Retro Games Upgrade Unit - Would you want something like this?

[Andy Armstrong]

Hi,

I have an idea that I would like some feedback on. I am a retro games fan, and like many others, strive to get the best picture / quality of signal from my old retro games consoles.

It is a confusing and complicated business, up scaling of different signals is not particularly easy and often results in a confusing bundle of boxes, wires, research and resulting in a bit of a mess. I am imagining a better way for retro consoles to be connected to our high-end displays and audio equipment. A way which means you as the gamer don’t need to play with cables, signals, converters, upscalers etc, and instead can have an object of beauty responsible for all of this complexity which will secure crisp, clean visuals from all retro games consoles to your TV and audio equipment.

It would work a little like this :

Or more concisely :

Essentially the magic box would :

•Remove a jumbled mess of legacy cabling from around your TV set
•Save you time researching how to get RGB from which cable type for your console and then how to upscale it to HDMI
•Deliver crisp clear visuals from all sources without mods, research etc. We could provide necessary AV cables if required
•Be the upgrade hub for all your retro games systems, in the same way an AMP is the center point for your audio system

If this existed would you use it?
What else might you want it to do?
What would you value most about this box if you had it and it could do anything?

 

[vskid3]

What kind of magic is in the Magic Box? I find it hard to believe that hooking composite to the Magic Box will give a much better picture than hooking it directly to the TV, without using magic.

 

[Diminuendo]

The xRGB mini and OSSC already do this, nether really take digital audio, but that can be fixed with a decent sound system.

 

[samjc3]

Magic always sounds good on paper, except that it's magic.

 

[Andy Armstrong]

It would take composite yes.

The magic part is to try ask you to look beyond this - if the device worked, was designed beautifully, would you be interested in purchasing it, given that the OSSC and xRGB mini are not exactly beautiful devices, nor particularly user friendly.

 

[samjc3]

Personally, no, I wouldn't buy such a thing. I've never been a hardware purist, and switched over to emulation for everything 6th gen and earlier years ago, and primarily play on PC besides. That said, I think that, if your magic box worked it's magic well and was pretty, there'd be a reasonably sized market out there, because there's a lot of people unlike me who actually do like the original hardware and are happy to spend their bits to have a better experience there. Just look at that fancy Aluminum ensconced NES that's come out recently.

 

[Diminuendo]

how exactly are the xRGB mini and OSSC "not exactly beautiful devices, nor particularly user friendly"?

 

[Kickback]

If you're going to use expensive hardware to play a Genesis or SNES via HDMI, you may as well save yourself a ton of money and buy a Raspberry Pi.

Also really, the Xbox Original & Dreamcast support Component & VGA, do American HDTVs have Component on them?

 

[Joeyjoe9876]

If you're going to use expensive hardware to play a Genesis or SNES via HDMI, you may as well save yourself a ton of money and buy a Raspberry Pi.

Also really, the Xbox Original & Dreamcast support Component & VGA, do American HDTVs have Component on them?

out of all of the ones that I've owned, yes they do. Some even have VGA as well.

 

[Kickback]

•Deliver crisp clear visuals from all sources without mods, research etc. We could provide necessary AV cables if required

This isn't really possible for some consoles, you need to mod to get anything better than Composite.

You could upscale and clean up composite, but it would still look awful.