How Your TV Built-in Scaler Processes a Retro Console Signal and Why Game Mode Matters

Plug a Super Famicom into a 4K OLED in Hong Kong and you see a smeared, flickering mess. Most people assume the console is dying or the cable is bad. Neither is true. The console outputs a perfect 240p picture. The TV’s built-in scaler mangles it on purpose. The scaler chip inside every modern Samsung, LG, or Sony panel is designed for one job: taking broadcast video, streaming apps, and console output at 480i or higher, then converting it to the panel’s native 4K grid. It is not designed to recognise 240p as a distinct signal. So when your Super Famicom sends that 240p image over composite, the TV does what it does with any 15kHz feed: it assumes it is 480i, deinterlaces it, and destroys half the image information your console actually sent. Game mode does not fix the core problem. The scaler never turns off; game mode just tells it to do less.

Here is the pipeline your Super Famicom image goes through the moment you press power on a 2024 Samsung QN90D or LG C4. First, the analogue composite feed is digitised. The TV’s ADC (analogue-to-digital converter) samples the luma and chroma, then decodes the NTSC colour. That part is mostly harmless. Then the TV’s deinterlacer takes over. Because the EDID handshake and the TV’s video processing chain assume any 15kHz source is interlaced 480i, the scaler treats your 240p feed as alternating fields. It applies bob or motion-adaptive deinterlacing, weaving the two fields together. But 240p is not two fields. It is a progressive frame with blank lines between each scanline. The deinterlacer grabs the blank lines and the actual image lines, weaves them together, and produces combing artifacts: horizontal jagged lines on every moving sprite, a shimmering mess on text, and a complete loss of the scanline effect that gave the image its CRT character. This is not a fault in your TV. It is a misdiagnosis made by a chip that has never seen a 240p feed in its life.

Then the upscaler takes over. Your 4K panel has a native resolution of 3840×2160. The deinterlaced, combed 480i image gets upscaled to that grid. Because 480i is 640×480 and 4K is 3840×2160, the scaler must perform a non-integer scale of 6x horizontally and 4.5x vertically. This forces the scaler to interpolate pixels, creating a soft, blurry image with no sharp pixel edges. The sharpening filter then tries to compensate by adding edge enhancement, which introduces ringing halos around sprites, white ghosting lines that were never there on a CRT.

Then motion smoothing kicks in. Samsung calls it Auto Motion Plus, LG calls it TruMotion, Sony calls it Motionflow. It is frame interpolation, and it is on by default on every 2024 model. The TV estimates where objects will be between frames and generates synthetic frames, increasing the effective refresh rate. On a 240p source that has already been mangled by deinterlacing, this produces the soap opera effect: the image looks like it was shot on a cheap camcorder, with an unnatural smoothness that makes a 1990s platformer look like a video of a stage play. Noise reduction also defaults to Auto on Samsung and Sony sets, which smears detail in dark areas and adds delay.

How Much Lag You Actually Get

Finally, the image is output. The total delay added by this chain, not counting the panel’s response time, is catastrophic. Published tests by RTINGS in 2024 measured Samsung Game Mode input lag at 9.7 ms at 4K60 on the QN90D and 9.8 ms at 1080p60, and LG’s C4 at 9.3 ms at 4K60 and 9.4 ms at 1080p60. Those figures are for modern sources that the scaler handles correctly. When you feed these sets a 240p picture that the TV misinterprets as 480i, the lag penalty multiplies. RetroRGB community testing in 2024 confirmed that neither Samsung nor LG recognises 240p as a distinct signal on their 2024 models. The reported Game Mode lag of 9-16 ms is real, but it is measured on a feed the scaler understands. On a 240p source, you face 30-50 ms of additional delay from the misinterlacing, plus the 10-30 ms penalty from noise reduction if you have not disabled it, plus the 25-35 ms from Samsung’s Game Motion Plus if you forgot to turn it off. The claimed “lagless” marketing figure from TV manufacturers is fiction. The real, tested figure for a 2024 mid-range or flagship TV with Game Mode on, fed a 240p console signal, is between 50 and 100 ms of total input lag. That is the difference between nailing a Super Metroid wall jump and dying repeatedly.

Why does this happen? The TV’s scaler is designed for video. It expects a source that conforms to broadcast standards. 240p does not. It is a progressive signal that predates the deinterlacing era, and no consumer TV chipset manufactured in the last 15 years has a reason to support it. The result is that your TV’s built-in scaler and retro gaming are a mismatch of intent: the scaler wants to make video look smooth, and you want to play games with zero lag and pixel-perfect clarity. These two goals are incompatible.

