After looking over my initial post I realize I should have given more information. I’m currently finalizing plans for my setup. I have a desk/table with 8 monitors. They will support various PCs and consoles. I originally bought a RetroTink 2X to help with this but then I though about using the Framemeister instead.
I have a 46" 2007 Polaroid 1080i TV that currently has several retro and modern consoles hooked up as well as a Framemeister. Even though the TV still works its so old that I’m certain technology has far surpassed it. I thought about buying a 4K TV in the next two years along with an OSSC such as an OLED or TCL but I don’t want to spend time and money just to end up with a worse experience. I measured the space I have and it looks like a 50" is the biggest size I can fit.
Thanks for the reminder about the Timesluth. It’s certainly easier than guessing using the manual lag test. It’s good to hear that updates are reducing lag. Voltar mentioned that updates for his Visio added lag and was one of the resaons I asked about 4K displays.
Thanks! I own a RetroTink2x and love it. I bought it originally for my Desk/Table setup but I might move the Framemeister there and pair the Tink with an OSSC.
Yeah it can totally vary, that was super shitty of Vizio, I wonder if they ever fixed that. Bob from RetroRGB did a video last year or maybe early this year on 2 4k displays with very low lag that he liked. My friend ended up buying one of them and it is ridiculously low lag.
I like to make things overly complicated for no good reason.
In today’s incident, I recently recieved a Rad2X PlayStation HDMI cable. Honestly, I bought this mostly to use on my JP PS2 to make using my son’s JP region DVDs easier. For that it’s mostly good but I had to jerry rig an updated DVD software onto my PS2 using the krHACKen modified update software as the one built into my white SCPH-50000 PS2 doesn’t support RGB in the DVD software. After that the upscaling using bob deinterlacing with the Rad2X/RetroTink smoothing function looks pretty great, a lot better than I’ve seen it look short of an upscaling DVD player like PS3 uses. And it being HDMI means no input switching, it’s all handled seamlessly by my HDMI switch.
But enough of making things easier. Let’s make things more difficult to use and stupid.
Since I had the thing I wanted to try it with games of course. The result is pretty good, I think overall it’s an improvement over standard bob deinterlacing in the OSSC as the smoothing helps to round out jaggedness and hide the low-res nature in motion which is something bob deinterlacing exposes pretty quick. But my TV does a really soft scale from 480p (the cable only outputs 480p) to 4k.
So I thought let’s run it through the OSSC for some reason. Then I can get it scaled again to 960p and the TV scaling is less offensive and I get a few other minor benefits.
I had to run it through my recently acquired HDMI to VGA adapter, and then also run it through a powered HDMI switch as the adapter needed more power than the Rad2X HDMI could supply. But after doing PS2 -> Rad2X -> HDMI to VGA adapter -> OSSC -> TV, I think I may be onto something here. Cause I spent the last hour or so trying like 10 different games and no matter what I throw at it the result looks better than ever. Crisp looking, nice scanlines, good fast deinterlacing, just the right amount of softness.
In the end I’m going to keep playing PS2 games on a 480i CRT but yeah I might get a standalone retrotink cause it seems useful for mildly better 480i gameplay on a modern TV.
How different is that from just using component or VGA ->OSSC ->TV?
Is it because of the way it deinterlaces at the Rad2X level? I’m not familiar with what a Rad2X is since I haven’t been paying attention to the retro device and scaling scene since completing my setup over a year ago.
Not of my own but there are several videos with retrotink / rad2x footage on youtube. Like this:
or this:
It’s an overlooked feature because it uh looks pretty bad using the filter with 240p. But if you know you’re going to be doing 480i 100% of the time, it’s a nice feature and I wish the OSSC had it.
There is an old custom firmware that has smoothing capabilities for the OSSC:
That page has an interactive before/after example of Rayman of the effect. You do lose functionality as I don’t think it’s been updated (or has space?) to incorporate the latest official firmware features, unfortunately. I guess you could buy two OSSCs and chain them…
I’m so ready for a beefier OSSC or OSSC2.
Retro Scaler A1 is finished and can now be bought. Seems like a solid 240p line doubler. Also handles interlaces images but doesn’t say how: https://irkenlabs.com/retro-scaler-a1/introduction# No sure if it’s because the £ is shitty but it seems expensive for what it is ($227/£173).
There was some discussion on shmups forum asking if this could support downscaling 480p/i to 240p which would have been a great feature but the request hasn’t been taken on.
Yeah I saw that custom firmware a while ago but I don’t think the filter there (contrast edge detect?) works the same way as a general smoothing and probably wouldn’t be as useful for 480i.
I’m not sure anyone with the knowledge has interest in beefing up the OSSC since at that point… just use a different scaling device. chaining an OSSC in to a DVDO or using a micomsoft scaler or something are all still viable options.
Oh, I tell a lie. there’s interest in an OSSC that can output 4k resolution without issue. but in terms of giving it a full frame buffer for various scaling effects? this isnt what the OSSC project was designed to do.
It was somewhat complicated. I first needed the 75-300 ohm balun, then my VCR didn’t tune in because it uses UHF and it’s a VHF only TV I was pretty sure Nintendos use VHF through.
So then, it’s an NTSC SNES (Super Famicom Jr), using a PAL N64 external RF modulator from the AV port, so converts composite to RF using a channel our TVs can tune.
I presume it’s still sending NTSC colour picture at 60Hz through the RF modulator, but colour doesn’t matter in black and white, and 60Hz could be adjusted with the vertical hold! Then I simply adjusted the vertical size pot as well, and it’s perfect!
Image is a bit snowy so I’ll clean all the connections which will likely clear it up as well as RF can.
This is how I played these games as a child (except in 50Hz) as I only had a hand me down black and white TV. Played Sega and the first couple of years of SNES in B&W.
Yes NES manages much better on B&W because there are less colours and detail. Was really quite playable as a kid, the only issue was potion colours in Solstice lol.
Now I’ll have to get another AV Famicom through for that, as I need a console with the Nintendo AV out plug to use the N64 RF adapter to set it to PAL channels, and my AV Famicom is RGB modded so doesn’t do composite properly anymore.
60Hz can again can be tuned in fine with vertical hold adjustments, but the TV can’t understand the NTSC colour encoding, and I couldn’t be bothered with the vertical size adjustment for this one given that.
Retrotink 2x pro or the OSSC. I like the idea of my first scaler being low effort. The retro tink only does 480p and the ossc can go much beyond that. But the ossc is a little more difficult to figure out.
I was pretty sure Nintendos use VHF through.
