www.figureitoutproductions.com In this video I will show you how to get the best image quality out of your Sony Playstation 2. I also talk about a device called "PS2 to HDMI." Music provided by Epidemic Sound.
m daudi Yowhatsupguys it's ya boy (some kind of name with gamer in it) now before we start this video make sure you SMASH that like button and be sure to SUBSCRIBE!
@@malcolmboyd3467 Those kind of RU-vidrs kind of get on my nerves...that kind of intro is just cliche. I don't like the idea of having to say to "subscribe to me", like I will subscribe if you earned my interest, like Adam here. I enjoy his videos and that is why I subbed to him.
I'm glad to see that some people actually know the difference between Graphics, resolution, and clarity three really different things and it annoys me when people get it wrong.
amu bebo Wait until you deal with people who defend the bad visuals in absurd ways. Sentences like this break my mind: "lol u just dont get it dude the games r supposed to be played with the yellow cables cuz thats how the graphics are meant to look" That's a paraphrase, but I've heard basically the same idea over and over so many times. Hell, even in the comments of this video there have been several people on the side of doing it wrong. Granted, not THAT badly.
720P in 2010 was the most amazing crisp ultra HD picture quality we had ever seen. And now 2020 1224P and above is the best 4K picture quality there is! So wired how times change. we are living in the future!
Wow thanks for the component tip! I already owned the cables, I just didn't know they could improve the image clarity on the PS2. It's not drastic, but the image is noticeably a little clearer and a little sharper. Thanks again!
Hey Adam, I like your videos on the 6th generation consoles. Do you have videos comparing the composite vs component quality on the Gamecube and the Original Xbox?
Resolution is actually part of why PS2 image quality is bad. PS2 games would often use really odd resolutions that don't upscale to 480i well (512x448 was pretty common). Even GT4's '1080i' mode is just 640x540 upscaled. Dreamcast mostly wiped the floor with PS2 in this regard as most games ran in native 640x480.
+yogibear2k10 No, we never had SCART here in the US. It would have been great to have back in the 90's. Instead, we were stuck with composite and S-video, and S-video wasn't that common.
+AdamKoralik With your PS2 to HDMI adapter Adam your best solution was to run it though an upscaler with HDMI input like the E-More Composite AV S-VIDEO to 1080P HDMI Converter I got online cheap since I'm too poor to afford a XRGB-mini FRAMEMEISTER,now the PS2 to HDMI adapter by itself never had an issue with my Insignia 2005 LCD HDTV but I wanted a crisper 1080p picture from the PS2 and an HDMI cable is better than the crummy component cables,plus the PS2 to HDMI adapter gives some scaling and better sound but not by much,thus me using the E-more upscaler aka Panlong upscaler HDMI input. This is before I found out about RGB SCART cables for PS2,online there are SCART to HDMI adapters but you may run into the same issue especially if your HDTV is an LG which is horrible for gaming,meaning you may have to daisy chain the SCART to HDMI adapter though a HDMI upscaler with a HDMI input option. Now I've never had the issues you had with my HDTV since it's old and PS2 SCART is available for NTSC users(well if your using the SCART to HDMI adapter it a non issue)and there is no need to mod your PS2 console unlike the SNES and that may be what's next for me to get,if you need more info look at the Playstation RGB episode"My Life in Gamming"did on their RU-vid Channel.I really wish I had a HD capture card,but I can't find one under $100USD so I can't show you any video on my Channel on the big differences on my PS2,I think my"replies"option is on if not let me know via my channel,I'll try to answer any questions you have Adam K. on this subject.
+AdamKoralik i dissagree, if you hook up the ps2 to a 1080p tv with component, you will notice that the video has a transparent filter. what i love about this filter is that it creates an optical illusion that makes jagged edges less noticeable without losing detail/pixels or color. its rather hard to explain, see for yourself. it is not acceptable to see jagged edges because it takes away the sense of depth in a game. on ps2, the jagged edges are distorted by the filter to be less noticeable, on ps3 ps2 classics look too sharp and the 100% picture clarity makes the game look really jagged and that turns me off from playing ps2 on ps3, even if i use component on ps3 and use NTSC, the game would still look like crap.
i changed my mind, your better off using composite on the ps2. component or 480p is only going to make the image have jagged edges everywhere. the ps2 has good composite output and it gets rid of the jagged edges without loosing too much detail. i strongly recommend you get a good 1080p tv and adjust color setting and tint in order to replicate crt color. ps2 games are just not designed for component, i never noticed jagged edges on ps2 games until component, you get sharper image with it but it takes away from 3d depth when you literally see every pixel.