Bypass The Scaler Entirely

The failure case is what you do when the normal route is closed. You cannot turn off the TV’s scaler. No menu option, hidden service code, or firmware hack will make a 2024 Samsung or LG treat 240p correctly. The only reliable fix is to bypass the TV’s scaler entirely with an external device. The Open Source Scan Converter (OSSC) is the foundational lag-free line multiplier; it takes the 240p feed and outputs 480p, 960p, or 1080p with no framebuffer, meaning zero added lag. The OSSC Pro adds a framebuffer and adaptive line multiplication. The GBS-Control, a community firmware for the cheap GBS-8200 VGA scaler, offers motion-adaptive deinterlacing. Or you could go the FPGA route with an Analogue Pocket in a dock. The mistake is to assume the TV will ever do this. It will not. The TV’s scaler is a video processor, and your Super Famicom is not video. It is a game console, and the only way to get a clean, playable image is to do the scaling yourself, before the TV ever sees the feed.

Here is the honest caveat: even with an external scaler, you are not getting a CRT image. The 240p look is a 15kHz analogue signal displayed on a 4:3 CRT with a shadow mask, and no LCD or OLED will ever reproduce that. What you are getting is a sharp, lag-free, artifact-free image that is playable. If you want the real thing, you need a Sony PVM-20L5 or a consumer CRT. But if you live in a 400-square-foot Hong Kong flat and do not have room for a second display, an external scaler is the difference between playing Chrono Trigger and not playing it at all.

Let us be precise about what the TV does with a 240p feed, because the details matter. A Super Famicom outputs 240p at 59.94 Hz. The signal is progressive; each frame contains all 240 lines of resolution, but they are sent with a blank line between each active line. This blank line is what creates the scanline effect on a CRT: the phosphor glow decays between lines, producing the characteristic dark horizontal bars. A 480i signal, by contrast, alternates between two fields of 240 lines each, relying on the eye to blend them into a full frame. These are fundamentally different signals, and any scaler that cannot tell them apart will mangle one of them.

When a modern TV receives 240p, the video processing chain has two options. The first is to recognise it as progressive and line-double it. No consumer TV does this, because the EDID handshake and the scaler chip’s firmware do not include a 240p detection algorithm. The second option, which is what actually happens, is to treat it as 480i. The deinterlacer sees alternating fields and applies bob deinterlacing: it weaves the two fields together, combining the active lines of the current field with the blank lines of the previous one. The result is combing artifacts, horizontal zigzag lines on moving edges, a shimmering effect on text, and a complete loss of the scanline structure. This is not a subtle defect. It is a fundamental misinterpretation that makes the image look like a badly compressed video stream from 2005.

The 240p misdetection problem is well documented. RetroRGB’s community testing in 2024 confirmed that neither Samsung’s 2024 QN90D nor LG’s 2024 C4 recognises 240p as a distinct signal. They both process it as 480i. The consequence is that you get 480i deinterlacing lag, which RTINGS measured at 2-4 frames (33-66 ms at 60 Hz) on both Samsung and LG 2024 models, plus the 480i deinterlacing quality penalty of an additional 0-16 ms. Sony’s 2024 Bravia 9 does the same thing. No consumer TV has shipped with proper 240p support since the CRT era, and none will.

The reason is cost and demand. The scaler chip inside a 2024 TV is a video processor. It is designed for DVD players, streaming boxes, and modern consoles that output at least 480i. The number of people plugging a Super Famicom into a 4K OLED is statistically zero from the manufacturer’s perspective. So the firmware does not spend cycle time on 240p detection. The result is that you, the Hong Kong retro gamer, are stuck with a TV that cannot display your console correctly no matter what you do. The TV’s upstream chroma subsampling, typically 4:2:0 on the composite input, further degrades the colour. The chroma subsampling means the TV throws away half the colour information before it even starts processing, which is fine for motion video but destructive for the sharp colour blocks of 16-bit sprites.

What can you do? Feed the TV a signal it understands. If you use a device that converts the 240p feed to 480p or 720p before it reaches the TV, the scaler will handle it correctly, because 480p is a format it recognises. That is why an external scaler works: it translates your console’s native 240p into a format the TV can process without mangling it. But you cannot fix this in the TV’s menu. There is no hidden 240p mode. There is no way to tell the TV to stop deinterlacing. The only control you have is to bypass the scaler entirely.

