How do Playstation 1 games look on an HDTV?

[johnjohn320]

Believe it or not, I still own an old Playstation 1, and I still own an old, standard tube TV. Not only am I stuck in the 90s, but I'm enjoying it. But yes, it's probably going to be time to go get a flat screen HDTV soon. Has anyone hooked their old consoles up to a newer TV? How does it look? I've heard some people say it looks so distorted that the games become pretty much unplayable, which would be sad. Bear in mind, I'm not talking about playing PS1 games on a PS2 or 3, I'm talking hooking that actual original PS1 system up. What do you think?

 

[mmntech]

Retro games run at a fairly low resolution. The PS1 for example outputs at 320x240. So they're not going to look great upscaled to 1080p on a modern HDTV.

For the best possible experience, make sure you're using S-Video cables instead of composite.

You can also output in RGB using SCART cables, but you'll need a converter box to change it to a component signal for most NTSC TVs. That's a more complicated solutions. There are SCART to VGA adaptors two, but they seem kinda sketchy.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Depends on the TV, some scale better than others.

It will look pretty bad, not unplayable.

 

[Anteaus]

Depending on whether you have a PC available, you might be better off ripping your PS1 games and using ePSXe emulation. You can use a PS3 controller for the games and the emulator can scale the games up if you want.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Step one: Load up game on hdtv
Step two: Drink copious amounts of alcohol-based beverages
Step three: Play game

If game still looks bad, repeat step two.

 

[It's Not Lupus]

also don't sit so close

 

[byteman99]

It would most likely look a bit blurry. To get the most out of a PS1 on an HDTV you will need an upscaler device like the XRGB Mini which cost around $350. Then you will also need a SCART cable to make sure the system can output at its highest quality.

I have the mini myself hooked up to a 50 inch plasma and it's really nice. So far I have a NES, SNES, Genesis, and Neo Geo AES connected through the upscaler using SCART cables. Not only is this the sharpest I've ever seen these games on HDTV but the response time is good too. Although your results may vary since there are tvs that get worse response times than others. I don't have a PS1 or N64 yet but I imagine the XRGB will do a great job at upscaling them.

 

[mmntech]

The advantage of those upscaler boxes is they let you use SCART RGB. They are crazy expensive though and I'd only recommend them for serious collectors who don't have access to a CRT display.

With PS1 games, your best option is the PS3. It upscales and outputs in RGB to HDMI. I'd say it does just as good a job, and they're only $220 brand new these days.

 

[magomago]

no the best option is as described above - using ePSXe, and then connecting that to an HDTV.

Most games will look amazing if they are 3D. There was a lot of detail texture artists put in those games that couldn't be displayed on the console at the time. Luckily a lot of it is recoverable - games like Xenogears and FF8,FF9 look absolutely amazing.

 

[cyclohexane]

using ePSXe, and turn on all the eye candy.

 

[Insomniator]

What the heck are you still playing on a PS1?

 

[Sulaco]

What the heck are you still playing on a PS1?

You realize there are literally dozens of excellent JRPGs and adventure games that are near-timeless on the PS1 right?

Personally, I'd prefer to probably just buy them on PSN and be done with it, but if somehow you got a load of them cheap for PS1, or just like collecting/playing on the real thing, by all means, there are still plenty of gems there. Far too many for most folks to be able to play.

 

[Ichinisan]

What the heck are you still playing on a PS1?

I played Super Mario Bros 3 on my 8-bit NES for a couple hours today.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Still the best Mario game of all time.

 

[CZroe]

My PSone has the official PSone LCD installed, which is RGB. I have an S-Video cable as a fallback, though I wonder if it will fit my PS2 component cables. Even my oldest PS2 has component output for modern TVs and plays PSone games perfectly fine with better video output than I can get from a PSX or PSone. My PS3 has component and HDMI and plays compatible PSone games with even better quality, though imperfect compatibility.

 

[razel]

I've hooked up both an NES, Sega Genesis and PlayStation 1 to an HDTV. Turn off all the junk processing, edge enhancement, etc... off. If they mention, it's distorted, they probably mean they are stretching 4:3 onto 16:9. Turn that off too and it's fine.

The issue is two fold. 1) NES maxes out at composite yellow video cable. Sega Genesis is capable of component, but realistically unless you want to spend money, you're really left with composite. PlayStation 1, you can play the discs on a PS3 and output HDMI.
2) TVs these days are larger, so you are just magnifying the blocky, splotchy ugliness of composite video. The scan lines in older smaller, CRT TVs really did a good job of hiding that.

 

[CZroe]

I've hooked up both an NES, Sega Genesis and PlayStation 1 to an HDTV. Turn off all the junk processing, edge enhancement, etc... off. If they mention, it's distorted, they probably mean they are stretching 4:3 onto 16:9. Turn that off too and it's fine.

The issue is two fold. 1) NES maxes out at composite yellow video cable. Sega Genesis is capable of component, but realistically unless you want to spend money, you're really left with composite. PlayStation 1, you can play the discs on a PS3 and output HDMI.
2) TVs these days are larger, so you are just magnifying the blocky, splotchy ugliness of composite video. The scan lines in older smaller, CRT TVs really did a good job of hiding that.

