Extron Super Emotia plus RGB interface issue

[schadenfreude]

I finally created a cable to use an ATX power supply with my Extron Super Emotia, and it works great if I connect a 31khz source directly to it. But when I use an Extron RGB 201 Rxi to do the vertical shift fix as described here (http://scanlines.hazard-city.de/), I can't get it to work.

Here are the setups I've tested:

Dreamcast with VGA box -> VGA cable -> Emotia -> RGBs over BNC/phono cables -> PVM [works]
Dreamcast with VGA box -> VGA cable -> Extron RGB interface -> RGBHV to VGA cable -> VGA CRT computer monitor [works]
Dreamcast with VGA box -> VGA cable -> Extron RGB interface -> RGBHV to VGA cable -> Emotia -> RGBs over BNC/phono cables -> PVM [no picture]

Why doesn't the Emotia recognize the signal in the third case? I though the interface wouldn't mess with the signal timings — i.e., no upscaling or downscaling — but if it's still a 31khz signal, then the Emotia should be able to read it. Thanks in advance.

[Fudoh]

What does the Emotia say (in terms of which LEDs light up) ? Do you get different readings in case 1 and 3 ? I can only think of a sync polarity issue that's throwing off your Emotia. The Extron interface has sync jumpers on the inside as well.

[schadenfreude]

Regarding the LEDs, I tested the Emotia with both an old Pentium PC and the Dreamcast.

For the Pentium PC, LED 4 turned on (640 x 400 / 31.5 kHz / 70Hz).

For the Dreamcast, LED 3 turned on (640 x 480 / 31.5 kHz / 60 Hz).

But when I added the interface in between the Dreamcast and the Emotia, no lights turned on.

Good point about the jumpers! I forgot to open it up and check those. Sadly, I cross-checked with the manual (http://www.extron.com/download/files/us ... i_revb.pdf) and confirmed that they were already set to factory defaults. I played around with the sync polarity settings (forcing negative and positive on horizontal and vertical, etc.), but every time I plugged the interface back in, none of the Emotia lights came on.

I've verified that hooking up the Dreamcast plus interface to a CRT VGA monitor works, and so does using an LCD television (which recognizes the signal as 640x480). So if the interface is outputting an odd signal that the Emotia doesn't recognize, I'm surprised the monitor and television understand it.

[Fudoh]

What Emotia model do you have ?

I have the same interface (201rxi, plus a few 203 ones, which is the same plus an added 3:1 switch) and I use(d) the combo of that exact interface with all my Emotias.

Have you confirmed that your Emotia NEEDS the "tuning-shift" ? Not all models do. The GX does not. Some revisions of the Super also don't. I can't remember if the original Emotia or the Plus do.

Did you check the unity toogle switch on the back of the interface ? Did you adjust the gain controls on the front to some medium setting ?

[schadenfreude]

It's a Super Emotia, no GX. I wish it were GX so I wouldn't have to add the RGB interface to my setup.

I don't think any of the DIP switches on the back relate to unity. The only references I see to the word "unity" in the manual are related to the level boost knob.

I did some more tests today to make sure I'm not crazy. In the first test, I connected the Dreamcast to the interface, then output that to a CRT VGA monitor. I verified that the image shifted when I moved the horizontal and vertical controls, and changing the phase and boost also altered the picture.

In the next test, I connected an old DOS PC directly to the Super Emotia, then output the downscaled image to a PVM and the loop through output to a CRT VGA monitor. I booted up Wolfenstein 3D and went to the title screen. On the VGA monitor, the line-doubled text looks sharp and blocky, as I'd expect. But on the PVM, the text sometimes looks sharp, but on some edges, there's blurring between the edge of the grey text and the red background. It's definitely due to the line-averaging issue you described on your page. Sometimes it looks sharp because it happens to average together the two scanlines that end the bottom of a letter, but other times it looks fuzzy because it blurs together the letter's final line with the background line below it. I will admit that once I boot the game and begin playing, the issue isn't very noticeable, but it's distracting when looking at some in-game text, like some of the text in the status bar.

In the final test, I went for the gold and connected the interface's output to the Emotia, which was still connected to the PVM and the VGA monitor. In this case, I could see the image on the VGA monitor and watch it move around the screen, increase in brightness, etc. as I messed with the controls on the interface, but no lights on the Emotia would ever come on. I even played with the jumpers on the interface board, unplugging and plugging it in each time as I walked through the different combinations, and never did the PVM show an image nor did any Emotia input format LEDs light up. All the DIP switches in the back were off when I ran through these combinations; I assume I shouldn't have to activate any of them because they don't seem relevant to this setup.

