Raspberry Pi 5 · GameCubeA Raspberry Pi 5 box that sits between a GameCube and a modern TV and makes the picture look like a CRT: scanlines, a phosphor mask and glow, frame-locked to the console.
CRT filters massively improve pixel games. CRTBOX brings back more of the look of a tube, which helps hide the jaggies.
Scanlines that swell on bright lines, an aperture grille, slot or shadow mask, halation glow, colour bleed and optional curvature. As bright as the console's own picture.
Set the game to widescreen and turn Widescreen on in the menu. The squeezed picture stretches out to 16:9, the shape it was made for.
The output is frame-locked to the console and each frame is drawn just in time for the TV. About 30 ms from capture to screen.
Console audio comes off the capture board and goes out over HDMI with the picture, drift-corrected.
Over HDMI-CEC, the arrow keys on your TV's own remote change filters, open a settings menu with help for every option, and show an info panel with lag, timing, temperatures and power.
Switch the console on and the TV wakes up and switches to the box. Five minutes after the console goes off, the box goes to sleep.
No soldering. You install Pi OS yourself, then SSH in and run one script.
Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) on a 16 GB+ microSD card or a USB SSD, with the username crtbox, SSH and Wi-Fi turned on.
The capture board's ribbon, its audio lead, the fan, and the TV on HDMI0. Then boot the Pi with the TV connected.
It takes a few minutes, then reboots into protected mode. Turn on GCVideo's line doubler for 480i, switch the cube on, and play.
Of course: about 30 ms, roughly two frames, on top of whatever your TV adds. For most games you won't feel it. If you're a competitive smasher, play Melee on a real CRT. Put the TV in its game mode, since its own processing can add more lag than CRTBOX does.
The GameCube squeezes them into its normal 4:3 picture and leaves the TV to stretch them. Set the game to widescreen, then turn Widescreen on in the menu. It turns itself off whenever the console is off for 10 seconds or more.
It was built around a GameCube with the BitFunx HDMI adapter (GCVideo). Other consoles that send 720×480p over HDMI might work, but none have been tested.
Yes. The system is read-only, so pulling the plug is safe, and your settings still get saved.
Without the fan the Pi throttles and frames arrive late, and on a phone charger it reports undervoltage.
The jaggies, hidden the way a tube used to.
Unofficial. CRTBOX isn't affiliated with Nintendo, BitFunx or the GCVideo project. GameCube is a trademark of Nintendo. FXAA is NVIDIA's, by way of libretro, which also supplies the Fake Lottes filter.