OSSC (DIY video digitizer & scandoubler)

[neorichieb1971]

the HDMIzer always seemed to me like just an accessory for their HD retrovision cables, something they would sell to people that had televisions with poor 240p handling on the component inputs.

Ok, so if I buy the OSSC its absolutely not going to do anything like this?

[BuckoA51]

Seems a bit sad to stop a project 9/10th's of the way to absolute perfection.

If/when a successor does come there will be people saying the same thing... "oh it would be great except xyz feature is missing".

[Xyga]

The final 1/10th of the technique or features doesn't necessarily represent 1/10th of the R&D and production cost.

[Guspaz]

the HDMIzer always seemed to me like just an accessory for their HD retrovision cables, something they would sell to people that had televisions with poor 240p handling on the component inputs.

Ok, so if I buy the OSSC its absolutely not going to do anything like this?

The OSSC is meant to be an enthusiast product for people who want an alternative to the Framemeister. It only supports RGB and YPbPr input, which requires users to buy new cables and/or mod their consoles.

The HDMIzer is meant to be a mass-market product for people who want to connect their old consoles to their TV using their existing cables, which is why it supports RF, composite, s-video, component inputs... and *not* RGB. They're planning a significantly less configurable device (as plug-and-play as possible) at a lower pricepoint.

[ZellSF]

the HDMIzer always seemed to me like just an accessory for their HD retrovision cables, something they would sell to people that had televisions with poor 240p handling on the component inputs.

Ok, so if I buy the OSSC its absolutely not going to do anything like this?

Protip: never buy any product based on potential future features. If the product doesn't do what you want now, wait.

[orange808]

the HDMIzer always seemed to me like just an accessory for their HD retrovision cables, something they would sell to people that had televisions with poor 240p handling on the component inputs.

Ok, so if I buy the OSSC its absolutely not going to do anything like this?

The OSSC is meant to be an enthusiast product for people who want an alternative to the Framemeister. It only supports RGB and YPbPr input, which requires users to buy new cables and/or mod their consoles.

The HDMIzer is meant to be a mass-market product for people who want to connect their old consoles to their TV using their existing cables, which is why it supports RF, composite, s-video, component inputs... and *not* RGB. They're planning a significantly less configurable device (as plug-and-play as possible) at a lower pricepoint.

Well, my demodulator and XRGB-2 better keep on working, then. I'm not getting rid of my Odyssey, Atari 5200, or Atari 7800.

I still want an OSSC, but I wish it could handle all my systems.

Looks like I'm the niche market in a niche market. (aka shitouttaluck)

[NJRoadfan]

Well, my demodulator and XRGB-2 better keep on working, then. I'm not getting rid of my Odyssey, Atari 5200, or Atari 7800.

I still want an OSSC, but I wish it could handle all my systems.

Looks like I'm the niche market in a niche market. (aka shitouttaluck)

Not like there aren't solutions to vastly better video quality for those systems.

[orange808]

Well, my demodulator and XRGB-2 better keep on working, then. I'm not getting rid of my Odyssey, Atari 5200, or Atari 7800.

I still want an OSSC, but I wish it could handle all my systems.

Looks like I'm the niche market in a niche market. (aka shitouttaluck)

Not like there aren't solutions to vastly better video quality for those systems.

Hmm... My Odyssey and Pong game aren't there.

Interesting...

[CobraKing]

Yes, gaming has never been fully plug&play, but a lot of things were easier with CRTs. However, a basic linedouble setup should not require much tweaking / additional HW, assuming the display accepts analog audio (or one is using exteral amp / has Borti's audio add-on). For those on other end of spectrum, I just created a wikipage that lists optimal timings for some consoles with corresponging modelines. The page is still very much in progress but please add new entries if you're familiar with console timings.

@marqs, silly question but how do you go about accessing the settings you've listed on your Optimal Timings page? I have 0.73 firmware on my device but can't seem to locate it.

Also, great news regarding your work on possible 1080p/5x scaling.

[Lord of Pirates]

The OSSC was a ~2 year hobbyist project. Companies have had the tech to deliver a comparable product for probably a decade now. I doubt we'll see a successor any time soon.

Its open source. You only need half a brain to mount the tech in a new box with HDMI, audio throughput and a better designed connector strategy and if you have a product that blows the OSSC out of the water.