Genesis is no more capable of component than the NES. You have to modify both for RGB and then add a component encoder circuit.

 

[HeXen]

Emulation has features that help. You can even create scanlines, flicker, phosphor glow and screen curvature.
These are the settings I use

#
# DIRECT3D POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS
#
hlsl_enable 1
hlslini %g
hlsl_prescale_x 4
hlsl_prescale_y 4
hlsl_preset -1
hlsl_write
hlsl_snap_width 2560
hlsl_snap_height 2048
shadow_mask_alpha 0.20
shadow_mask_texture aperture.png
shadow_mask_x_count 320
shadow_mask_y_count 256
shadow_mask_usize 0.187500
shadow_mask_vsize 0.09375
curvature 0.02
pincushion 0.02
scanline_alpha 0.450000
scanline_size 1.25
scanline_height 0.750000
scanline_bright_scale 1.000000
scanline_bright_offset 0.750000
scanline_jitter 0.25
defocus 2.0,2.0
converge_x 0.0,0.0,0.0
converge_y 0.0,0.0,0.0
radial_converge_x 0.0,0.0,0.0
radial_converge_y 0.0,0.0,0.0
red_ratio 1.0,0.0,0.0
grn_ratio 0.0,1.0,0.0
blu_ratio 0.0,0.0,1.0
saturation 1.250000
offset 0.0,0.0,0.0
scale 1.000000,1.000000,1.000000
power 1.200000,1.200000,1.200000
floor 0.0,0.0,0.0
phosphor_life 0.200000,0.200000,0.200000
yiq_enable 0
yiq_cc 3.59754545
yiq_a 0.5
yiq_b 0.5
yiq_o 0.0
yiq_p 1.0
yiq_n 1.0
yiq_y 3.0
yiq_i 1.2
yiq_q 0.6
yiq_scan_time 52.6
yiq_phase_count 2

 

[Ichinisan]

Emulation has features that help. You can even create scanlines, flicker, phosphor glow and screen curvature.
These are the settings I use

On a 1920x1200 display, I prefer integer scaling without simulated scanlines. Sure, the pixels are more obvious, but they're much sharper and clearer than running everything through a normal scaling algorithm that blurs everything.

The blurring problem comes in scaling algorithms that do not multiply lines evenly so that the vertical space is filled completely. When scaling a 640x480 signal for a 1920x1080 display, multiplying each line by a factor of 2 (1280x960) doesn't quite fill the screen vertically, and multiplying by a factor of 3 (1920x1440) wouldn't fit. To fill the screen vertically without integer scaling, there will always be a blur effect.

If you quadruple each pixel (double each pixel horizontally, then double each line vertically), you end up with a 320x240 native framebuffer, rendered and output at 640x480, integer scaled to 1280x960. It would look very sharp with that kind of integer scaling, but you'd need simultaneous letterboxing + pillarboxing to fit 1280x960 on a 1920x1080 display. However, most TVs would still process the image. You'd want to disable the simulated overscan that most HDTVs have enabled by default (a slight zoom that crops the garbage in some broadcasts). That way, each scanline in the original signal maps directly to rows of pixels on the screen. You'd also want to disable any image processing and use game mode (if available) to minimize image processing delays. Those algorithms really don't enhance games very much. If the display has any kind of smooth motion 120hz interpolation feature, that's going to have strange artifacts and undesirable side-effects, so you should definitely turn-off any of that stuff.

I'm not sure if this is an issue on Playstation, but some old games assume you can't see the areas around the edge of the screen (due to overscan on CRT TVs). You might see some garbage in those areas. Some NES emulators let you set a mask of however many pixels you want on the sides. That minimizes the appearance of strange glitchy effects in games like Super Mario Bros 3. I thought it was funny how many people moaned and complained about seeing the garbage on the Wii Virtual Console version.

"I had the original NES version and it DID NOT do that! Shame on you, Nintendo!"​

They're wrong. It really did have that on the original game, but TVs back then always cropped-out part of the picture. When I play my real 8-bit NES with SMB3 on my Sony LCD HDTV, I see the strange glitches in the area that was normally obscured by overscan. It doesn't bother me, though. Since the original picture is so low-def, I want to see every bit of detail possible...even the weird stuff.

 

[lazybedone]

I love your guidelines.. #mint

 

[ImpulsE69]

games like Xenogears

No, it looks like complete crap. As it always has, but still a great game. Just played through it on ePSXe last year.

 

[magomago]

games like Xenogears

No, it looks like complete crap. As it always has, but still a great game. Just played through it on ePSXe last year.

Are we talking about the same game?

The 2D sprites definitely don't scale well, but the 3D environments and the battles are vastly improved over the original PSX version. Sure it may not be high pixel count like games that came later on, but its still quite a massive improvement.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Are we talking about the same game?

The 2D sprites definitely don't scale well, but the 3D environments and the battles are vastly improved over the original PSX version. Sure it may not be high pixel count like games that came later on, but its still quite a massive improvement.

Eh...you spend the majority of the game in the world, which looks horrible. No amount of filters will fix that. I hated it back then, hate it now.