Non-powered active HDMI to VGA adapters for OSSC

[Xer Xian]

It seems that demand for DACs has pretty much vanished, I made a casual £30 offer on eBay for a 3D Fury and actually won it for £21..

Assuming the seller doesn't cancel the auction, does anyone know how to re-purpose it as a scaler? (I think the D/A conversion itself isn't any better on it than the Fury 2 or 3). I've found the scaler firmware but the manual doesn't say anything about how to upgrade.

[BazookaBen]

HD Fury has a discord, you can ask there, and they usually respond in 24 hours.

So regarding the 240p mode on OSSC, do we know what horizontal resolution it is putting out? It might be putting out something like 1440x240 to get a high enough pixel clock for most DAC's.

[Blair]

My vp50 Pro just lists the 240p (pass-through) output from the OSSC as "240p RGB digital" my vp50(non pro) sees it as 480i ( common bug with that model)

Although I did these tests with much earlier firmware so things might have changed since then. Similar to how much functionality my HD 3000 has now. Thanks to the most recent ossc updates.

[orange808]

HD Fury has a discord, you can ask there, and they usually respond in 24 hours.

So regarding the 240p mode on OSSC, do we know what horizontal resolution it is putting out? It might be putting out something like 1440x240 to get a high enough pixel clock for most DAC's.

Once the HDFury converts to analog video, there is no horizontal resolution.

Also:
https://github.com/marqs85/ossc/blob/re ... eo_modes.h

[BazookaBen]

HD Fury has a discord, you can ask there, and they usually respond in 24 hours.

So regarding the 240p mode on OSSC, do we know what horizontal resolution it is putting out? It might be putting out something like 1440x240 to get a high enough pixel clock for most DAC's.

Once the HDFury converts to analog video, there is no horizontal resolution.

Also:
https://github.com/marqs85/ossc/blob/re ... eo_modes.h

Yeah, I know horizontal resolution isn't really a thing for analog signals, I was just wonder what Gunstar's OSSC was outputting to the vertex.

[Xer Xian]

The OSSC's 240p passthrough is reported as 1440x240 by an Extron scaler I have here. I could get a TvOne scaler to feed a digital 320x240 signal to a Fury but I'm not that motivated to try it..

I dropped an email to the Fury guys about re-flashing the 3D Fury, we'll see if they get back to me.

[Xer Xian]

So I got a reply from HD Fury, flashed the scaler firmware, plugged a SNES mini to it, hooked the thing up and was left utterly bewildered by the sight before me..

Without the 3DFury:



with the 3DFury (both hdmi and component out):



Well isn't it interesting..

[orange808]

So I got a reply from HD Fury, flashed the scaler firmware, plugged a SNES mini to it, hooked the thing up and was left utterly bewildered by the sight before me..

Without the 3DFury:



with the 3DFury (both hdmi and component out):



Well isn't it interesting..

Looks like a color space thing. Can you force RGB on your display?

[Xer Xian]

Believe me, not a color space issue the 3DFury somehow recreates not only an analog output, but (worse-than) composite artifacts as well, to let you dive right back into the eighties

Seriously, either my unit is broken, or something went wrong with the re-flashing. I need to muster some motivation to look into it, but I'm not terribly inclined right now..

[nmalinoski]

From a distance, that looks like a giant, high-res DMG GameBoy screen.

[orange808]

Just tried the Kramer FC-32.

I basically rage quit testing it. It's in excellent condition; I don't believe I have a bad unit. In fact, I think this one is NOS.

- Only accepts 480p from the OSSC. No 240p pass through or x3, x4, x5 line multiples.

- Doesn't work with all my PC CRT monitors! (Seriously! A DAC that doesn't work with some CRT's!)

- As the manual points out, it is designed for strictly VESA standard signals and it seems to only accept and convert inputs that are very close to VESA.

- Doesn't handle HDCP. (Not a surprise for a DVI box that is mass produced and sold by a company that operates outside of China.)

There's no black crush. It outputs both component or RGB and seems to handle color space conversion well. Unfortunately, it doesn't accept most inputs and it literally doesn't work with two of my three PC CRT's.

Yuk.

[Xer Xian]

That's interesting orange, I think you managed to pick the worst DAC on the planet.

I got the 3DFury to work now. As shown above, the firmware that they suggested me to install was basically non-functional, but among the stuff they sent me there was also an older version that I found to be mostly fine.

I say mostly, because the aspect ratio setting is glitchy. It only works in a few restricted scenarios (certain input resolutions and certain output resolution - up to 720p). In any case, it only allows to select between original AR, stretched and 1:1. Beside that, the Fury does not like when you change the input res, and only syncs after changing the output res (so you need to go back and forth).