@@polycube868 There is a video output that is even better than S-Video, Component Video. These are basically similar to RCA video, but instead of being only one video connector, it's three connectors (Red, Blue and Green). You can use this in your Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, and PS2 to obtain (at least) 480p resolution with progressive scan
@@hectorvargasdiaz5435 ok watch this ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Rgohhau18NM.html also tekken 4, burnout revenge, Tenchu 3 look beautiful with component
Excellent video!! I'd say the first thing to do when looking to upgrade the PS2 video quality is to get a good, old flat screen HD TV or monitor. The older the model, the better, as long as it is HD or Full HD. Just got an LG monitor, 20 inches, Full HD with HDMI port. Perfect for the old PS2. Now I have to get that little cheap converter.
I was using video for the longest time and just tried out component and immediately i could tell a MAJOR difference even for an old rust bucket like the ps2. Thanks a lot for this video and not stealing watch time from me just to explain a cable.
thank you for this. the authentic personality approach with raw opinions and takes made this a lot less boring to watch through and actually somewhat entertaining.
@@NFSBeast2365 It completely depends on where you're from, the games you play and the consoles you use. For example, some consoles can output 480p over component but they won't if a game doesn't support it. If you're from the US and you wanna play a PS2, then you're probably better off using component cables over RGB scart, as they will allow for at least a 480p signal for PS2 games that support it. RGB scart won't output 480p or higher. If you're from the UK (Like me), then going with RGB scart is better, in my opinion. PAL PS2s support component output but most of our PS2 games don't output in 480p apart from like, 5 games, so it's basically pointless. The difference between RGB scart and component over here is barely noticeable. If you're from the US, you'll benefit a lot from the component cables because you'll be able to get 480p output from a lot of PS2 games.
I was using the stock composite cable with a SCART adapter for years, I'm really looking forward to see the improvement with component, I'm gonna write here once I get it delivered and try it out! btw this is not the first video from you that helped me, you gained a sub :)
Xbox games look good in hd. If you have an xbox 360 you can easily play your original xbox games in hd. For example dead or alive 3 looks amazing in hd.
Thanks for going over the hdmi to ps2 converter. After, no success with recognizing the signal on my smart tv, i borrow a friend's little tv to change the setting in the ps2, and boom! It works. Thanks.
This video really helped me since I got the HDMI dongle thing, and nothing was showing on any TV, so changing the video setting from RGB to YPrBr worked just fine. I had setup the thing before, but in the meantime the battery have depleted and all the settings reverted to factory. Now it's up and good.
I just connected my PS2 to my 50 inch 1080p Samsung via component cables, and yeah the image was a bit blurred out, but looked amazing compare to standard AV cables. I then connected it to my 24 inch 720p Philips and BANG💥, the freaking picture quality improved greatly and the blurred CG images looked very crisp. I guess the bigger the hdtv is, the more blurrier and stretched out the picture quality will get via AV/Component cable. Now the smaller screen is, and the less pixel it has (720p is perfect), the better the image quality will look.
my theory on why the image clarity was bad is for 2 reasons 1) Sony wanted to separate itself from the pixelized look textures had on the original Playstation, since the smooth zbuffering on the N64 was considered to look nice back then. Of course, in hindsight it actually looks like crap, Sony shouldn't have pursued this route 2) in an effort to "outdo" the Dreamcast, they focused a lot more on polygonal performance, and in order to achieve this, they have to take some shortcuts, which had thus affected clarity. That said, some games actually look pretty nice on the ps2, but most of them were pretty basic looking games, the more technical games were crap looking. Honestly the console looks at its best with a CRT, since an LCD makes the visual flaws apparent.
Hey Adam, I just had an idea. You use the mClassic for everything and you have Free McBoot? Does your copy of free McBoot have GSM on it? GSM is a program that let's you force game resolutions to 480p, 576p or even 1080p. The 1080p upscale doesn't look very good IMO, but what if you set the GSM to output 480p, plug in the PS2 HDMI adapter, and then plug the mClassic into the PS2 to HDMI?
I remember hooking up Component for the 1st time with my PS2 playing Smugglers Run back in the day. It made a huge difference. Those Colored smoke check points were so detailed and vibrant. even the PS2 Bootup sequence was nice. I think you can see a huge difference using older TVs with component inputs then you can on an HDTV with component inputs. HDTV's just make non HD content look like crap.