Marqs has done the hard work by the looks of it. Perhaps someone else needs to chime in with a product that copies what Marqs has done and dot all the i's and cross all the T's.

Haha, as orange said, be my guest. This is one of the nichest markets ever, I stand by what I said.

Even if someone redesigns the board a bit, they're just going to order a PCB or two from OSHPark and solder it together themselves.
Manufacturing costs are too prohibitive for a competitor product that's only marginally improved, and as I said, it'll be quite a while before someone makes a true successor.

I can't see everyone rushing to buy a competing product unless it had a lot of significant improvements.

[neorichieb1971]

I don't see the HDMizer and OSSC as two different products that are aiming for different markets. They are just 2 different products going 2 different ways about getting the same result.

If the HDMizer uses standard inputs and is cheaper I would consider that a good thing. And if it is cheaper than the OSSC and it comes in a nicer package, supports HDMI and throughputs audio then surely the R+D of the last 1/10th of the OSSC isn't that expensive at all to get it up to the same specification. I never knew hobbyists spent £1000's on R+D anyway.

I don't know how many people are on the fence about this OSSC. But the more people praise the OSSC in its existing current form the more your talking me OUT of buying it. I can see an upgraded version just around the corner which will iron out all the quirks. Then I'd be ready to buy.

[CobraKing]

^^^
Ok, we completely understand that you're not going to buy the OSSC and we're completely fine with it.

[neorichieb1971]

^^^
Ok, we completely understand that you're not going to buy the OSSC and we're completely fine with it.

I'm not quite made up my mind yet. It depends on a few things. Unlike most of your customers I am content with throwing something on the screen that is decent and just playing games and thats what the OSSC should be. With every electronic product on the market your buying someone elses expertise. You rarely get to program your Blu ray player to sharpen the image, or produce scan lines. You just get what the experts think you should get. And I want a product like that for retro gaming. I just want to plug the thing in and play games based on the idea that what it outputs is what is "generally" considered to be the holy grail of RGB 15khz on your flat screen TV.

What I don't want is a machine that looks like a graphic equalizer with sliders, turning knobs, adjustments and LCD screens and firmware updates every 10 minutes.

So when it goes on sale. I will read feedbacks and see what peoples opinions are. If it works straight out of the box with profiles for each console and just works. I'll ignore the bells and whistles, eat my words and buy the thing. But if I continue to read "this isn't synching" or "When I plug in my playstation on game x something goes horribly wrong". Then i'll definitely be giving this product a miss.

[kel]

^^^
Ok, we completely understand that you're not going to buy the OSSC and we're completely fine with it.

I'm not quite made up my mind yet. It depends on a few things. Unlike most of your customers I am content with throwing something on the screen that is decent and just playing games and thats what the OSSC should be. With every electronic product on the market your buying someone elses expertise. You rarely get to program your Blu ray player to sharpen the image, or produce scan lines. You just get what the experts think you should get. And I want a product like that for retro gaming. I just want to plug the thing in and play games based on the idea that what it outputs is what is "generally" considered to be the holy grail of RGB 15khz on your flat screen TV.

What I don't want is a machine that looks like a graphic equalizer with sliders, turning knobs, adjustments and LCD screens and firmware updates every 10 minutes.

So when it goes on sale. I will read feedbacks and see what peoples opinions are. If it works straight out of the box with profiles for each console and just works. I'll ignore the bells and whistles, eat my words and buy the thing. But if I continue to read "this isn't synching" or "When I plug in my playstation on game x something goes horribly wrong". Then i'll definitely be giving this product a miss.

That isn't the kind of market that the OSSC was designed for. It's like going on a forum about apples and complaining that the apples that they are talking about are no good because you want oranges.

Good luck finding that perfect scaler for retro games that "works straight out of the box with profiles for each console and just works". If that existed we wouldn't all be here and marqs probably would have just put his feet up and not bothered spending all the time it took to design and program the OSSC. Being as though scalers aimed for retro consoles are so few and far between maybe if you wait another 10 years you can look back and laugh at us all for wasting our time with this device that should have been something else than it was.

