parbake

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  • August 28, 2025 at 7:00 AM in reply to: Can an OSSC (original or Pro) pillarbox 4:3 content on a 16:9 TV? #67038
    parbake
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      Thanks for your reply!

      I suppose it’s a flat screen TV and not CRT? For CRT it’d be relatively easy to add a new aspect-corrected mode where horizontal sampling timings are multiplied by 4 except active which is multiplied by 3.

      It is a CRT! A widescreen one similar to this Grundig or this Loewe. It accepts 480p via VGA but always displays the picture across the entire 16:9 screen, there’s no way to reduce the width to 4:3. Unfortunately here, these 16:9 480p TVs are much more readily-available than 4:3 480p models.

      However, the resulting super resolution mode would not work on a flat screen which instead would require resampling line buffer contents.

      A memory organization has been done for the next firmware which among other improvements frees up enough RAM to make it possible to read 2 samples from line buffer for each output pixel. That would allow linear interpolation horizontally and thus freeform scaling in X-axis.

      While it sounds like it wouldn’t be necessary in my situation, freeform X-scaling would be a more flexible solution. I’ve read that there are flat-panel displays that would also benefit from 4:3 inside 16:9, and it would also provide more fine-grained control over aspect ratio.

      FW development for OSSC Classic is no more done actively so I can’t promise that feature gets implemented in near future or at all.

      No worries. Is either solution supported (or likely to be in the future) by the OSSC Pro in line-multiplier mode? I assume freeform scaling is already possible in scaler mode, but with higher latency.

      August 25, 2025 at 12:46 AM in reply to: Can an OSSC (original or Pro) pillarbox 4:3 content on a 16:9 TV? #66904
      parbake
      Participant

        Looking at this again, it seems selectable aspect ratio is available on scalers but not line multipliers, although I don’t think there’s a fundamental reason that a line multiplier couldn’t support selectable width.

        Specifically, it looks like it’s available on the OSSC Pro in scaler mode, but not line-multiplier mode nor on the original OSSC. Similarly, it’s an option on RetroTINK-5X Pro but not the 2X Pro.

        So it seems I can convert 240p 4:3 to 480p 4:3-inside-16:9 if I order an OSSC Pro, but not with an original OSSC. Can anyone confirm?

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