Best Component-to-HDMI Solution for Retro Gaming?

[AkikoKumagara]

I'm looking for opinions on what route I should explore to get better video output when compared to my current solution for component-to-HDMI adaption. I am using, currently, HD Retrovision cables into and out of a mechanical switcher that introduces no significant noise to the video. The switcher then goes into an AVerMedia ET113 Component to HDMI adapter (I believe this is the weak link in the setup) which then outputs HDMI into an AVerMedia Live Gamer HD 2 1080p PCIe capture card.

The main problem I tend to notice is very blatant noise on the video input, especially on the PlayStation 2. I also use the Wii which has less obvious noise. I think it's mostly an issue when the console is displaying interlaced video (480i in this case), such as on the main OSD menu. I will include screenshots that properly highlight my issue below.

My first thought is to wait for the RetroTink 5X Pro to become available again and grab one of them; it seems like it would solve basically all of my issues in one neat package, but I'm interested in hearing any thoughts other people here may have on the issue at hand, and I very much appreciate any opinions or advice on the matter.

 

[duwen]

I'm lucky enough to have both scart and component inputs (as well as HDMI) on my 4k TV, but if I didn't I'd definitely go for the RetroTink 5x Pro.

PS2 directly connected via component to my TV looks great - almost as good as my Dreamcast connected via HDMI using a Behar Bros Akura box. Everything older than that gen I connect directly via the scart input and have found the TV's upscaling to be adequate and not introduce any noticeable noise or lag.

 

[FAST6191]

Generally if noise is your biggest issue as opposed to latency then count yourself lucky.

Best. Skip it all and go emulation. Easy cheats, savestates, turbo, slowdown that actually slows down, some latency mitigations, remappable controls, net play, ROM hacks, upscaling that can do all manner of creative things that hardware probably needs a FPGA or custom silicon for, potentially upscaling of 3d in software, widescreen options... what is not to love? Anything likely needing a complicated graphics setup is probably also emulated just fine. If you are of the inclination then http://bogost.com/games/a_television_simulator/ also comes into play.

Best if you are an emulation snob. Get a CRT and maybe split it to an HDMI convertor if you need to capture video for some reason.

Best for a reasonable price and insist on newer screens. Various hifi stacks/amps popular a few years ago have a lot of ins and HDMI out. Latency varies with them but usually pretty good. There are also some that have some fun ripping apart old plasma screens for some of their gear.

Best as in money (up to around $1000USD anyway) no object. Varies between people, and latency, upscaling quality, deinterlacing method*, full mode support and more all come into play and have tradeoffs. Short of some kind of mission impossible sequence to get a framemeister then yeah you find yourself in the OSSC (bit cheaper but still very good) and retrotink world, GBS Control probably ought to be mentioned but I have less experience there. Your screen might also come into play as some, including some generally desirable ones otherwise, have been known to cause trouble.
Some will also chain devices together to achieve various goals. There is also the diminishing returns question where you might need a trained eye and direct comparison to see it.

Best for absolutely silly money. See something like the VP50Pro, a far more advanced take on the hifi stacks mentioned above. https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/dvdo-iscan-vp50pro-video-processor though I am not sure what goes for latency when you get down to it.
Silly money and silly skills. There are some FPGA driven graphics fiddlers these days, though you will find yourself learning to program such toys. If the siren song of emulation had not taken me years ago then I would still say poke this silly money stuff and just got the best possible still extant CRT or plasma or whatever with proper inputs.

*which you can also help yourself with various mods, regional versions and whatever else to the base console** in some instances (though usually it is PAL regions got the shaft so figure out what NTSC efforts can do unless it is one of those rare occasions where a PAL exclusive is the best option, might also mean the added bonus of dodging scart even if scart presents one of the easier routes to better, though rarely the best, quality for a lot of things).

**do note things like the Wii making life far easier than the trying to sort component on the gamecube, never mind widescreen efforts in hardware. Though comes at the cost of GB player which might be the best means of playing GBA games (when combined with component and gameboy interface software) this side of people making clone consoles getting their act together (which they slowly seem to be doing, and might well come with HDMI out of the box).

 

[Deleted member 323844]

5X Pro definitely beats any other upscaler I had, including the Framemeister. I'm very happy with it, and PlayStation 2 benefits greatly from it, especially the motion adaptative deinterlacer and the almost instantaneous resolution switching.

