To those of you who still play with your PS2.

[Nocturne]

First of all I hope this is the right section to post this in - feel free to throw virtual rocks at me if not (notthefacenottheface).

My kingdom for anyone that can help, haha.


I used to post here quite allot until sometime ago that I sort of 'fell out' of gaming. A week or so ago I really felt like playing some good ole' PS2 JRPGS, so I grabbed myself a sealed PS2 slim off of ebay along with the official PS2/PS3 component cables.


Ready to rock and roll I set it all up and popped a game in, and daaayuum did it look bad on my Sharp 32" HDTV. I wasn't expecting the games to look quite as good as they did on of the old tube TVs, but this was unplayable. The worst jaggies I've ever seen, which looked even worse when anything on the screen moved. I've tried the RGB cable included and everything still looks beyond awful and I'd say the component cables look even worse.

I took some pictures of the horror, but I don't even think the photos do justice to the ugly. The component cables also make like vertical lines.

The home menu with component (the lineeeees!)


Game title screen using RGB cables


and with composite


This looked just as bad in real life - you can't make out any characters faces really.


I've tried every option combination I can think of in both my TV menu and the PS2.

Hours of tinkering leave me thinking that maybe I need to get one of the big old TVs, but I don't really have room for one and I really would love to be able to play PS2 games on the TV I already have. I've seen multiple people in 'show your setup threads' both here and on other sites where people seem to be able to set their PS2 up with HDTV with graphics not at all far away from that you get with a CRT.

Any help will be really appreciated

[J0e Musashi]

I use my PS2 with the official component cables, and it looks fine. You could try turning down the sharpness on your TV to get rid of the vertical lines.

Your game title screen with RGB cables looks decent enough to me.

[noobish hat]

Yeah, RGB doesn't look too bad to me. I'd still say put it on a CRT though.

[Nocturne]

I should of mentioned, sorry - only the title screen looks nice on RGB, the game itself looks like an awful jaggy mess D:

[Nocturne]

This is poor Sora through RGB:


That's probably the nicest I've had it looking and even that is awful. KH II looked even worse.

[fuse]

Component should be fine for games that will run in progressive scan (480p), but the best, albeit pricey one-size-fits-all solution is to get a hardware upscaler - the XRGB line of products in particular get a lot of love round these parts. A chap named Fudoh runs this site here and it is generally regarded as one of the top resources on the subject, or at the very least a good place to start.

[speedlolita]

?300 scaler or a CRT for around a tenner that will produce what every scaler aims to do.

[fuse]

?300 scaler or a CRT for around a tenner that will produce what every scaler aims to do.

There's a charity shop near me that had a wall of CRTs (inc. some nice 4:3 ones) for peanuts when I went in recently. Unsurprisingly, I thought of you! But yeah, a viable option albeit not especially practical within most setups.

[Decider-VT]

daaayuum did it look bad on my Sharp 32" HDTV

Not to sound snide but this might be the problem. Fuse is right when suggesting that you look into scalers, as it's possible that your set just scales content poorly. I'd still side with popular opinion and suggest a CRT if you have the room for one, though.

[briareos_kerensky]

Component should be fine for games that will run in progressive scan (480p), but the best, albeit pricey one-size-fits-all solution is to get a hardware upscaler - the XRGB line of products in particular get a lot of love round these parts. A chap named Fudoh runs this site here and it is generally regarded as one of the top resources on the subject, or at the very least a good place to start.

XRGBs (3 and the FrameMeister) aren't exactly the best when it comes to 480i/p, though they can be one of the cheapest scalers around despite the burden of import. A secondhand Edge (even the new Green model) will produce better results for around the same price.
Mind, I love both XRGB3 and FrameMeister and they are the best solution if you span from 240p to 480p, but if the focus is on 480i/p I would look to other scalers.

[nakamura]

CRT is the only way to go tbh. Also are you playing PAL? Most of the Square Enix games looked very rough in PAL format compared to NTSC. Final Fantasy 12 pal is rough. Maybe a small LCD to reduce the problem?

[Nocturne]

Thanks so much for helping, guys

Although on your guys advise I'm thinking that I will go the CRT route, I was wondering how one would go about finding a LCD/LED TV that would handle PS2s great? As time goes on do the upscalers in TV get better (Mine is about 3-4 years old), or anything like that.

Is there anything I should look out for in particular when buying a CRT other than it can handle component cables? Maybe brands matter? Given I will be using it pretty much just for playing my PS2, should I look for a 4:3 set? (I don'y recall many PS2 games I had that have a larger resolution.

[J0e Musashi]

Later Toshiba CRT's have component in.

[speedlolita]

But can't display 480p, making that route utterly pointless.

RGB SCART into a CRT, job done.

[Nocturne]

CRT is the only way to go tbh. Also are you playing PAL? Most of the Square Enix games looked very rough in PAL format compared to NTSC. Final Fantasy 12 pal is rough. Maybe a small LCD to reduce the problem?

I would be playing PAL, yes. Blimey I didn't know that about SE games - do you know of any websites with comparison pictures or anything like that?