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Experience with Scaling Devices using PlayStation 1 (PS1)

I’ve been playing around with PS1 games on my old LG 1080p TV using different devices and wanted to do a little write up (keeping it brief but also describing what I saw). Apologies for no screenshots, but I’m not really set up for it and any pictures I took wouldn’t really convey much.

The reason the PS1 is so interesting to me is because it’s still that early time in 3D graphics as far as hardware, but it lasted long enough to where the developers got really good at attempting realism. So while simple polygonal games like Spyro the Dragon look good no matter how you scale or filter them, games like Gran Turismo 2 or Need for Speed III either need to be left original or with subtle scanlines. You can’t just anti-alias or blur your way through these games. Every little pixel (from the trees to the dirt) has been placed there to resemble reality in a very “crunchy” graphics sort of way. That’s part of the art and the fun of PS1. The little system is trying to do the most with what little it has and I want that carried through to me while playing the games.

First of all; here’s my setup: I use an original PS1 1001 console (the one with the audio jacks in the back). I use Retro Gaming Cables RGB Scart cables going through a GScartSW (which is an expensive switching device that offers sync regeneration) going out to a scaler. Here are the setups I tried.

Framemeister - Though I’ve sold my Framemeister recently, I had tried it extensively with the PS1 and used the custom configurations from FirebrandX. The scaling was right, but didn’t look great on my TV at 5x due to positioning. And 4X looked really sharp and centered, but it was leaving a lot of unused screen space and I ended up having to use the zoom feature on my TV. Not ideal for many reasons. Also, I wanted scanlines and those only looked good at 4X as well. Plus it’s annoying switching back and forth and having to use the remote to load different profiles (more on my solution for that later on). Back when this is all we had to use, it was more than acceptable. But with so many awesome choices these days, it just seems like an over-priced way to go these days (I bought it for $300 and sold it at around $800).

Scart2X - Whenever Mike Chi (RetroTink Store) came out with the Scart2X I jumped at the chance to try it. The $95-ish device takes RGB Scart input and outputs straight to HDMI. It doubles 240p input and deinterlaces 480i, so you get a crisp 480p output. There’s also a button to add either scanlines or smoothing to the image. I used this setup for a couple of months and I really appreciated the simplicity. All my 240p consoles look fantastic through this (Genesis, SNES, Sega Saturn, etc). There were a couple of downsides, however. The first was that the device doesn’t pass through 480p or anything higher. It really only accepts 480i and 240p. Secondly, the scanlines are 100% black lines and this made the image really dark on my TV. So I ended up not using the device’s scanlines and - instead - using a separate HDMI scanline generator. This actually helped a lot but not being able to input other sources with higher resolutions kind of bothered me. As far as being simple to use, this is the ultimate device. But I just wanted a little more than this had to offer in the end, but I’d have no problems recommending this - especially to those that want an unaltered original experience.

GBS-8200/GBSControl - At this point, I learned about the developments around the GBS-8200 from watching one of RetroRGB’s videos on the subject. Turned out that I had bought this really cheap ($25-ish) VGA scaler device years back and it sat in a bin in my basement without use (because it didn’t really do what I wanted from it on a VGA monitor). A developer (ramapcsx2) came up code so that you can use an Arduino to control the GBS-8200 board. The neat thing is that - once installed - you can control resolution and features through your phone using WiFi. You can also add a clock generator module to the board to prevent screen tearing (for PS2 games like Dead or Alive 2). So - after spending maybe $25 in additional parts and conducting a mod that took me an hour and a half to figure out - I had a really nice scaling device that rivaled the Framemeister in features, but also had most of the simplicity of the Scart2X. Well one extra addition I need was a SCART to VGA converter (which I luckily had). I can leave it on 1900x1080 output and it automatically adds scanlines (letting you pick the intensity - which I leave on 50%) if the input is 240p (so that higher resolutions just look normal). Turns out that this is exactly what I wanted all along. The board also provides adaptive motion deinterlacing (which you can turn off or change to BOB deinterlacing at will). This ends up looking great on my TV - it’s nice and centered and sharp.

mCable Classic - I’ve also tried using the mCable Classic (I’ll just refer to it as mCable) with the GBS-8200 to add smoothing since it essentially adds no lag. Since this article is focused on PS1, I’ll just mention what I’ve found it useful for and what I haven’t. First of all, the mCable doesn’t really do anything at 1080i, so you need to feed it 480p or 720p from the scaler output to see a difference. And that’s not really convenient (as I’d just prefer to leave thing set as they are), but you could leave the cable hooked up and turned on and just disable the smoothing it offers by upping the resolution from the scaler to it. Second of all, using scanlines really only works well with 1080p output on the GBS-8200 and the mCable doesn’t really do much with scanlined output going into it.

mCable/GBS-8200 - So here are some games that are use-cases (combining mCable and the GBS-8200):

Tekken 3 - Using smoothing has mixed results here. Menus look great but the characters in-game looks pretty rough at 480p. Upping to 720p results in the characters looking decent smoothed (especially when paused), but I’m 50/50 on whether to go this route or just to use the 240p scanlines to be honest. For simplicity, the mCable isn’t really worth since this isn’t a game you’d play for a long time.

Crash Bandicoot (and Ridge Racer) - This at 480p going into the mCable is probably the best-case scenario. Game looks smoothed and great. Simple polygonal 3D games is kind of what smoothing is best used with. The mCable is especially great because of how it treats defined solid lines. Scanlines looks great, but if you were going to sit down and beat this game, setting up the mCable would absolutely be worth doing.

Need for Speed III (and other realistic-looking racers) - This is a case where you want to preserve the pixels that were trying to make the streets and scenery look realistic. In this case, scanlines really beat out the mCable’s smoothing. With the smoothing (even at 720p), the barely-visible pixelated leaves on the ground just look like a brown smear. There wasn’t a lot of resolution to go on here and it’s only detrimental to remove it with smoothing.

Parasite Eve (and FF7) - This is another case where smoothing really isn’t useful due to the way the very pixelated/blocky characters look. Sure, you’d see some nice smoothing on the backgrounds, but they’ve used every pixel to carefully represent the characters on the game field in a way that smoothing just doesn’t work with them. In this case, scanlines works at 50% intensity because at this point your eyes will blend things for you and also you won’t be missing the information your eyes need to do this.