I got one of these units to play my PS2 on a PC monitor. Tried it out on with my laserdiscs. Works pretty great. It'll take a 240p/480i signal (NTSC, PAL, PAL-60, PAL-M, NTSC-443 and SECAM) over Composite,S-Video, or Component and line doubles it to 480p over HDMI. It doesn't have any comb filters in it so you still need something to clean the image. It does have a comb filter but I think its a basic 2-line one. Haven't really done any test with hooking my player directly to it. The bob deinterlacing function included is great. The only issue I've had with it is some Japanese subtitles seem to flicker on my "Ayrton Senna: The History" disc. I initially thought it was a deinterlacing issue. But it seems to be a issue with the disc and not the device. The japanese subs on my copy of The Fifth Element don't have the same issue.

These units also have a smoothing filter and a scanline filter mode. Didn't use them. You can also turn off the bob deinterlacer and pass through the interlace signal to your TV if you want. The chipset in here only accepts inputs from 240p or 480i. 480p doesn't work. Shouldn't be an issue for most devices through my ES10 had to be put in 480i mode.

So if you want all HDMI inputs on you tv, need a better scaler, or just don't have Component inputs on your tv, its a great device IMHO. The original Retrotink 2x will probably give the same performance. The Pro model just has a mould-injected case, regular HDMI over mini-HDMI, and better power filtering. The original model is $90 while the Pro is $130 through the retrotink site.

Input Chain:
CLD-3080 > Panasonic DMR-ES10/DMR-E20 > Retotink 2x Pro

Might mave to look into this.
Looking for a cheap and cheerful way to go from s-video to hdmi with a line doubler for old gaming.
May suit my R7G going from S-video to Hdmi also

I have the Retrotink Pro myself, bought directly from the manufacturer, and I can recommend it wholeheartedly.

Going from a 24 inch Panasonic CRT TV to a 49 inch 4k Samsung POS was a huge step down for the enjoyment of my collection... but this has restored quite a lot of it.

It works very well with retro game consoles and does a good job with Laserdisc over composite or svideo.

Just make sure that you have the latest firmware upgrade -easy to do- and put your TV in Game Mode or whatever mode you have on it that interferes the least with the image quality.

My only concern with shelling out money for a product like this is that while my LD player and my SNES both output NTSC, what is considered “good video” isn’t exactly the same. For old games you pretty much just want a straight path for the synthetic image because game systems are the actual source, there is nothing corrupting the image. And of course with games latency is critical. For LD though you’re dealing with a very imperfect copy of a film where the picture looks better when extremely messed with to remove composite video artifacts, mainly color poverty and frame rate conversion and you can take forever to render it because lag is irrelevant.

And then there is the poor PS1 which only seems to look worse the “better” the signal gets to the point where anything more than 20” regardless of signal path probably isn’t advisable unless it’s a 2D game like Pac Man or Street Fighter. Then there is the PS2 with aliasing so sharp it can cut you *unless* it’s playing a port of an old 2D game in which case it’s for some reason burry as hell in any format.

Looking at getting one these for my R7G as my tv does not have S-Video in so i can make better use of the 3DComb Filter.
Think i would see a improvement?


https://www.retrotink.com/product-page/retrotink-2x-pro

Do you currently only use composite out on your R7G Jake?

Unfortunately yes GB,
No S-video in on my tv which hopefully this could remedy.

So you've really yet to experience the true capabilities of your player as its image looks quite lack lustre via composite versus s-video, I would give it a shot Jake unless you can get your hands on a rather more expensive AV processor that provides an s-video input. Best of luck Mate....and I suppose you could always sell it on if your not happy with the result?

Update: Was thinking again about this and tbh if it were me I think I would hang on until a decent processor showed up, just looking on eBay here and there is currently a DVDO iScan VP30 for sale next door in the Netherlands for €325/£290 with a make an offer option and worldwide shipping. It may be way more than you desire to spend but I'd bet any money it'd be far superior than the other option with lots of additional flexibility available should you need it.

It is a great tool, here is two screen shots from before and after using the smooth filter on the device.

I'm watching/waiting for the Retrotink 2x Mini... if I don't pickup a stand-alone VP before it's released, I may go that route to get 480i/480p HDMI into my XBox One which I use for scaling and aspect ratio (Zoom for letterbox discs). I know the 2x Pro can do what I want, but I'm willing to wait for the lower price of the mini since I have a hacky work-around using my AVR's A/D, scaling, and second HDMI input to get things working through my XBox One (which I only really need for aspect ratio zoom), but it's an annoyance and requires cable swapping from my normal setup for all other sources.

If anyone else knows of another 480i/480p composite-to-HDMI device with 4:3 output, please let me know... not worried about lag as it won't be used for gaming, unless it's so much video would be out-of-sync too much to correct with lip-sync.