4K Upscaling solutions

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Revolver Ocelot
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4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Revolver Ocelot »

I am using a Framemeister now on my 40 inch 4k Tv and it looks good. I want to get a bigger (.55 at least) Oled sometime next year when the tvs support HDMI 2.1 and the variable refresh rate.

According to the My life in Gaming Video the OSSC is a bit better for gaming at 4k screen in case the screen supports the OSSC completly. The OSSC is a device I want to get anyway.

But I still wonder if there are some upcoming 4k scaling solutions in the works that are affordable at the same time. Do you guys know anthing about that?

Or is the OSSC the definite solution for 4K Screens at the time being?

Would be glad hearing some opinions on that matter.
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Fudoh
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Fudoh »

There are already plenty of cheap 4K upscaling solutions, but to create an FPGA based one that can be tailored to us gamers' needs is still way too expensive. Most 4K displays to a pretty good job in upscaling incoming HD signals, so the motivation (from a buyer's perspective) to invest additional money in better upscaling than what the TV offers on its own is pretty slim.
Revolver Ocelot
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Revolver Ocelot »

Fudoh wrote:There are already plenty of cheap 4K upscaling solutions, but to create an FPGA based one that can be tailored to us gamers' needs is still way too expensive. Most 4K displays to a pretty good job in upscaling incoming HD signals, so the motivation (from a buyer's perspective) to invest additional money in better upscaling than what the TV offers on its own is pretty slim.

Ok I see. Thanks for the information. I thought something similar already. There was a slim hope though that there maybe will a FM successor in 4K. But if this is not viable from a consumer perspective this won't happen either I guess..

Well not a big deal for me, as the OSSC seems to be pretty good on a 4k screen according to the My Life in Gaming guys.
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Danexmurder
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Danexmurder »

Revolver Ocelot wrote:
Fudoh wrote:There are already plenty of cheap 4K upscaling solutions, but to create an FPGA based one that can be tailored to us gamers' needs is still way too expensive. Most 4K displays to a pretty good job in upscaling incoming HD signals, so the motivation (from a buyer's perspective) to invest additional money in better upscaling than what the TV offers on its own is pretty slim.

Ok I see. Thanks for the information. I thought something similar already. There was a slim hope though that there maybe will a FM successor in 4K. But if this is not viable from a consumer perspective this won't happen either I guess..

Well not a big deal for me, as the OSSC seems to be pretty good on a 4k screen according to the My Life in Gaming guys.
I don't have an OSSC but I have a framemeister hooked up to my 4K Oled TV and also have an Analogue NT hooked up to it. They both look pretty amazing. I've wondered the same thing about a 4K upscale and am hoping that we'll have a good FPGA solution or other consumer product in the future.
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bobrocks95
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by bobrocks95 »

My assumption is that we're several years off from 4K being viable for FPGAs. You should certainly get your money's worth if you buy an OSSC now, or next year with an OLED.
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by TillDawn »

I have an LG 55B7D OLED TV and an OSSC. Stuff looks insanely sharp and vibrant via the OSSC, and the TV accepts all modes (2x to 5x). I would not worry about upscaling beforehand, chances are high that your picture will look superb even without it.
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Fudoh »

Speaking of LG OLEDs and their upscaling: In the recent MLiG video Marc demonstrated the free scaling option on his LG OLED, which you can use to manually independently (!) adjust horizontal and vertical scaling.

God knows how many LG OLED reviews I've seen over the past years and NOT A SINGLE ONE ever mentioned this option nor did anybody here on the board or any any other gaming board I know ever lose a single word about it. WTF?!?!? Total game changer in my book, since it allows you to fine tune any aspect ratio you get from the OSSC.
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by nmalinoski »

Revolver Ocelot wrote:There was a slim hope though that there maybe will a FM successor in 4K.
bobrocks95 wrote:My assumption is that we're several years off from 4K being viable for FPGAs. You should certainly get your money's worth if you buy an OSSC now, or next year with an OLED.
There very well may be a 4K successor to the Framemeister, but, I agree, it's still a few years out.

I think there's still going to be a need for a device like the Framemeister (or OSSC+RT2X) for not only scaling, but also for providing fine-tuning of that scaling that you won't get from your TV's built-in scaler (things like custom letterboxing, sharp integer scaling, and color profiles), and providing compatibility for the legacy video formats and hookups that have gradually been eliminated from consumer displays.
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bobrocks95
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by bobrocks95 »

For the record I can't tell the difference between 4x and 5x from the MLiG 4K video- can you all? I assume that we'll get very diminishing returns even if a 4K OSSC (or Framemeister) ever happens.
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Fudoh wrote:Speaking of LG OLEDs and their upscaling: In the recent MLiG video Marc demonstrated the free scaling option on his LG OLED, which you can use to manually independently (!) adjust horizontal and vertical scaling.

