Kaico OSSC & BenQ EX2780Q IPS 144Hz 27″ monitor
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I also use the Kaico OSSC with a PC monitor, and, by sheer coincidence, started a replay of San Andreas tonight. So I feel compelled to jump in.
The OSSC can work really well with a PS2 – with the appropriate setup. I admit to having spent just about as much time tinkering with the settings over the year that I’ve had it as I’ve had playing with it, but I’m really satisfied with how things are looking now.
The first thing you’ll want to do is set the sampling rate correctly. You should start with the settings here, although you’ll probably need to adjust to get it right. For reference, that’s: H.samplerate=858, H.active=640, H.synclen=44, H.backporch=116. You get to this from the “Sampling Options,” then “Adv. Timing 480i.” I also highly recommend setting “Allow upsample 2x” to “On” while you’re in there, it helps a lot.
You should also make sure the scanlines are set up right. The OSSC isn’t really designed around interlaced output, and uses a “bob” deinterlace method that makes the picture “flicker” – although the effect is more like rapid vibration. You can cover up a lot of this with scanlines. From “Scanline Options,” make sure “Scanlines” is set to “Auto” or “on” and that “Sl. alternating” is set to “on.” This will essentially add scanlines to alternating frames and mask some of the deinterlacing flicker. Adjust the scanline strength to whatever looks best for you, and I’d suggest you increase the “Sl. hybrid st.” setting as you increase the scanline strength to offset the way they’ll darken the picture. Over the past few days, I’ve been using the combination horizontal and vertical scanlines, but I suspect I’ll adjust that on a game-by-game basis.
Finally, you’ll want to make sure you understand the different output settings, under… “Output Settings.” “Passthrough” does no line multiplication and lets your monitor handle the de-interlacing. This is generally considered the best approach for 480i sources like the PS2, but I find the result blown out, and have the additional effect of my monitor squishing it into the center of the screen, unless I have the “TX Mode” set to “DVI.” (Keep meaning to ask about that…) “Line 2x (bob)” will let the OSSC handle the de-interlacing and gives you a bigger, softer picture. “Line 3x (laced)” is back to letting your monitor handle the de-interlacing, and has the same “squished” effect for me. Finally, there’s “Line4x (bob)” with is where I keep mine most of the time, since it looks best with my monitor.
I’m sure you’ll need to do some adjustment, though. I’ve spent a lot of time with a ruler pressed up against the screen to get the aspect ratio right, which ended up being “H.Sample=788,” oddly enough. But it’s ended up being worth it, I’ve basically eschewed all my newer systems in favor of playing the PS2 through the OSSC.
Good luck!
Here’s how things are looking currently (sorry for the phone pic, there’s a lot more detail in the real thing):
Good luck on the Amiga restorations! 8-bit boy that I am, they still seem like something from the future…
I don’t know why you’d need a monitor that could handle 240p for a PS2, unless you wanted to play PS1 games (or the tiny number of 240p PS2 games) in passthrough mode. The deinterlacing thing is probably the bigger deal, since you’re more likely to want passthrough for 480i. I really don’t know what the current trend is, you’d think nothing modern would be able to handle it, but everything is so advanced now, maybe the manufacturers figure “doesn’t take up any space, so why not include it?” I wouldn’t expect my monitor to be have a deinterlacer, since it’s a fancy modern 4K, but it does.
You’ll want to look around on here for more info about the burn-in issue with bob deinterlacing, I’m sure people have gone into more detail. It might be less of an issue for modern displays, especially ones where you can speed up the response time (essentially how fast the pixels change from one color to another).
As for widescreen on the PS2, well… there’s a thorny situation. The short answer is “it changes from game to game, but don’t get your hopes up.” You have to remember that widescreen TVs were still a rarity during the PS2’s lifespan. There’s the setting you can change from in PS2’s config screen, but barely any games check it at all. Mostly wishful thinking on Sony’s part, and probably market prep for when widescreen TVs became more readily available (since they sell those, too).
So now, let’s look at it from the game developer’s perspective. They only have a limited amount of time and money to dedicate to a project, and the vast majority of customers will be playing on a 4:3 TV – so there’s no reason to add on the additional work to add 16:9 functionality. It’s not just the game itself: menus, maps, title screens, and cutscenes would all have to be redone or modified. The few people who have 16:9 TVs at this point are pretty used to doing most of their viewing in 4:3, anyway, aside from movies on DVD.
There were workarounds and cheats, of course, and I’ll link this list again, since it has a column for that as well. I’m sure things got better at the very tail end of the PS2’s era, when more people had widescreen TVs and companies were putting out PS3 versions of the same games. But a lot of it is really, well… just crap.
Let’s look at some examples (apologies again for the phone pics):
Here’s GTA: San Andreas in it’s normal 4:3 mode. I had to use actual game footage, because (as you saw) the menus and maps don’t change at all when you switch the display mode to “Wide.”
And here’s “Wide.” The top and bottom of the image are cut off now, but everything in there seems right. CJ and the disk icon are about the same width as before. But that corner map… ouch. Just like with the map and menu, Rockstar didn’t bother building a widescreen version of this, so we get that… egg thing.
Here’s the iconic opening area of Yakuza 2 in 4:3. It’s a very well laid-out, cinematic shot, with contrasting light and dark areas in the top and bottom.
And here’s the widescreen version. With the top and bottom gone, the layout is much less interesting. At least they bothered to redraw the corner map, though! And, like GTA, the menu and title screen don’t change at all when you switch to widescreen.Of course, not every game approached a widescreen display this way, so check that list out! And there’s a whole modern mod scene where people are actually increasing the viewable area instead of just zooming in on the center, but that stuff is all… complicated as hell.
Probably a lot longer answer than you were looking for! But there was a lot going on around this time, and nobody quite knew when people would start switching over to wide TVs.
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