XRGB-mini Framemeister

[Fudoh]

If SYNC MODE is set to AUTO, it only enables VSYNC if the input is anything but straight 60.00 or 50.00 hz. If input is 50.00 or 60.00 hz, it keeps it off. Yes? It makes sense in my head.

no, the range for enabled v-sync is actually quite wide. 59.5 to 60.5 at the very least. I'm pretty sure that even an unmodded MVS runs v-synced at 59.15Hz (but here the TV set will most likely introduce some judder).

It might be a bug related to 50Hz sources. Do you have any other 50Hz systems running on your Mini ?

[jamisonia]

For use with FBX profiles, how does one know the output resolution of the game in question? The Full Status screen always just says 240, I've never seen those other resolutions.

[FBX]

For use with FBX profiles, how does one know the output resolution of the game in question? The Full Status screen always just says 240, I've never seen those other resolutions.

Research via Google and also emulator experience. The Framemeister only reports the basic encoded output signal and not the internal game resolution. For many years, I didn't even know the Genesis had a 256x224 mode and only learned about it when I started using Kega Fusion some years back. Speaking of which, I'm now on the letter "G" in testing the entire Genesis library for games that use 256 mode for main gameplay. Of the 225 titles I've tested thus far, 60 of them ended up being 256 mode games. Almost all the 256 mode games are low development budget crap titles or sports (not a fan of most sports games).

[desram]

Newbie scanline question, finding this thread a little unwieldy to search but maybe this hasn't been asked -exactly-.
I've been messing around with FBX's profiles and I'm curious if anyone else has experienced the following:
PS2 Component (480i) profile, Set HDMI Output to 1080p, scanlines appear unevenly spaced, but this seems to be addressed by tweaking the DEC_LINES1/2 settings. However, for some reason I get horrible flickering unless I crank up the DEC_SMOOTH to max. Lower DEC_LINE settings also seem to make the flicker worse.
PS2 Component (480i) profile, Set HDMI Output to 720p, scanlines appear evenly spaced but alternate between dark lines and less dark lines, no flicker

I don't think I'm having these issues with the 240p stuff I've tried. Chasing scanlines now because to my eye it makes the 480i stuff look less awful.
Also not really clear on what the difference between INT_X and DEC_X settings are, seems to depend on 720P/1080P out. I guess my problem is mainly that I don't know what I'm doing with all the scanline settings.

Relevant Hardware:
Vizio 60" E-series LED
xrgb mini (firmware 2.00a), HDMI out to TV
ps2 slim via sony component cables

[jamisonia]

or sports (not a fan of most sports games).

I doubt most retro gamers are!

You answered my question though. I basically wanted to know of the Mini's status screen should be telling me the exact resolution.

[opt2not]

Ugh, the hipster word "retro" always makes me cringe. Anyway, I like the older sports games.

Cyberball and Hat trick are a couple of my favourite ones. NHL '94 was great and still more fun than any of the new EA shite they put out. Neo Turf Masters, Windjammers, Mutant League Hockey & Football, Outrun (hey racing's a sport right?), Sega Bass Fishing...all great titles.
Please don't put all gamers into the same box as yours, we all have our different tastes.

As for your question: What are you playing that always says 240p? 'Cause perhaps you're not seeing other resolutions because you're not feeding the Mini other resolutions.

[Fudoh]

What are you playing that always says 240p? 'Cause perhaps you're not seeing other resolutions because you're not feeding the Mini other resolutions.

The Mini will just tell you the SIGNAL, including any visible underscan, so only 240p, 384p, 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p and possibly a few VESA resolutions. Visible underscan (e.g. the 48 lines of black on a SMS 240p signal) are treated like active lines by the Mini.

[CkRtech]

NHL '94 was great

I proudly display the classic NHL games next to all of my other games.

[jamisonia]

Ugh, the hipster word "retro" always makes me cringe.

[FBX]

Ugh, the hipster word "retro" always makes me cringe. Anyway, I like the older sports games.

I do too, provided they are actually done "well". For example, I thought Arnold Palmer Golf was very well done. In that regard, 256 res games are generally playing to 'ignorance' rather than experience and knowledge of what makes a good game great. That's what offends me most about what I've been finding out thus far about the Genesis library.

[broken harbour]

Ugh, the hipster word "retro" always makes me cringe. Anyway, I like the older sports games.

