No, I don't mean pixelated. I mean 3D objects in them have a checkerboard, transparent mesh over them that don't exist over sprites. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's because you have only ever played these games on blurry CRTs with RCA cables. I have a fancy later model EDTV and when I use s-video it becomes really apparent. Certain PS1 emulators display this too while others like ePSXe don't. This is part of the reason why I can't find any screen shots to show what I'm talking about. Any modern screenshots come from emulators that fix this, and any old screen captures from when the games came out are too small or blurry to notice. This is also very apparent to anyone who got any PS1 games on the PSN store.

Does anyone know why this exists?

It's pretty distracting and down right ugly, but my only options are 1) go back to RCA, 2) emulate the games. With 1) you sacrifice all the detail you gain with s-video. Before I switched over, I couldn't identify a large portion of the things I was fighting in FF7. With 2) it's just not the same man and it won't work perfectly. I guess I'll just have to *deal with it*

Unless someone can come up with the elusive third option.