OSSC (Open Source Scan Converter) with an Amiga

[jarp]

Does all of your equipment output RGB? Because if they do not then you cannot even use the OSSC with them. I know that you can get RGB out of all those consoles, but decided to ask just in case. SCART means nothing because SCART connector has pins for composite video and s-video just as well. But thhe OSSC accepts only RGB and YPbPr, no composite, no S-video.

And if you indeed have true RGB outputs on all those devices then unless your TV sucks, you probably will see no improvement if you use OSSC. OSSC will take the same RGB signal in which your TV will take, it magically cannot improve the signal.

You need the OSSC only if you do not have RGB (or YPbPr) inputs on your display device or your display device cannot sync to those low horizontal refresh rates... You seem to have RGB inputs and your TV will sync so no need for the OSSC. Well you could use it to add scanlines to your plasma TV but those lines would be quite expensive then.. .

[trixster]

They're all RGB i think.

I was led to believe that there should be a noticeable improvement over rgb scart? Not so? The current picture quality seems decent to me but i'd not regard it as excellent. There are a few issues like checkboarding and a tiny bit of colour smearing. Plus NTSC PS1 games appear to offset too far left which i believe is an issue with the plasmas handling of the sync of scart signals at 60hz. Only some games allow you to move the picture to the right to compensate for this.

The plasma is a Panny GT50 which is widely regarded as a good plasma but i do not know if it's regarded as being able to handle RGB scart well or not, and I'm no expert!

[idrougge]

Benq monitors tend to support 50 Hz, so do Viewsonic.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by thgill

Yes.

If your LCD does 50hz, scrolling will be smooth like a crt. Pretty much all of Dells modern lcds do 50hz no problem. They are what I use.

Yep, Dell SE2717H coming in. Hopefully it should cover everything. It also does FreeSync!

Originally Posted by trixster

They're all RGB i think.

I was led to believe that there should be a noticeable improvement over rgb scart? Not so? The current picture quality seems decent to me but i'd not regard it as excellent.

Yep, I'm in the same situation - I've got SCART inputs pretty much everywhere, but I'm not wholly satisfied with the resulting image. Stuff looks blurry and I know it is way better on a CRT.

I thought the OSSC was going to bridge that gap by giving me awesome image quality everywhere?

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by trixster

They're all RGB i think.

I was led to believe that there should be a noticeable improvement over rgb scart? Not so? The current picture quality seems decent to me but i'd not regard it as excellent. There are a few issues like checkboarding and a tiny bit of colour smearing.

If image is blurry, it ain't RGB. THere's no color smearing on RGB signals, perhaps it could be the display? Assuming the connection isn't actually using Composite over SCART.

RGB SCART is indeed the best image you can get. Checkerboarding and similar artifacts are only usually visible on modern LCD televisions, if you used a CRT the chances of them being there are lesser.

[jarp]

Originally Posted by trixster

I was led to believe that there should be a noticeable improvement over rgb scart? Not so?

Unless your TV has crap ADC, then no. Think about signal path. When you connect your device to your TV, signal path is something like that:

RGB output -> TV's ADC and DSP -> display panel

When you use OSSC it's somthing like:

RGB output -> OSSC's ADC and DSP -> TV's DSP -> display panel

Now, if you think about picture quality then the limiting factor is quality of RGB signal and quality of ADC. If RGB signal is bad, then no way OSSC can fix it. However, if your TVs ADC is bad then that's another thing, that OSSC can fix.

Signal prosessing is of course another thing... Your TV will somehow process the digital signal. It scales the image and everything. That can too be poorly implemented. OSSC does line multiplying perhaps removing need for scaling. So that COULD help. But it's not guaranteed. I know that my monitor (dirt cheap Acer) has extremely poor scaling algorithm. It totally ruins the image. But with the OSSC I can disable scaling from my monitor and use OSSC's Line4x mode and get great big picture.

[demolition]

One of the main problems with RGB SCART is that 240p/50Hz is not actually a standard they have to support, so quite often TVs will still try to deinterlace this signal as if it was 480i, causing both extra latency and other artifacts. The OSSC on the other hand, was designed specifically to handle 240p without deinterlacing convert it straight to a 50 Hz digital signal practically without any processing. Most TVs can then take this signal through HDMI which must support 50 Hz, and if set in gaming mode, the general quality should be quite good, and I would expect a lot better than most TVs RGB SCART solutions.

I will receive an OSSC in a couple of weeks, so hopefully my expectations will be fulfilled.

[trixster]

My OSSC arrived yesterday. I'm using it on a penny GT50 plasmas tv with PS1, Saturn and SNES consoles. The SNES and Saturn have 50/60hz mods and can run Pal and NTSC games. The PS1 has a PSIO and so can run PAL and NTSC games.