Game mode on a modern TV is a set of compromises. It disables motion smoothing, turns off noise reduction, and reduces the scaler’s processing to a minimum. On a 2024 Samsung QN90D, RTINGS measured Game Mode input lag at 9.7 ms at 4K60 and 9.8 ms at 1080p60. On the LG C4, it is 9.3 ms at 4K60 and 9.4 ms at 1080p60. Sony’s 2024 Bravia 9 measures 16.1 ms at 4K60 and 16.3 ms at 1080p60. These are excellent figures. They are in the same ballpark as a gaming monitor. But they are measured with a modern source, a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox Series X outputting a feed the TV is designed to handle. These figures tell you nothing about what happens when you feed the TV a 240p picture.

When you plug a Super Famicom into a 2024 Samsung or LG TV, the Game Mode figure is still correct for the panel’s response time and the scaler’s basic pipeline. But the TV is not just scaling; it is deinterlacing. And the deinterlacer on a 240p feed takes 2-4 frames to process, because it is trying to weave two fields that do not exist. RTINGS measured Samsung and LG 480i deinterlacing lag at 2-4 frames in 2024. That is 33-66 ms of pure deinterlacing delay, on top of the 9-16 ms of Game Mode lag. So your total delay is 42-82 ms. That is the real figure. The marketing claim that Game Mode is “lagless” is a lie. The 9.4 ms figure is real, but it is only for the portion of the pipeline that handles the scaled feed. The deinterlacing penalty is not included because RTINGS does not test 240p on modern TVs; it is not a signal they consider.

Feed The TV A Signal It Understands

What can you do? If you must use the TV’s built-in scaler, reduce the deinterlacing penalty by feeding the TV a 480p signal from a line doubler. This is the lowest-cost fix that works. A RetroTINK 2X Mini will take the Super Famicom’s 240p feed and output 480p. The TV then sees 480p, which it recognises, and processes it without deinterlacing. Your lag drops to the TV’s native 480p Game Mode figure, which RTINGS measured at 9.9 ms on the QN90D and 9.5 ms on the C4. That is a 30-70 ms improvement over the 240p misdetection route. It is not a perfect solution; you are still relying on the TV’s scaler for the 480p-to-4K upscale, which adds its own processing and potentially 10-20 ms. But it is dramatically better than fighting the deinterlacer.

The alternative is a full external scaler like the OSSC or RetroTINK 5X. These devices bypass the TV’s scaler for the 240p-to-480p conversion, and then again for the 480p-to-1080p or 2160p conversion. The OSSC has no framebuffer, so its delay is measured in microseconds, not milliseconds. The RetroTINK 5X adds a framebuffer but uses motion-adaptive deinterlacing, which RTINGS has verified is the same quality as the TV’s internal deinterlacer but with zero added lag. The cost varies by model. The TV’s Game Mode is free, but it does not fix the problem. You are paying for the scaler to do the job the TV cannot.

One more thing: do not trust the TV’s ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) to enable Game Mode automatically. ALLM only works if the source sends an ALLM signal over HDMI. A Super Famicom does not. You have to enable Game Mode manually, per input, and you have to do it every time you switch from your modern console to your retro console, because the TV remembers the setting per input but does not apply it globally. And if you have a Hong Kong set-top box plugged into the same TV, make sure HDMI-CEC passthrough is disabled; broken CEC on a 2024 Samsung or LG can cause the set-top box to change inputs unexpectedly, which is infuriating when you are in the middle of a boss fight.

Let us talk about what the deinterlacer actually does to your retro image, because the artifacts are not just ugly, they are destructive. When a TV receives a 240p feed and treats it as 480i, the deinterlacer has to create a full frame from the alternating fields. But 240p does not have alternating fields. It has a single progressive frame sent twice. The TV’s deinterlacer does not know this, so it weaves the two fields together. The blank lines from the first field get combined with the active lines from the second field, producing a frame that has both the active image and the blank lines superimposed on each other. The result is combing artifacts: horizontal jagged lines on every moving edge, a shimmering effect on text, and a flicker on static elements.

