VP30 with 240p input as recognized 480i?

[telemetry]

Hello all, new to the boards, hope not to waste your time. I recently acquired an iScan VP30 to use with my Saturn specifically (among other retro consoles) after some rather obsessive reading through Fudoh's reviews and these boards. I understand it's a little downgrade from the XRGB* series, but it seemed pretty versatile and I couldn't convince my wife to go over a $200 limit for this hobby.

I am happy with the quality of the scaling, but one part that gets me is I can't quite figure out how the VP30 is treating 240p from the Saturn. It seems to alternately recognize 240p, and at other times treat it as 480i.

Rather obsessively playing Radiant Silvergun, it seems that the VP30 behaves in two different ways (coming in with my awareness that Radiant Silvergun uses 480i titles/240p gameplay, so I understand there's an unavoidable transition there[1]). But the VP30 seems slightly confused about how to treat the gameplay:

- Half the time it treats it as 480i input, which means there are pretty evident flickering scanline artifacts shown in flash effects (engine exhaust from ships, damage indicators when hitting ships)
- And half it appears to do a perfect 240p scale (smooth flash effects, no flickering scanline artifacts).

This VP30 has no ABT102 daughtercard, so my understanding from Fudoh's analysis is that it should behave identical to a iScan Ultra (SI503-behavior), which should correctly detect 240p content.

I can't seem to predictably control it - In fact I had convinced myself I made a mistake ("Looks like I made the wrong choice with 240p") the first day I got it, then I noticed at times it performed exactly like I hoped, and I can't figure any options that would've changed the behavior.

Looking around the forum, Fudoh comments that the ABT102 removes the ability of the VP30 to recognize 240p content (http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 8#p1083418), but since I don't have one of those, I figure it should work correctly. With the ABT102, "the signal gets treated like 480i" (http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 2#p1083422), implying by converse that without the ABT102 I shouldn't have a problem. (Indeed Fudoh's call-out of the VP30 on his Top-5 240p list is explicitly without the ABT102).

Maybe I misunderstood? The behavior is a little unclear to me.

[Fudoh]

I have indeed NEVER seen a SiI504 mistreat 240p as 480i.

You could check if the Film Mode setting (off vs. auto) makes any difference.

[telemetry]

Toggling that setting seems to have an effect, music to my eyes! Much cleaner flashes and no artifacts with lines or shadows flickering.

I can't seem to reverse it (back to the bad behavior) now though, whether I have film mode on or off, but it behaves correctly for me after messing with this setting. Probably still have a lot to learn. Thanks for the tip!

[Skips]

I had a VP30 about a year ago

When using it it would periodically just switch film mode on or off randomly and I would either have to switch it back or it flat out would think its off. I either upgraded the firmware to 1.14 or downgraded to 1.09. I can't remember specifically but one of those two versions had the problem and the other fixed the problem. Pain in the ass part is though you will need a PC or laptop with a serial connection, don't trust those USB to serial adapters as they may or may not work with file transfers correctly. Using one that does not work right will cause the upgrade to fail, fucking the VP30 up quite a bit. If that happens you have to boot to some maintenance mode (cant remember how its done) and force an upgrade.

[RocketBelt]

Where did you download old firmware versions from?

[telemetry]

Well, this VP30 here only has firmware 1.06.

For reference I've seen linked an example of a working active-USB-to-serial adapter: http://www.amazon.de/Digitus-DA-70156-U ... =usb+rs232

However, since it's working correctly and there seem to be a lot of "firmware woes" especially in the DVDO Edge thread, I think I may just leave it as is.