Yea GT4 has some problems in 480p and upwards, it exhibits some “banding” effects if I can call them like that, but any other title I tried is better in 480p, and that includes Tekken 4, SoulCalibur 3 and Valkyrie Profile 2.
As for Retrotink 2x Pro vs OSSC, it looks like they are both in the same price range, but the Retrotink lacks a few things like RGB inputs (but it has composite and S-Video), jack audio outputs and a display (not sure if has a remote and on-screen display as I haven’t tried it). Also the fact that Retrotink 2x Pro has no costumizable scanlines and doesn’t support anything higher than 480i/576i is quite a turn-off for me. I’ve been using the OSSC with the Wii U feeding it 1080p signal via component and adding scanlines for Wii games and it really looks amazing (you can see them on the Scanlines Screenshot thread).
As a personal opinion, I think the Retrotink 2x Pro is way too pricy for what it does, it should be in the 50-75$ range maximum for what it does, the OSSC is better in every way except if you want to connect composite or S-Video consoles.
When I have proper deinterlacing a la a framemeister, I agree with poptart that 480p usually isn’t worth bothering with. Without those fancy deinterlacing methods, however, I don’t really notice the issues he’s pointing to enough to prefer a bob deinterlaced 480i. Especially not one with a blur filter applied. Honestly, I can’t find a whole lot of discussion of this issue in general? Anything recent is just ‘well MLiG said…’ but I haven’t found an info dump on the subject or anything.
It’s not just isolated games, almost every PS2 game compatible with 480p has compromizes in going to 480p. It’s just the reality of the hardware where the 4mb edram was extremely tight and the 480p mode neccesitating a 640 pixel wide output vs the 512 pixel wide output widely used on PS2 480i games. The only real way around that would have been to have 480i look worse to maintain consistency with 480p (or reduce complexity of implementation) which a handful of games do.
The biggest advantage of OSSC is being able to do 3x,4x,5x multiplication. Most TVs do an OK job of 480p but you’ll get sharper results at higher res output from the OSSC going at high multiplications. On my TV it’s actually impossible to turn off overscan and image contextual auto-backlight at 480p so I really like having the ability to kick things up to 960p.
Try looking up the official PS2 SDK and included documentation. Otherwise yeah there’s not great discussion or sources for this online.
Edit: I had some more here but I’m going to do a bit more research before adding it back.
Bottom line, you’re just going to be dealing with artifacts. Whether from deinterlacing or color depth or what, the PS2 is kind of a pain in the ass to display.
But then it has the best library to date, so it’s all worth it
The Retrotink 2X Pro would also be better than the OSSC at 240p/480i switching as it’s been proven to handle it better and it’s smoothing is amazing for 480i games, making it ideal for the PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, Dreamcast, etc. It can also be useful for Dreamcast games that don’t support VGA and Scart. To get scart cables to work for it it requires a scart to component converter, though it’s at least cheaper.
I have all my retro consoles connected to an OSSC at this point, except PS2 I have a separate setup with a consumer grade 20 inch CRT TV over s-video because it just looks so, so good on a CRT. And then I got a Rad2X to make using my Japanese PS2 for DVDs easier, and honestly I’m just so impressed with the results of using bob deinterlacing with smoothing that it makes me question whether the CRT is even needed.
I have a hard on for sharp pixels, even in 480i/480p content, so smoothing just doesn’t do it for me. I should look in to potential software solutions, though, since I play primarily on my desktop via capture card anyway. current set up is very close to lagless, so a frame or two or lag from high quality deinterlacing in post might be a reasonable solution for me.
I like sharp pixels too, but man, when I did 480i tests of no smoothing and smoothing the smoothing one looked better in motion for me, the interlacing/flickering on models and text got insane plus it helps with more consistent visuals. Though I have to admit I would also pick the no smoothing for sharpness so it’s a toss up for me.
Smoothing might look more “blurry” but honestly in motion it seems to work better plus the no smoothing in this game doesn’t look that much sharper than smoothing.
I get why people prefer the latter–it’s the same reason people prefer not to use the 480p x2 setting on the OSSC–but I’ll take the sharp output every time.
I would too, but for some games like this the sharp output isn’t that much sharper, in fact it almost looks the same in motion except for smoothing getting rid of interlacing so that’s a plus for me to prefer it in this case.
My solution is using ffmpeg to deinterlace (there are several options) with hardware upscaling and H.264 encoding on my Intel CPU/GPU. Super quick and great results!
Wave Rally (PS2) 60fps 480i to 720p
Click through for best quality
For me, scanlines look better than smoothing (even if they are artificially generated). Also I don’t find bob-deinterlacing to be bad at all, but that’s only because I was lucky enough that my monitor has an option that almost removes flickering from the bob-deinterlacing. The TV on the other hand… that’s another story.
Hey @Timu321, or anyone else, have you got any more info on the frame cap for deinterlaced signals?
Does that produce a jittery image in motion?
Is that what the blur is supposed to soften?
I’ve been using this cheapo thing, and it seems to deinterlace ok. I’ve only noticed some text sort of ‘jumping’ while scrolling on a menu, and only in a couple of games.
I have no idea what sort of frame limit it might be imposing.
My guess is it just a limitation of interlaced signals, that at 60 frames, a blended signal will be half the rate.
I’ve been playing a bit of San Andreas, and it doesn’t feel like its running half speed.
If the ossc and tink are similar, then I could probably hold off for a while.
It’s only wii and ps2 I’m trying to figure out.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
A couple of screenshots from the recently acquired Viewmaster 20".
It does, and yes the blur can soften that as well. For my capture card it has interlaced signals between looking like crap in motion and capping the framerate to 30FPS. With deinterlacing it looks better and I can have the full 60fps as my capture card(and pretty much most of them in general) prefer progressive signals over interlaced signals.
You should be getting 60fps when it’s deinterlaced, I get it and record it even.
