I number of us over in the retro folder on RLLMUK (
www.rllmukforum.com) looked into these with the purpose of hooking up our retro systems up to our flat screen TVs.
I contacted the MD of the company who was kind enough to send me a unit to test.
My initial (quick write-up):
Quote:
The machine I tested was a region and 50/60hz switchable SNES, and the games I tested were Mario Allstars with Super Mario World (PAL) and Super Ghouls n Ghosts (NTSC).
I wasn't sure how I was expecting the upscaler to output the image. If I plug my SNES straight into the plasma the picture is VERY blocky, but not in a good way. The blocks are slightly mis-shapen, and it doesn't look very good at all.
With the upscaler the image is output in a smoothed fashion, a bit like one of the filters you often get on retro game compilations. My initial feeling is that it's nowhere near as a good as the picture on a CRT, but it 'is' better than the picture I was getting when plugging the SNES directly into the TV.
I also tested firing 50 and 60hz feeds into the system. I'll try out some other systems, but initial results indicate that this unit is only really meant to have a 60hz feed into it. With 50hz the scrolling is VERY jerky indeed.
If I plugged my SNES directly into my TV and scrolled left or right, I'd get a weird slightly out of kilter line every so often (sort of like how MAME sometimes displays on some settings). This has thankfully completely gone with the upscaler, but I did notice a very VERY tiny pause in the scrolling every 10 seconds or so. It's hard to explain this, but if you've seen one of those cheap DVD players where the image 'chugs' it's a bit like that, but only every 10 seconds or so. Compared to the horrible scanline it's a million times better.
I'll give further systems a test and will also give a full lowdown of the specs of the unit as and when I get more time.
|
I started putting a basic web site together showing the unit and how it outputs from various systems, but only got as far as the SNES and Gamecube:
http://www.jabba.demon.co.uk/coosis/
I personally didn't think the picture improved enough to warrant getting it. Also, unless you had a 60hz image going into the box the image would jerk horrible when scrolled.