YUV cables for SNES, Genesis and perhaps Dreamcast

[Ed Oscuro]

But HD's cables are targeted at SNES and Genesis systems, not the NES. If tim's board still could be used inside a Genesis or SNES style cable, that'd be one thing, but otherwise it doesn't seem relevant except as another way of doing it.

[ms06fz]

About the cables themselves, I'm more worried about the quality of the chip inside. I don't think regular component cables need especially much shielding, so what they are saying is mysterious. It's probably a question more of where they fall on this graph.

Video wires in close proximity to one another will experience some degree of cross-talk unless they're properly shielded from each other. In the case of YPbPr this could mean intense luminosity would bleed into the Pb/Pr lines (giving the picture a bit of purple hue) or that intense red or blue colors could bleed into the neighboring lines (making the picture brighter and more purple than it should be)

There's also the possibility of crosstalk with the audio lines, which could produce an audible buzzing.

No shielding on this cable is an absolute deal-breaker for me. I'll just build my own instead.

[antron]

But HD's cables are targeted at SNES and Genesis systems, not the NES. If tim's board still could be used inside a Genesis or SNES style cable, that'd be one thing, but otherwise it doesn't seem relevant except as another way of doing it.

it looks like tim's board requires luma, so it could be used in a SNES cable but not a Genesis cable.

[RGB32E]

But HD's cables are targeted at SNES and Genesis systems, not the NES. If tim's board still could be used inside a Genesis or SNES style cable, that'd be one thing, but otherwise it doesn't seem relevant except as another way of doing it.

it looks like tim's board requires luma, so it could be used in a SNES cable but not a Genesis cable.

I was merely suggesting that Tim's component solution would be best for those with NESRGB systems wired with a SNES connector, regardless of what retrovision has described so far.

[Kyle]

My biggest concern is their claim that 240p support is getting better. I bought an HDTV a little over a year ago specifically looking for 240p support. I walked around the store hooking up a Genesis with a SCART to component box to a ton of TVs.

It seemed like (even then) component was on the way out in favor of HDMI. But the more damning fact was that maybe 10 - 15% of the TVs I tried played nice with the signal. Let's say 2 or 3 out of 20.

I would be very curious to know if they are either making the claim with no real data or ignoring reality.

And this is coming from someone who would potentially be a buyer if the cables do a better job than the Specialty AV SCART box.

[blizzz]

You can find their reasoning at the bottom of this page: http://www.hdretrovision.com/240p-compatibility-issue

There are no hard facts to support our theory, besides the reality that our SNES & Genesis component cable prototypes have worked on every newer TV we tried which was manufactured within the past couple of years.

No mention on how many TVs they tried. Maybe only their own?

[Ed Oscuro]

My biggest concern is their claim that 240p support is getting better.

I think I ought to pass your data point along to them, since they asked for comments.

One can say that TVs are getting better at being responsive - but that's a totally different claim.

I think that 480i support should be with us for a long time, and unfortunately this isn't something the manufacturers talk about much.

The HD Retrovision folks aren't the ones who will give the solution to this problem, though they have hinted they are working on an upscaler which indicates to me that they do recognize it is a widespread problem. They are responsible for portraying the issue honestly as they're specifically marketing a solution for this issue.

[blizzz]

They published their ideas about their future scaler: http://www.hdretrovision.com/future-products/

They don't plan an RGB input. So you have to convert the RGB signal from the console to YPbPr and then back to RGB inside of the scaler. Doesn't look like they're far into development. I don't have hopes for this project, but who knows.

[Pasky]

Whatever it is they're using to transcode has the same issues the other solutions have (ba6592F etc..). Blues become more greenish, and greens become a darker green. It looks rather awful imo.

[Lord of Pirates]

They published their ideas about their future scaler: http://www.hdretrovision.com/future-products/

They don't plan an RGB input. So you have to convert the RGB signal from the console to YPbPr and then back to RGB inside of the scaler. Doesn't look like they're far into development. I don't have hopes for this project, but who knows.

There's also mention of a converter on that page. Why would they design an s-video->component converter over an S-Video or RGB->component transcoder ?

[mufunyo]

Heh, the Ambery SDV1 already converts 240p composite/s-video into 480i RGB/YPbPr. I originally bought it to convert NES composite to RGB at acceptable quality for capturing (this was before the NESRGB), but I quickly noticed that it doesn't preserve the original timing of the video signal. Would be two birds with one stone for people with TVs that don't have an S-video input and also don't support 240p. The box doesn't really add any significant lag, I once connected the RGB signal while using the untouched composite as csync, and the image was shifted to the right, so I'd say it adds a quarter scanline of lag or so (a few microseconds).

