The MiSTerFPGA project has recently added support to natively output S-Video. It’s a very useful feature for those wanting to use televisions whose best connections are S-Video and composite. I created a video to show how to enable this feature on your MiSTerFPGA using an adapter designed by Mike Simone. A Quick summary on how to setup the adapter is to edit the MiSTer.ini with these changes:
vga_mode=rgb ; supported modes: rgb, ypbpr, svideo, cvbs. rgb is default.
ntsc_mode=0 ; Only for S-Video and CVBS vga_mode. 0 – normal NTSC, 1 – PAL-60, 2 – PAL-M.
composite_sync=0 ; set to 1 for composite sync on HSync signal of VGA output.
Then reset your MiSTer, plug in an adapter and some cables and you’re done. In the video I go into more details and also do some image quality comparisons between composite, s-video and component. Keep in mind that image quality can vary across televisions, so your image can look a little different than what I’m getting. I also plan to release videos focusing on connecting the adapter using direct video and also how to do this using only off the shelf cables.
For a list of vendors selling the adapter, check out the below post here on RetroRGB by Zez Retro:
https://www.retrorgb.com/mister-s-video-composite-podcast.html