Sega Saturn OSSC vs Generic Upscaler
8I recently got an OSSC. Up to this point I've been using a generic upscaler, which I've been mostly happy enough with. Here's just a quick comparison video.
My Thoughts
The OSSC preserves the aspect ratio and is a more faithful recreation of the original video signal. The colour reproduction is better than the upscaler. You get nice sharp pixels with the various line double modes. The passthrough signal also looks really good, but I run into issues on my 4k monitor when using this. 240p is fine and the monitor will do a nice job expanding it to fit the screen, or I can line multiply for a sharper picture. Where the OSSC starts to fall short is the interlaced signal output by Dead or Alive. DOA uses 480i and my screen cant display this. I don't like the deinterlacer in OSSC and the various multiplication modes, including 3x laced, seemed quite shaky, 4x bob wasn't too bad though.
The upscaler does a great job with deinterlacing. Dead or alive looks great with it, and it produces a nice clean, sharp, smooth and bright image. The colours dont seem quite as accurate as the OSSC passthrough setting, but its a great way to play saturns high res 3D fighters. The upscaler falls short on the 240p games. It misinterprets the 240p signal as 480i. This causes a shaky blurred image when things are moving. This isn't always bad though. It results in a sort of anti aliasing type effect on sprites. If you look at sasquatch in Vampire saviour, he's continuously moving and actually looks really good through the upscaler. It is a bit jarring though, especially when the background layers are shaking all over the place. .
I also tried putting both OSSC then upscaler in series and was rather happy with the results. The upscaler still breaks the aspect ratio, but I can correct this on my screen. It doesn't come through on the video as I have put in the aspect ratios as they are output by the device.
Overall, I like line 2X on OSSC for Saturn 240p games and Upscaler for the 480i games. My preferred setup is both in series as this lets me play all games on one configuration and you seem to get some benefit from upscaling the line doubled image. Also worth noting, you can do a 4:3 aspect ratio upscale on the Upscaler as well (something like 800x600), if preserving the original aspect ratio is important to you. The generic upscaler gets a lot of bad reviews online, but for the price it does a perfectly acceptable job. The OSSC is pricy, but full of great features and does give a nice clean output. OSSC is a bit complicated though. There's a lot of profiles and I played around with the settings a lot. Generic 4:3 aspect ratio still seems to give me the best results. You can download optimum profiles online if needed. A good investment for die hard retro game fans. For those just looking to have some casual fun with old consoles, the generic upscaler is fine
What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
(Note: I actually got the OSSC for my Dreamcast as my retro bit VGA +HDMI adaptor setup wasn't doing a great job and the image was covered in horrible noise artefacts. Still optimising the DC setup, so I will start posting some comparison videos for that later, once I'm happy with the setup)