Also, a slightly more general rant/musing:

Instead of providing these silly end-user trinkets, a much more interesting thing to crowdfund (imho) would be a video processing ASIC designed for TVs that sits closest to the display panel in the processing chain. You could have a single port designed to accept composite, s-video, component, RGBs (SCART), RGsB (PS2), VGA, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort, and design the chip with things like 240p support, low latency, "hard pixel" upscaling, etc. in mind. A second digital input could accept alpha-blended overlays from the TV to show the OSD on top of the image, and a passthrough mode would pass any other signal through to the display panel as if the chip wasn't there.

You could aggressively market such technology by exclusively using a red DVI-I connector (a DVI-I connector can carry all the aforementioned signals), and having some kind of logo that the TV manufacturer can put on the box to signify that this TV set is exceptionally suited to gaming. You could develop a business model where you gain additional revenue through selling DVI cables for specific console hookups like the Nintendo Multi-AV, and sell switch boxes that let you connect multiple inputs to the same "Red" connector. All you'd need then is to develop the ASIC, secure funding, and strike deals with one or more TV manufacturers.

[Ed Oscuro]

That would be closer to what they seem to be promising, but it wouldn't be a replacement for a good cheap SNES / Genesis RGB to YUV cable.

That said, at $30+ a pop I think it starts to make a lot more sense to just buy a multipurpose transcoder box and be done with it.

[blizzz]

mufunyo, that sounds very similar to what NVidia did with the G-Sync module. That's an expensive FPGA based scaler which gives a huge improvement for PC gaming, yet it doesn't look like it will be widely available. Creating something similar for TVs and make it "perfect" for retro games would be great, but which company would increase their price by ~$50 to add slightly better support for very old games. What counts for modern consoles is a low input lag mode for HDMI input. And we already get that on all good TVs as the gaming mode.

[mufunyo]

And we already get that on all good TVs as the gaming mode.

Game mode is throwing a bone. It reduces lag but never eliminates it or even brings it down to acceptable levels, imho. Compared to a CRT or gaming monitor, TVs are sluggish beasts even when set to "Game mode". The problem is the signal chain is just too long. Even when you disable a bunch of processing, the pipeline is just too long. This is why you need a chip that sits right behind the display panel, which is able to pass through signal from the conventional chain, and bypass it completely when set to the gaming input.

[blizzz]

I'm not saying that the game modes are perfect, but that's as much as you can expect from TV manufacturers. It's enough to make casual buyers happy.

[BuckoA51]

Whatever it is they're using to transcode has the same issues the other solutions have (ba6592F etc..). Blues become more greenish, and greens become a darker green. It looks rather awful imo.

Like you I preferred the image on the left and raised the same point in my article, I got this response back on Twitter, apparently the colour is wrong in the left screenshot:- https://twitter.com/HDRetrovision/statu ... 17/photo/1

[blizzz]

Interesting to see that different SNES revisions have different composite colors. https://twitter.com/HDRetrovision/statu ... 88/photo/1

They also replied to me with a screenshot from a 1CHIP SNES with their cable: https://twitter.com/HDRetrovision/statu ... 32/photo/1
Looks good. It might be a decent option for people in the US with a component TV, component splitter and something like a PEXHDCAP.

But on the other hand I've read a couple posts in the last days from different people that had problems because their TVs don't support 240p on the component input. It really seems to be a bigger issue than they expect it to be.

[BuckoA51]

I suppose the "way it's supposed to look" is entirely dependent on how Nintendo had their monitors set when developing the game in the first place. It's not unthinkable that they knew composite colours would change slightly and the shot on the left is what they were working with. Neither is it unthinkable that they didn't actually calibrate anything and just made the game with whatever colours looked right at the time.

[blizzz]

There are several examples where composite has (subjectively) better colors than RGB. There's really not much they can do about it. They could optimize the transcoder for certain games, but that would make the colors worse in other games or homebrew.

[Ed Oscuro]

And we already get that on all good TVs as the gaming mode.

Game mode is throwing a bone. It reduces lag but never eliminates it or even brings it down to acceptable levels, imho. Compared to a CRT or gaming monitor, TVs are sluggish beasts even when set to "Game mode". The problem is the signal chain is just too long. Even when you disable a bunch of processing, the pipeline is just too long. This is why you need a chip that sits right behind the display panel, which is able to pass through signal from the conventional chain, and bypass it completely when set to the gaming input.

TV manufacturers already reduce component count to its lowest level, so it ultimately does come back to a "game mode" which disables certain types of processing on the same chip. Talking about a different display pipeline to save on transfer points doesn't make sense to me.

Also a number of monitors have appeared with extremely low input lag numbers, in the few millisecond range. No TVs as of yet but I don't see why they can't follow those developments. There's fairly similar processing going on.