Retro Gaming Cables/Upscalers

Psiloc posted a bit about his cables in the Retro Gaming thread.

Personally I may go for a 5x despite price but as I still haven't even committed to a 4K TV yet I have plenty of time...

Edit - as for your other question, if a TV plays an NTSC console in colour without problems then it supports NTSC but not sure by what measures the cable you mentioned requires it.

Only import oddities I ever had on old NTSC compatible Carts was Vampire Chronicles on DC which oddly only worked with the RF cable (SCART made the top quarter of the screen full screen) and Shireen on Wii which went redscales unless I used component.

I have one of these, a Marseille mClassic. At the moments it's on my Switch, but I've used it with my Wii and even with my Xbox One, where it made games like CoD and Rocket League look a bit better. Here's a DF video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-NhX9-_KE0

The HD Retrovision cables are good but you still have to run them through a scalar. They're basically the cream of the crop in terms of getting the analog signal out of your console - but you still have to upscale/line double and digitise the signal with a scalar. If you just plug them into the component input on your TV (surprised you even have one) then it's going to look pretty bad unless you can get a 480p or better image from the console which I don't think is a thing on the Saturn.

There's not actually a ton of difference between component and a well shielded RGB SCART cable. Their signals are so easily converted they're basically equal. The main advantage for component is that you're more likely to be buying a better quality product if you just bought one at random, some RGB SCART cables are utter crap.

Anyway the best options nowadays are a RAD2X cable for a single console or one of the Retrotink 2X products + HD Retrovision/high quality SCART cable for multiple consoles (these are actually basically the same hardware in different form factors, just see which form you prefer). I've been recommending the RAD2X cables to anyone who just says "how do I hook up my Megadrive", "how do I hook up my SNES" etc. because they're plug and play and excellent.

The "cost is no object" option is the 5X Pro, and it's currently in stock which is a rarity. They're a lot of money but they are worth it. The OSSC is the same thing, but cheaper, with the downside being the manual tinkering that's required for each console. I think it's being updated to a new model soon though

What's the model number of the TV?

On paper what you've described makes sense and should work. It checks out that a modern TV would do composite over 3.5mm to save space.

I can't stress enough how bad it will look compared to running it through the 5X though (or any scalar tbh). But as a stopgap go for it

i.rtings.com/assets/products/JsmAQ9q7/sony-a80j-oled/inputs-side-large.jpg

Yep I'd come to the same conclusion as you

I’m familiar with that sort of input via old in-car monitors that used to use them

5x, other than a minor glitch with my favourite scanline/shader setting that was promptly fixed with a firmware update it’s been perfect. Like literally, I can’t conceive of a way it could be improved

Let me know what settings you decide on!

Most people seem to fall in one of three camps: Sharp pixels, scanlines or smoothing. We can continue to be friends with two of these options.

I have pushed my retrotink 5x to 2022, too many expenses thus far and some trouble between me and my brother has meant we have decided to not share new appliances. This meant I had to pay for my new TV entirely myself leaving me strapped for cash.

Will try out my new HD Retrovision component cables for the saturn tommorow directly on my old HD TV(Cost me 100 euro unfortunately forgot Swiss products gets charged custom duty because the agreement between thr EU lapsed). Intend to buy genesis at some point and the cable can at least be used for that as well. No idea how bad the input lag will be, gaming mode should help reduce some of it adding maybe 1 frame hopefully?

Well, the Retrotink has arrived, now I just need a day off to play with it. Assuming the USB on my 2021 OLED can power it. A little concerned about the specific SCART warnings in manual about "unbuffered TTL CSYNC" as I have no idea if my standard console cables are good or not and it is a pricy bit of kit...

Also need to dig out a better cable for my GC than the composite SCART currently plugged in. Pretty sure I have something better with one of my 3 Cubes...

Mine is a Sony OLED so not sure about 1200p support specifically but hopefully it has it.

Cheers for the cable reassurances. Just going to fiddle with basic modes at first (only got GC, Wii and PS2 currently downstairs with TV).

Typically my crappy composite adaptor stop gap arrived 2 days before the 5x so never even got looked at

1200p and 1440p should both definitely be full screen.

1080p Fill relates to the fact that 1080p isn't an integer scale for 240p/480i, so there are various options for how you want the screen to fit. 1080p Under does an integer scale, but not full screen, 1080p Fill scales the image so it fits the screen (with minor IQ consequences) and 1080p Over does an integer scale but overscans the image so the top and bottom are cut off.

But the point is if your TV supports 1200p or 1440p then the issue should be moot. Although 1080p Over is sometimes useful if the game has some blank space at the top and bottom that needs cropping out.

And yeah at the moment the OSD doesn't auto dismiss and you have to press the menu button again to dismiss it.

Well your TV certainly will inherently be scaling any image to its native 4k resolution but that goes for any content. Whether 1200p or 1440p looks best depends on the panel but they will likely both look near perfect. Until the next generation of these things which will certainly output straight to 4k (which is also an integer scale from 240/480) there will always be some non-integer scaling at some part of the process, but 4k currently requires way more power than is economical today and the benefits are practically imperceptible.

As long as you've got integer scaling in as much of the pipe as possible, you're doing all you can. The other settings are either preference or circumstantial.

And yep, quality cables are now more important than ever.

New 5x firmware debuts today at 12PM PST, which I think means 8PM for us.

Google suggest it would be OK but I don't have a wavebird to try it out.