I can’t be the only one that occasionally prefers the look of scanlines to the pixelated or filtered upscaling one sees on modern emulators and virtual consoles. I mean — think what you played Metroid on originally. It sure as hell wasn’t a 50-inch LCD TV upscaling using a proprietary algorithm and doing inter-frame interpolation.
If you want that old look while playing your classic games, there are two options: get an old TV, or get this SLG 3000 doodad. It’s a scanline generator, which means it takes an existing signal and just plain adds scanlines to the output.
Here’s a video of the device in action (skip to 1:45 for the setup and 3:30 for a good close-up comparison):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzPqwkREvKE&w=640&h=390]
It uses VGA input and output, so you’ll need to keep that in mind, but it’s not all digital; there are potentiometers that adjust the scanlines and DIP switches to control their “power.”
You can get an SLG naked for just under €50, so around $70. There is also a case you can order with for an extra €17, but only white ones are available for now.
Man, this thing is completely backwards, ridiculous, and awesome.
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[via Retro Collect and Retro Thing]