Best option for Gamecube (w/GCDual) to 1080p display?

[sofakng]

I'm lucky enough to have a Gamecube with a GCDual installed and my goal is to use the Gameboy Player with the best quality on my 1080p (4K) display.

Right now I'm using RGB from the Gamecube to the OSSC and upscaling the 240p to 1080p.

However, the GCDual also has an HDMI output for a pure digital signal but the OSSC can't upscale this. (the OSSC Pro will, I think?)

Is it worth me pulling my Framemeister out of the closet to upscale HDMI->HDMI? Does that still have ~1 frame of latency? Should I just stick with RGB to the OSSC for upscaling?

[Kez]

Are you using Game Boy Interface (GBI)? If not, that should be your first step. There are various simple ways to run homebrew on your GC and GBI is a huuuuge upgrade.

If you're using GBI, there is a special configuration of GBI optimized for the OSSC, it runs in 360p and can be scaled perfectly 3x to 1080p. There were some compatibility issues between GCVideo and this mode, however I believe on newer firmware versions it can now be used.

My recommendation would be GBI-HF-OSSC via SCART into the OSSC, set the OSSC to Line3x.

[sofakng]

Thanks for the reply!

Yes, I'm using GBI-HF-OSSC via SCART and Line3x and it definitely looks really good.

I was just wondering if it's worth investigating HDMI-to-HDMI upscaling via the Framemeister because the GCDual HDMI output should be slightly better quality than the RGB (analog) output, right?

[Kez]

I would expect the upgrade to be pretty minor honestly, if you can't see any obvious analogue noise in your picture it's probably close to what you'd see in a fully digital chain. Still, if you have the FM to hand it doesn't hurt to experiment!

[arrghus8]

I use GBI with a GCDual modded Gamecube into a Framemeister. Unfortunately, the FM doesn't recognize the 240p HDMI signal, so I'm stuck with using analog for now. I'd wait for the OSSC Pro if you're looking to go digital-to-digitial.

[Unseen]

I use GBI with a GCDual modded Gamecube into a Framemeister. Unfortunately, the FM doesn't recognize the 240p HDMI signal, so I'm stuck with using analog for now.

I think 240p into the Framemeister worked the last time I tested it, but that was a long time ago. But why don't you enable linedoubling in GCVideo to turn the 240p signal into 480p?

[arrghus8]

I think 240p into the Framemeister worked the last time I tested it, but that was a long time ago.

I stand corrected! It's been awhile since I had set things up, so I took another look. The FM does recognize the 240p HDMI. I'm using one of FBX's profiles for a 6x scaling ("20GBPA6X") which is apparently intended for analog input. Everything looks great when I give it 240p input with an RGB cable. When I switch over to HDMI, the scaling is off. Here are two pictures for comparison:

Analog: https://i.imgur.com/QQOVmrk.png
HDMI: https://i.imgur.com/sWgdLT4.png

I suppose I should play with the profile settings to try and properly resize the image, although it's not clear to me why the two inputs are being scaled differently.

But why don't you enable linedoubling in GCVideo to turn the 240p signal into 480p?

My understanding is that the FM doesn't handle 480p as well as 240p. At the time I also figured it made sense to let the FM do all the upscaling to maintain an integer scale up to 1080p, rather than double to 480p and then scale from 480p to 1080p. I'm realizing that doesn't quite make sense, since it's not doing a 2.5x scaling up to 1080p, but a 3x with cropping. I should be able to crop the doubled 480p image to 360p (giving a 320p GBA image in a 360p window) and then do a 3x scale up to 1080p.


Edit: I realized that the Framemeister keeps separate zoom settings per input. After copying the settings for analog inputs over to HDMI, everything looks great! Now if only Rogue Leader didn't change resolutions whenever I die I could ditch the analog out into a GBS8200 and use HDMI exclusively with the Gamecube.

[matt]

OSSC with GBI HF is hard to beat. If you take the time to set up a custom profile with optimal timings, the picture is incredibly sharp. Plus, if you use 5x 1080p, you can set up custom scanlines to make a faux-LCD grid pattern which IMO looks really good. Until the OSSC Pro with direct HDMI support comes out, I find it hard to imagine a better solution.

For what it's worth, I use an official component cable modded with a VGA/component switch (I bought it back when they were $30 and thought nothing of chopping it up). I find the picture quality with GBI to be marginally better in YPbPr than RGB. However I've never tried any of the GCVideo solutions so this may not be the case with your setup.