[Xyga]

The perfect all-purpose scaler for all retro video game hardwares is certainly possible on paper, just seems almost impossible to engineer and produce in the real world, within real market conditions.
Not even Micomsoft who have the longest experience, who put the most time and money into this niche field, were able to produce it.

Not saying it will never happen, but products that leap over time and technical research to achieve a near-ideal product form are like unicorns.
They require exceptional environment, people, and sometimes just the golden 'inspirational luck' combined with a wiiiiiide panel of skills.
One thing's for sure though; without a large-enough, already installed market...it just doesn't happen, or if does sometimes in theory, as an embryo of a project, it just doesn't go beyond the blueprints stage. Many great inventions have been lost because of unfavourable environment, wrong time, wrong target, etc.

[Thomago]

Good luck finding that perfect scaler for retro games that "works straight out of the box with profiles for each console and just works". If that existed we wouldn't all be here and marqs probably would have just put his feet up and not bothered spending all the time it took to design and program the OSSC. Being as though scalers aimed for retro consoles are so few and far between maybe if you wait another 10 years you can look back and laugh at us all for wasting our time with this device that should have been something else than it was.

Besides, with the huge variance some consoles (think SNES/SFC) and AV setups (think SCART switches etc.) have, even a box with preprogrammed profiles for each console would be faaaaaar from perfect.

[ZellSF]

But if I continue to read "this isn't synching" or "When I plug in my playstation on game x something goes horribly wrong"

"Continue to read"? I've been following this thread pretty closely and have not seen a lot of that. The OSSC is very well behaved. Not perfect, but nothing is.

[bobrocks95]

Unlike most of your customers I am content with throwing something on the screen that is decent and just playing games and thats what the OSSC should be.

You don't really get to decide what a product should be unfortunately... We could have that plug n play device, but it wouldn't look great in anywhere near every scenario, and it wouldn't offer half the features the OSSC does.

Look at people talking in the 4K thread about stuff like the iScan Mini. It just works, but the price you pay for that is it looking pretty terrible.

[Lord of Pirates]

^^^
Ok, we completely understand that you're not going to buy the OSSC and we're completely fine with it.

I'm not quite made up my mind yet. It depends on a few things. Unlike most of your customers I am content with throwing something on the screen that is decent and just playing games and thats what the OSSC should be. With every electronic product on the market your buying someone elses expertise. You rarely get to program your Blu ray player to sharpen the image, or produce scan lines. You just get what the experts think you should get. And I want a product like that for retro gaming. I just want to plug the thing in and play games based on the idea that what it outputs is what is "generally" considered to be the holy grail of RGB 15khz on your flat screen TV.

What I don't want is a machine that looks like a graphic equalizer with sliders, turning knobs, adjustments and LCD screens and firmware updates every 10 minutes.

So when it goes on sale. I will read feedbacks and see what peoples opinions are. If it works straight out of the box with profiles for each console and just works. I'll ignore the bells and whistles, eat my words and buy the thing. But if I continue to read "this isn't synching" or "When I plug in my playstation on game x something goes horribly wrong". Then i'll definitely be giving this product a miss.

This is what people mean by different markets. The bolded is what the OSSC is all about. There's no compulsion to update unless a feature you want is added or a bug is fixed.

At Zell: Isn't line tripling compatibility the only significant and widespread issue?

[Guspaz]

Other issues include lack of audio support (to be resolved by Borti's mod), use of DVI instead of HDMI (can be resolved via adapter), iffy SNES support (possibly resolved by firmware update, Marqs has mentioned some tweaks he hopes to get in the main firmware), lack of OSD and non-intuitive menu structure (to be resolved by firmware update, for the menu structure at least).

I think the SNES issue is probably a more significant/widespread issue, since line triple is a "nice to have" (it works without it).

[RGB32E]

Unlike most of your customers I am content with throwing something on the screen that is decent and just playing games and thats what the OSSC should be.

You don't really get to decide what a product should be unfortunately... We could have that plug n play device, but it wouldn't look great in anywhere near every scenario, and it wouldn't offer half the features the OSSC does.

A plug and play device already exists!


The rv joke appears to be just a white boarding session to promote their component cables. There's been nothing to suggest anything more than that. More extraneous products under the guise of plug and play! If someone can actually make something "better", that's another matter, but that hasn't been the case for them.

Anyone remember this?


