Tricky? Not at all. If you follow Calamity’s guide for crtemudriver it’s cake. I was up and running in 15 minutes.
Additionally if you have an Extron Emotia (I do) you can downscale a vga signal to 240p. It works wonderfully with no transcoder needed. That’s what I used before going with crt emudriver.
I meant tricky in the sense that you need specific hardware for that purpose and it’s not something you can just expect to do with any machine. You need a video card that’s supported by CRT emudriver, and one with analogue outputs if you plan on outputting to a 15kHz CRT. An Extron Emotia would also work (does it add any input lag, though?). I never used CRT emudriver as I didn’t have a supported video card whenever I was trying this, and I was unsuccessful trying to output 240p to my 15kHz television at the time using any of the other methods. The Wii is undoubtedly the easiest solution for getting Retroarch on an SD CRT TV, but it obviously has its limitations.
The Extron Emotia adds no lag afaik. The guys over at the SHMUP forums use them so if they did I doubt they would use them.
Along with the Wii, the Rpi puts out 240p from the aux port composite cable. Put a Lakka image on there and you’re good. If you want really hi quality 240p you can pick up the retrotink rpi hat and have your choice of using composite, s-video or component. The only thing that sucks with using the Rpi is you’ll most likely only be able to use runahead with maybe Atari2600 - NES. After that I would think it would become too resource intensive. Plus n64 is your road block.
I’ve never minded the, IMO, negligible amount of lag that emulation introduces. My problem with the Pi, is preciously that though. It’s just not quite powerful enough yet. I can’t justify the purchase/setup of a dedicated emulation device that doesn’t run all of Gamecube, and everything that came before it.
No I was saying in response to the Wii being suggested as the easiest device to get 240p.
In your case, I would go to website that sells like used Dell Optiplex towers. Find one with an older i7 processor and slap an older AMD card like a 6570 that can be powered directly from PCI and needs no dedicated power to the card. (Or find the most powerful AMD card without needing dedicated power.)Or of course you can build something yourself but I would think it would be more expensive.
I think a 6570 though would run even up to Gamecube being that you would be running these emulators at low resolutions. The highest I have played on my CRT build is Dreamcast and it runs with no hiccups on a 6570 with an i5 2400.
No, no. I follow. I was just sort of commenting my own take.
That’s a good idea though, with the Optiplex… You think an early i7 is gonna be enough to run Dolphin, PCSX2, Reicast, and Beetle_Saturn? If so, yeah… I might just have to do that.
I did manage to get an HDMI to component adapter for the 480p + Interlacing setup. It’s pretty damn snazzy looking, though there is some overscan going on with the adapter I got. No big deal, as it was a cheapy one.
This will all have to do until I get that JVC-D with the modded on RGB port. I gotta decide if I want a VGA or SCART port though. Guy’s pretty adamant I should get a SCART port, but I’m in the US… so… I don’t know if it’s the way to go. At least I’ll be able to connect my real consoles without god awful de-interlacing when that comes. Who knows… maybe, just maybe, I can push that 15Khz signal out of my current card and everything will be sunshine and roses.
If not I’ll have to look into those optiplex.
It will depend mostly on cpu freq, most of the games i tried didn’t run at a stable 60fps with beetle_saturn on my i7 2600k.
He’s probably recommending that because it’s easier to get your consoles to output RGB-SCART than RGBHV-VGA.
I assume it’s easier to get VGA than SCART out of a PC though, right? I probably won’t ever go above S-Video with the real consoles. Or is it just kind of a connector change?
Just to clarify, SCART itself is really a connector standard, not a signal standard. SCART can carry composite, S-Video and RGB signals. Not every port will carry all signals, e.g. on my TV, one of the two is evidently missing S-Video as it’s not selectable in the TV menu. Likewise, cables need to be properly wired and have all the pins for RGB, which is what you need if going the 240p via PC route. Getting VGA (=analog RGB) out of a PC should be possible even when you have only digital ports via converters, but then you need a VGA-Scart cable or something like the Ultimate Scart Adapter (UMSA) that ensures proper sync.