God knows how many LG OLED reviews I've seen over the past years and NOT A SINGLE ONE ever mentioned this option nor did anybody here on the board or any any other gaming board I know ever lose a single word about it. WTF?!?!? Total game changer in my book, since it allows you to fine tune any aspect ratio you get from the OSSC.
The only other time I had seen it mentioned... Was in MLiG's video on the Super NT. Nobody outside of them have bothered pointing it out from what I've seen.
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nmalinoski
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by nmalinoski »

bobrocks95 wrote:For the record I can't tell the difference between 4x and 5x from the MLiG 4K video- can you all? I assume that we'll get very diminishing returns even if a 4K OSSC (or Framemeister) ever happens.
From a distance, no; but, from my normal distance from a desktop monitor, the 5X image looks a little less blurry. Which makes sense; it has more image data to start with than the 4X image, before getting blown up to 2160p and then scaled to whatever size was used for this comparison shot.

Luckily for us, once 8k/4320p displays hit the consumer market, we'll finally have a display that can do exact integer scales for all of 240p, 288p, 480i/p, 720i/p, 1080i/p, 1440p, and 2160p. (But we'll have to wait for a 16k/8640p display to get an exact integer scale of 576p. :P) Then all we'd need is something to get these displays to resync to a different resolution within milliseconds instead of, well, seconds.
Revolver Ocelot
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Revolver Ocelot »

@all Thanks a lot for the further information.

bobrocks95 wrote:My assumption is that we're several years off from 4K being viable for FPGAs. You should certainly get your money's worth if you buy an OSSC now, or next year with an OLED.

Yes it seems logic that some decent solutions are still some years away. But eventually they will emerge I guess. But as you said for now the OSSC will be more than decent.

Maybe I am just worrying to much that the FM won't do a good job an big screen (55 or bigger). Could be the case as well.

For that case I am getting the OSSC. I like the FM and I will use it forther for 240p and 480i content. And for the 480p stuff (gamecube and Dreamcast) I will use the OSSC.
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orange808
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by orange808 »

Revolver Ocelot wrote:@all Thanks a lot for the further information.

bobrocks95 wrote:My assumption is that we're several years off from 4K being viable for FPGAs. You should certainly get your money's worth if you buy an OSSC now, or next year with an OLED.

Yes it seems logic that some decent solutions are still some years away. But eventually they will emerge I guess. But as you said for now the OSSC will be more than decent.

Maybe I am just worrying to much that the FM won't do a good job an big screen (55 or bigger). Could be the case as well.

For that case I am getting the OSSC. I like the FM and I will use it forther for 240p and 480i content. And for the 480p stuff (gamecube and Dreamcast) I will use the OSSC.
You may already know this, but the OSSC can only line double, so you will want 960p support from your new display.
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copy
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by copy »

Revolver Ocelot wrote:Maybe I am just worrying to much that the FM won't do a good job an big screen (55 or bigger). Could be the case as well.
I don't think you should worry. The FM looks very good on my 55".
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BuckoA51
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by BuckoA51 »

I tried HD Fury's Vertex scaler and couldn't tell a jot of difference compared to my TVs scaler. Their claims that it is lagless are BS too, if you use scaling mode it's 1 frame, measured with Leo's tester.
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by orange808 »

BuckoA51 wrote:I tried HD Fury's Vertex scaler and couldn't tell a jot of difference compared to my TVs scaler. Their claims that it is lagless are BS too, if you use scaling mode it's 1 frame, measured with Leo's tester.
That's interesting. I guess it really is an all new piece of hardware. ( I always assumed the Vertex was just a Linker/Integral frankenstein combination. )

With the older Linker (with 4:2:0 sampling), I couldn't find any latency with the Leo Bodnar or a camera test.

Too bad about the latency; I guess I'll stick with my Linker. I use the Linker to downscale 4k to 1080p, anyway, so I don't need 4:4:4.
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by BuckoA51 »

There's no latency if you don't use the scaling mode and just use it for EDID minding etc, but there is if you scale.
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Revolver Ocelot
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Revolver Ocelot »

orange808 wrote:
Revolver Ocelot wrote:@all Thanks a lot for the further information.

bobrocks95 wrote:My assumption is that we're several years off from 4K being viable for FPGAs. You should certainly get your money's worth if you buy an OSSC now, or next year with an OLED.