Cyberball and Hat trick are a couple of my favourite ones. NHL '94 was great and still more fun than any of the new EA shite they put out. Neo Turf Masters, Windjammers, Mutant League Hockey & Football, Outrun (hey racing's a sport right?), Sega Bass Fishing...all great titles.

I still play NHL 94 and the two Mutant League games to this day, love them.... even if MLH is kinda choppy.

[12345]

@FBX
Since you've tested so many systems already, is there any setting for SYNC_LEVEL you use by default? I'm kind of having trouble finding the balance between the profiles I generally use. Thanks!

[FBX]

@FBX
Since you've tested so many systems already, is there any setting for SYNC_LEVEL you use by default? I'm kind of having trouble finding the balance between the profiles I generally use. Thanks!

Sync level shouldn't be a factor at all if you use a boosted sync cable from retro_console_accessories. I've only encountered one Bugs Bunny game thus far that seemed to have trouble with sync on my library test.

[darcagn]

Ugh, the hipster word "retro" always makes me cringe. Anyway, I like the older sports games.

Cyberball and Hat trick are a couple of my favourite ones. NHL '94 was great and still more fun than any of the new EA shite they put out. Neo Turf Masters, Windjammers, Mutant League Hockey & Football, Outrun (hey racing's a sport right?), Sega Bass Fishing...all great titles.
Please don't put all gamers into the same box as yours, we all have our different tastes.

As for your question: What are you playing that always says 240p? 'Cause perhaps you're not seeing other resolutions because you're not feeding the Mini other resolutions.

Let's not forget Tecmo Bowl; I love playing the NES Tecmo Bowl ROMhacks with the updated rosters!

[opt2not]

Let's not forget Tecmo Bowl; I love playing the NES Tecmo Bowl ROMhacks with the updated rosters!

Oh I completely forgot about Tecmo Bowl! I've been meaning to try out the updated roster hacks, thanks for reminding me!

[opt2not]

I was thinking we should collaborate on an email to Micomsoft detailing the things we want fixed and the features we want added to the Framemiester. I've got a laundry list of things for both categories in my head right now, and I'm thinking about getting them all written down in detail to fire off.

I put some thought into this, and this might be a crazy one...or it might have been asked before but I was wondering if it could be feasible for the mini to take a vertical displayed input and output a 90 degree (choice of left/right) rotated image. This would be mainly for arcade pcb's that are in vertical screen orientation being able to be displayed on a horizontal set-up.
Just thinking if the Mini is processing the video information, couldn't it rearrange the pixels to change the orientation of the image? Just a wild thought.

[desram]

Just a little addendum to my earlier post. Noticed that changing the OUTPUT_RANGE value from Full to Limited made the flicker mostly go away. It still flickers pretty bad if I drop DEC_SMOOTH below around 90.
Current settings that seem to look OK (to me) are
DEC_LINE1 90
DEC_LINE2 98
DEC_SMOOTH 108
(this is at 1080P)
So confused

[Fudoh]

Image rotation Just a wild thought.

it's on the feature request list we submitted to Micomsoft quite some time ago.

Wether it's possible or not depends on the hardware design. PROBABLY not. The FPGA stage (that's where the linedoubling for 240p sources happens before the information is passed on to the Marvell for scaling) and it's memory buffer would a) need to be able to handle more than linedoubled SD resolutions and would b) require enough memory to buffer a full frame instead of just a few lines. That's neccessary in order to output an incoming pixel columns as a line.

[thrash75]

If SYNC MODE is set to AUTO, it only enables VSYNC if the input is anything but straight 60.00 or 50.00 hz. If input is 50.00 or 60.00 hz, it keeps it off. Yes? It makes sense in my head.

no, the range for enabled v-sync is actually quite wide. 59.5 to 60.5 at the very least. I'm pretty sure that even an unmodded MVS runs v-synced at 59.15Hz (but here the TV set will most likely introduce some judder).

It might be a bug related to 50Hz sources. Do you have any other 50Hz systems running on your Mini ?

No, not at the same time. I briefly hooked up my PAL PS2 to it via composite (ordered component cables for it now). That's all. This is all very puzzling to me. C64 PAL should output around 50.12Hz, and the irregular motion I see on the screen (scrolltexts "chop" every 5 seconds, or so) supports that claim. But the XRGB mini is apparently sniffing 50.00Hz input.. There may be something I don't know about the C64 in this regard. Slightly frustrating..