The upscaling is not bad, but not especially great either. Below are my captures (with self-explanatory labels):
http://image.ibb.co/bCh5Ec/3x240p.jpg
http://image.ibb.co/fYMAfH/3x240p_SL.jpg (these are 81% scanlines!)
http://image.ibb.co/dqmMnx/4x240p.jpg
http://image.ibb.co/d3yTZc/5x240p.jpg
http://image.ibb.co/evqaEc/5x240p_SL.jpg (very cool)
http://image.ibb.co/b6Tj7x/480p.jpg
http://image.ibb.co/hHvaEc/480p_ingame_SL.jpg (again, broken SL)
http://image.ibb.co/dB0xSx/960p.jpg (forgot to test upsample2x. SL are still broken btw)

480i passthrough was not accepted. Probably it doesn't like the OSSC's passthrough of 1440x480 (960i was accepted, but useless).

For some input resolutions, the AR is off - there's nothing that can be done within the device itself.

It would have been nice to have a functional 1:1 framed output for scanlines, but again, I couldn't get it to work for 1080p output.

All in all, I think the 3DFury is pretty useless as an OSSC companion, at least for scaling. I've not tested it as a passthrough DAC - in fact, I don't know if it can even act as a pure transcoder with the scaler firmware.

[Fudoh]

At times HDFury was weird color sampling. I think it's the same what people were seeing on their FHD to 4K solutions. Some of the artefacts almost look like 4:2:0 sampling (especially the discoloring between the scanlines hint at 4:2:0).

[Xer Xian]

Yeah, it only makes sense considering that the Fury 4s was mainly intended to process movie material. After all, they reshelled and resold it as HDFury x4, pushing on the frame multiplying feature.

[Fudoh]

But given their claims and coming from their losless DAC solutions, 4:2:0 gives it a really bad look, when all the other home theater processors at least manage to keep it at 4:2:2 internally. I mean the idea of using the HDFIV as a scaler for video games isn't this far off, when somebody purchased it earlier on for getting VGA from a Playstation or stripping HDCP from a PS3 while staying digital.

[orange808]

But given their claims and coming from their losless DAC solutions, 4:2:0 gives it a really bad look, when all the other home theater processors at least manage to keep it at 4:2:2 internally. I mean the idea of using the HDFIV as a scaler for video games isn't this far off, when somebody purchased it earlier on for getting VGA from a Playstation or stripping HDCP from a PS3 while staying digital.

That's true, but for some people, the Linker will still give better results than the blurry or laggy upscaling they get from their displays. It does come out fairly clean and there's no ringing. So, I still prefer it over other inexpensive solutions like the iScan Micro.

I also get better results by forcing the Linker into RGB color space.

[Fudoh]

did you follow the more recent Vertex discussions ? (I didn't.) Do you happen to know if the Vertex's and the Linker's upscaling performance are identical ?

[orange808]

did you follow the more recent Vertex discussions ? (I didn't.) Do you happen to know if the Vertex's and the Linker's upscaling performance are identical ?

I haven't followed the Vertex, either. I'll wait a while and try to borrow one or pick one up cheap.

I'm hoping Marseille comes out with a new mCable product with more control over the "enhancement" features.

[headlesshobbs]

I decided to grab another adapter since I was at Walmart and it looks like they replaced Berkin with their Onn brand which was going for $17. I'll have to say it is a lot more color accurate and almost had me fooled into thinking I was on a direct hdmi connection while trying 1080p material. Too bad it doesn't have an audio jack.

Now I've been doing a bit of testing and I can conclude that using vga cables as opposed to hdmi cables is such a poor choice as every cord I can dig up either has ghosting or some other issues. Digital clears up all this and I think we need more adapters with a direct connection like the Tendak since hooking it up directly to the display kills any chance of the image getting it's quality degraded. Digital truly is best!

[fernan1234]

Has anyone ever gotten color depth upscaling (16-235 -> 0-255) working with an HD Fury (X3)? It doesn't seem to do anything.

Edit: The device actually only expands YUV HDMI signals, not RGB Limited. Theoretically they could do a firmware update to do the latter as well, but it looks like the product is no longer supported.

I didn't know this. Thanks for posting this info. I mainly use my HDFury3 with a PS3 and Wii U. Games on these output RGB limited rather than YUV, right? Well, at least playing Blurays on the HDMI should benefit from the color depth upscaling.

[LEGENOARYNINLIA]

Any idea where to get a Tendak female HDMI to male VGA/DSUB for cheap in the EU? I already got another Tendak model and it's amazing with the PS3, but it's not so useful with a PC since it kind of hangs out and puts stress on the HDMI port.

