Reply To: Getting CRT-like brightness from original Xbox to LCD monitor

[RandomBolt]

No game will use “full width” 720×480, that is not supported. The 480p output is EDTV 480p, where the 720 has margins (2 by 8px) which leaves 704px to be squished by 10:11 into 4:3, 640×480. This is according to spec for digital signals encoded over analog, like Component of TV VGA ports (with a TV RGB signal).

Any game that rendered geometry into square pixels instead of 10:11 will never display correctly in any EDTV compatible TV – CRT or LCD.

480p EDTV doesn’t change colorimetry, so if newer CRTs were more saturated, that should be a CRT problem.

Xbox was not (and cannot output) correct monitor VGA signals with Conexant chips. The filtering circuit on the motherboard would also need to be bypassed and further modified before being correct at a PC monitor.
Supposedly, it can output sRGB/rec 709, for 720p/1080i HDTV with HDTV gamma curves. I would not think this would be what is out of the encoder chip at 480p.

Gamma should be the same between 480i or 480p (not sure). It is possible there is some mismatch of IRE black levels at the output, so maybe try NTSC vs NTSC-J as US has 7.5 while J and PAL have 0 for black. This is a common problem when converting analog video to digital form, where for HDTV they were all set to 16-235 regardless of region.