One thing to note about the small box PS2 converter is that it will not work for PS1 games. At least not for mine. It works really well for PS2, the picture looks great, but when I tried a PS1 game it just read "error" once it started to load up. The small resolution for PS1 is too small I'm guessing. Great video by the way, very informative!
Awesome video and great explanation. I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out why my PS2 looked so bad on my HDTV while my GameCube and Dreamcast look amazing. I’ve since moved my PS2 to a 19” Sony CRT and prefer playing it that way. It seems much brighter on the CRT and “feels” like the right way to play it.
@@chrisspearline767 some CRT TVs have component connections. My CRT doesn’t though. I just have Composite and S-Video. I play my PS2 through the S-Video connection and it looks great.
@@TheTOShow1 I have a CRT I just got for NES,SNES and Genesis but I think the PS2 looks better on a flat screen with composite cables. I haven't tried it yet on a CRT
Great video Adam, but I am still unsure about something after watching. What specific brand of component cables are capable of turning pickles into cake? If you could clear that up, that would be awesome. Thanks!
Just realised I never came back and gave my impressions of the PS2 to HDMI device. So, first thing's first it worked like a charm. My TV had no problem displaying it and also had the option of forcing 4:3 which is the native screen size for most PS2 games. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people playing games 'fullscreen' when it's stretched to oblivion. Anyway, device worked fine but there's a bit of an issue with the set up. I use a PS2 slimline and the HDMI converter sits next to the power lead in a way that the USB wire coming out of the side wants to cut THROUGH the lead. This means that with the USB wire in, it's resting either above or below the power lead which in turn forces your converter to bend up or down in the port. I managed to reduce the pressure a lot by cutting down the hard plastic ribbing on the power lead but it's still a bit worrying as a long term thing. Long story short, if your HDTV doesn't support component cables then I'd recommend this.
I struggled for over three years with picture not working with component on my tv. i bough a new tv, still not working. and now you are saying i have to go in the ps2 and change the settings there? I hate life.....
Pro tip: if you have a PS2 SCART cable, you can get both RGB and YPbPr out of a PS2 without any need to swap out cables. The OSSC for example accepts both YPbPr and RGB through its SCART input.
I have 3 HDMI ports on my TV and have 6 things that need it with the exception of the PS2. Got the converter you show here and could not get it to work on my HDMI switcher. Since seeing the settings needed to be changed got it changes and now it works. Thanks for the tip, image was a bit blurred on the component and on HDMI is little better. But we are looking at old tech. Thanks for posting this video!!! :)
I found that the best way to play ps2 was using a newer model dell 24 inch gaming monitor with component cables through a component to hdmi converter. Or the ps2 to hdmi converter. The smaller screen is perfect and you can set it to fast response time with full dynamic contrast. Clearest picture I've ever gotten. Even better than crts
Adam, have you tried using official PS3 component cables? I've been using a set of official Sony gold plated PS3 component cables on my PS2 and the quality on it is astounding. The cables you showed in your video look like some third party set.
sleepybird09 did you bother to read his question? He asked if he’s tried OFFICIAL Sony cables because the ones in the video are not made by Sony. He knows they are PS3 cables.
RS1 the quality of a cable when using analogue video (like in component) is incredibly important. the original question was if he's using OFFICIAL cables. the cheaper component cables often have quite thin wiring which can mean interference. official sony cables are pretty well made.
BlackSwordChronicles $70 and up is high end. try for less than 20. they're usually perfectly fine unless you're really anal about picture quality. a quick amazon search for me shows plenty in the $10 range, mine cost me about $15 (well, i'm in the euro area) and picture quality is excellent to my eye and i'm playing on a 55" TV. the ones to watch out for are the ones that are like $5, often the shielding in the wiring is insufficient and can lead to noise getting into the picture which is a pain in the ass. going official isn't compulsory with the PS2, what matters is that you get good quality cables, if you do that you'll get a night and day difference in some cases. Generally in my experience you see a substantial increase in colour saturation and a virtual elimination of that vaseline smear look the regular composite cables give you. though that does mean you see a lot more jaggies and dithering. games like GTA san andreas show that particularly well. if you do go with component cables though, make sure your console is set to output in component, that's Y, Cb/Pb Cr/Pr. you can change it in the system settings menu. if you don't you won't get a picture or it'll be messed up.
Got my cable today and hooked it up and all I can say is a million times thank you!! The picture quality is amazing!! It's exactly how I remembered it back in the day. My old setup was awful and I didn't even want to play because it was so dark and blurry.