Yes it seems logic that some decent solutions are still some years away. But eventually they will emerge I guess. But as you said for now the OSSC will be more than decent.

Maybe I am just worrying to much that the FM won't do a good job an big screen (55 or bigger). Could be the case as well.

For that case I am getting the OSSC. I like the FM and I will use it forther for 240p and 480i content. And for the 480p stuff (gamecube and Dreamcast) I will use the OSSC.
You may already know this, but the OSSC can only line double, so you will want 960p support from your new display.
Thanks I am aware of that. In Order to get the most of the OSSC I will do lots of research to get a decent Oled that is known to work very well along with the OSSC.


@copy Thanks for the infos. Yes maybe I am worrying just too much and everything will be fine with the Framemeister. Just the way it is with my smaller 4K TV I am using now.

I was just a bit alarmed when the My Life in Gaming guys mentioned to problems with the FM and 4k displays.
Seraphic
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Seraphic »

mCable should have a newer version of their Gaming Edition cable out in the next few months. Should be sporting 4K/HDR, so might be worth a look.

https://twitter.com/MarseilleInc/status ... 9862846465
BuckoA51 wrote:There's no latency if you don't use the scaling mode and just use it for EDID minding etc, but there is if you scale.
I have the Vertex too, just haven't tried using it yet. Is there latency for both up/down scaling?
creamygarlicdip
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by creamygarlicdip »

would a capture card that could route through a pc to output at 4k be a viable future solution? I'm not that savvy on the tech side of that but i wonder if someone could program custom upscaling algorithms that could just use your computer and it's gpu to do most of the legwork.
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by bobrocks95 »

creamygarlicdip wrote:would a capture card that could route through a pc to output at 4k be a viable future solution? I'm not that savvy on the tech side of that but i wonder if someone could program custom upscaling algorithms that could just use your computer and it's gpu to do most of the legwork.
I think this can be done but it might be really laggy? I feel like I remember Fudoh talking about it before.
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by BuckoA51 »

I have the Vertex too, just haven't tried using it yet. Is there latency for both up/down scaling?
That I haven't tested tbh since I didn't have need to downscale any games.
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Overkill »

Speaking of LG OLEDs and their upscaling: In the recent MLiG video Marc demonstrated the free scaling option on his LG OLED, which you can use to manually independently (!) adjust horizontal and vertical scaling.
Last year I bought an LG OLED 55c7v, and since my first xbox 360 back in 2006 that I always used RGB Expanded, just because my old LCD support it, and it was recommended in AV forums, and the blacks looked correct to me, for an lcd. Now with the OLED I continued to used it in Xbox One. But seeing that last MLiG vídeo, they recommend standard instead of PC RGB. Is this correct?
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Fudoh »

as long as you're able to set your TV to the right settings, it doesn't matter. I prefer to use full range whenever possible, but I also believe that limited range RGB is a total abomination and shouldn't exist in the first place. Unfortunately it does exist though and Marc's setup in MLiG is heavily based on switches and using multiple sources on a single HDMI input. So, since limited range RGB can be a requirement depending on your sources, it might be easier for you to use this for all of your sources.

Doesn't change my mind about it though :mrgreen: I would just recommend not to mix sources using a single input on your TV. You're pressing your luck very hard to make that work on all occasions.
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bobrocks95
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by bobrocks95 »

Fudoh wrote:as long as you're able to set your TV to the right settings, it doesn't matter. I prefer to use full range whenever possible, but I also believe that limited range RGB is a total abomination and shouldn't exist in the first place. Unfortunately it does exist though and Marc's setup in MLiG is heavily based on switches and using multiple sources on a single HDMI input. So, since limited range RGB can be a requirement depending on your sources, it might be easier for you to use this for all of your sources.

Doesn't change my mind about it though :mrgreen: I would just recommend not to mix sources using a single input on your TV. You're pressing your luck very hard to make that work on all occasions.
For those who are plugging a lot of sources into an HDMI AVR, hopefully eARC will solve this problem. You can keep most everything plugged into your receiver, except for problematic sources like the Wii U, which you could plug into your TV and use eARC to still get LPCM surround sound.

