Picked up a Hyperkin Dreamcast cable that outputs via HDMI. I tried it out and it’s displaying in this tiny box on my TV. The box on the cable has no settings and the TV is a 1080 Sony Bravia.
I’m not sure what options I have aside from stretching the image via the TV settings but if anyone can assist, it would be appreciated. Thanks.
480i/480p is 1/4 of 1080p so that seems accurate to me.
Dreamcast is the purple square in the upper right:
Appreciate the graphic! I’m definitely going to need to look into an upscaler sometime in the near future.
What was your input situation before?
Dreamcast outputs at 480i/p which looks about that size on a 1080 display. I think your TV is running in just-scan display mode which is just displaying what it gets pixel for pixel. I’m guessing whatever you used for input before made the TV auto scale itself, but now it’s not on HDMI.
Change the TV to fill and live with it. It’s gonna be a bit blurry.
I was using an RCA cable output prior to this. It worked great, though was lower quality of an image than I would’ve liked.
I’ll have to check the display mode on the tv and see if any other options exist. I did play it in Fill mode which kept the 4:3 resolution but I feel like that sorta defeats the purpose of using hdmi.
HDMI doesn’t automatically mean good resolution. The Dreamcast only outputs 480p. That’s regardless of what you’re using to plug it in. The TV was likely automatically scaling the RCA signal, but isn’t scaling the HDMI.
If your game isn’t 16:9 then your video won’t be. Nothing about HDMI means you’re automatically going to get high def widescreen.
garbage in , garbage out.
or in this case, SD in , SD out.
I’ll have to check the display mode on the tv and see if any other options exist. I did play it in Fill mode which kept the 4:3 resolution but I feel like that sorta defeats the purpose of using hdmi.
Well no? You are getting a digital signal which will be MUCH clearer than analog RCA… Upscaling / fill mode is the Only way to make it bigger.
Well thats just not true! You could also try sitting really really close to the tv!
You’re right. The picture is cleaner but
choppynot crisp from TV being set to Full. That’ll have to be my Solution for the time being.If your TV has a crappy upscale then you can look into external hardware, however seems odd this is making it choppy, does your TV have a low latency GAME mode?
With this cable it’s getting the signal as vga, so it’s “pc” settings. No lag or anything. And I meant choppy like lines and such. Should’ve said “crispness”. The game plays flawlessly on the tv with no output issues.
Sorry for the confusion.
Yeah, as said, that’s going to be due to however your TV upscales things.
Getting a dedicated scaler will help, but bear in mind that you’re taking an image that’s at least 1/4 smaller (might be less than that, can’t remember the math off hand) than your screen’s native resolution and zooming in on it.
Using most scalers gives you a ton of options for how to zoom in. Straight pixels, bilinear (or trilinear) filtering, and some have various shader effects as well to emulate the style of TVs these consoles were made for.
By using HDMI/VGA you are getting the clearest digital signal version of that image possible, but it’s still tiny, and any way you choose to expand it will have pros and cons.
And I meant choppy like lines and such. Should’ve said “crispness”. The game plays flawlessly on the tv with no output issues.
You probably need to take a picture, you might be describing that the output is 480i interlaced where every other line is drawn and some modern TVs will render that badly. In which case it is a deinterlacing issue.
Take a look at this link some games support 240p output mode…
Guessing that hyperkin thing isn’t scaling the image to fill the screen. Does it have any instructions for scaling the image up at all? I would assume it should be scaling the image. It makes no sense to be outputting 480i/p through HDMI.
Edit
Reading more about it, it doesn’t seem to upscale at all. What a shame. You’ll have to use your TV to scale the image with its “zoom” or fill function.
No instructions at all. I just tinkered with my tv and the only “solution” is to have the DC in Full mode. I can live with that but it’s far from ideal. I would’ve liked something that scaled up.
Run it through an upscaler. https://www.retrorgb.com/upscalers.html
Problem is the using an HDMI out, can’t really upscale that with simple upscalers made to upscale analog video.
HDMI upscalers exist. https://retrododo.com/mclassic-hdmi-upscaler/
Don’t worry. It’s bigger on the inside… 🟦
TVs didn’t used to be that big, so your Dreamcast is pushing the biggest size available at that time.
Nah, I’m just kidding.
It is essentially what is going on.
OP became a giant overnight and hasn’t figured it out yet.
Looks like it’s outputting at the original Dreamcast resolution. I think you’d need an upscaler if you don’t want to have to rely on the TV’s picture settings. It may also be worth seeing if you can lower the display resolution to 480p on that input.
Gonna check the tv settings and see. Thanks.
Tv in Full mode is my only solution. Guess I’ll have to shop for an upscaler at some point.
I’ve heard people say good things about Retrotink
I’ll give that a look. Thanks for the rec!
+1 for RetroTINK. I have a 2x Mini for my N64, and it does a lovely job. I also have an OSSC. Great as a pkug-abd-plag solution, but has a LOT of complexity under the bonnet if you want to tinker.
Buy a CRT