Totally right about the PS2 image clarity on a modern TV.....horrendous! I could not believe how bad my PS2 looks on my TV. By contrast, all the other systems from that generation (DC, Cube and Xbox) all look pretty damn good. Granted, not as good as they did on my old Trinitron...but a hell of a lot sharper than the PS2. It's really frustrating because there's so many great games on PS2 that you can't get anywhere else.
The Sony PS3 component cables I use on my PS2 work flawlessly. Yeah god of war 2 didn't look a hell of a lot better but still it's good. I was playing ghost recon jungle storm and it doesn't have a 480p option but it did look better. Not going back to composite
Public Service announcement; Please everyone just find a Sony Trinitron CRT and find some PS2 component cables and enjoy the best possible PS2 picture quality.
Have a Panasonic 100hz CRT TV. Up there as well. Beautifully produced picture and PS1 games in component on the PS2 is arguably better than HDMI on the PS3
@@diskopumper1693 alright cheers, I've tested both component by itself and also component plugged into a hdmi converter. Surprisingly no different in quality.
I'm glad I found this video, at first I thought the improvement would be like 0.000001% something not even perceptible to the human eye, but the difference in quality ended up being quite remarkable, like night and day. It gave my favorite console of all time (PS2) a new breath of life. Thank you sir.
I was gonna buy component cables only to find out my tv doesn't have those types of connections on the back so I'm gonna have to buy the HDMI converter either way. Nice to know there's not much difference between the two.
Been awhile since you've thrown up a video like this. Enjoyed it! I found the inclusion of the HD re master to be a great add-in! I'm running a component/HDMI change from Wii and that is highly noticeable. I find with the PS2 not so much :-p
Hey Adam, I have a suggestion for your PS2 to HDMI problem. You use an RGB SCART to HDMI converter for your retro consoles. I bought two of those, one for my Sega Mega Drive and one for my Super Nintendo. Both work great. In addition to that, I noticed that they also had an HDMI input allowing you to switch between SCART and HDMI. Experimenting with the equipment, I discovered that if you plug your PlayStation TV into the HDMI input it not only upscales the PSTV from 720p to 1080p it also bypasses the HDCP. Why not try plugging your PS2 into the HDMI input on your SCART to HDMI adapter so it will upscale from 480i to 1080p? No reason your TV should not recognize it then.
Chuyi Vue I tried it myself. For PS2 games, plugging the PS2 to HDMI into the SCART/HDMI to HDMI adapter certainly works. It upscales the picture to 1080p without issue. But for PS1 games played on the PS2, there is a problem. Most PS1 games have resolutions of 240p in NTSC regions and 288p in PAL regions. Other games use standard definition resolutions; 480i for NTSC and 576i for PAL. So long as the PS1 game stays at a fixed resolution, the SCART/HDMI to HDMI adapter can seamlessly handle the upscaling. But then you have video games such as Driver that uses the low resolutions for the actual gameplay and standard definition resolutions for the menus, cutscenes and load screens. If I try to play, for example, Driver in this configuration, the screen constantly blacks out as the game switches from 288p to 576i and vice versa. And when the picture does come back, there is the little blue info box in the bottom left corner of the screen telling you the input, output and source information. It happens way too frequency and makes recordings of the game virtually unusable. And speaking of recordings, I use an Elgato Game Capture HD for recording from my PS3 and HDMI consoles. While the picture looks great on the TV, the colours in the capturing come out rather fogged. In fact, the S-video to DVD recordings look better. My Elgato Card comes with a special component cable that plugs directly into the PS3 and Elgato card itself. This cable is interchangeable with the PS2 and the recordings look vastly better than captured in with the HDMI adapter, but unfortunately the Elgato card does not accept any resolutions lower than 480i through its component or HDMI input. A component to HDMI upscaler might be able to solve the problem, but I'm yet to find such a device that can seamlessly switch between 240/288p to 480/576i and back again. The PS3 can handle the changes without issue, but it does not support the memory cards without an adapter and because it uses emulation software to play the PS1 games I have noticed a glitch or two in some games. So if you only want to play PS2 games in their best quality, the component cables or HDMI adapter will do the trick and any upscaler will boost it to 1080p without interruption. But if you want to play PS1 games, you'll need to either play them on the PS3 or just settle for S-video on the PS2. The PS1's optimum quality is RGB SCART, but the switching resolutions can also be a problem in RGB to HDMI upscalers too. Personally, I have my PS2 plugged into a Panasonic EX79 DVD/HDD recorder via S-video, and the recorder outputs to the TV in HDMI. I think it looks great and there is no dropouts between 288p and 576i.