The funny thing is, if I hook the C64 up to my TV (Sony KD-55X8505BAE) directly via composite, the scrolling motion is smooth as butter 100% of the time. But I'm guessing the TV matches the hz from the C64 automatically, in that case?

So, in my current case.. With the XRGB mini I get a superior picture quality, but lose the smooth motion. *sigh* Guess I can't have everything. Oh well, It seems, I may have to live with it. I'll keep an eye on the firmware updates.. Oh, maybe I could try an ealier firmware, just for kicks? Hmm..

Thanks a lot for trying to help.

-Brian

[tacoguy64]

Have any of you guys ever tried using the mini with an OLED tv or a 4k tv?
What are your thoughts on that?

I think pretty much all OLED TVs are 4k. At least all the ones I can see at Best Buy's are. This might not be good for retro games because since the XRGB outputs at 1080p, that means the 4k TV is going to be doing some of the upscaling on its own, which kind of defeats the purpose of the XRGB.

Actually both 720p and 1080p scales perfectly to Ultra HD. I always assumed that most of us uses 720p from the XRGB-mini, since that's the only choice if you want nice scanlines. 1080p may look sharper, but the pixels gets stretched unevenly, unless you choose to fiddle with the zoom settings and overscan the picture :/

The fact that both 720p and 1080p scales so well to Ultra HD is the only exciting thing about a resolution that high IMO. There will never be a PS4 or Xbox One game that runs in that resolution anyway, and even if they somehow manage to pull that off, it will likely run like crap, or be limited to some artsy indie stuff I don't care about anyway.
The next generation of consoles may support Ultra HD, but probably won't have physical media, so I'm not gonna buy those anyway

I know that there are 1080p oleds. Just not very commercially available right now due to all the problems they are still having with them. I was hoping for pc monitors manufacturers would have released oled monitors by now but it seems like we are still a bit ways off. At least it's good to know that the xrgb produces a really nice image with an oled tv.

[thrash75]

It might be a bug related to 50Hz sources. Do you have any other 50Hz systems running on your Mini ?

No, not at the same time. I briefly hooked up my PAL PS2 to it via composite (ordered component cables for it now). That's all. This is all very puzzling to me. C64 PAL should output around 50.12Hz, and the irregular motion I see on the screen (scrolltexts "chop" every 5 seconds, or so) supports that claim. But the XRGB mini is apparently sniffing 50.00Hz input.. There may be something I don't know about the C64 in this regard. Slightly frustrating..

The funny thing is, if I hook the C64 up to my TV (Sony KD-55X8505BAE) directly via composite, the scrolling motion is smooth as butter 100% of the time. But I'm guessing the TV matches the hz from the C64 automatically, in that case?

So, in my current case.. With the XRGB mini I get a superior picture quality, but lose the smooth motion. *sigh* Guess I can't have everything. Oh well, It seems, I may have to live with it. I'll keep an eye on the firmware updates.. Oh, maybe I could try an ealier firmware, just for kicks? Hmm..

A little update on my situation.. I downgraded from 2.00a to 1.07a (what does the 'a' stand for? alpha? huh..). VLOCK works now, and motion is smooth all the time. Yay! Though, it still sees the input as 50.00Hz.. That doesn't make sense to me. But as long as it makes sense to the XRGB mini, and the output video is smooth, then that's a super-minor issue.

Like you said, Fudoh, there might be a bug related to 50Hz sources in v2.00a.

-Brian

[Konsolkongen]

I know that there are 1080p oleds. Just not very commercially available right now due to all the problems they are still having with them. I was hoping for pc monitors manufacturers would have released oled monitors by now but it seems like we are still a bit ways off. At least it's good to know that the xrgb produces a really nice image with an oled tv.

OLEDs can get burn-in. Saw a 1080p LG (obviously) in a store yesterday that had severe burn-in. It didn't look as bad as burn on a plasma, but still very noticeable. The panel was defective though, and had some strange "interlacing" across the whole screen. Might have been more subjective to burn-in because of that, but I have heard of PS Vitas that had burn as well. I wonder how much care you have to take to avoid this, compared to a plasma screen...?

