The Sega Dreamcast – now over 20 years old, the Dreamcast represents an era of unprecedented creativity within Sega. With a huge range of remarkable games spread across every genre imaginable, Sega’s final console remains popular even today but while the Dreamcast’s video output options were forward looking at the time, taking full advantage of them today isn’t quite as easy as you’d expect – but the arrival of a hardware modification with a pristine HDMI output is an absolute gamechanger. There’s no doubt about it – DCHDMI is the best way to play Dreamcast on a modern flat panel display.
This internal modification is the first and only fully digital solution for Dreamcast video output. It overcomes limitations typically encountered with other solutions while offering the sharpest possible video output from your Dreamcast console. Most of the modification is internal in nature, with the only external difference coming down to the inclusion of a mini-HDMI output on the rear of the console. It’s entirely non-invasive to the standard operation of the Dreamcast, meaning that you can run the analogue video output in parallel with the new HDMI output.
But what makes this modification possible is the fact that Sega pioneered a pristine 480p output for its last console, a massive evolution over the prior gen’s more standard 240p – and it was glorious, especially if you owned Sega’s own VGA box. This works great on a classic PC monitor of this era but if you’re trying to play the Dreamcast on an HDTV either via VGA or via some form of analogue to digital converter, there are issues to consider.
You see, the Dreamcast generates a DTV signal much like other consumer electronics of this era – while only 640×480 worth of pixels is ever drawn, this is contained within a 720×480 frame. Typical displays, however, interpret this as a true 640×480 eliminating lines in the process. The result? A loss in image clarity with minor distortion and a narrow aspect ratio. This is where the DCHDMI differs – it taps directly into the system delivering all pixels digitally to your display at a variety of output resolutions.
That’s right, although the Dreamcast itself delivers a 480p output, the DCHDMI has a wide variety of carefully considered and beautifully executed scaling options for a pristine digital video output. The key difference is the use of integer scaling to either 1080p or 960p resolution, making for crystal clear pixel reproduction as opposed to the more blurrier scaling typically employed by displays themselves when processing a 480p signal.