LG CX series and RetroTink 2x-Multiformat - help?

[DejahThoris]

I thought that the RetroTink 2x-m would be a good solution for my setup, but upon receiving it, it doesn't seem to help anything at all.

My setup is PSX (the PS2 DVR, not PS1 shorthand) into the 2X-M with component, the 2X-M into an HDMI Matrix and from there to an LG CX.

I'm booting into OPL and loading games from the network, but the OPL menu screen shakes/shimmers/flickers in parts like when you display most 480i content on these screens. I had been under the impression that the 2X-Multiformat was the answer to this issue, but I'm beginning to feel like I may have bought the wrong product on accident.

What *should* I be using to get a stable image out of the PS1/2 when they display 480i on a modern display?

[DejahThoris]

Looks like I mistook it for a deinterlacer.

The pictures on their 2X-M vs 2X Pro page were very very good looking, and I didn't really expect there to be flickering/shifting issues.

Guess I need to snag a framemeister?

[Harrumph]

GBS8200 with GBS Control firmware will be your cheapest (and arguably best) option.

https://www.retrorgb.com/gbs-control-in ... rview.html

[Konsolkongen]

As far as I know the Framemeister still does the best deinterlacing for video game content. Unfortunately they are stupid expensive right now. I believe the upcoming OSSC Pro might be able to do better deinterlacing than the regular model and hopefully rival the FM eventually. But probably not right when it’s released

The regular OSSC can do much better for 240p/480p than the retrotink especially on your TV which supports all of its higher resolutions.

[DejahThoris]

As far as I know the Framemeister still does the best deinterlacing for video game content. Unfortunately they are stupid expensive right now. I believe the upcoming OSSC Pro might be able to do better deinterlacing than the regular model and hopefully rival the FM eventually. But probably not right when it’s released

The regular OSSC can do much better for 240p/480p than the retrotink especially on your TV which supports all of its higher resolutions.

Well, fingers crossed either I fall into a Framemeister, or the OSSC Pro does better.

I have an OSSC, and it works great for 240p/480p, but it still flickers/very slightly moves on 480i content. So someone had suggested to me to grab a retrotink for the PS2 stuff I wanted to play, and I'm just back to square one it seems...

GBS8200 with GBS Control firmware will be your cheapest (and arguably best) option.

https://www.retrorgb.com/gbs-control-in ... rview.html

I've seen these around for a lot of stuff over the years, but hadn't seen someone show deinterlacing until just now. I guess this would be a good tide-me-over until I fall into a framemeister, though I'm not 100% sure all I need.

[fernan1234]

Did you try turning on "scanlines"? That may help reduce the appearance of flicker.

[ldeveraux]

Did you try turning on "scanlines"? That may help reduce the appearance of flicker.

Yeah, but then you'd have scanlines

[DejahThoris]

Did you try turning on "scanlines"? That may help reduce the appearance of flicker.

I tried that but it doesn't make much of a difference, honestly.

Horizontal lines flicker like crazy.

[Kez]

Have you tried setting it to pass through and seeing how the TV handles 480i?

[DejahThoris]

Have you tried setting it to pass through and seeing how the TV handles 480i?

I have! It makes big blocky chunks out of everything. Especially text.

I'd read a bit about the OSSC and setting it to Line 2x and then enabling the Allow upsample2x option as having fixed flickering for some folks, so I'm going to update my OSSC tonight (it's on an old enough fw to not have the option) and see where that takes me.

[ASDR]

Have you tried setting it to pass through and seeing how the TV handles 480i?

I have! It makes big blocky chunks out of everything. Especially text.

I'd read a bit about the OSSC and setting it to Line 2x and then enabling the Allow upsample2x option as having fixed flickering for some folks, so I'm going to update my OSSC tonight (it's on an old enough fw to not have the option) and see where that takes me.

The Upsample2x option should not do anything for 480i content in normal 2x mode. It looks really nice with both OGXB and PS2 in 480p, though. Read the manual to see what it does and which modes it affects.

I'm surprised you dislike the deinterlacing of your CX so much. If HDTVTest is to be believed its handling of SDTV content is decent.

Maybe you just have unrealistic expectations? You don't like the flicker (it's not that crazy, really), which is how things looked like when the PS2 & CRTs were current, you don't like the deinterlacing of your CX, you don't like the smoothing + bob which the RetroTink can offer, which is how OGXB games look like and some PS2 titles that implemented flicker-filtering. I guess the Framemeister would do better, but it's still interlaced video, after all.

