UltraHDMI - HDMI Upgrade Kit for the Nintendo 64

[RGB32E]

After several years of anticipation it appears the HDMI mod for the Nintendo 64 will finally be released later this year!

Kevtris recently posted a video with the creator, MarshallH - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNccuaE4BUE

Teaser from earlier this year - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlq1AaxngEU

Project page - http://ultrahdmi.retroactive.be/

WHAT IS IT?
Want to play your Nintendo 64 with bit-perfect video and audio, on your modern flatscreen? This is for you! The mod goes inside your N64 and connects directly to the RCP, capturing video as digital RGB, optionally adding processing like scanlines and crop/fill, producing up to 1080p HDMI output. The quality blows away the older composite and RF connections. It really makes a huge difference on LCD TVs!

THE FEATURES
UltraHDMI is designed to connect to modern TVs and monitors. It generates several different resolutions, and like all the other options, can be configured with the on-screen menu.

•480p60, 480i60
•576p50, 576i50
•720p60, 50
•1080p60, 50
•Audio: 48KHz, 16bit PCM

All the settings are configurable with an on-screen menu overlay that can be accessed during a game with a button combo. Every aspect of operation is fully configurable. Just want to play games? It works fine from the get go. Power users can tweak every setting to their liking. Optionally, it can apply a set of retro filters to make it "feel" more like a tube TV: scanline bleed, nonlinear brightness curve, HV anode sag... You can turn off all the processing for a zero-delay signal with less than 100 nanoseconds of lag. Otherwise, latency averages 1 frame (16ms).


HOW CAN I BUY IT?
I won't sell the mod myself. Installing the mod is pretty tricky and requires decent soldering skill. Instead, you'll buy them from installers/resellers. There are already people all over the world who are setting up to do installs. Final pricing is also up to them.


FINAL DETAILS
This mod cannot add more detail or resolution than the N64 already generates. It can't fix blurry textures, or add polygon detail. What you will get is a pixel perfect image of what the game produces, before it got smeared into analog TV goo.

Fancy ribbon cable for connecting the Reality Coprocessor to the kit. This type of cable could be really handy for other mods including the N64RGB!

[bobrocks95]

So wait, will the ribbon cable and board not be available to purchase, or they'll be available from resellers? Only being offered pre-installed limits things quite a bit and the wording is kind of vague.

[CkRtech]

A great question. I am hoping that by "reseller" he essentially means "distributor" - basically so he doesn't have to deal with vending.

And then of course there is the "final pricing is up to them." - something that doesn't really back my statement above. You'd think if it were available as a kit, the pricing would be standardized (in native currency) similar to Tim Worthington's kits.

Maybe it is 100% up to the installer/resellers what they do. Maybe we'll get lucky and those individuals will offer "just the kit" at a fair price.

[blizzz]

Info from early July was: Modders have to order 5+ kits at $127 each without getting a testing unit.

[bobrocks95]

Yikes, too rich for my blood, especially after the margins modders will want to make it worth their while.

I mean, $127 could be close to what it costs to make actually. But unlike say with the NESRGB, the next best connection choice if you don't buy the mod is pretty close in quality. RGB 240p is great for a lot of usage scenarios.

[CkRtech]

It hurts even more considering that no matter what sort of output you have, N64 games are still going to look terrible.

It seems like there is a possibility that you could feasibly order 5 kits (yikes), acquire several N64s on the cheap, mod them, sell four HDMI N64s, and keep the last one - possibly offsetting your cost depending on the demand for HDMI-ed N64 units.

If you are buying from a reseller ("reseller" and not simply "distributor"), then you are obviously going to see mark-up from the $127.

Seems like, at least for me, RGB N64 with upscaler is the way I am going to stay.

[RocketBelt]

What's the racing game on the right?

[zakruowrath]

What's the racing game on the right?

That would be Cruis'n USA

Yikes, too rich for my blood, especially after the margins modders will want to make it worth their while.

I mean, $127 could be close to what it costs to make actually. But unlike say with the NESRGB, the next best connection choice if you don't buy the mod is pretty close in quality. RGB 240p is great for a lot of usage scenarios.

