SNES to 4K HDTV (I need advice. A lot of it)

[asheenlevrai]

Hello

 

I recently dug up my old SNESes and now I am faced with the noob retro gamer dilemma.

A) Should I try to use my original hardware and adapters/upscalers to connect it to my HDTV?

B) Should I use my original SNES cartridges on a modern SNES clone (like the Analogue super nt, maybe)?

C) Should I use an emulator (like bsnes?) and call it a day?

 

For A):

 - I have both the US SNES (NTSC) and the European Super Nintendo (PAL). I have both a SNES to RCA (composite) cable and a SNES to SCART cable. However, my TV only accepts RCA (composite), YPbPr (component) or HDMI. I currently use the SNES to RCA cable. It obviously looks terrible. I was told SCART provides a "better" signal but I cannot test that since, as I just mentioned, my TV lacks SCART input.

 - Most of my SNES cartridges are US but/and I have a cartridge adapter allowing me to play US cartridges on the PAL SNES and vice-versa.

 - I was thinking I should buy an adapter (SCART to HDMI?) but experts in retro gaming seems to indicate that this would lead to poor image quality and input lag.

 - I then thought I should purchase a high-end adapter that would also act as a 2X (240p->480P) upscaler (like the RAD2X from RetroTINK, not sold on their website though!?!) but since it's relatively expensive ->

 - I then considered I could spend the extra money and go for a "real" upscaler. Maybe this is going to give me a better image (won't it?). And I could potentially use it with other consoles if I ever need to... I don't know... I started looking at the store on RetroTINK.com and there are many options and little info about what device would make sense in my situation. Oh, and no way to contact them apparently...

 

 

For B):

 - The Analogue super nt seems like it is the best deal according to everyone on YouTube. Hyperkin clones look nice but reviews on YouTube turned me off. Bad audio, mediocre colors, ...

 - Of course I arrive too late and all super nt units are sold out. I signed up to be notified when they are back in stock, though. Analogue told me they are currently manufacturing more units...

 - I wonder how good of an experience the super nt (or alternatives) would be compared to A). Could it be better as Luke say?

 

 

For C):

 - I have a couple decent "SNES-like" USB controllers (iBuffalo) that I purchased years ago "just in case".

 - I installed bsnes on my iMac and tried playing a few games (without tinkering with the settings of the emulator, yet). It turned out relatively OK but I didn't play much more than a few minutes of SSF2 yet, for testing purposes.

 - I don't know if I should settle for this strategy and thus attach a PC to my 4K TV and play SNES games from bsnes

OR

 - Since my TV is an android TV, I installed several SNES emulators for android on it. However, both using Snes9x EX+ and SuperRetro16 I cannot access the games stored on either my NAS, a USB dongle or an SD card (I can only access internal memory and don't know how to transfer games there, yet). Using RetroArch I can access USB and SDcards so I can actually use the emulator. With default settings (bsnes core) I get terrible performance (unplayable). Is it the settings of the emulator? Is the hardware of my TV not good enough (it's a low end 50'' Sharp model from 2019)? I tried with a different core (beetle bsnes) but then launching any game would crash the emulator. RetroArch has so many options that I must admit it is intimidating...

 - I like how I can control most things on my HDTV with the iBuffalo SNES controller, though The fact that I don't need a keyboard and a mouse (like I would if I was using bsnes on a PC attached to my TV) is also a plus to me.

 

 

So now that I'm lost deep in the rabbit hole, could anyone give me some guidance about what option would make the most sense?

 

Here are a few criteria about me:

 - I would like to have the best (least blurry) image, but I am not necessarily a nostalgic of pixelated graphics, scanlines or anything like that. The smoothest it looks the better.

 - I want decent audio (apparently we can even have improved audio using modified ROMs on emulators). I don't like games that sound too off compared to the original (like some cheap SNES clone apparently do). But I can settle for something decent even if it's not 100% accurate.

 - I want a sufficiently low amount of input lag so that I won't throw the gamepad at my TV out of rage. I mostly play Super Street Fighter 2 (Mortal Kombat, etc), Mario Kart, Super Ghouls and Ghost (Donkey Kong Country, Mega Man, Mario), Super Bomberman, Super Metroid, Zelda... the usual suspects. I guess input lag matters for these games although I doubt I could detect a little bit of input lag.

 

Thank you very much in advance for your advice and guidance.

