Topic: Is upscaling/upconverting a good idea for The Nintendo Concept?

[Nile Boogie]

Some DvD players have the ability to upscale the resolution to 720p or 1080i although DVDs are 480p by default. Should Nintendo do this with their Next-Gen Machine? I think it would be easier on the CPU/GPU because its not dealing with large HD textures and it sorta pacifies the techies without making the system overpriced because its fairly simple to do.

And something else...

For those who feel really down because of the "specs" that IGN spoke of I can say with supreme clarity and focus,   "Fear not, for there are other specs."  

[Caliban]

A few days ago I was interested in getting a DVD player with upscaling ability for my future HDTV, but something got to me, wouldn't it look kind of pixelated or show some other visual deformity? I later read that apparently this upscaling technique works rather well for anime (my main interest) or any other type of media. And now that you mention it about the Rev having such an ability, I would think that would be pretty cool and more importantly cheap.

I wasn't feeling down at all, the controller makes excitment ooze out of my form, but there are other specs? lol, what are you into "Nile Boogie"?

[IceCold]

Other specs, eh? I'm not sure about this, but I remember you predicting that the Revolution's directional input would be an upside down optical mouse with blue light instead of red

The upscaling idea sounds interesting, but I don't know if the Rev could do it.  

[Svevan]

If the N64 games featured on the Virtual Console don't feature some sort of graphical polishing (resolution or otherwise), then I'll be mighty disappointed. As for the GC games, leave well enough alone, I think they look great at their current resolution.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Depending on the upscaling technique, I think upscaling would only yield marginal improvements, if they're improvements at all.  I can only guess it'd reduce the appearance of jaggies since there's more pixels crowded per unit area, but it still doesn't introduce finer details to occupy those extra pixels.

[wandering]

Quote
If the N64 games featured on the Virtual Console don't feature some sort of graphical polishing (resolution or otherwise), then I'll be mighty disappointed. As for the GC games, leave well enough alone, I think they look great at their current resolution.

Well, hopefully, if they do that, they'll provide the option to play with the original resolution. I'm a purist. I thought OOT looked worse on the GameCube than it did on the N64.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

I looked at Majora's Mask on N64 as recently as last summer.  It's hard to look at.  Especially after getting 2 prescription glasses in the years since I first played it.

[BigJim]

Didn't Iwata mention "testing" graphic enhancements on VC games? That possibly sounds like a software-based upconversion of sorts.

Generally upconversion works out well. I wouldn't mind seeing Rev game upconversion. There's always the option to disable it if something is just wrong.

[KDR_11k]

What's upscaling good for? You stretch a low-res image to high-res. Unless you're using a fixed-res screen (that alone is stupid when you're using HD which isn't a single res and each HD res isn't supported by most sources yet) with a damn crappy upscaler you don't need to "upconvert" the data. But of course it seems like most HDTVs are indeed fixed-res and have crappy upscalers.

[UltimatePartyBear]

Well, the thing about upscaling is that it causes a delay.  Deinterlacing can take up to a half second on some HDTVs.  As long as the audio is delayed to match, this doesn't cause any problems when watching videos, but it means you're always a bit behind when playing a game.  Of course, deinterlacing isn't necessary if the Rev outputs a 480p signal, and the delay caused by increasing resolution is practically imperceptible.  However, all the VC games are going to be in lower, interlaced resolutions.  It would be very nice if the Rev could pretty those signals up a bit.  If nothing else, it would guarantee the same experience to all Rev owners.

[Smash_Brother]

Quote
Originally posted by: BigJim
Didn't Iwata mention "testing" graphic enhancements on VC games? That possibly sounds like a software-based upconversion of sorts.

Frankly, I'd be happy if the games for the N64 won't have framerate issues when played on the Rev (I'm looking at YOU, Rare).

[Ian Sane]

"Frankly, I'd be happy if the games for the N64 won't have framerate issues when played on the Rev (I'm looking at YOU, Rare)."

That would be nice.  Perfect Dark at 60 fps would be magnificent.  Too bad MS probably won't let that happen.

[KDR_11k]

However, all the VC games are going to be in lower, interlaced resolutions. It would be very nice if the Rev could pretty those signals up a bit. If nothing else, it would guarantee the same experience to all Rev owners.

Considering that all emulators put out a progressive picture I'd be surprised if Nintendo couldn't get the Rev to do 480p for the emulated games.

Either way, if you're going to make the Rev do the upscaling you have to put a HD output on the thing, could just go the remaining step to let the thing render HD pictures as well.

[antman100]

It's a shame 540p is not widely accepted by most HDTVs. It's like the poor stepchild of resolutions.  What's nice is that it scales relatively well to both 720p and 1080i and wouldn't require much more 'oomph' than 480p.  While it's true that a TV has to upscale or downscale to its native resolution, theoretically, the more signal resolution you give it, the less the chips have to mess with things.

[hudsonhawk]

No, upscalers won't help the Rev.  It's only useful if the upscaler is really good - better than what your TV has - and if it you have DVI or HDMI out.   It's a band-aid on a format that doesn't scale well, not a good solution to a bad problem.

It would add cost to the Rev, possibly as much cost as just giving it the RAM it would need to handle HD resolutions.

FWIW, Upscaling DVD playback was supposed to be one of the 360's features.  It was a late scratch.

[hudsonhawk]

Quote
Originally posted by: PartyBear
Well, the thing about upscaling is that it causes a delay.  Deinterlacing can take up to a half second on some HDTVs.  As long as the audio is delayed to match, this doesn't cause any problems when watching videos, but it means you're always a bit behind when playing a game.  Of course, deinterlacing isn't necessary if the Rev outputs a 480p signal, and the delay caused by increasing resolution is practically imperceptible.  However, all the VC games are going to be in lower, interlaced resolutions.  It would be very nice if the Rev could pretty those signals up a bit.  If nothing else, it would guarantee the same experience to all Rev owners.

It doesn't inherently cause a delay, it's that most sets are too underpowered to handle it without latency.

It's why a lot of people splurge and get things like Faroudja upscalers for their TV's (sort of like how people used to buy line doublers and things like that).

Oddly enough, this just reminded me that the PS2 has a line doubler built into it.  And it looks crappy on HDTV's, so it's just further proof that these won't help the Rev.

[BranDonk Kong]

I'm sure the Revolution will make N64 games run in a higher resolution, but technically that's not upscaling. Even Nintendo's N64 emulator for the Gamecube improved the games...err Ocarina of Time and the Master Quest. The Revolution most likely won't have any of the N64's hardware built into it, so just by using the Revolution's 3D acceleration alone N64 games will most likely look more crisp and probably run in 480p.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Ocarina, Master Quest, and the Zelda Collection already run in 480p.

[Jensen]

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane
"Frankly, I'd be happy if the games for the N64 won't have framerate issues when played on the Rev (I'm looking at YOU, Rare)."

That would be nice.  Perfect Dark at 60 fps would be magnificent.  Too bad MS probably won't let that happen.

There won't be any framerate increases....  Unless the games have quite a bit of reprogramming, which I don't think is likely.  Emulators can only run games at their original framerate.

Mario 64 runs fairly nicely at 30fps (the same as Sunshine).  LoZOT is pretty bad at 20fps, 16.7fps in PAL.