Mega Drive - Upscaler

[Farore]

Hi all,

I've been having an itch to play my old Mega Drive I, but I am looking for solutions that can upscale the output signal with minimal lag. Does anyone have any recommendations about this?

Nothing like a bit of Friday night Golden Axe or Street Fighter.

Thank you in advance.

 

[Vince]

Hi all,

I've been having an itch to play my old Mega Drive I, but I am looking for solutions that can upscale the output signal with minimal lag. Does anyone have any recommendations about this?

Nothing like a bit of Friday night Golden Axe or Street Fighter.

Thank you in advance.

With my megadrive (mk1) which I would consider to be a really nice picture, I went with a 3BP mod and out via RGB to an OSSC. I dont think the OSSC has composite so its not really an option on a stock MK1 but is on the MK2. This really isnt a cheap way to do it the mods are about £30 or so and require some soldering skills and the OSSC is expensive (£100 area) but if you want the best possible on a mk1 then modding the system is the way.

Scaler wise a decent cheap option for a stock mk1 or 2 would be a cheap retroscaler 2x or something similar.

 

[Personality+]

Anything from RetroTINK

 

[Armadillo]

I use a retrotink 5x with my old consoles, it's magic. Had mine years, 100% recommend it.

 

[Vince]

I use a retrotink 5x with my old consoles, it's magic. Had mine years, 100% recommend it.

Do you recon the 5x is a better option than the ossc? I have my ossc profiled per console but don't really know a whole lot about the retrotink stuff. I see some people are using both together but not sure if there is much advantage.

 

[Armadillo]

Do you recon the 5x is a better option than the ossc? I have my ossc profiled per console but don't really know a whole lot about the retrotink stuff. I see some people are using both together but not sure if there is much advantage.

Depends what you play. For interlaced content, I'd say it's 100% worth it. The motion adapative deinterlacing is so much nicer than bob deinterlacing, I pretty much always use it over bob deinterlacing and was the main reason I went with the 5x over the ossc. Also games that switch between 240p & 480i when you go to the menu don't black screen on the 5x, it can handle the switch without having to resync.

I've not used an OSSC, so other than the deinterlacing methods, I can't really compare anything else.

 

[Vince]

Depends what you play. For interlaced content, I'd say it's 100% worth it. The motion adapative deinterlacing is so much nicer than bob deinterlacing, I pretty much always use it over bob deinterlacing and was the main reason I went with the 5x over the ossc. Also games that switch between 240p & 480i when you go to the menu don't black screen on the 5x, it can handle the switch without having to resync.

I've not used an OSSC, so other than the deinterlacing methods, I can't really compare anything else.

Ahh fair play to be honest you can get lost in the OSSC menus for hours fiddling about with stuff and messing about. I just use a 2x for like console testing and plug and play stuff as it has composite if im actually taking a console into the lounge ill generally have it go through the ossc. Both work pretty well to me and my 40 something year old eyes dont really see that much difference most of the time.

 

[Farore]

Depends what you play. For interlaced content, I'd say it's 100% worth it. The motion adapative deinterlacing is so much nicer than bob deinterlacing, I pretty much always use it over bob deinterlacing and was the main reason I went with the 5x over the ossc. Also games that switch between 240p & 480i when you go to the menu don't black screen on the 5x, it can handle the switch without having to resync.

I've not used an OSSC, so other than the deinterlacing methods, I can't really compare anything else.

Thanks so much for this. This is hepful. Are these expensive? And are they easy to set up?

 

[Armadillo]

Thanks so much for this. This is hepful. Are these expensive? And are they easy to set up?

Retrotink 5x pro is £325. 5x is easy or as hard to use as you want really. You can just plug it in, set your desired output resolution (1080p max, it does have an experimental 1440p, but that's hidden, for advance users), use generic 4:3 or 16:9 (depending on input) and away you go. Or you can really dig in if you like and really start fine tuning it based on systems and add stuff like scanlines, there is a big wiki for it https://consolemods.org/wiki/AV:RetroTINK-5X_Pro.

Takes Composite, RGB, YPbPr, & S-video.

OSSC is about £130, apparently not quite as user friendly as the 5x (That's what I read when deciding myself, I've never used an ossc). Only takes RGB and YPbPr.

There are other options.

Retrotink 2x pro. This is just a basic line doubler. Outputs at 480p, has a couple of options (smoothing and scanlines). Plug and play, basically no setup. No RGB, only S-video, composite and YPbPr. £130 ish. This is a hard sell at that price, has it's place, but really basic for the price.

GBS-C or GBS-Control (same thing, can be listed as either). This is easily the best value upscaler, but the most faff. It's based on an opensource firmware. Only does RGB & YPbPr in. Good option, has motion adaptive deinterlacing if you ever want to play 480i titles on later systems. Faff comes from they come in different configs. Some only output over vga, so you have to get an vga to hdmi convertor, some have it built in, some don't spit out audio and so on. Can be got for £60ish, but you gotta find the right/good ones.

Lower than that, is pretty much all junk and you may as well just plug directly into the tv.

Upscaling old consoles with no lag and good output is not a cheap game.

 

[Farore]

Yikes - this is much more expensive than I expected! Do any of these devices give as good result as using an old school CRT television?

 

[Armadillo]

Yikes - this is much more expensive than I expected! Do any of these devices give as good result as using an old school CRT television?

5x can get really close with it's scanlines and crt masks

.

OSSC can add scanlines and crt masks as well, but can't find a comparison between an actual crt and lcd for those.

GBS-C has scanlines, but isn't as good, last I checked. It's just the best "cheaper" option.

2x-pro is just a line doubler, it looks decent, but is really just a plug and play option to stop modern tvs butchering the 240p signal on older consoles.

Playing on a crt if you have room is always going to be "best" as that's what they were designed for, but the modern solutions can get close, but not cheap.

 

[Farore]

It seems like old school gaming on CRT are for people who are privileged to have the money and space for a CRT, or a very expensive RetroTink! Need to start saving those pennies...

 

[jcb33]

The Morph 4k is also worth a look. It's a lot cheaper than the 4k Tink and they have just released analogue components that you can customise it with.

Still expensive, but it's not quite as painful.

 

[Farore]

The Morph 4k is also worth a look. It's a lot cheaper than the 4k Tink and they have just released analogue components that you can customise it with.

Still expensive, but it's not quite as painful.

Thanks for the recommendation. I will check it out.

 

[Vince]

I still stick by the best thing you can do to a mk1 is a 3bp, granted it adds massive money and I think my cable I use was about £60 but it made a massive difference to the console. If you are going to go all out might as well upgrade the MD as well!

 

[Farore]

I still stick by the best thing you can do to a mk1 is a 3bp, granted it adds massive money and I think my cable I use was about £60 but it made a massive difference to the console. If you are going to go all out might as well upgrade the MD as well!

I have no idea what this is. Can you please share more?

 

[Vince]

I have no idea what this is. Can you please share more?

The 3bp mod also known as a tripple bypass bypasses audio and video final stage processing and throws them through a mod board effectively allowing for cleaner video and dialling in of your audio preferences:



This is about the best quick image I could find of mine. It replaces the big megadrive composite DIN for a RGB din connection the same as the MD2 and generally gives a much nicer picture which my photography skills will never do justice to :



Probably a bit niche for most but its a solid upgrade to the MD1... I have a feeling there is one you can buy now with an upscaler built in (will have to check that).