Upscalers for Retro Consoles

Link@rentadrunk.org to RetroGaming@lemmy.world – 40 points –

I have been looking to get a upscaler for my retro consoles and also to allow me to stream these analog consoles.

Currently I am leaning towards the Open Source Scan Converter 1.8 but I know there are other options too like the RetroTink.

Does anyone have any experience, recommendations etc with these?

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Retrotink 5x immediately solved all my issues without additional setup or tinkering. Heavily recommend it. Ossc is cool and I love the open side of it. But retrotink 5x just plain works, and if you want a tinkering scaler the retrotink 4k does that thr best.

It sounds like the Retrotink 5X would be the thing to get. Its pretty pricey though. But its pretty fully featured, gets a lot of firmware updates, and it just works for the most part.

Now a retrotink is kinda overkill for me. So I recently got a GBS-C from aliexpress. Seems pretty nice so far, but I need to play with it more. However, the price is much, much cheaper than the Retrotink.

This will be dependent on a few things:

  • What's your budget?
  • What consoles are you looking to play?

I can personally vouch for the OSSC as a great entry point, however there's a caveat - if you'll be mostly playing PS2 / inputting interlaced content and you have the budget for it, you might want to consider the RetroTink 5X, as the OSSC's bob deinterlacing is not up to par IMO. The 5X is well worth it for that reason alone, otherwise they are both great options.

PS1, PS2 and maybe Wii not sure if they benefit from it.

Looking at the RetroTink 5x it seems to be double the price of the OSSC.

  • Wii, you'd be perfectly fine either way, you'll be able to get 480p 2x on the OSSC or 3x on the 5X.
  • PS2, you'd really benefit from the 5X for a vast majority of games, which output 480i, as the deinterlacing on the 5X is much better than the OSSC, here's an example on GT4, and you'd again get 3x (1440p) vs 2x (960p) on the OSSC.
    You could try and force 480p via GSM otherwise, if your PS2 is nodded, but I've had pretty poor luck with that method so I wouldn't recommend it.
  • PS1, that's debatable, for most games you'd be completely fine either way, but there's a fair number of them with res switching, which the 5X tends to handle better / without any delay vs the OSSC, so if that matters to you, that could be another pro for the 5X.

You're kinda in the perfect "target demographic" for the 5X with a PS2 in a way, but it's a matter of how much flickering bothers you or not, and whether or not the higher output res, more features, etc, is worth the price or not.
Again, both options are absolutely great and you wouldn't go wrong with either!

Thank you for your advice and everyone else. I have opted to get the RetroTink 5x!

Retrotink 5x is awesome so far

Thank you everyone! I have opted for the RetroTink 5x!

I have an OSSC, works wonderful with default settings for my PS2

Are you using scanlines per chance? Because otherwise the amount of flickering produced via bob deinterlacing is extremely distracting tbh.

Nah, I can't get the scan lines to look right with my cheap ass TV. Just basically updated the firmware and left everything on Default - I don't even change the upscaling settings as when I do it seems to make things all blurry

There's also the RetroTINK-4K if you'd like to take out a second mortgage. Personally, I prefer to just add HDMI mods and rely on my 4K TV's upscaler, or use FPGA consoles, but not everyone can do that.

Note that if those consoles include GameCube DOL-001 and a good upscaling TV, there's a very easy solution. A Carby will output native 480p over HDMI when booting while pressing the B button.

Just to add to the math, it really depends on what you own already and your capabilities to install mods yourself. Buying 3 pixelfx HDMI mods (shiny editions) will cost you around the same as the 4k (and that's if you can install yourself). Same thing as the analogue consoles if you want individual systems to play cartridges.

To add to the quality aspect, I have a 4k and I compared my RGB N64, HW1 N64Digital HDMI and RGB outputs, and Mister core as soon as I got it. The 4k looks better on my OLED than the HDMI output of the mod, with the only exception being if you prefer the smoothing filter in certain games.

I have been working on putting a stellar hd+ in an xbox, but there is so many things wrong with that console I had to shelve it for my own sanity. I also recently got pixelfx's retro gem for a PS2, but I haven't had a chance to actually install it yet and it's an internal mod like the hd+. It looks like pixelfx also has a seperate upscaler called the morph4k though, that might be worth checking out.

Honestly, I didn't know that upscalers like that existed but now I'll have to check them out for myself too