WEBVTT

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You're digging through some old moving boxes you never unpacked, and you discover your

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old console with a bunch of retro games. Ah, nostalgia.

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You dust it off, and after managing to hook it up to your shiny 4K flat screen TV, you

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find that it looks… well, did Link always look so blurry?

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Part of the problem is that old consoles like the SNES had a resolution of just 256x224 pixels,

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compared to the 3840x2160 pixels of a modern 4K TV.

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That means that if your TV were to show the game at its true native resolution, it would

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be this tiny. And you'd have to get so close to the screen, you'd go cross-eyed.

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So instead, a television will take that small media and upscale it so that it fills up most,

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if not all, of the available pixels. To do this, the TV manufacturer had to choose just one of several different upscaling algorithms.

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The most common ones are nearest neighbor, bilinear, bicubic, and landshaws, with nearest

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neighbor being the simplest and fastest to process, and landshaws being the slowest

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and most complex. However, on modern day hardware, any of these algorithms can easily upscale an image in

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real time, which for this video, I am defining as 16 milliseconds or less.

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And that's because if you're playing a game at 60 frames per second, each individual frame

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will appear on screen for about 16 milliseconds.

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Therefore, each of these algorithms should work faster than that, which also means that

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buffering multiple frames is not necessary.

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However, for AI or smart image upscaling, a multi-frame buffer can be necessary, which

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will result in a delay, or input lag, of much more than 16 milliseconds.

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So check out this video for more information about all that.

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But back to the topic at hand. Assuming that each of these algorithms can work in real time, which one actually looks

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the best? Well, see for yourself.

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And immediately you can see that only nearest neighbor can deliver the perfect, sharp pixels

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that make pixel art look good. All the others just kind of blend the pixels together, which blurs the image.

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So the upscaling algorithm on your TV is probably some form of bicubic or landshaws.

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Raising the question, why would anyone want an upscaling algorithm that's more complicated,

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slower, and looks worse?

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Because while nearest neighbor scaling looks great for pixel art, it does not look good

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for most other images. Your TV doesn't know that you've plugged in a retro game console, as opposed to a DVD

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player or something. And for live action video, bicubic or landshaws scaling really are better choices.

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The real world is not made of pixels. And so when we upscale a photograph, the results should not look pixelated.

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2D Mario is made of pixels.

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And therefore, when we upscale him, the results should be pixelated.

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But wait, I hear you say, my TV already has a game mode setting.

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Why doesn't it just use nearest neighbor for that? Well, because most 3D games also look better with bicubic or landshaws scaling.

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So the manufacturer would have to include a nearest neighbor menu option, which doesn't

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sound so hard. As for why they don't do that, I don't know.

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TV manufacturers just don't care, I guess.

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Maybe because not enough consumers know or care about this problem.

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But if you really want those sharp pixels, I have good news.

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There are a lot of options, like the RetroTink 2X, Framemeister or open source scan converter.

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But before you buy anything, I recommend you check out this great RGB video explainer series

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from MyLife in gaming, because this stuff can get really complicated.

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I ended up just buying a $14 component cable for my Wii, which provides much better quality

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than the stock composite cable. And it's not perfect, but you know what, it's good enough for me.

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Now if you're emulating your old games, you have way more options.

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Emulators like RetroArch have access to an arguably even better scaling method called

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Sharp Bilinear, which uses nearest neighbor for pre-scaling to the closest integer and

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then uses bilinear scaling for the remainder.

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This method even allows you to rotate the image without getting any jagged edges.

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There are also tons of other interesting scalers and shaders that can be mixed and customized

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to get just the look you want. And blurry pixel art is not just a problem for retro gamers.

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If you're a digital artist like me, you should know that programs like GIMP, Photoshop and

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After Effects do have support for nearest neighbor if you know where to look.

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But some creative software, including Premiere, does not.

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It's annoying. Also, support for integer scaling from PC hardware manufacturers like AMD, NVIDIA and

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Intel has been getting better lately, but we've still got a ways to go.

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If you want to learn more and get involved in the Sharp Pixel Revolution, Merritt Tenenlin's

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website, which I used as a resource for this video, is a great place to start.

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He's even developed a browser plugin that solves a similar problem with improperly scaled

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images on websites. And I use it every day when taking important screenshots for TechWiki videos like this one.

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Never mind that. Thanks for watching. Like, dislike and check out our other video about how to buy a TV for gaming.

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