Component Vs. Scart with OSSC

[TheRedLine]

I’ve been thinking about buying some component cables from hd retro vision for a while now. And recently I discovered the OSSR and have been trying my best to research as much as possible before buying anything. And I’m kind of confused on getting component or scart cables. From what I’ve read about it in general without the OSSC in the picture. I should get component since it has support for progressive scan and scart does not. But scart has RGB and component does not. Additionally I can get 3 scart cables from insurrection industries for less than 10$ more than just the hd retro genesis cable. So I was hoping I could have a few questions answered.

1. Does scart not supporting progressive scan cause any tv/monitor compatibility issues component would not.
2. Is the OSSC’s deinterlacing as bad as I’ve heard/does it make the upside of having RGB worth it?
3. does the price of the scart cables and RGB outway the progressive scan from component cables if I were to just use passthrough?
4. is insurrection industries a good place to go for scart cables? are there any places that have higher quality cables?

[nmalinoski]

Don’t confuse the cable with the signals it carries. Generally, yes, SCART only supports 15kHz, such as with the Xbox, which will only output 15kHz RGB when a SCART cable is connected, but will do that plus 480p, 720p, and 1080i with a YPbPr component cable (And an NTSC video region); however, with the Dreamcast, some aftermarket devices, like the Behar Bros. Toro, will use a sync combiner to convert the 480p RGBHV to 480p RGBS and send it over the SCART cable, which can be used by the OSSC. The PS2 is a special case, where it will output RGBS when in 15kHz modes, but will then switch to RGsB (sync-on-green) when using 480p, 720p, or 1080i, which the SCART cable will carry; most SCART-native devices won’t support RGsB, but the OSSC will.

To answer your questions:
1. No. TV/Monitor incompatibilities are generally caused by the video modes (frame rates, dimensions), not the encoding/colorspace used (RGB, YPbPr, etc.).

2. The OSSC uses bob deinterlacing. It’s not pretty, but it’s not terrible, unless you have a display that is particularly susceptible to image retention or burn-in caused or exacerbated by a bob-deinterlaced image. If you have one of those displays, you’ll probably want to use passthrough to allow your TV to perform deinterlacing (probably at the expense of about a frame of lag).

3. Generally, no. There’s not really any quality difference between RGB and YPbPr, but a given console line or a given board revision might give you better RGB than YPbPr or vice versa. For example, my understanding is that the original Xboxes are supposed to have good YPbPr output and mediocre RGB output until the 1.6 board revisions, which are supposed to have good RGB output but mediocre YPbPr output, but then the 1.6 boards also have some glitchiness in some games due to the different video encoder.

If we’re talking HD Retrovision’s transcoding cables for consoles like PS1, SNES, or Genesis/MD, they’re known-good and recommended by a lot of people; you probably wouldn’t notice a difference in quality between the resulting YPbPr and the original RGB.

In my experience, SCART tends to be more expensive to accommodate. Quality SCART cables go for $35~$45 each, and, if you want a good, automatic SCART switcher, you’re looking at somewhere between $110ish (mini hydra) and ~$240 (gscartsw). Component has been a little cheaper (at least in my experience), where first-party cables were available at retail for $10~$20, HD Retrovision’s PS2/PS3 and Wii/WiiU component cables are going for about $30 each (although the RGB->YPbPr converting ones are, what, $50~$60 each?), and automatic component switchers can be had on eBay for <$100 (Audio Authority 1154/1154A; will do TOSLINK, too), or you can spend significantly more for a gcompsw (~$220).

Of course, if you’re not looking to have all of your consoles hooked up at once, you can ignore the switcher costs.

[TheRedLine]

Thanks for the fast reply. So if I’m understanding correctly, generally the console and specific revision of said console will prefer either component or scart. And there is no definitive answer for everything. If that’s the case are there any sites that can give me an answer for individual consoles? Also there isn’t really much of a quality difference between a YPbPr and RGB cable? So since I probably will not have everything hooked up at once. And don’t have a need for a switch box because of that. Would you just recommend getting whatever is cheaper as long as it’s a quality cable? So in this case the insurrection industries scart for 25$ish each over the HD Retro YPbPr for 63$ each? Sorry if I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying I honestly am just now learning about this stuff and don’t completely understand a lot of it.

[nmalinoski]

Also there isn’t really much of a quality difference between a YPbPr and RGB cable?

There isn’t a noticeable difference in quality between RGB and YPbPr signals, assuming the cables are of similar quality/shielding. You should get a good cable whether you go with RGB or YPbPr.

Would you just recommend getting whatever is cheaper as long as it’s a quality cable? So in this case the insurrection industries scart for 25$ish each over the HD Retro YPbPr for 63$ each?

Pretty much. I can’t really speak to the cables made by Insurrection Industries, as I’ve never purchased or used any of them, but they’ve been a reputable company as far as I’ve seen. I expect they’ll work fine. The only aftermarket SCART cable I’ve purchased is from Retro-Access, and it works well; but RA has an ordering/stocking process that not everyone wants to deal with. Retro Gaming Cables is another reputable manufacturer, as is thefoo.83 on eBay. I’m probably forgetting a few, but those are the bigger names.

[TheRedLine]

Awesome, that’s good to know. I do have one more thing I would like to confirm. I would prefer using my monitors as a display over my TV. I didn’t completely understand the answer you gave since I’m not very well versed in this stuff. Will any limitations of scart cause issues with modern 1080/4k monitors that would not happen on TVs? As in not displaying at all or requiring the use of deinterlacing to display. The consoles I would be using are the SNES, genesis, saturn, and dreamcast NTSC if that would affect your answer at all. Thanks again for the response everything I understood was helpful and I really appreciate it.

[nmalinoski]

Again, the limitation is not with SCART–it’s up to the display to be compatible with the video modes output by these consoles (Or you normalize the signal with framerate conversion on a full scaler, like a Framemeister or the upcoming OSSC Pro).

Older consoles like the Genesis, SNES, and Saturn output 240p or 480i at somewhere around 60Hz (Or 288p/576i@50Hz for PAL variants), which are easily line-doubled by the OSSC to 480p; however, the framerates usually enough off-spec from the normally-supported 60Hz±1% (Including 59.94Hz) that digital, flat-panel display won’t accept the signal (I don’t think the Dreamcast really has these problems). CRTs, the displays these consoles were designed to use, don’t really care if the input is that off-spec.

Additionally, the SNES (and the NES) has a janky sync signal (short version is that the scanline right before the first visible scanline on every other frame gets cut short, which results in an uneven sync), which a lot of modern displays really don’t like, and which is fixable only with a scaler that can accept the signal or with a dejitter mod.

If you want to learn more about this sort of thing, check out My Life in Gaming’s RGB Video Master Class series on YouTube.

[JVoorhees]

I also decided to go HD Retrovision component cables for all my consoles. Already preordered them, but saw they got delayed (guessing because of the coronavirus) until June. Will be August if you ordered/order after March 17th. From everything I’ve read (and I’ve watched youtube videos of them), there is pretty much no difference. Component definitely is more convenient if you live in the US. I’m going to use them on my CRT (with component port) and also the OSSC.

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