 

Best,

-a-

[Bombastinator]

There was an LTT video on this iirc.

 

all I’ve got for advice is something I got from my grandfather who fought in world war 1: “never buy a pair of pants with a plastic zipper” I think he meant it literally but I find it surprisingly applicable in a lot of situations.

[SolarNova]

Use component if ur TV allows it.

And ofc disable as much TV processing as possible.

[asheenlevrai]

3 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

There was an LTT video on this iirc.

 

all I’ve got for advice is something I got from my grandfather who fought in world war 1: “never buy a pair of pants with a plastic zipper” I think he meant it literally but I find it surprisingly applicable in a lot of situations.

I'm not sure I get it...

Would it mean to be careful about potential points of failure?

[asheenlevrai]

1 hour ago, SolarNova said:

Use component if ur TV allows it.

And ofc disable as much TV processing as possible.

Could you elaborate a bit?

Why SNES to component rather than anything else.

That's the highest-end analog option, right? Price-wise too...

Do you mean it's better to stay away from any analog to digital conversion? In order to avoid lag?

Or is it something else?

[Bombastinator]

10 minutes ago, asheenlevrai said:

I'm not sure I get it...

Would it mean to be careful about potential points of failure?

Sort of perhaps.  The important ones anyway.  One point is Think about what you keep behind your zipper.  Another is that a small part failure can make an entire object useless.  Even one that isn’t an obvious one.

[SolarNova]

9 minutes ago, asheenlevrai said:

Could you elaborate a bit?

Why SNES to component rather than anything else.

That's the highest-end analog option, right? Price-wise too...

Do you mean it's better to stay away from any analog to digital conversion? In order to avoid lag?

Or is it something else?

Component has separate cables for the image data, keeping the information 'clean' and uncompressed. This cable will have 5 connections, 2 for sound, and 3 for video

Composite combines the signal into one cable, causing the signal to degrade. This cable will have 3 connections, 2 for sound 1 for video.

 

it can be very noticeable.

 

Going from analog to digital for the TV does indeed add lag unless u get a very high end, and expensive, scaler. Cheaper converters also dont look great, similar to Composite.

[asheenlevrai]

12 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

Component has separate cables for the image data, keeping the information 'clean' and uncompressed.

Composite combines the signal into one cable, causing the signal to degrade.

 

it can be very noticeable.

 

Going from analog to digital for the TV does indeed add lag unless u get a very high end, and expensive, scaler. Cheaper converters also dont look great, similar to Composite.

Unfortunately, it looks like my TV doesn't support 240p on the component input (nor 288p for the PAL version).

I just ran this test:

https://www.hdretrovision.com/240p#test

and I get a "video not supported" message

[SolarNova]

4 minutes ago, asheenlevrai said:

Unfortunately, it looks like my TV doesn't support 240p on the component input (nor 288p for the PAL version).

I just ran this test:

https://www.hdretrovision.com/240p#test

and I get a "video not supported" message

Thats unfortunate.

 

Looks like ur gunna need a scaler then.

 

or, just find urself a suitable 'retro' display and have a separate system for retro gaming,

[asheenlevrai]

2 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

Thats unfortunate.

 

Looks like ur gunna need a scaler then.

 

or, just find urself a suitable 'retro' display and have a separate system for retro gaming,

Unfortunate indeed...

I'd like to avoid a dedicated setup for this since it would be only used occasionally and real estate in my living room is pretty expensive

[SolarNova]

30 minutes ago, asheenlevrai said:

Unfortunate indeed...

I'd like to avoid a dedicated setup for this since it would be only used occasionally and real estate in my living room is pretty expensive

Well, an OSSC is about ~$200 i think, so u could look into that but ull also want the component cable.

[asheenlevrai]

50 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

Well, an OSSC is about ~$150 i think, so u could look into that but ull also want the component cable.

Yeah... all this (almost) gets more expensive than a SNES clone...

[PlayStation 2]

Hooking up older consoles to modern 4K sets can get expensive fast. I'd personally search for a high quality RGB Scart cable for the SNES to use and get a Retrotink2x that takes an RGB Scart input and can upscale it properly. A simple Scart to HDMI adapter could give you satisfactory results, but only if the adapter in question is of high quality and only if the upscaling quality is of high quality.

That or I'd get an SNES Classic and mod it and go from there.