Also, you can switch OPL to 480p and a good number of PS2 games can also support progressive scan.

[DejahThoris]

The Upsample2x option should not do anything for 480i content in normal 2x mode. It looks really nice with both OGXB and PS2 in 480p, though. Read the manual to see what it does and which modes it affects.

I'm surprised you dislike the deinterlacing of your CX so much. If HDTVTest is to be believed its handling of SDTV content is decent.

Maybe you just have unrealistic expectations? You don't like the flicker (it's not that crazy, really), which is how things looked like when the PS2 & CRTs were current, you don't like the deinterlacing of your CX, you don't like the smoothing + bob which the RetroTink can offer, which is how OGXB games look like and some PS2 titles that implemented flicker-filtering. I guess the Framemeister would do better, but it's still interlaced video, after all.

Also, you can switch OPL to 480p and a good number of PS2 games can also support progressive scan.

I was simply going by what I'd read in regards to Upsample2x. If it won't do anything, it won't do anything and whomever posted about it was wrong.

Your "it's not that crazy, really" is definitely your not having the same experience as me. Horizontal white lines (like the ones on top and bottom in the OPL menu) flicker in and out strobe-light style. It's INCREDIBLY noticeable and incredibly distracting. It is not the same kind of flicker that you get playing PS2 / OGXbox on a CRT.

The Retrotink and OSSC both give the strobelight issue, so it's not my not liking the smoothing, it's that it's actually unwatchable thanks to the strobelighting issue. If it simply smoothed things and I didn't like the image, I'd understand that well enough.

The CX itself gives a solid image, but makes things blocky and puts lines through some things, which is still better, but makes some text hard to read.

You can see the lines through the X button here from the CX handling things:

http://imgur.com/a/UTxPItK

[ASDR]

Your "it's not that crazy, really" is definitely your not having the same experience as me. Horizontal white lines (like the ones on top and bottom in the OPL menu) flicker in and out strobe-light style. It's INCREDIBLY noticeable and incredibly distracting. It is not the same kind of flicker that you get playing PS2 / OGXbox on a CRT.

OGXB actually employs a very strong flicker filter by default and doesn't flicker much at all. Many people disable it on their softmodded consoles because it makes the image look even softer on top of the various defects caused by many revisions of the video output circuitry. PS2 has some games doing something similar, but certainly not all.

When did you last use a PS2 on a CRT? That 'unwatchable, incredibly distracting flickering' is just how 480i looked like during the PS2 days. Maybe on particular CRTs it was less pronounced due to phosphor afterglow or some mixture of composite video and a tube with a large dot size blurring things enough to lessen the flickering, but that stuff just flickered. Like crazy. And we all were to blown away by MGS2 to even notice.

The CX itself gives a solid image, but makes things blocky and puts lines through some things, which is still better, but makes some text hard to read.

You can see the lines through the X button here from the CX handling things:

http://imgur.com/a/UTxPItK

Well that looks fucked. No HDTV should deinterlace like that. Maybe something about the OSSC puts the TV in 'PC mode' and it doesn't deinterlace properly or some other issue is at work here, but it should not look this broken.

[Guspaz]

Relevant settings may be:

TX mode (RGB vs YCbCr444 vs DVI)
HDMI ITC (on vs off)
Default HDMI VIC (0 vs anything else, such as the 480i VICs from https://web.archive.org/web/20171201033 ... d_2017.pdf)

If passthrough interlaced isn't working right and you don't like the flicker of bob deinterlacing, you can also try line3x laced output, which outputs 1440i and may produce different results. Also, consider trying 2x bob versus 4x bob as one may be more pleasing that the other.

[DejahThoris]

Your "it's not that crazy, really" is definitely your not having the same experience as me. Horizontal white lines (like the ones on top and bottom in the OPL menu) flicker in and out strobe-light style. It's INCREDIBLY noticeable and incredibly distracting. It is not the same kind of flicker that you get playing PS2 / OGXbox on a CRT.

OGXB actually employs a very strong flicker filter by default and doesn't flicker much at all. Many people disable it on their softmodded consoles because it makes the image look even softer on top of the various defects caused by many revisions of the video output circuitry. PS2 has some games doing something similar, but certainly not all.

