Best upscalers for....

[RCM]

From all you've gents might have heard of the XRGB frame meister do you think it's worth the wait or should I take the plunge on an EDGE? I love what I have, but I'm kind of addicted to upscalers right now.

[Leo_A]

If you absolutely have to have the best video quality, the best thing to do is start with the simple things. It won't be cheap, but upgrading your televisions to better quality models compared to those budget, low end, HDTV's would be a easy way to see improvements across the board without doing anything like modding your consoles, buying different cables, or starting to buy and experiment with external scalers and such.

Secondly, for your early consoles, you need to get them modded. Something like the Atari 2600 will benefit greatly from a s-video mod. They're fairly economical to install and there are skilled individuals that can do it for you at places like AtariAge for a reasonable amount. A scaler has to work with the image it recieves, so ensuring you're set up to send it the best possible image from your consoles is something you need to do before ever buying one if you're after the best possible video quality. There are composite mods for the Intellivision, s-video mods for the Atari consoles, and even component mods for the Colecovision.

And for your later consoles, upgrade them to at least the best possible video cable that is available for North America if you haven't already done so (Or perhaps even taking it a step further with RGB). That means things such as regular composite cables for the NES, s-video cables for the 16/32 bit era of consoles, VGA for the Dreamcast, component for last generation consoles and the Wii, etc.

And then is the time to start considering things like external scalers. And once you likely find out that you wasted your money on several expensive external scalers that don't get the job done like you hoped for, go log on to somewhere like Craiglist and keep an eye out for something like a nice, used, late model Sony Trinitron for $50 to hook up your classic consoles to for the best experience.

[StealthLurker]

From all you've gents might have heard of the XRGB frame meister do you think it's worth the wait or should I take the plunge on an EDGE? I love what I have, but I'm kind of addicted to upscalers right now.

I would say waiting is probably a good idea. Especially if it's going to drop this year. It feels like that thing was announced ages ago. If it can finally deliver what the XRGB3 tried to do and produce some nice scanlines, it could be THE device. Knowing myself and my tinkering and gadget fetish, I'll probably snag one up too... haha. Playing around with this type of stuff is sometimes more fun than the actual games themselves (at times)!

If you absolutely have to have the best video quality, the best thing to do is start with the simple things. It won't be cheap, but upgrading your televisions to better quality models compared to those budget, low end, HDTV's would be a easy way to see improvements across the board without doing anything like modding your consoles, buying different cables, or starting to buy and experiment with external scalers and such.

Secondly, for your early consoles, you need to get them modded. Something like the Atari 2600 will benefit greatly from a s-video mod. They're fairly economical to install and there are skilled individuals that can do it for you at places like AtariAge for a reasonable amount. A scaler has to work with the image it recieves, so ensuring you're set up to send it the best possible image from your consoles is something you need to do before ever buying one if you're after the best possible video quality. There are composite mods for the Intellivision, s-video mods for the Atari consoles, and even component mods for the Colecovision.

And for your later consoles, upgrade them to at least the best possible video cable that is available for North America if you haven't already done so (Or perhaps even taking it a step further with RGB). regular composite cables for the NES, s-video cables for the 16/32 bit era, VGA for the Dreamcast, component for last generation consoles and the Wii, etc.

And then is the time to start considering things like external scalers. And once you likely find out that you wasted your money on several expensive external scalers that don't get the job done like you hoped for, go log on to somewhere like Craiglist and keep an eye out for something like a nice, used, late model Sony Trinitron for $50 to hook up your classic consoles to for the best experience.

Pretty much this. Stuff made in the CRT era is going to look best on a CRT. Plus it's the inexpensive way to achieve the best results possible on the actual hardware. If you think about it this way.... if you're buying HDTVs like Insignia and Vizio, all this fancy video processing gear can eventually end up costing more than your HDTV itself!

.

[kedawa]

I wish I could just buy a monitor with all this razzmatazz built in.

[StealthLurker]

I wish I could just buy a monitor with all this razzmatazz built in.

That would be a RUNCO display panel. Something like 20 Gs MSRP for a 50" plasma a few years ago.


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[kedawa]

I wish I could buy it, then, because it would mean I was rich.

[Zoe F]

I'll bump this to mention that I just recently picked up a Videon Omega HDP. It's a big, ugly, nine pound box which is more than ten years old. I'd heard about its 240p line doubling being top notch, but I honestly wasn't expecting it to be too much better than the equipment I already had. I plugged my AV Famicom into it though, and it blew me away. Once one has disabled a few options which are unnecessary for gaming, the picture quality rivals that of any CRT I've ever seen.

The not-very bad news: There is some input lag. It isn't an enormous amount by any stretch of the imagination (maybe 2-3 frames), but it's certainly there. I adjusted rather quickly, and I was able to play through a few games without issue.