[maxtherabbit]

I decided to grab another adapter since I was at Walmart and it looks like they replaced Berkin with their Onn brand which was going for $17. I'll have to say it is a lot more color accurate and almost had me fooled into thinking I was on a direct hdmi connection while trying 1080p material. Too bad it doesn't have an audio jack.

Now I've been doing a bit of testing and I can conclude that using vga cables as opposed to hdmi cables is such a poor choice as every cord I can dig up either has ghosting or some other issues. Digital clears up all this and I think we need more adapters with a direct connection like the Tendak since hooking it up directly to the display kills any chance of the image getting it's quality degraded. Digital truly is best!

No offence but that's just because every VGA cable you have sucks

[headlesshobbs]

Direct connection to the port, only cables being used are hdmi.

You use a vga cable and you're already degrading yourself.

[orange808]

Nope. If you aren't getting a clean signal using quality RGBHV cables and a good DAC, you have other issues with your setup--and you need to address them.

[BazookaBen]

Has anyone ever gotten color depth upscaling (16-235 -> 0-255) working with an HD Fury (X3)? It doesn't seem to do anything.

Edit: The device actually only expands YUV HDMI signals, not RGB Limited. Theoretically they could do a firmware update to do the latter as well, but it looks like the product is no longer supported.

They still support the HD Fury 3 on their discord. Hope on it and ask them about it

[Shelcoof]

I decided to grab another adapter since I was at Walmart and it looks like they replaced Berkin with their Onn brand which was going for $17. I'll have to say it is a lot more color accurate and almost had me fooled into thinking I was on a direct hdmi connection while trying 1080p material. Too bad it doesn't have an audio jack.

Now I've been doing a bit of testing and I can conclude that using vga cables as opposed to hdmi cables is such a poor choice as every cord I can dig up either has ghosting or some other issues. Digital clears up all this and I think we need more adapters with a direct connection like the Tendak since hooking it up directly to the display kills any chance of the image getting it's quality degraded. Digital truly is best!

No offence but that's just because every VGA cable you have sucks

It's true if your using low quality or crappy VGA cables your going to be getting a terrible image.

A good example of this are the cheap third party VGA cables sold for the XBox 360. Originally I thought it was just the connection but later upgraded and bought official microsoft VGA cables and found the image quality to be so much better.

Anytime I can substitute an SVGA cable with a VGA cable I do it just for piece of mind.

[SuperSpongo]

Just a little heads up: I have the Tendak Dongle with the little piece of HDMI cable coming out of it. I used it on my OSSC with a Mega Drive attached and was getting sync drops. First I thought it was the OSSC, then the monitor. I put an Extron interface inbetween which switches the Led to orange when it's losing sync. That way I found out that the Tendak is the culprit for the sync drops in 2X mode. Higher modes work fine, but those are not supported by my particular monitor.

So I guess I'm looking for another dongle besides the Tendak. Any ideas?

There's a polish shop on eBay that sells refurbished Gefen DVI to VGA adapters for 33 Euros, but they look slightly different from the picture in the wiki. Will they work the same?

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre ... 2455117426

I could also get the HDfury Nano for 27 Euro from Amazon

https://www.amazon.de/HDFury-HDF0020-1- ... 2-fkmrnull

[Xer Xian]

Go with the HDfury Nano. It performs very well (especially with signals well below the max accepted bandwidth, like 2x), has audio out and is powered via USB.

[Gunstar]

I saw someone mention that Kev was playing on one of the analogue consoles on a B/PVM via their new DAC, can't remember where I read that though but it's nice to hear that there's at least a prototype out there.

Also came across this whilst looking for the previous bit of info (source Forbes):

When you plug a 32X into Mega Sg, it is totally compatible with it. It sees the accessory just like an original Sega system would. It’s the reliance on analog multi-link cables that makes it impossible to support with an HD only system. With that said, we're going to be releasing a really fancy DAC for all Analogue systems that can bring support to analog only accessories like 32X. In addition, the Analogue DAC is totally designed in house and will offer RGB, Component, S-Video, Composite, Analog audio and more. All designed specifically for every Analogue product and will work with every Analogue system, giving literally the highest quality analog output possible. Nothing ever released comes even close to how good this is. It’ll work with all future products too. So the idea is: you buy one DAC (reasonably priced) and can use it on every Analogue system for all your analog A/V needs. That means: compatibility with anything that needs a CRT like light gun games and analog only accessories like 32X are something we will be working to support.

Sounds pretty amazing with all those various outputs.

[SuperSpongo]

Go with the HDfury Nano. It performs very well (especially with signals well below the max accepted bandwidth, like 2x), has audio out and is powered via USB.

Thanks for the input! The HDfury does look like a great solution. The wiki says it does not need an external PSU, though, which would be my preference. Is the external PSU needed for 5X mode, like on some other listed devices?