 

[Deleted User]

My Wii U's HDMI doesn't work after lightning struck it several years ago but other than that it works fine and components work. So I recently bought a component to HDMI converter and it works fine. There's no reason it wouldn't work for any system because you hook up the components to the console then you hook the other end to the adapter, and then just a hdmi cable on the other side that goes to the TV. So it doesn't need specific console hookups so it should work for any console that can handle component. Just make sure you get component INPUT and HDMI OUTPUT I made the mistake of getting them backwards and it won't work. Here is the one I bought that works

https://www.ebay.com/itm/184488566771

Those Retrotinks show to be $300 this one is $20 so you decide.

 

[duwen]

Those Retrotinks show to be $300 this one is $20 so you decide.

Yeah... I'll take the RetroTink.

What you're saying is if you just want a signal from console to screen buy the cheapo cable... akin to "those shielded RGB SCART cables cost too much, just use RF". OPs requirement is for "best" video chain, which points to the RetroTink or similar.

 

[Deleted User]

Yeah... I'll take the RetroTink.

What you're saying is if you just want a signal from console to screen buy the cheapo cable... akin to "those shielded RGB SCART cables cost too much, just use RF". OPs requirement is for "best" video chain, which points to the RetroTink or similar.

It's a waste of money you could buy a like a PS4 on CFW with $300, just for a little bit better picture probably. People waste their money on stuff and if they want to pay $300 for something like that it's their money but it's still a waste of money to pay that much there's no real argument around that.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/184488566771

Those Retrotinks show to be $300 this one is $20 so you decide.

I don't think this would be an upgrade from my current solution.

 

[Deleted User]

Have fun spending $300 then it's your money. Not sure why you even made a thread if you already decided you were going to buy that.

 

[duwen]

People waste their money on stuff and if they want to pay $300 for something like that it's their money but it's still a waste of money to pay that much there's no real argument around that.

With that statement you've proven you shouldn't be in this thread.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

Have fun spending $300 then it's your money. Not sure why you even made a thread if you already decided you were going to buy that.

I'm not asking for solutions that aren't going to resolve my problem, and I haven't resolved to buying the RetroTINK yet, it's just looking like the winner thus far in terms of something that can do what I need it to. I've been considering stuff like the OSSC as well but I want the opinions of people who are more experienced with this hardware than I am before I make up my mind. I'm not going to spend $20 for something that does what I can already do, possibly the same or worse than my current setup. That's all.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Generally if noise is your biggest issue as opposed to latency then count yourself lucky.

Best as in money (up to around $1000USD anyway) no object. Varies between people, and latency, upscaling quality, deinterlacing method*, full mode support and more all come into play and have tradeoffs. Short of some kind of mission impossible sequence to get a framemeister then yeah you find yourself in the OSSC (bit cheaper but still very good) and retrotink world, GBS Control probably ought to be mentioned but I have less experience there. Your screen might also come into play as some, including some generally desirable ones otherwise, have been known to cause trouble.
Some will also chain devices together to achieve various goals. There is also the diminishing returns question where you might need a trained eye and direct comparison to see it.

Thank you for the informative response. This part is more or less what I'm looking for. I'm not trying to spend "silly money", I'm actually fairly broke, lmao. Definitely just mainly want a way to get my old consoles from console to capture card without the nasty noise shown in my screenshots. And yeah, latency is there, but it's not absurd and I haven't had problems playing much in my current chain, but I think it could be improved by using a decent scaler, plus the ET113 can't handle 240p signals unfortunately. I'm not even considering the Framemeister at this point, to be honest. I know they're extremely rare and sought after, and for the money I'd rather grab the new RetroTINK at this point. I'm very much considering the OSSC as well, though. GBS Control is something I need to look more into, I appreciate the info.

 

[Hayato213]

I'm looking for opinions on what route I should explore to get better video output when compared to my current solution for component-to-HDMI adaption. I am using, currently, HD Retrovision cables into and out of a mechanical switcher that introduces no significant noise to the video. The switcher then goes into an AVerMedia ET113 Component to HDMI adapter (I believe this is the weak link in the setup) which then outputs HDMI into an AVerMedia Live Gamer HD 2 1080p PCIe capture card.

The main problem I tend to notice is very blatant noise on the video input, especially on the PlayStation 2. I also use the Wii which has less obvious noise. I think it's mostly an issue when the console is displaying interlaced video (480i in this case), such as on the main OSD menu. I will include screenshots that properly highlight my issue below.

