I recently purchased a 32'' Samsung HD LCD TV, and was saddened to learn that my NES looks terrible when played on it.  Not only did it look bad, parts of the picture would flicker and the picture was laggy.  I tried changing every option in the TV's menu, but there was no luck.

Last week, I was looking through some boxes and found the RF switch for my NES (I had been using the R/W/Y cables).  I decided to give it a try and behold, the picture looked noticeably clearer albeit still a bit laggy.

First, I'm not quite sure I understand the difference between the RF and AV signals and why there would be such a difference on an HD.  Also, I'd like to just ask if there is any general advice for improving my NES experience on my new TV.  Thank you.

(NOTE:  Please don't respond with "get an SD TV!!"  That's not the point.)

Huh, that's strange. I have an HDTV and my NES works just fine. Maybe it depends on what model of TV you have?

I have the same flickering issues with my 32" Sharp Aquos LCD.  I found that turning up the brightness makes it a little less noticeable, but that's the best I could do.  It is possible that you could run your NES through a home theater receiver and maybe the receiver's video processing would fix the problem, but since my TV is mounted on the wall in my bedroom I don't want to put a box in there.

Werdna wrote on 14. Jan 2009 at 01:36:

I recently purchased a 32'' Samsung HD LCD TV, and was saddened to learn that my NES looks terrible when played on it.  Not only did it look bad, parts of the picture would flicker and the picture was laggy.  I tried changing every option in the TV's menu, but there was no luck.

Laggy picture is a pretty common problem on HDTVs when playing older video game systems.  I imagine that this is caused because televisions are designed to maximize throughput rather than minimize latency.  Your HDTV is probably trying to upscale the images to look good on an HD screen, but is doing that in a manner that takes an impractically long time.

Hopefully the next generation of HDTVs will have better backwards compatibility with older video game systems.

Sargon wrote on 24. Jan 2009 at 21:02:

I have the same flickering issues with my 32" Sharp Aquos LCD.  I found that turning up the brightness makes it a little less noticeable, but that's the best I could do.  It is possible that you could run your NES through a home theater receiver and maybe the receiver's video processing would fix the problem, but since my TV is mounted on the wall in my bedroom I don't want to put a box in there.

That was my thought too.  Maybe try running your NES through something else (got an old VCR laying around?) before you hook it up to the Home theatre receiver and/or HDTV.  Not sure if that would make any difference, but it might solve the problem.