For those who don’t know, the XRGB-mini Framemeister is a device that is often used to upscale old video signals (composite, svideo, SCART) to look better on an HDTV. The guys over at My Life in Gaming did an amazing video (below) explaining what it does and a tiny bit how it works. Things can get pretty complex when it comes to choosing what cables for what console, so I definitely suggest checking out more of their videos as they’re highly informative.
Sources point towards Micomsoft finally halting production for good (this has happened before). So it might be a good time to pick one up. Sources also revealed that they said work is still continuing in an updated version of the Framemeister. However, this supposed model won’t see the light of day until as soon as 2020.
Luckily, there are many alternatives to the Framemeister. The first (picture below) is the OSSC. This stands for “Open Source Scan Converter” and works much like the Framemeister and has a fairly good option set. The big benefit is that it’s a bit cheaper as well (about 200 USD) and is more like a DIY project. I’ve been told it continues to improve due to the open source nature of the project. There are also boxes that convert SCART to HDMI, svid to HDMI, and composite to HDMI individually. However, these boxes lack any kind of option set and seemed to be somewhat of a mixed bag. In addition to all of this, there are mods that will allow direct output of HDMI and other cable formats. Lastly, and perhaps the option that adds up quickly are individual consoles like the AVS NES by retroUSB, or the Super NT and the NT Mini by Analogue. The latter ran about at a high price, but with the advent of FPGA chips being used in newer clone consoles we might seen some cheaper options like the SuperNT in the future.
