I've looked around a lot for this and there sure are a lot of products that claim to upscale but look super sketchy, or unreliable, or probably don't actually do any upscaling, and I don't really know how to spot what exactly I'm looking for so I figure I'll ask here.
Background on my setup, I have a PlayStation 2 with a component (I forget which one's which, the one with 3 video outputs and 2 audio outputs) cable, a thing that converts from component to HDMI, and an HDMI capture card. The PS2 outputs at 480i (some games can do 480p, but most don't).
For reasons not worth getting into, I need the input into the capture card to be at least 480p, or 576i (or any standard resolution higher than that). So ideally, I would have an upscaler that:
- Can upscale 480i to pretty much anything better than that
- Takes either Component or HDMI input (composite would be fine as well but I'd like to avoid this)
- Ideally has HDMI output
- Ideally has minimal delay, but if it's HDMI input I can work around this
- Ideally under... $100 USD? If I need to buy like a Framemeister to make this setup work I'm just gonna abandon this idea.
Am I being way too greedy for my price range? Does such a thing even exist at all? If not, what's the closest I can get to any of this?
RetroTink-2x. It takes 240p/480i inputs and outputs 480p60fps over HDMI. The original model used to be $99 USD but it looks like it’s gotten an upgrade so it’s now around $130 with a nice case. Although it’s slightly over budget for you, I can recommend this personally as I used one for a year before upgrading to an OSSC
https://www.retrotink.com/product-page/retrotink-2x-pro
An OSSC is going to be better, but it’ll also add like $40 or so to the price. You can also poke around the RetroTink website as I think they have some other models that are cheaper (idk if they have component input or not though).
