[WIZZARD77]

I just got an N64 s-video cable from e-bay and when I use the s-video lead the picture is full of black dots in kind of a grid over the picture. The composite lead looks normal. Did I receive a bad cable or is my tv at fault. I have tried it on my brothers N64 and it does the same on his tv. One unit is a black one and the other is a pikachu edition. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanx

[Hornpipe2]

WIZZARD77, on Sun Mar 30, 2008 10:44 PM, said:

I just got an N64 s-video cable from e-bay and when I use the s-video lead the picture is full of black dots in kind of a grid over the picture. The composite lead looks normal. Did I receive a bad cable or is my tv at fault. I have tried it on my brothers N64 and it does the same on his tv. One unit is a black one and the other is a pikachu edition. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanx

Are you using both the S-Video and the Composite (yellow) lead at the same time? Make sure you have only one plugged into your TV at a time, leave the regular composite lead unhooked.

[Lendorien]

This is a really late reply, but I was looking for a solution to this problem myself. Some trial and error revealed that it had to do with the cable I was using. I'm thinking you might have the same issue.

Some net research suggested that poorly shielded cables caused this problem. The cable I was using was a cheap one donated to my brother int he dorms in college (along with a bunch of games. We have no idea who owns them, but they stole our rumble packs).

I had a couple other N64 cables laying around, so I tried the one I'd bought from Gamestop. It's a heavy duty multi-system svideo/composite cable. Switching to that one from the flimsy inexpensive one solved my problem. The black checkerboard was gone and I was shocked at how much better the image was over composite. It's almost like night and day.

My research has suggested that while cables are a likely culprit, some HDTV's might be the culprit too, though this is not the case for me.

Best of luck!

This post has been edited by Lendorien: Fri Jan 2, 2009 12:41 AM