The advantage of HDMI thou is it's all digital so no analogue interference and crystal clear audio and video even if it is N64 graphics. I think it's a nice option in that not everyone wants multiple SCART cables to deal with and you can easily just plug and play it with a modern TV without having to buy and use an upscaler or converter.

I think anything under $200 is a decent price for what it is. Any higher and that's when I'd draw the line but that's me personally.

There's pros and cons to every setup but honestly at this point, modern high quality video out of a console that's almost 20 years old is a luxury. Some will pay it, some won't

[noko_bombette]

And is this the only option to upscale the N64 to a LCD TV avoiding the delays when switching from one resolution to another (Donkey Kong 64, Killer Instinct Gold, Resident Evil 2...)?

[blizzz]

marqs scaler should be able to handle resolution changes without delay once it's finished.

[Xan]

The scanlines are a good idea, pretty obvious how the shots with them look better than the ones without. It helps a fair deal against that blurry crap look they would have otherwise. Unfortunate that it adds lag though.

I'm wondering whether a unique aspect of this could be output of 480i titles in 480p on the original hardware. I guess it's just some deinterlacing job? The page is certainly missing some info here. I don't know if these hi-res modes on N64 used field rendering or not, but the 480p output on the Zelda Collector's Edition N64 emulator is nothing to go by if they just internally quadrupled the original 320x240 res.

[zakruowrath]

Here's the forum thread on his website answering a few questions.

http://retroactive.be/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7

From what I've asked Marshall there's no black screen delay when switching between 240p and 480i.

[RGB32E]

Seems like, at least for me, RGB N64 with upscaler is the way I am going to stay.

It's pricy, but I could see myself installing at least 3 of these kits. Compared to a N64RGB or THS7314 N64 + XRGB-mini, it likely has the benefit of no chroma sub-sampling (4:2:2), so the resulting picture would likely be much sharper and clearer. Here's a native resolution emu? pic scaled 5x to 1080p with overscanning/top and bottom clipping. I could be happy with this! You can get close with a XRGB-mini, but it's not 100% due to the 4:2:2 conversion, that affects horizontal color resolution.

Spoiler

marqs scaler should be able to handle resolution changes without delay once it's finished.

Looking forward to that, but I'm not expecting it to ship this year.

[RGB32E]

Marshall's own forum thread for updates - http://www.retroactive.be/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7

A "de-blur" filter looks promising!

[FBX]

Very clever that you bumped the topic so that it looks like I duped it right next to it.

[Fudoh]

A "de-blur" filter looks promising!

this actually looks fantastic. Is there any word how they can achieve this ? I don't know how THIS particular game look in a classic N64, but if the major titles can actually look anywhere near this, this would be a major selling point for the HDMI mod in my book.

[CkRtech]

but if the major titles can actually look anywhere near this, this would be a major selling point for the HDMI mod in my book.

+1

[lettuce]

Marshall's own forum thread for updates - http://www.retroactive.be/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7

A "de-blur" filter looks promising!

damn!, how is this possible???.......im surprised theres not a shader for retroarch that has this effect by now!!?

[RGB32E]

Found a similar QVGA screen dump of the game and 2x scaled for comparison.



Marshall has created other filter/effects as well. I'd imagine he came up with an algorithm to sample adjacent pixels (maybe 3x3 mask) to derive an "de-blurred" pixel value.

[Fudoh]

I like it. Will be interesting to see some videos with this filter on titles we know in and out.

[marshallh]

Hi all
The deblur works by some heuristics to detect 320x240 games. So it works for about 90% of the games out there (and it smart enough to give up when it can't). When its de-blurring the picture is sharper than RGB will be. Games that use oddball sizes are something that will be even more difficult to recover original data, and I'm not sure if its possible for those yet (Gauntlet Legends uses 512x240, same with Rampage, etc).
I can't reverse all VI effects (like dither filterblur) but this gives a closer representation of the internal framebuffer. This would be really easy with LLE in emulator software but its pretty hard with just hardware since you have no idea how the original framebuffer was scaled.
Probably next video will be a splitscreen comparison vs. composite.



Here is after pixel double to 1080p (no scaling) and deblur:
http://retroactive.be/img/i/ra55e64d200dca5c563.png
You can see the magic square dither pattern in lots of games now
http://retroactive.be/img/i/ra55e64bd1c71fdafe1.png


So basically there are lots of tradeoffs you can play with regarding the processing (or lack of it). I still find myself going back to the scanlines over the sharp pixels for some reason. I think it tricks the brain into perceiving more detail than there actually is.