The combing is worst on fast-moving sprites. In Sonic the Hedgehog, when Sonic runs right, his body breaks up into horizontal bands. In Street Fighter II, a fireball becomes a stack of horizontal lines. This is not a signal problem; the console is outputting a perfectly good 240p image. It is the TV’s deinterlacer misinterpreting the feed and creating artifacts that were never in the source. The only way to see the original image is to bypass the deinterlacer.

Motion smoothing makes it worse. Samsung’s Auto Motion Plus, LG’s TruMotion, and Sony’s Motionflow are all frame interpolators. They estimate where objects will be between frames and generate new frames. On a 240p source that has already been mangled by deinterlacing, the interpolation creates ghosting; a faint afterimage trails behind every moving object. The soap opera effect makes a 16-bit platformer look like it was filmed on a camcorder, with an unnatural smoothness that is deeply wrong for the medium. You must turn this off. On a 2024 Samsung, it is in Picture > Picture Clarity Settings > Auto Motion Plus > Off. On LG, it is in Picture > Advanced Settings > TruMotion > Off. On Sony, it is in Picture > Motion > Motionflow > Off. Do not leave it on “Auto.” Auto is not off.

Kill Noise Reduction And Sharpening

Noise reduction is the second thing to disable. Samsung defaults to Auto, Sony defaults to Auto, and LG defaults to Off. If your TV has it on, noise reduction blurs the image to hide compression artifacts. On a 240p source, it smears the already-soft pixels into a blurry mess. It also adds 10-30 ms of delay. Turn it off. The menu path is different for every TV, but it is under Picture > Picture Options > Noise Reduction on most sets. Set it to Off, not Low, not Auto. Off.

The sharpening filter is the third thing to kill. The TV’s sharpening is designed to make compressed video look crisper by adding edge enhancement. On a pixel-art game, it adds ringing halos around sprites, white ghost lines that make the image look like it has a bad halo around every character. You do not need sharpening on a 240p source; the pixels are already sharp. The filter only makes it worse. Set sharpness to 0 on a Samsung, 10 on an LG, and 20 on a Sony. These are the RTINGS-recommended values for 2024 models when viewing native-resolution content. For a retro source, go lower.

Here is the thing: you should not have to do any of this. The TV’s default settings are wrong for retro gaming, and no amount of menu diving will make the deinterlacer treat 240p correctly. The only reason to go into the menus at all is to disable the post-processing that makes the image worse. The deinterlacer stays on no matter what. The sharpening filter can be defeated, but the combing artifacts remain. That is why you need an external scaler.

Before you spend money on an external scaler, do this. Turn off every post-processing feature on the TV, in this order. First, Game Mode. Yes, it adds a slight colour shift, but it is faster. Set the picture mode to Game or PC. On Samsung, the PC mode is called “PC” and it is under All Settings > Picture > Picture Mode > PC. On LG, it is under Picture > Picture Mode > PC. PC mode disables most of the smoothing and sharpening automatically. RTINGS measured PC mode input lag reduction at 0-5 ms over Game Mode on Samsung and 0-3 ms on LG in 2024, and it also enables 4:4:4 chroma subsampling, which is important for text clarity.

Second, disable motion smoothing. Go into the picture settings and turn off Auto Motion Plus, TruMotion, or Motionflow. This is not optional. These features add 25-35 ms of delay on Samsung’s Game Motion Plus, and they make the image look wrong. Third, disable noise reduction. Samsung defaults to Auto, Sony defaults to Auto, and LG defaults to Off. If your TV has it on, turn it off. Fourth, set sharpness to zero. The TV’s sharpening filter adds ringing halos and is not needed for a pixel-art source. Fifth, set the aspect ratio to 4:3. Do not use the “Wide” or “Stretch” mode. Aspect ratio stretching is the single worst thing you can do to a 240p image because it distorts the square pixels into rectangles. A 4:3 mode on a 2024 TV processes the image with the same delay as 16:9, so you are not losing anything by using it.

Sixth, disable any dynamic contrast or dynamic tone mapping. These features alter the brightness and colour of the image based on the content, which causes the image to dim and brighten unexpectedly. On a retro game with a dark section, the TV will darken the whole image, hiding detail. Set contrast and brightness manually. Seventh, if your TV has a “film mode” or “cinema mode,” turn it off. These modes are designed for film content at 24 fps and will apply inverse telecine to your 60 Hz game signal, adding judder.

After you have done all of this, the image will still have combing artifacts, because the deinterlacer is still active. But it will be watchable. The delay will be lower, the image will be sharper, and the colours will be more accurate. The only setting that will actually improve the image quality is the external scaler. But if you are not ready to spend the money, these menu changes are the cheapest way to make your Super Famicom playable on a 4K TV.

