Playstation Portable

Sony PSP Go console. The penultimate model produced by Sony, it lacks the UMD disc drive present on all other models

The Sony PSP is a portable games console produced by Sony between 2004 and 2014. While always designed and marketed as a portable system, later models of the PSP introduced a TV out option which makes them of interest to users of upscalers.

Models

There were a total of five different hardware revisions. The first revision (PSP-1000) and the last (PSP Street or PSP-E1000) do NOT offer a TV/external display output option. The PSP-2000, PSP-3000 and PSP Go variants DO offer this option however. The PSP Go is particularly attractive to gamers wanting to play on the big screen as it can be paired with a DualShock 3 controller.

When using the PSP with an external display, games are rendered at the 480 × 272 resolution of the PSP screen, rather than the standard 480p (720×480) resolution used for output. This means games are displayed with black letterboxing on the external display. Due to this unusual aspect ratio of 30:17, it cannot be perfectly scaled to modern displays without some amount of letterboxing.

Models tested

Sony PSP Go (with OSSC)

OSSC Specific settings

There are two separate profiles to use with the PSP:

• In the PSP's system menus and other non-game content, the entire 720x480 screen area is used. You therefore want to simply scale the native image.
• In games, the 720x480 screen is letterboxed to produce a 480x272 active region. You therefore want to configure the OSSC to treat portions of the letterbox as offscreen, effectively "zooming" the image.

You can find timing calculations taken from an oscilloscope, and the resulting OSSC settings which result, here.

For both of the below modes, the following settings produced the cleanest image on my television:

Sampling phase	292 deg
Reverse LPF	3

480p line2x for non-game content

The OSSC's defaults for 480p content are correct.

480p line2x for letterboxed game content

You have two choices here. You can either (nearly) preserve the PSP's native aspect ratio, producing a 635x360 (1270x720 in line2x) image, which is unlikely to scale nicely to a modern television, or you can have a slightly inaccurate aspect ratio (by about 5 pixels) to produce a perfect 1280x720 image. Both options are presented, although the author's preference is the 1280x720 image.

H. Active	635	nearly preserves aspect ratio
H. Active	640	scales to 1280x720 perfectly
H. Backporch	95
V. Active	360
V. Backporch	63

The resulting image will not be vertically centered on the screen, nor will it fill the screen entirely vertically or horizontally. The OSSC limits the V. Backporch value to 63, which prevents the image from being shifted upwards or zoomed further. See here for a feature request to allow larger V. Backporch values.

Pairing with external scalers

Using an external scaler, you may be able to fill the screen more completely than can be done with the OSSC.

With the DVDO Edge, Edge Green or iScan Duo

No special settings are required on these scalers to use 480px2 mode, however you can still use the steps/settings below for a more pleasingly scaled image.

With the iScan VP50 Pro (and similar ABT scalers)

To use the OSSC's 480p line double mode in conjunction with the VP50 Pro, first connect your PSP to the OSSC via the component video TV cables and select "Connected Display Settings" on the PSP to switch to TV out mode. You can connect the PSP to the OSSC using AV2 or AV1 with a suitable adapter. Make sure YPbPr mode is selected on whichever input you are using.

Verify that you have a stable image with the basic settings, now follow the steps below to enable compatible 480p line double settings for the VP50 Pro.

1) Navigate to the "Output Opt." menu on the OSSC and enter it. Find "480p/576p proc" and set it to "Line2x". You VP50 Pro will lose picture now, but don't panic.

2) Leave the Output Opt menu and navigate to the "Sampling Opt." menu and enter it. Find "Adv. Timing" for 480p and enter this menu.

3) Enter the following settings:-

• V.Active 360
• H.Active 640
• H.Backporch 95
• V.Backporch 63

After entering those settings, an image should appear on your VP50 Pro

4) Minimise image jitter by adjusting the Sampling Phase under the "Sampling opt." menu. The PSP's pause screen is useful for this, check for jitter around the white text. You may need to re-do this calibration every time you use the PSP with the OSSC.

5) Use the Zoom controls on the VP50 Pro (under Input Asp.Ratio) to zoom and centre the image. The values should be approximately as follows:-

• Zoom->Hor. 1.322x
• Zoom->Ver. 1.322x

• Pan->Hor. 0 or +1
• Pan->Ver. +52

6) Optionally apply post processing to the image. Line doubled 480p produces a very over-sharpened looking image with lots of saw-tooth edges. If you do not like this, there are two things you can do. Firstly, as of firmware 0.78, you can turn on the "Allow Upsample2x" option under the sampling options menu on the OSSC. Turning this on should significantly decrease the jaggedness of the image. If the image is still too over-sharpened for your taste, you can use the VP50's picture controls to soften it further. In the "Picture Control" menu choose "Fine Detail" and reduce this to taste. You can also try reducing the Edge Enhancement setting too. On the OSSC you can turn on scanlines if desired. Although PSP games never had scanlines, their resolution is similar to that of retro consoles and the addition of scanlines may give the image a pleasing retro look and reduce some of the sawtooth edges that 480p line double mode causes.

7) Save the presets/profile settings on both the VP50 and the OSSC so that they do not need to be manually entered next time you play.

Thanks to Nikodem R for these settings. See the Youtube videos below for some footage captured from a iScan VP30 scaler.

• Digimon World RE:Digitize
• Brave Story
• Various games with firmware 0.78

XRGB-2 Specific settings

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XRGB-3 Specific settings

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XRGB-Mini Specific settings

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