Nintendo 64 won't work on HDTVs

Factual Questions
1

I bought a Nintendo 64 off eBay for some nostalgic gaming but have been having a helluva time getting it to work. The system itself works (the light comes on) but I’ve tested it on 3 HDTVs and a LCD monitor and all say there’s no signal being received (I’m using the standard yellow/red/white RCA connectors). I Google’d the problem and found several other people having similar issues on newer TVs.

Why is this? Why would an analog video signal work on old TVs but not on the modern ones? Every once in a while I can get it to work but I have to turn it off and turn it on several times and seemingly get lucky (and it still only works with one game, not the other).

I tried hooking it up to an RF modulator but unfortunately the modulator automatically detects when a signal is being received to turn itself on or off so I think it’s just staying off.

Out of curiosity I put a voltmeter to the video connector (set to DC, not real sure what kind of output the RCA connectors give). When I turn it on it peaks at about 1.4 V and then slowly goes down to about 100 mV steady-state. For reference I have a Wheel of Fortune game that hooks directly to the TV and I measured its video connector voltage which stays at around 2.3 V. Could this be the issue? Any way to amplify this to get it to reliably work?

2

a DC voltmeter is useless. audio and video signals are AC and not of a single frequency.

3

Ahh, well thanks a lot for crushing my only theory thus far. :stuck_out_tongue:

But I still think it’s some kind of low-voltage issue given none of the TVs detect a signal and the RF modulator won’t even power-on when it’s connected to it…

4

I don’t think modern stuff can handle 320 x 240 any longer. I just set one of my PC outputs to that resolution and my display flipped out.

5

And in a follow up test, the actual NTSC standard of 480i works just fine.

6

Well I *have *managed to get the Nintendo 64 to work on 2 of my TVs a few times. It looked really pixelated and generally crappy (expected) but it took a ton of finagling and experimenting (turning the N64 on before the TV, switching inputs around, flipping the N64 off-and-on a dozen or so times). It all seems very random.

7

Have you ever tried it on an old CRT unit? Like, how do you know it can even output?

8

Unfortunately I don’t have any CRTs to test it on. Every display in the house is a LCD. The person I bought it from on eBay said he tests each one on an older tube TV (and I’ll believe it since he has good feedback and cleans/sells N64s on a regular basis) but he also said he had similar issues when he tried them on a newer DLP TV.

I know the N64 “works” since it has indeed worked a few rare times on my TV. What I don’t get is why they don’t seem to work on modern TVs. It’s definitely not an isolated issue. I guess I don’t understand how modern TVs process an analog video signal any different from the old CRT TVs…

9

This sounds like you have a hardware issue with the N64 or it’s cables.

10

Well the cables are new and I’m dubious as to whether it’s truly a hardware issue since so many other people seem to have issues with newer TVs. Would measuring the video cable with a AC voltmeter be of any use? Or is it useless without an oscilloscope?

11

this. My Atari 800 works just fine on my year old LCD HDTV.

12

It probably isn’t the cable. It’s almost certainly the non-standard NTSC output of the N64 not being supported by your various TV tuners. Is the game that does work a memory expansion pack title?

13

Not sure. I’ve gotten Mario Party (the first one) to work a few times. Mario Kart has never worked.

14

I can’t figure out if that’s one of the few actually 480i N64 titles, which would be one of the only real explanations for it working that’s supported by my theory. It worked for a while right? Like, it didn’t blink out again after a few seconds?

15

So currently I have it hooked up to my RF modulator, which displays a red LED when it displays a video signal. Most of the time when I turn the N64 on it will show the red LED for about a half-second before turning off again. Every once in a while it’ll stay on and the game (Mario Party) will come up. I can’t seem to re-create why it works when it works. It’s all very perplexing…

16

I’m pretty sure that the RCP (the graphics engine in the N64) does some funky things to the output signal to avoid the “comb” artifacts that are so often seen on interlaced formats (e.g., NTSC). There are definitely different video modes, which would explain why some games might work. This Wikipedia page says that consoles of that era would muck with the timings in some video modes so that each half-screen pass would hit the same points on the raster. This link on that page looks like it contains references to a bunch of converters that connect older videogame hardware to newer TVs. Acquiring a converter might be the way to go.

17

Thanks, Punoqllads. I’ll look into some video converters that can handle the 240p/288p resolutions most N64 games output.