When did you last use a PS2 on a CRT? That 'unwatchable, incredibly distracting flickering' is just how 480i looked like during the PS2 days. Maybe on particular CRTs it was less pronounced due to phosphor afterglow or some mixture of composite video and a tube with a large dot size blurring things enough to lessen the flickering, but that stuff just flickered. Like crazy. And we all were to blown away by MGS2 to even notice.

The CX itself gives a solid image, but makes things blocky and puts lines through some things, which is still better, but makes some text hard to read.

You can see the lines through the X button here from the CX handling things:

http://imgur.com/a/UTxPItK

Well that looks fucked. No HDTV should deinterlace like that. Maybe something about the OSSC puts the TV in 'PC mode' and it doesn't deinterlace properly or some other issue is at work here, but it should not look this broken.

I actually played it on a CRT this morning in order to make sure it wasn't my PSX that was to blame. So yes, while 480i on a PS2 is bad in general, it is not strobe-light levels of bad.

I assure you that going through the OSSC of the retrotink are both equally as fucked as using the pass-through but in a different way, and not at all normal, ha. I simply can't get the phone on my camera to capture it in video or I'd share it.

[DejahThoris]

Relevant settings may be:

TX mode (RGB vs YCbCr444 vs DVI)
HDMI ITC (on vs off)
Default HDMI VIC (0 vs anything else, such as the 480i VICs from https://web.archive.org/web/20171201033 ... d_2017.pdf)

If passthrough interlaced isn't working right and you don't like the flicker of bob deinterlacing, you can also try line3x laced output, which outputs 1440i and may produce different results. Also, consider trying 2x bob versus 4x bob as one may be more pleasing that the other.

2X bob and 4X bob look identical as far as I can see.

3X laced output doesn't display at all.

I'll poke around with the ITC and VICs in a bit here though, thanks!

[ASDR]

Your CRT is going to be smaller, blurrier, lower-contrast, lower-brightness etc. than a modern OLED so the effect is probably less pronounced, but it should fundamentally be the exact same thing. I've used bob deinterlacing with the OSSC, to me it really doesn't look much different than what interlaced content on a good CRT monitor or PVM/BVM looks like.

The upsample2x should provide a smoother horizontal look in bob4x and can compensate for sub-optimal sampling parameters, but if you can't even see a difference between 2x and 4x bob this will be even more subtle. You can also try to experiment with scanlines and bob deinterlacing, though that'll probably not make it less flickery.

In addition to the OSSC options Guspaz gave you there might also be settings on the TV. Try disabling game mode just to see if that helps. I have a TV that only does the most basic weave deinterlacing with game mode enabled.

[Guspaz]

The LG OLEDs can be put in PC mode (IIRC by setting the icon of the HDMI input to the PC icon and/or by changing the label to "PC"), which dramatically changes the picture processing handling. It disables a bunch of stuff and is the only mode that supports 4:4:4, I think? But if you have it on, try with it off, and if you have it off, try with it on.

[Konsolkongen]

Regular game mode on the CX should support RGB444 as well.

[DejahThoris]

The LG OLEDs can be put in PC mode (IIRC by setting the icon of the HDMI input to the PC icon and/or by changing the label to "PC"), which dramatically changes the picture processing handling. It disables a bunch of stuff and is the only mode that supports 4:4:4, I think? But if you have it on, try with it off, and if you have it off, try with it on.

I have a B9 as well, so I knew about this. It hadn't done anything on the CX for this.

BUT!

I did play around with a bunch of processing options in the menu on the CX and something or other I changed fixed everything. Unfortunately I can't remember which option it was, lol.

But I knew what was going on was absolutely wrong, and I'm glad to find out that there was a solution.

https://imgur.com/a/E3MFtE4

I'd forgotten to set it to 4:3 at first and was too excited, ha. But here's some shots showing it works out great.

The retrotink is still a pointless item for me since it and the OSSC give just about identical results. But at least everything is playable! I'll still probably muck about with a GBSC and snag a framemeister if I see one at a decent price.

Thanks for all of the ideas and support!

[fernan1234]

https://imgur.com/a/E3MFtE4

Noticed those are on 2x bob. Did you try 4x bob after finding your solution? When I had a C9 4x bob looked much better to me both in colors and sharpness, and I'm not sure but I swear I remember lag felt much less with 4x bob, and I noticed precisely playing the game you showed there (Shadow Hearts) which uses tightly timed inputs for combat. That could be mainly because at least on that TV 4x was automatically detected as a PC input.