240p/288p to 480i/576i Transition Test: SCART to HDMI vs Framemeister vs OSSC vs RetroTINK 2X

This video is intended as a public service for retro gamers concerned about what's commonly referred to as "The Chrono Cross problem". While most retro games ran at resolutions of 240p in NTSC regions or 288p in PAL regions, DVDs tend to run at resolutions of 480i and 576i. Certain games on PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 use these DVD resolutions, and some even use both resolutions. Such games generally use 240p or 288p for the actual gameplay, but 480i or 576i for the menus, cutscenes and loading screens and the like.

Chrono Cross is the most famous example of games with both resolutions. Other games include Silent Hill, Dino Crisis, Resident Evil, Castvania Sympathy of the Night, Driver, and Driver 2. While this may have seemed like forward thinking back in the 90s, these resolution changes can reek havoc with modern HDTVs and video scalers. When the device detects a change in resolution, it needs to resync causing the screen to blackout momentarily.

This is especially problematic with the two most popular upscalers among the retro gaming community: the XRGB-mini Framemeister and the Open Source Scan Converter. Both devices blackout when they detect a change in resolution. Cheaper upscalers which treat 240p/288p as though it were 480i/576i don't have this issue at all, since they always interpret the signal as interlaced they never have to resync. The downside is that 240p and 288p doesn't look as sharp as it does on the Framemeister or OSSC, but the softer image is less offensive on 3D content.

One of the newest retro gaming devices on the market is the RetroTINK 2X. Like the OSSC, it correctly interprets 240p and 288p and their interlaced counterparts as as just that and linedoubles the incoming signal and outputs it as 480p or 576p over HDMI. It supports composite video, S-video and component. As best I can tell, it blackouts too when it detects resolution changes on the PS2 over component. But the RetroTINK has a cool feature that I don't think enough people are talking about. If you feed it S-video content from a PS1 or N64 in 2x mode, it handles the resolution switch seamlessly! I have not yet tested a Sega Saturn, but this if it works on a Saturn too this could be a new solution to the Chrono Cross Problem.


NOTE: Ironically, my Sony HDTV didn't like any 288p resolutions coming off the PS1 in either line doubled or passthrough mode. So in order to display any video off the OSSC and RetroTINK 2X, I needed to feed their HDMI outputs into the HDMI input on the cheap SCART to HDMI.