I remember one user on here using a receiver with 2 outputs and having them both plugged into their TV, one for limited range sources and one for full range sources. Just madness.
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by paulb_nl »

Fudoh wrote: I prefer to use full range whenever possible, but I also believe that limited range RGB is a total abomination and shouldn't exist in the first place.
Indeed, I set everything to Full Range RGB. Its just better quality with gradients because 36 steps are lost with Limited. Limited RGB or YCbCr indeed should have never existed. It doesn't even save bandwidth or PCB board traces so its useless.
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Lawfer »

Fudoh wrote: I prefer to use full range whenever possible, but I also believe that limited range RGB is a total abomination and shouldn't exist in the first place.
So that automatically disqualifies the Wii U then, good thing that some of the exclusives have been ported elsewhere. It still has some exclusives though, such as Fatal Frame V Maiden of Black Water, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, The Wondeful 101, Devil's Third, Star Fox Zero, Super Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3, New Super Mario Bros. U, New Super Luigi U, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, Paper Mario: Color Splash.

And the semi-exclusives: Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD, Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD.
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Fudoh
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Fudoh »

Limited RGB or YCbCr indeed should have never existed. It doesn't even save bandwidth or PCB board traces so its useless.
For YCbCr I'm OK with limited range. Not because I see any advantage, but because it's the only standard and it was introduced when digital video was introduced, so at least the signal transmission was streamlined with the codecs in use.
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by thebigcheese »

If I remember correctly from the video, HDR causes consoles to switch out of full range anyway because current HDMI specs can't support both full range RGB and HDR. Or at least not the HDMI that's implemented on the consoles. That was a lot of what convinced me to just set things to limited. Some TVs (including mine, I believe) don't always handle the range switch properly without, say, backing out to the home screen and then reselecting the input, so it's a much bigger hassle to try setting things to full range for basically no actual benefit. Granted I am no video expert, but I suspect that a lot of "purists" have insisted on certain settings on principle without actual evidence to support their claims. If you want to use full range, go ahead, I am just now more convinced that it doesn't actually improve the visuals. Not sure that captures would even be a valid way to provide evidence because computer monitors are always full range RGB, so they might display banding/artifacts that a TV wouldn't.

Regarding the Wii U ports - yeah, a lot were ported to the Switch, but the Switch also only outputs LPCM audio, so if the issue you are hoping to solve (as I was) is an audio issue, that won't help. Still have to plug both of those directly into my receiver to get surround sound. However also keep in mind that the games would have been designed around limited range RGB (since Wii U only supported that, AFAIK), so insisting on playing those games in full range is kinda pointless IMO.
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Joelepain »

thebigcheese wrote:If you want to use full range, go ahead, I am just now more convinced that it doesn't actually improve the visuals.
From a pure mathematical point, in a 24bit format, you only get 10.5 million colors with limited range RGB ( (235-16)^3 ) Vs 10.9 million colors with YCbCr ( (235-16)*(240-16)^2 ) Vs 16.7 million colors with Full range RGB ( 256^3).
I don't say it's obviously visible, but people have to stop saying it's quite the same thing when you loose more than 1/3 of your color palette...
And you have the same kind of wasted color palette with 30/36-bit color depth with Rec.2020...
thebigcheese wrote:However also keep in mind that the games would have been designed around limited range RGB (since Wii U only supported that, AFAIK), so insisting on playing those games in full range is kinda pointless IMO.
I'm a not a game developper, but I'm pretty sure games aren't designed around limited range. Game engine are much more complicated than this, most of the time dealing internally with floating point and making calculations in a much bigger range. It must be a pain and totally pointless to design a game engine around this "feature". I suppose it's much more simple to let the final stage of the engine or the hdmi interface do its whatever_format_it_spits to rgb-limited-range conversion.
And don't forget most WiiU port run at ~1080p on Switch vs ~720p on WiiU, often with more stable framerate too.

I am too convinced that limited range (RGB or YCbCr) is just an abomination that should have never existed. It's just pointless and stupid. But a lot of things are stupid in the hdmi realm...
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Re: 4K Upscaling solutions

Post by Revolver Ocelot »

Seraphic Thanks for the info. Checked the mCable and it seems to have some pontial for sure. The reports I can find in the Internet are also quite positiv. Maybe These cables could improve the Image quality of the Framemeister and the OSSC a bit.

I will get the OSSC soon already btw. My first plan was to get it together with the new Oled, but as it is uncertain when the HDMI 2.1 TVS will be avaiable it is better to get the OSSC soon already.

Just in case the OSSC won't be available when the new TV is on the market.

Too bad there are no HDMI 2.1 TVS avaiable already. I am quite tempted getting a Oled Display as fast as possible. They look great. But it won't be wise to get a new tv when new Standards are around the corner. I want to be up to date in relative terms.
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