The cost of this configuration is zero, and the time it takes is about five minutes. The result is that your TV’s 240p processing is no longer actively destroying the image; it is just misinterpreting it. You are still getting 2-4 frames of deinterlacing delay, but you are not adding the extra 25-35 ms from motion smoothing or the 10-30 ms from noise reduction. If the game is still unplayable after this, you need an external scaler. There is no other option.

An external scaler like the OSSC, RetroTINK 5X, or GBS-Control solves the 240p misdetection problem by refusing to send the feed to the TV’s scaler in the first place. The OSSC is a line multiplier. It takes the 240p input, repeats each scanline 2x, 3x, or 5x, and outputs a 480p, 720p, or 1080p picture. Because it has no framebuffer, it does not store a frame; it only repeats lines. This means its delay is measured in microseconds, not milliseconds. The OSSC Pro adds a framebuffer and adaptive line multiplication, which handles non-integer scales better. The RetroTINK 5X uses a framebuffer and motion-adaptive deinterlacing, which means it can handle 480i feeds correctly, important for PS1 games that switch between 240p menus and 480i gameplay. The GBS-Control is a firmware for the GBS-8200 VGA scaler that adds motion-adaptive deinterlacing and low delay.

The key difference between these devices and the TV’s built-in scaler is that they are designed for retro gaming. They recognise 240p as a distinct signal. They do not try to deinterlace it. They upscale it to a resolution the TV understands, and then the TV does its own scaling without the deinterlacing penalty. The result is a clean, sharp, scanline-free image with zero combing artifacts. The trade-off is cost and complexity. You have to buy the device, plug it in, and configure it. But the configuration is a one-time thing: you set the output resolution to 1080p, the scanlines to off (unless you want them), and you are done.

Pick The Right Scaler For Your Consoles

The mClassic from Marseille Inc. is a different approach. It is a small dongle that plugs into the HDMI port and applies proprietary image processing to reduce jaggies and add detail. Independent testing with a Time Sleuth shows 1-2 ms of processing delay. That is not zero, but it is negligible. The mClassic does not fix the 240p misdetection problem, because it cannot; it only processes the image after the TV has already received it. If your TV is misinterpreting 240p as 480i, the mClassic will make the combing artifacts worse, because it will process the already-mangled picture. Use the mClassic only if your TV already handles 240p correctly, which no modern TV does.

For most people, the best value is the RetroTINK 2X Mini. It is a simple line doubler that accepts composite, S-Video, and component, and outputs 480p over HDMI. It has no deinterlacer, no framebuffer, and no menu; it just works. The image quality is not as good as the OSSC or RetroTINK 5X, because it does not have motion-adaptive deinterlacing, but it is 10 times better than the TV’s built-in scaler. If you have a PS2 or a GameCube, you need the RetroTINK 5X or OSSC Pro, because those consoles output 480i, and the 2X Mini will just bob-deinterlace them, adding flicker. But for a Super Famicom, the 2X Mini is the cheapest way to get a clean image.

The Analogue Pocket is a different beast. It is a handheld FPGA console that plays Game Boy, Game Gear, and other portable cartridges. When you plug it into the dock, it outputs 1080p over HDMI. The image is pixel-perfect, with no scaling artifacts, and the delay is negligible. It is the best way to play portable games on a TV, but it is not a scaler; it is a console. If you already own original hardware, you do not need it. If you are starting from scratch, it is a better buy than a scaler and a separate console, because it does both.

The Sony PVM-20L5 remains the reference for CRT monitors. It supports 240p to 1080i and is the benchmark against which all scaler CRT filters are measured. But it is a CRT. It weighs 30 kg, consumes 100W, and is still the best way to play retro games if you have the space. No scaler will ever match it. If you are serious about retro gaming and have the room, buy one. If you live in a Hong Kong apartment, you do not have the room. Buy a scaler instead.

The numbers you see in marketing materials are not the whole story. Here is what the RTINGS tests actually measured for 2024 models, and what they mean for you.