Well, the picture quality is fabulous. Much better than scart rgb alone. It's not far off the output you get from using emulation.

The OSSC works flawlessly with Saturn and Snes games at both 50 and 60hz. It will work with PS1 NTSC games but my tv will not display PAL PS1 games at all - the Tv cannot handle the upscaled res (314p).

Other than that it's great!

[rare_j]

How about line x3, x4, and x5 modes? Maybe the ps1 will work in pal with those.

[trixster]

My tv doesn't support those sadly

[demolition]

Received my OSSC today and just hooked it up to my Panasonic ST50 plasma (which is pretty much the same as the GT50 line just without the expensive THX preset) for a quick test. The picture looks very nice and everything 50 Hz is as smooth as it should be. The scanline emulation is also decent. Overall it is a big improvement over just using SCART RGB in the TV. So far I have only tested it with PAL 50Hz P and 25Hz I modes from the Amiga and that works well, although there is no deinterlacing. I would probably turn off deinterlacing anyway since is generally causes more problems that it solves and I don't intend on using the OSSC with WB in interlaced modes for any semi-serious stuff, but mainly for gaming. I have the RTG on the Vampire for productivity and WB stuff.

[jarp]

Remember to set up advanced timing settings properly, that will improve quality a lot Stock settings are good for some kind of average gaming console, but if you want to see pixel perfect results then you need to set settings manually.

[demolition]

Yeah, I'm thinking it should be possible to get it to output 1080p for Amiga progressive PAL which should utilize a bit more of the screen since the firmware now can do 4x line doubling. In the default setting it is outputting a 576p mode with 2x line doubling.

[trixster]

I've managed to get my tv to display pal ps1 games by setting v active in the advanced setup menus to 300 (from 288). Now everything works well!

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by jbenam

Yep, Dell SE2717H coming in. Hopefully it should cover everything. It also does FreeSync!



Yep, I'm in the same situation - I've got SCART inputs pretty much everywhere, but I'm not wholly satisfied with the resulting image. Stuff looks blurry and I know it is way better on a CRT.

I thought the OSSC was going to bridge that gap by giving me awesome image quality everywhere?

Did you receive and try the Dell SE2717H? I almost bought this on a whim but chickened out thinking my buying random Dell monitors luck was going to run out.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Did you receive and try the Dell SE2717H? I almost bought this on a whim but chickened out thinking my buying random Dell monitors luck was going to run out.

Yep, I did (welp, noticed your reply on this thread almost one year later while googling for some OSSC info, since I'm still planning to get one) and it's an amazing monitor. You can kinda see the pixels from close on (27" is probably a stretch for a 1080p panel), though.

It displays an extra-sharp picture with my original C= silver VGA adapter IIRC I remember being very satisfied with 50hz scrolling as well. I should test it again one of these days, since I don't remember if I was using my A4000's scandoubler or not when testing the scrolling...

I've ordered some stuff to build a SCART->VGA adapter but I still haven't got the time to build it. Want to try some of my consoles on it (SNES, etc) and see what happens

[jbilander]

I'm running Classic WB on my A1200 connected to a Benq BL912 monitor through a simple RGB -> Vga adapter. Works great for low res stuff like games. However, this version of classic WB I'm using (ADVSP) looks best in PAL:High res laced (640x512) but sadly it flickers a lot on this monitor. Anyone know if the OSSC is able to flicker-fix this interlaced resolution? PAL: High res (640x256) of course doesn't flicker but doesn't look good with wrong proportions on icons and text. Maybe line-doubling PAL High res is what will solve my issue? I know an Indivision aga mk2 probably is a better choice for serious WB stuff at higher resolutions but I would prefer the external OSSC if it can flicker-fix my current setup, since I can use it with old consoles as well and avoid having to manually switch between vga/dvi input on the monitor when going in and out of games and wb on the amiga.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by jbilander

Anyone know if the OSSC is able to flicker-fix this interlaced resolution?

Since the OSSC does not have a frame buffer, it is not a flicker-fixer or scan doubler, so that would be a no to your question.

As you mention, an Indivision is probably your best bet for your A1200 if you really want to use it with that monitor and not find another one which will deinterlace for you (any TV with SCART input should do that).

[Krashan]

Originally Posted by jbilander

I know an Indivision aga mk2 probably is a better choice for serious WB stuff at higher resolutions.

True. Having a framebuffer, Indi can produce 1280×1024 mode, which is deinterlaced and looks awesome on 17"/19" displays having exactly this native resolution.

[jbilander]

Originally Posted by demolition

Since the OSSC does not have a frame buffer, it is not a flicker-fixer or scan doubler, so that would be a no to your question.

Ok, thanks for clarifying that.