My first thought is to wait for the RetroTink 5X Pro to become available again and grab one of them; it seems like it would solve basically all of my issues in one neat package, but I'm interested in hearing any thoughts other people here may have on the issue at hand, and I very much appreciate any opinions or advice on the matter.

No component port on your TV? I am using HD Retrovision cables with OPL built-in GSM.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

No component port on your TV? I am using HD Retrovision cables with OPL built-in GSM.

I'm going from console to PC via capture card, ports on my TV (and in this case I'm using a computer monitor) wouldn't really make a difference here.

 

[Hayato213]

I'm going from console to PC via capture card, ports on my TV (and in this case I'm using a computer monitor) wouldn't really make a difference here.

If you can get Retrotink to work then use retrotink, I bought the retrotink 2x Pro few months ago and I couldn't get it to work so I return it , you could use a mclassic to upscaler the output a bit if you want it.

In terms of OPL GSM you can upscale to higher resolution but overall screen size is smaller, Im playing on a 50-inch tv, and the screen size output after the GSM upscaler is like what you get on a 40 inches tv. Not too bad in the case of a big TV.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

It's a waste of money you could buy a like a PS4 on CFW with $300, just for a little bit better picture probably. People waste their money on stuff and if they want to pay $300 for something like that it's their money but it's still a waste of money to pay that much there's no real argument around that.

I have no interest in a PS4, I can emulate the retro games the PS4 can play on my PC without a problem. I also don't care about any PS4 (or newer) exclusives. I'm trying to run retro games from 6th gen and back, without emulating where possible. While it would be nice to just buy a new console, that's not something I'm in the market for. Any new release I want is usually out on PC anyway, and my PC way outmatches any $300 game console, lol.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

If you can get Retrotink to work then use retrotink, I bought the retrotink 2x Pro few months ago and I couldn't get it to work so I return it , you could use a mclassic to upscaler the output a bit if you want it.

In terms of OPL GSM you can upscale to higher resolution but overall screen size is smaller, Im playing on a 50-inch tv, and the screen size output after the GSM upscaler is like what you get on a 40 inches tv. Not too bad in the case of a big TV.

I know all about GSM, no worries. I already use it sometimes; depends on the game, though. Mclassic unfortunately doesn't replace what I find to be the weak link in my setup because it would have to come after the HDMI conversion in my chain.
Edit: 2X-Pro is also on my shortlist of considerations, but it's not readily available either and its successor seems to make more sense.

 

[duwen]

I know some people swear by the m-classic cables, but for how much they cost they don't represent good value for money given the negligible results. I always presume they're intended for the sorts of people that prefer those hideous smoothing filters rather than clean, sharp, pixels.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

**do note things like the Wii making life far easier than the trying to sort component on the gamecube, never mind widescreen efforts in hardware. Though comes at the cost of GB player which might be the best means of playing GBA games (when combined with component and gameboy interface software) this side of people making clone consoles getting their act together (which they slowly seem to be doing, and might well come with HDMI out of the box).

Yeah, I already use Wii & HD Retrovision component cables for Wii/GC. I'd probably grab a GBA consolizer kit before trying to get a GameCube + Homebrew + GameBoy Player + unobtainium component cables.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Have fun spending $300 then it's your money. Not sure why you even made a thread if you already decided you were going to buy that.

He did say best, not cheapest. These cheap converters/upscaler have high latency and are NOT suitable for gaming, never mind the poor quality video.

 

[duwen]

I'd probably grab a GBA consolizer kit before trying to get a GameCube + Homebrew + GameBoy Player + unobtainium component cables.

Best option for outputting a GC is one of the many GCHD devices. The one I got is branded "BitFunx", but is essentially the same internals as the Carby and other similar devices. While a consolized GBA is definitely neat, I certainly prefer the GC with GB Player - mainly because, wherever possible, I'll utilise one system that can do the job of several... that's why I retired my Master System in favour of the Megadrive/Powerbase Converter combo, and retired my Wii when I got a WiiU.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

Best option for outputting a GC is one of the many GCHD devices. The one I got is branded "BitFunx", but is essentially the same internals as the Carby and other similar devices. While a consolized GBA is definitely neat, I certainly prefer the GC with GB Player - mainly because, wherever possible, I'll utilise one system that can do the job of several... that's why I retired my Master System in favour of the Megadrive/Powerbase Converter combo, and retired my Wii when I got a WiiU.

I ended up getting the RetroBit Prism Component Cable for GC. I know it gets some hate for valid reasons, but the price was right and it was shipping from within the country (via Amazon Prime).