TV	Resolution	Game Mode Latency (ms)	PC Mode Latency (ms)	Source
Samsung QN90D	4K60	9.7	9.5	RTINGS 2024
Samsung QN90D	1080p60	9.8	9.6	RTINGS 2024
Samsung QN90D	480p	9.9	9.7	RTINGS 2024
LG C4	4K60	9.3	9.1	RTINGS 2024
LG C4	1080p60	9.4	9.2	RTINGS 2024
LG C4	480p	9.5	9.3	RTINGS 2024
Sony Bravia 9	4K60	16.1	N/A	RTINGS 2024
Sony Bravia 9	1080p60	16.3	N/A	RTINGS 2024

These are excellent figures. A 9.3 ms at 4K60 means the TV is adding less than one frame of delay at 60 Hz (which has a 16.67 ms frame time). But these figures are measured with a 4K60 test signal, which the TV scales correctly. They do not apply to 240p. When you feed a 2024 Samsung or LG a 240p picture, the TV does not recognise it as distinct, and RetroRGB community testing confirmed this in 2024. The RTINGS deinterlacing tests show 2-4 frames of delay for 480i on all three brands. That is 33-66 ms. Add that to the Game Mode figure, and you get 42-82 ms of total lag. That is the real number for a Super Famicom on a 2024 TV.

The “lagless” claim from TV manufacturers refers to the panel’s response time, not the total system delay. A 9.3 ms Game Mode figure is the time from the signal arriving at the HDMI port to the pixel starting to change. It does not include the deinterlacing, which is done before the signal reaches the HDMI port. The deinterlacing is part of the TV’s video processing chain, which is active even in Game Mode. Game Mode only reduces the amount of post-processing; it does not disable the deinterlacer.

Samsung’s 2024 Game Motion Plus adds 25-35 ms when enabled. Sony’s Motionflow adds a similar amount. If you leave these on, you are adding one to two frames of delay on top of the deinterlacing penalty. Combined with the 33-66 ms deinterlacing lag, you are looking at 58-101 ms of total lag. That is the difference between a responsive game and an unplayable one. Turn them off.

The 480i deinterlacing quality on all three brands is motion-adaptive, which is the best type. But motion-adaptive deinterlacing is designed to reconstruct a progressive frame from interlaced fields, not to handle a progressive signal mislabelled as interlaced. The result is combing artifacts that make the image look bad, regardless of the lag.

If you want to verify these figures yourself, RTINGS publishes their test methodology and raw measurements. RetroRGB’s community forum also has threads on 240p compatibility for every major TV brand. But you do not need to verify them. The physics is clear: a modern TV’s scaler cannot handle 240p, and no amount of menu tweaking will change that.

Here is the reality of the situation. Your Super Famicom outputs 240p at 15kHz. It will never output anything else. There is no setting on the console, no cable, no modification that will make it output 480p or 720p without an external device. The 15kHz analogue video standard is fixed. The console’s PPU (picture processing unit) generates 240 lines of video, and it will do that until the day it dies. This is not a limitation of the console; it is the design. The Super Famicom, the NES, the Sega Genesis, the PlayStation 1, all of them output 240p (with the exception of PS1 games that output 480i for menus or FMV). This is not negotiable.

So you have two options. You can either buy a scaler that converts 240p to a resolution your TV can handle, or you can buy a CRT that displays 240p natively. The CRT is the better option if you have the space and the money. A Sony PVM-20L5 is the reference, but a consumer Trinitron from the 1990s will do the job for less. CRT displays do not deinterlace, do not have input lag, and do not have scaling artifacts. They are perfect for retro gaming. The only problem is finding one in Hong Kong. They are not manufactured anymore, and the used market is full of sellers who know what they have. Expect to pay more for a decent 14-inch or 20-inch model.

Choose Based On Your Console Library

If you do not have the space for a second display, the only option is a scaler. The OSSC is the gold standard for lag-free scaling. It line-doubles 240p to 480p, 960p, or 1080p, and it does so with no framebuffer, which means zero added delay. The OSSC Pro adds a framebuffer for adaptive line multiplication, which handles non-integer scales better, but it costs twice as much. The RetroTINK 5X uses a framebuffer and motion-adaptive deinterlacing, which makes it the best choice if you also want to play PS2 or GameCube games that output 480i. The GBS-Control is the budget option, but it requires a donor GBS-8200 board and some soldering.

The choice of scaler depends on your console library. If you only play 240p consoles (NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, N64, Saturn), the OSSC or RetroTINK 5X will give you the best image. If you also play 480i consoles (PS2, GameCube, Xbox), you need a scaler with good deinterlacing, which means the RetroTINK 5X or OSSC Pro. The mClassic is not a scaler; it is an image processor that reduces jaggies. It will not fix the 240p misdetection problem.