[Fudoh]

excellent! Is your filter exclusive to the HDMI N64 implementation or is there a software version, possibly a plug in for some video editing software ? I mean this is handsdown one of the greatest processing filters I've ever seen and could work wonders with dozends of mediocre video capture solutions.

[Mark]

This is radical. One question: does the installation of the UltraHDMI kit prevent use of the multiout connector or the RGB mod? I'd love to work both into one N64 for complete functional portability between CRTs and flatscreens.

[BuckoA51]

I'm on the reseller list and I'm down for getting an initial batch and will be selling as DIY kits and (with a bit of luck) offering a fitting service too. I was initially just going to get five and see how they sold but if people want to PM me their interest I may order more.

[Unseen]

excellent! Is your filter exclusive to the HDMI N64 implementation or is there a software version, possibly a plug in for some video editing software ? I mean this is handsdown one of the greatest processing filters I've ever seen and could work wonders with dozends of mediocre video capture solutions.

I would guess that he detects which pixels are the interpolated ones and replaces them with a copy of the previous pixel. Replicating this in a video editing program should be possible using down+upscaling with nearest-neighbour interpolation, but it needs a pixel-exact video capture from the N64 which is probably hard to achieve when you only have access to analog output signals.

You probably wouldn't want to use automated detection of de-blurrable frames in video editing software to avoid artifacts during transitions or misdetections. I think it's the more interesting part though, so here is my idea for an initial approach:

• Take three horizontally-adjacent pixels (let's call them 1 2 3)
• calculate the average of 1 and 3 (linear interpolation)
• check if 2 matches that average (with some tolerance)
• if yes, count it as a possibly interpolated pixel
• repeat the check for all triplets of pixels in a frame, keeping two seperate counts for even and odd columns
• if most of the pixels in the even or the odd columns in a complete frame are counted as possibly interpolated, start to replace the pixels in these columns with the one to their left (enable deblur)
• if deblurring is currently on and the count of possibly-interpolated pixels drops too low, disable deblurring because the game probably has switched to a different mode

It might be useful to detect frames with uniform color (e.g. all-black) and ignore them for blur detection purposes because they would be detected as completely blurred.

Although the above scheme may sound complicated, it could easily be implemented as part of a video processing pipeline on an FPGA.

[Dew]

Who would I message to buy the kit? If instructions provided would like to do it myself. Would prefer to buy from US.

[BuckoA51]

Stateside I'd imagine RetroRGB would be all over this, I'll drop him a message and see if he's going to be a reseller.

[RGB0b]

Yup, I'm on the reseller list as well and will be selling DIY kits as soon as they're available.

[RGB32E]

Yup, I'm on the reseller list as well and will be selling DIY kits as soon as they're available.

Oh good! Perhaps you can make arrangements to sell Kevtris' Hi-Def NES as well? Seems like Jason is procrastinating on selling DIY kits.

[marshallh]

This is radical. One question: does the installation of the UltraHDMI kit prevent use of the multiout connector or the RGB mod? I'd love to work both into one N64 for complete functional portability between CRTs and flatscreens.

Both can work at the same time. If you have the HDMI plugged in, the transmitter is turned on, there may be some barely perceptible interference on composite since the connectors are in close proximity.
Of course once you unplug HDMI it's disabled and you get 100% original output. The spltiscreen above I captured using that method.

The original RGB mod (where you just amp the existing analog rgb lines) won't be affected by this, so long as the wiring doesn't get in the way. Now, Tim's RGB mod taps some of the same digital lines as mine, but does so at the DAC where it's easier to solder. My FFC runs over that area so Tim's mod would need to be carefully wired with thin gauge wires laying flat from the point of attachment (not sticking up). I've not tested our mods together but they will probalby both work.


Also, I've been telling installers this but it bears repeating here: I cannot help people with installs. If you get a DIY kit the onus is on the person you bought it from to provide you with support and replacement parts if need be. I'm not sure why anybody would want to sell bare kits to people (that road ain't pretty but they can do whatever they want.