Composite Video on the NES: Why's it so wobbly?

zdw 77 points 7 comments July 05, 2026
nicole.express · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (3 comments)

Dwedit

The missing dot is not just a thing that helps stabilize the colors in a picture, it's literally a missing dot. The first scanline is literally twitching left and right by one pixel every other frame. You probably can't see it on your TV without messing with the vertical hold.

brianpan

Growing up I definitely noticed the wobble. But I'm also so used to it that I didn't realize a lot of examples were videos. Really interesting investigation!

RiverCrochet

See also: https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/NTSC_video

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