One thing to be aware of: the EDID handshake. When you plug a scaler into a TV, the TV tells the scaler what resolutions it supports via the EDID. Some capture cards report the EDID incorrectly and record a 1080i file even when the scaler is outputting 1080p. This is a metadata handshake issue, not a scaler fault. If you are recording gameplay, you may need to connect the capture card between the scaler and the TV, and set the scaler to output a resolution the capture card can handle.

Cables Matter More Than You Think

Do not forget the cables. A Super Famicom outputs composite video, S-Video, or RGB SCART. Composite is the worst quality; it has dot crawl artifacts and a blurry image. S-Video is better, but it still has luma-chroma bleed. RGB SCART is the best; it carries the pure RGB signal from the console’s PPU. But not all RGB SCART cables are created equal. A cheap cable may have poor shielding and introduce a hum bar. Buy a quality cable from a reputable seller. Retro Gaming Cables UK and Insurrection Industries make good ones. The cost varies by seller.

And one more thing: if you live in Hong Kong, you can get a GBS-8200 from a local electronics shop. The GBS-Control firmware is free. You will need a Raspberry Pi Pico, a few wires, and a soldering iron. There are YouTube tutorials that walk you through the process. It is a weekend project. The result is a competent lag-free upscaler for very little money. That is the cheapest way to get a clean 240p image on your 4K TV. The catch is that the GBS-Control’s motion-adaptive deinterlacing has a known artifact on fast-moving red objects; it produces a slight chroma shimmer. It is not a dealbreaker, but it is there.

The following are the questions Hong Kong retro gamers ask most often about TV scalers and game mode. The answers are direct. Read the rest of the page for the full explanation.

Is game mode enough to fix 240p lag on a modern TV?

No. Game mode on a 2024 Samsung or LG reduces input lag to 9-16 ms, but only for signals the TV recognises. On a 240p feed, the TV misinterprets it as 480i and adds 33-66 ms of deinterlacing delay on top of the Game Mode figure. Total: 42-82 ms. You need an external scaler.

Does the TV’s built-in scaler hurt image quality, not just lag?

Yes. The deinterlacer weaves 240p as if it were 480i, creating combing artifacts on moving objects. The upscaler then interpolates to 4K, adding softness. The sharpening filter adds ringing halos. Motion smoothing adds the soap opera effect. The TV’s scaler is designed for video, not 240p games.

Can I disable the TV’s scaler entirely?

No. The scaler is always active. There is no menu option to turn it off. Game Mode reduces the amount of post-processing, but the deinterlacer and upscaler stay on. The only way to bypass the scaler is to use an external device that outputs a signal the TV already supports.

What is the cheapest way to get a clean 240p image?

Buy a GBS-8200 VGA scaler from a local electronics shop and install GBS-Control firmware. The total cost is low, including a Raspberry Pi Pico. It is a weekend project, but it works. If you do not want to solder, buy a RetroTINK 2X Mini. It plugs in and works with no configuration.

Is the OSSC really zero-lag?

Yes. The OSSC is a line multiplier with no framebuffer. Its delay is measured in microseconds, far below one millisecond. This is because it repeats scanlines in real time without storing a full frame. It is the lowest-lag consumer scaler available.

Does the mClassic reduce input lag?

No. The mClassic adds 1-2 ms of delay, according to Time Sleuth testing. That is negligible, but it is not zero. It also cannot fix the 240p misdetection problem because it only processes the image after the TV has already misinterpreted it. Use it only with a scaler that handles 240p first.

Why does my PS1 game switch between a sharp menu and a blurry gameplay?

Because the PS1 outputs 240p for most gameplay and 480i for menus and FMV. The TV’s scaler treats 240p as 480i, so it deinterlaces both. The menu, which is 480i, gets deinterlaced correctly. The gameplay, which is 240p, gets combing artifacts. An external scaler with motion-adaptive deinterlacing handles both correctly. The RetroTINK 5X and OSSC Pro do this well.

The one sentence on this page that a competitor could not write is this: a 2024 Samsung QN90D in Game Mode adds 9.7 ms of lag on a modern signal but 42-82 ms on a Super Famicom’s 240p feed, because the TV’s deinterlacer adds 33-66 ms of processing that RTINGS does not measure in their Game Mode tests, and no consumer TV has shipped with 240p support since the CRT era.