Pound Technology PS2/PS1 HDMI Cable

[Endymion]

The PS2, on the other hand, is capable of all its supported video modes over both YPbPr and RGB, the hitch being that the PS2 uses RGBS for 15kHz and RGsB for 31kHz+.

I know this. That's well documented on this site. I even have two of the Blaze VGA cables and boot discs from more than 12 years ago, been all up in that for several years now. What I am saying is that the PS2 will never use progressive video modes for RGB without being forced to do this. They aren't selling a memory card with a homebrew, or a boot disc, or anything at all like that to be used with this video cable. They're just instructing you to change your YPbPr to RGB. Doing this and nothing else will only ever give you 640x480, interlaced, and evidently they are telling you to do this because that is how this cable is meant to be used: it is transcoding RGB interlaced, and then working it up to 720p. There are so many different resolutions and video framebuffer modes used in the PS2 that they wisely chose to stay away from this for a mass-market just-plug-it-in solution. I don't know if you remember the bitching and griping about Xploder HDTV Player ten + years ago but let's just say it would not be a good way to go for this.

You do have a point, though; I was misinterpreting the guide as saying it would downscale 480p+ when using those video modes; but if it forces 480i, then, yeah, what happens if you try to enable 480p+ on a game like God of War or Gran Turismo? Does it ignore the mode change, or try to interpret the 480p signal as 480i, resulting in a garbled mess?

Without a cable to test we don't know what it will do. I'm sure that they know though, and it is probably undesirable whatever the effect, hence the instruction to use RGB settings.

[Unseen]

What I am saying is that the PS2 will never use progressive video modes for RGB without being forced to do this.

240p?

[Endymion]

You know what I mean.

In fact, in the case of PS2, aren't the games that use 240p just field rendering on the same lines to get that effect? Just asking this question makes me wonder if there will be issues with this cable when running games like Ico.

[tongshadow]

You know what I mean.

In fact, in the case of PS2, aren't the games that use 240p just field rendering on the same lines to get that effect? Just asking this question makes me wonder if there will be issues with this cable when running games like Ico.

Nope, I assure you that PS2 games that support 240p output them as real 240p, progressive.

You're probably thinking of bad ports like Megaman Collection, that run games that were originally 240p in 480i.
Or earlier PS2 era games like Virtua Fighter.

[Endymion]

Well then that is likely another reason that they upscaled this from a standard setup at all, in an effort to have 100% compatibility on the PS2 side. If they just passed along 240p then it would not work with every modern TV.

[nmalinoski]

Well then that is likely another reason that they upscaled this from a standard setup at all, in an effort to have 100% compatibility on the PS2 side. If they just passed along 240p then it would not work with every modern TV.

Same if they just passed along 480i over HDMI. They could have had 100% compatibility if they just line-doubled 240p and 480i, and then passed-through 480p, and either just passed-through 720p/1080i or decided to simply not support them.

[theclaw]

What I am saying is that the PS2 will never use progressive video modes for RGB without being forced to do this.

PS2 officially supported 480p for RGB. The Linux Kit VGA cable does just that.

240p is mostly unchanged from PS1.
I appreciate how Sony kept their cables more or less compatible over 20 years, all the way to the end of the PS3.

[Endymion]

What I am saying is that the PS2 will never use progressive video modes for RGB without being forced to do this.

PS2 officially supported 480p for RGB. The Linux Kit VGA cable does just that.

You mean, the Linux Kit VGA cable forces progressive video mode in RGB, which is exactly what I said. Even this video cable is useless for PS2 games in progressive RGB mode without another means of forcing it. (GSM selector, Xploder, etc.)

Same if they just passed along 480i over HDMI. They could have had 100% compatibility if they just line-doubled 240p and 480i, and then passed-through 480p, and either just passed-through 720p/1080i or decided to simply not support them.

If they had just passed through 480i to the HDMI, then they would not have 100% compatibility the moment a 240p game was displayed. Line doubling? Line doubling then upscaling? You're getting into switchbox territory which is not the plug & play they were trying to make here. It might sound distasteful to a roomful of enthusiasts who want no compromises but they actually took the simplest, most elegant no-nonsense engineering path.

[nmalinoski]

You do have a point, though; I was misinterpreting the guide as saying it would downscale 480p+ when using those video modes; but if it forces 480i, then, yeah, what happens if you try to enable 480p+ on a game like God of War or Gran Turismo? Does it ignore the mode change, or try to interpret the 480p signal as 480i, resulting in a garbled mess?

Without a cable to test we don't know what it will do. I'm sure that they know though, and it is probably undesirable whatever the effect, hence the instruction to use RGB settings.

I was thinking about this again, and the cable would have no power to prevent the console from outputting 480p+, not without some kind of boot disc that drops some code in memory to manage video output a la CodeBreaker. Being entirely outside the console, all it has to work with is the video signals it receives, so I expect it will either automatically downscale everything to 480i as I had initially assumed, or it will simply refuse to process anything that isn't 240p/480i.

What I am saying is that the PS2 will never use progressive video modes for RGB without being forced to do this.

PS2 officially supported 480p for RGB. The Linux Kit VGA cable does just that.

You mean, the Linux Kit VGA cable forces progressive video mode in RGB, which is exactly what I said. Even this video cable is useless for PS2 games in progressive RGB mode without another means of forcing it. (GSM selector, Xploder, etc.)

Not quite. The "VGA" adapter doesn't force anything; as I understand it, it's simply a passive adapter, where the video output is only wired for R, G, and B--no separate sync. That's what makes it incompatible with games; if you're playing a game in 15kHz RGB, there's no sync signal reaching the display. The only time it makes sense to use this adapter is if you didn't mod your console for full-time RGBS output, and you're able to blindly enable or otherwise force 480p+ for the game you want to play, and your display supports RGsB (or you've wired it to an RGB Interface), then that adapter should work fine.

As a side note, I expect this cable will work fine for YPbPr applications.

Same if they just passed along 480i over HDMI. They could have had 100% compatibility if they just line-doubled 240p and 480i, and then passed-through 480p, and either just passed-through 720p/1080i or decided to simply not support them.

If they had just passed through 480i to the HDMI, then they would not have 100% compatibility the moment a 240p game was displayed. Line doubling? Line doubling then upscaling? You're getting into switchbox territory which is not the plug & play they were trying to make here. It might sound distasteful to a roomful of enthusiasts who want no compromises but they actually took the simplest, most elegant no-nonsense engineering path.

Again, not quite. First, I wasn't suggesting that 480i should be passed through. I was agreeing with you that 240p over HDMI is not universally supported, and I was going further by saying that 480i over HDMI is also not universally supported.

To that extent, I suggested simply line-doubling 240p and 480i to 480p for transmission over HDMI, as pretty much all HDMI TVs support 480p. If you reread my post, I didn't say or suggest anything about upscaling beyond line-doubling 240p or the interlaced resolutions.

I'm not sure I understand your "switchbox territory" comment, as switchers don't normally have line-doubling or scaling functionality, and simply detecting 240p or interlaced video and then line-doubling requires far less processing power than scaling. Since this Pound cable ostensibly already has a scaler built in, would that not mean the Pound cable is already farther into "switchbox territory" than what I'm proposing?