So at this point, I think I have two working Extron units that just don't work in tandem. Am I the only person on the internet experiencing this problem? Before starting this thread, I searched this forum and other results in Google for almost 2 hours trying to see if anyone else had this issue, but I never found anything relevant.

Is it worth trying another RGB interface? It sounds like crazy talk when the one I have here seems to work fine. The other alternative is to figure out how to adjust the vertical position from each input I use. I've been trying to find such a thing for DOS, but all these damn DOSBox Google results are flooding my search results with irrelevance!

[Fudoh]

I'm at a loss - sorry. No idea what's causing this as I definitely never had the issue.

Some Extron interfaces have a unity 3-pos switch on the back. I might have thought of a different interface.

About using the Emotia with 400p70 sources (like your DOS PC): you won't be happy with the results. The problem is that with this constellation you don't get a proper 2:1 input:output line mapping, so you'll always run into a few sharp and a few less sharp lines due to the 400 line to 240p line conversion. A vertical shift will fix a few lines, but make others look worse instead.

For a perfect conversion you would need to squeeze your source first and then possibly unsqueeze it using the monitor's controls. Not easy.

[BuckoA51]

What happens if you flick the DDSP switch on? (I know that disables adjustments but just try it)

[schadenfreude]

I tried that, and though the VGA monitor displays an image (that I can't move due to disabling of adjustments), the Emotia output on the PVM still displays nothing. I've tried basically every combination of switch flipping and jumper setting at this point and have never seen the Emotia output a post-interface image. What a Christmas gift!

[schadenfreude]

I'm at a loss - sorry. No idea what's causing this as I definitely never had the issue.

It's no biggie. Thanks for the responses and your site; I wouldn't even know about these Extron devices if it weren't for your research!

About using the Emotia with 400p70 sources (like your DOS PC): you won't be happy with the results. The problem is that with this constellation you don't get a proper 2:1 input:output line mapping, so you'll always run into a few sharp and a few less sharp lines due to the 400 line to 240p line conversion. A vertical shift will fix a few lines, but make others look worse instead.

Ah, so that's what it's doing. These things were designed for displaying PC content on SD devices, so why isn't there a mode to display a 200p image with 20 black lines above and below? I assumed that's what it would do and that doing a vertical adjustment would give me a reasonable-looking image. And then there could be a setting on the Emotia to have it shove the image into 240 lines if you don't want to adjust your monitor or TV.

Regarding the results, I'm actually impressed. For text, the results are disappointing (due to the occasional and noticeable color bleeding mentioned before), but I've played some Wolfenstein 3D and Doom and Quake and think the low-resolution look is pretty nice. I'm sure the novelty will wear off eventually, but it's neat to see what these games could have looked like if the VGA standard didn't force low-resolution images to be line-doubled.

On the other hand, some 2D graphics look noticeably borked. Dithering patterns in Commander Keen 4, for example (you must think I am obsessed with id games!), are sometimes output with black horizontal lines every few rows, making the effect look disastrous, especially when the screen scrolls. And there's some noticeable screen "shimmering" on solid color backgrounds.

[BuckoA51]

Have you tried composite sync into your Emotia from your Extron interface rather than separate HV sync?

[schadenfreude]

In my frustrated stupor I have tried every combination of horizontal, vertical, or combined sync output you can imagine, but none of them worked. But I wouldn't expect anything other than separate horizontal and vertical sync to work with the Emotia's input because it expects a typical RGBHV VGA signal, right?

[BuckoA51]

Usually yes, and I take it the LCD on your Extron interface shows the correct/expected scan frequencies?

[schadenfreude]

Interesting! Yes, it always displays as 31khz and either 60Hz (Dreamcast) or 70Hz (DOS machine).

[BuckoA51]

I'm as stumped as Fudoh then. As far as I've been able to determine the interfaces do very little to the signal, certainly not enough to suddenly make it incompatible. If I had to hazard a guess I'd say a weird cable problem, possibly flexing it a different way when connecting to the Emotia causes it not to connect properly.

[schadenfreude]

Yeah, I was thinking that but don't have any other cables to test with at the moment. The part that bugs me about that theory though is that the loopthrough video output from the Emotia to the VGA monitor displays fine, but the converted output from the Emotia to the PVM never displays anything. So the post-interface VGA signal is understood by a VGA monitor but not by the Emotia. Crazy stuff!

I wish I had another interface to use for testing, but I dunno if I'm willing to gamble on purchasing another one. I don't have a need for vertical shifting at this point, so I'll wait it out until it becomes a problem and then revisit.