For that reason I think they would be a bad choice as PC monitors, which is a shame. They would definitely be amazing to work with. If you don't work for many hours straight, and use screensavers often you might be able to get away with it though. If not, then I'm sure you would see your desktop burn into your screen within a very short time.

Not sure if OLEDs have image retention, and if it goes away, or is permanent once it shows.

Personally I can't wait for OLEDs. LG has already expressed that they see no reason for black frame insertion on their OLEDs, so I would never buy one from them. I think Sony and Panasonic are the ones to look out for

[opt2not]

Image rotation Just a wild thought.

it's on the feature request list we submitted to Micomsoft quite some time ago.

Wether it's possible or not depends on the hardware design. PROBABLY not. The FPGA stage (that's where the linedoubling for 240p sources happens before the information is passed on to the Marvell for scaling) and it's memory buffer would a) need to be able to handle more than linedoubled SD resolutions and would b) require enough memory to buffer a full frame instead of just a few lines. That's neccessary in order to output an incoming pixel columns as a line.

*phew* ok, not as crazy as I'd thought. But it would be pretty amazing if they could add this feature. Cheers Fudoh.

[FinalBaton]

NHL '94 was great

I proudly display the classic NHL games next to all of my other games.

Same. Without any shame.

[FBX]

It's not that I don't like any sports game. In fact, there are several that I enjoyed. I was unbeatable at Super Tennis on the SNES. Rather, it's bland dime-a-dozen titles like the hundreds of ESPN and Madden titles (all of which are of course in 256 mode on the Genesis). It was like the Genesis got this 'stigma' of being a sports console and so every crappy 3rd party company thought they needed to spit a sports game out. EA was especially guilty of this.

[Mikeramos]

Hi guys!

Any Dreamcast profile progressive scan?

[BuckoA51]

On the Wiki

[Ed Oscuro]

OLEDs can get burn-in. Saw a 1080p LG (obviously) in a store yesterday that had severe burn-in.

Interesting, is that a fairly new model?

I thought there were big improvements over the last few years on OLED lifespan, at least in the lab. But panel manufacturers don't seem to reveal much about OLED lifespan (in 2013, OLED TV warranties from LG came in at 12 months), though other makers have gone on record saying they fear OLED panels can't get bright enough, at least not without harming panel lifespan.

[Konsolkongen]

It's the LG 55EC930. It's the first one we ever had in the store where I worked. It looked amazing, but being an LG it had craptastic menus, and were just a pain in the ass to work with

The OLEDs have a problem with displaying blue colors. Not that it doesn't show a nice blue color, but more that it's speculated that the blue subpixels dies much faster than the others. I think they have improved on this though.
What LG does with their panels, is actually quite neat. Instead of using a combination of the red, green and blue subpixels, to make an all white screen (like a plasma did), they added a fourth subpixel that's all white. This will not only make the panel brighter, but I'm sure it will also lessen the wear on the blue subpixels as well.
The only downside to this, as I can tell, is that the chance of getting a panel with stuck/dead subpixels is increasingly higher, now that there are more of them. Both 55EC930s I saw had one or two stuck pixels. But on a Ultra HD panel it probably won't stand out as much

[Hamburglar]

I am having a problem getting my SNES to give me a stable image on the XRGB Mini, and I am not sure what is left to try. The thing is, I am fairly certain it worked fine on the XRGB Mini before the latest update (though I am not 100% on it because it's been a while; have been quite busy lately but I don't think I would have put my SNES back together if it wasn't working on the XRGB).

Anyway it's a US 1CHIP-02 model 1 (not a mini). I am getting mixed reports as to whether or not the 1CHIP-02 has CSYNC wired up (I know for a fact the 1CHIP-03 does not). Anyway, I cannot get a stable image on the XRGB Mini with this SNES. Illusion of Gaia for example will give me the intro, but as soon as the title screen comes up, it blanks out and says "no signal". I still hear the music.

To rule out it being my cable, I have a 1CHIP-01 and it works fine in the exact same setup.

I know it is not the console because it works fine over composite and s-video.

Anyway, what can be wrong? Just to rule it out, I ran a wire from the CSYNC pin on the encoder to pin 3 of the SNES A/V port and I got the exact same result.

Since composite video is pin 9, I tried switching the wire from pin 3 to that (just in case my cable was wired up to use composite video for sync or something). Same exact result.

Does anyone know what could be wrong? Thank you.