Chuyi Vue Well, then the component cables or HDMI should do fine. Hopefully you found my suggestions helpful should you decide to go back to PS1 games.
nice video man exactly what he said you summed up the best option your opinion inside first 30seconds but I still watched the whole video because its helpful
Thanks for the video! I recently bought component cables for my Nintendo wii, since I got a new TV a couple of years ago. Needed them since I wanted to play ddr xD I was looking to buy a ps2, as the songs are so much better lol supernova, extreme. Really appreciate this video!
You good sir are a hero. I was stressing so much over this not understanding what to do almost ready to give up. It turns out all I had to do with that PS2 to HDMI adapter was.....wait for it......PLUG IT IN!!! can you believe this? Never would have thought I feel so dumb...thank you so much!!!👍👍👍
10:05 interesting to see how you can suddenly read the text on screen when it switches to S-Video. Shows you how bad Composite actually looks. I have to say though that I'm pretty happy with how the PS2 looks through component. Sure, it's not perfect, but it looks good enough. But maybe that's because I came from Composite and everything looks good compared to that. I wasn't as impressed as I was with the Dreamcast through VGA, though. I felt like my life was a lie before I switched to VGA.
I gotta say your channel has probably been my favorite RU-vid discovery since......well...RU-vid! I've seen all your informative gaming videos starting in Febuarary this year. In between releases im working my way back. Absolutely loved the Generation videos....fucking unbelievably awesome job!! Our prefrences and opinions are EXACTLY the same, even our nitpicks...so much so its kinda scary. Anyways...regarding this one...I've incorporated a line into my "vocab" so much its now second nature. When ANYBODY has a remark about disliking ANYTHING, out comes "How DARE YOU not like cake!" complete with that crazed, horrified "Did I just say that" look! You can only imagine the responses/reactions I get. Hilarity! I know your a busy man, so heres the time ...4:20 to 4:40
I was born in 80, and my first system was the SEGA Master System. We were by no means "rolling in the dough". It was usually one game at my birthday, maaaybe three at Christmas. Unless a system had been released, then it was the system. With SEGA being my first, I've always kinda went with the underdog of the generation. That is until the shitbrick Nintendo decided to call the Wii came out....I was sooo close to getting it, but the gaming gods were with me! I helped a guy move a couple weeks before THE DAY. He was one of those "I only play sports games, I'm not into that other stuff." guys. His girlfriend was more gamer than him and had Twilight Princess, and Raving Rabbids. Within an hour I had played as much as I could handle of FOUR games! Her two, Wii Sports, andsome golf game he had...I didnt even fuck with Madden. But the frustration that I had reached before even starting a game had me kinda shocked honestly. I was pretty fucking sure that one of us had made a mistake while setting it up, or that it might have gotten fucked up during the move somehow. He assured me that thats how it played and that I was just not using the controller right. That one hour, and having Mr. "I only play with balls." tell me that I didnt know how to use a controller was more than enough for me.
Very helpful video. I just ordered Component cables for PS2 with the 5 cords but realized after seeing your video that you suggest buying the component for the PS3. Is there a huge difference between PS2/PS3 component cables? And should I get the one with 6 cables or is 5 good enough?
I'm trying to play tomb raider 2 on a 50 inch panny atm, using the stock cables you get with a ps2 and it looks like a fried cat shit. I had the component cables but they broke and they only work on ps2 games anyway. *laments life decisions.
Hello Adam, thanks for the PS2 videos! ! Though I'm very happy with the image improvement with component VS. composite, I've noticed that some games aren't compatible with it. For example, the infamous ICO doesn't work through component because of its weird resolution. Also some homebrew apps like the Snes emulator don't work, and the same happens with a few games that include an emulator (licensed arcade ports for the Ps2 like Gradius III). But most games with emulators like Taito Legends, SNK classics work just fine. Have you experience any of these issues? I think that having a Scart or S-video cable as a second choice could be a good idea, in case you have any compatibility problems. The image through composite in this console is just awful, way worse than my Master System or Snes back in the day!!
AdamKoralik I was expecting that answer haha. I have a PS3 but I kind of like using memory cards and wired controllers, I don't know how to explain it, it just does something for me. Are there ANY other possible ways?
