Famicom titler price query.

[Riffbear]

HI all,
Is the famicom titler really worth the $1,000 mark?  

[fredJ]

I think the price in Japan is more like 500$ -700$ but I haven't followed it closely, it is too expensive for me. Might be 1000 $ as you say.
It is pricey because it offers the best possible image quality with its RGB output. Also it is quite rare.
Sometimes you can see people just selling the RGB card for 200 - 300$ in Japan.

[L___E___T]

I remember when you could buy a new one for $500  

Waaaah.

[MasterDisk]

Because some people ruins it by removing the PPU, so it became rarer in working condition so price increased a lot.
Depending of condition: from $470 to $700 loose ---- 670 to 850 boxed, maybe 950-1000 if it's unopened.

[L___E___T]

I think it's awful that folks remove the PPU.  If you really want a sharp visual clarity, just get an emulator.  Famicom wasn't designed for HD TVs.

[ericj]

For roughly the same price of the PPU alone, you could get an old Lumigen, DVDO, or Key Digital video processor and scale the image of all your old consoles to work great with HDTVs.

[petik1]

Why would someone take the PPU out of one famicom to put it in another?

[L___E___T]

It's the retro gaming equivalent of shark fin soup.  No wonder it's so popular in Japan.

[fredJ]

"The console was released exclusively in Japan at a retail price of 43,000 yen"  (the famicom was released at 14,800 six years earlier)
Says wikipedia, who also has an external link to famicomworld....
http://famicomworld.com/system/famicom-titler/

I think people prefer to have an AV Famicom or Twin Famicom rather than the titler. The titler is around twice the size of a Twin Famicom and it weighs 4,5 kg. That's probably why people prefer to put the PPU in their everyday console of choice. Some people have to have the best.

Personally I think that RGB is overrated for any console; I've looked at clips (most recently Pc Engine) and I don't consider it to be a big deal.
If you want HD, buy xbox...

[Hamburglar]

Never heard of people harvesting the PPU from these systems to stick in another Famicom other than some Japanese sites that show people doing this, specially for someone out of Japan that would be very expensive, considering you can get the PPU from arcade boards for much cheaper.

Most people don't RGB mod their systems for HD TVs that would just be stupid, I use my RGB modded Famicom on a 1990s SONY CRT RGB monitor, the picture is amazing.
And no scaler is ever going to clean up Composite video to RGB quality.

I remember when these systems were going for about 300 NIB tops, used even cheaper- even if you do not use RGB these systems are the only units to output S-video straight out of the box. That's one of the reasons they go for so much.

I think it's awful that folks remove the PPU.  If you really want a sharp visual clarity, just get an emulator.  Famicom wasn't designed for HD TVs.

[ericj]

I just suggested a scaler for HDTV use, not to match RGB output.

My video processor, coincidentally, does output through either component, RGB HV, and/or HDMI, but like I said, it's not true high quality RGB output. I input the signal to the VP through S-Video (via an AV switcher). It treats the 240 signal from the Famicom as 480i and can scale/deinterlace it nicely to 480P, 720i/P or even 1080i/P (which looks like shit  ). Good enough to play and enjoy either way, since it is virtually unplayable without it on a 73" HDTV.  It makes all the other consoles I have look damn good, too. For under $500, it was a pretty good purchase IMO.

[RetroGamerTMD]

I've always been interested in modding my AV Famicom for Svideo output, is the encoder in the famicom tilter the only way to do it? I don't think I could do it if it meant paying that much just to destroy original hardware...

[Hamburglar]

I just suggested a scaler for HDTV use, not to match RGB output.

My video processor, coincidentally, does output through either component, RGB HV, and/or HDMI, but like I said, it's not true high quality RGB output. I input the signal to the VP through S-Video (via an AV switcher). It treats the 240 signal from the Famicom as 480i and can scale/deinterlace it nicely to 480P, 720i/P or even 1080i/P (which looks like shit  ). Good enough to play and enjoy either way, since it is virtually unplayable without it on a 73" HDTV.  It makes all the other consoles I have look damn good, too. For under $500, it was a pretty good purchase IMO.

If you want to play on a HD set then an upscaler makes sense,  I used to have a Sigma scaler, worked great for component to HDMI conversion, but didn't do as well a job on composite video, specially not on 2D video games.
Post Merge: February 01, 2012, 08:14:05 pm

I've always been interested in modding my AV Famicom for Svideo output, is the encoder in the famicom tilter the only way to do it? I don't think I could do it if it meant paying that much just to destroy original hardware...

No there are other options, you can use Nintendo VS and Playchoice boards, it is cheaper but still very destructive in the sense that you are taking a part out of an arcade board that will make it unusable. You also need to build or buy a RGB to S-video/video encoder.

[L___E___T]

I also remember when you could buy these 300 new.  Shame.

[DerZocker]

I wonder why people would rip apart their Titlers anyway instead of just using them for playing.