EDIT:
Meet the "Compozitizer"! 6 AV inputs and dual HDMI output with scaling up to 8k resolution!

[orange808]

Pardon me. Isn't the Framemeister basically plug and play? It certainly looks easy to use.

After the XRGB-3, everything looks easy.

[NormalFish]

Pardon me. Isn't the Framemeister basically plug and play? It certainly looks easy to use.

After the XRGB-3, everything looks easy.

The framemeister is as plug and play as you are tolerant of shit image quality or tiny windows.

[ZellSF]

At Zell: Isn't line tripling compatibility the only significant and widespread issue?

Yeah, but that is just a nice extra. The OSSC is plug and play.

Sure you can tweak it to be better, but that applies to almost everything. Criticizing a product for options is how we end up with shit like phones without headphone jacks.

[BuckoA51]

think the SNES issue is probably a more significant/widespread issue, since line triple is a "nice to have" (it works without it).

SNES compatibility was improved a couple of firmwares ago (now works on my Sony, but not my parents Panasonic) Further improvements to SNES compatibility would most likely require add-on hardware unfortunately.

[Guspaz]

Marqs had discussed a SNES-specific firmware that solved the SNES issues, but that he wasn't sure if the changes could be integrated into the main firmware.

[BuckoA51]

Yeah that was a dead end unfortunately.

[marqs]

EDIT: Leaving it on 480p in sampling and setting it to 640 H.active like you suggested but changing H. samplerate to 830 and then tweaking H. backporch as you also suggested gives pretty much the same results as above. Thanks for the help.

I wouldn't change samplerate if you don't want to lose detail, GC uses 858 internally except for GBI ULL as far as I know.

It would be great if you could implement 9x line multiplying for 2160p for 4k users. Probably not possible but would be great of it was.

Current HDMI TX chip is not able to output 2160p.

Seems a shame that HDMizer will not support RGB and the OSSC doesn't have the overall design down. If the market is so niche why not get these guys talking to each other?

There has been a couple contacts regarding potential co-operation, but it's not easy to put together devices with dissimilar targets and people with different schedules.

@marqs, silly question but how do you go about accessing the settings you've listed on your Optimal Timings page? I have 0.73 firmware on my device but can't seem to locate it.

Go to Sampling opt.->Adv. timing, and select the mode you want to edit with <- and -> (current mode is pre-selected) and press enter.

What I don't want is a machine that looks like a graphic equalizer with sliders, turning knobs, adjustments and LCD screens and firmware updates every 10 minutes.

So when it goes on sale. I will read feedbacks and see what peoples opinions are. If it works straight out of the box with profiles for each console and just works. I'll ignore the bells and whistles, eat my words and buy the thing. But if I continue to read "this isn't synching" or "When I plug in my playstation on game x something goes horribly wrong". Then i'll definitely be giving this product a miss.

It sounds like you're after an "Apple device" that "just works" (only if you use it like its designers assume you to) but lacks configurability and in worst case has artificial limitations . You might prefer Framemeister if you're afraid about incompatibility - disable framelock and tweak sync_level a bit and you don't have to worry about touching settings much after, assuming you can live with potentially inoptimal picture/motion quality.

Yeah that was a dead end unfortunately.

The customized fw made SC512N1-L (my only device that have had issues with SNES) compatible even at lowest bandwidth setting, but apparently it didn't help with some other cases. As conclusion, iit confirms that the pixel clock regenerated from SNES hsync cannot be used to drive output with 100% compatibility, so only option (using OSSC hw) is to try generating close enough pclk using on-board oscillator and then periodically drop/duplicate pixel during vblank to keep output framelocked. It remains to be seen how displays will tolerate that.

[neorichieb1971]

neorichieb1971 wrote:
Seems a shame that HDMizer will not support RGB and the OSSC doesn't have the overall design down. If the market is so niche why not get these guys talking to each other?
There has been a couple contacts regarding potential co-operation, but it's not easy to put together devices with dissimilar targets and people with different schedules.

Why is time a concern? Surely getting a nice casing, HDMI, audio throughput is a bonus for you. And for them, they get your expertise to boost their R+D to 80% without doing anything. I personally think if you cut down the amount of options you want the OSSC to support your life would be easier as well. I don't think for a second they will ignore your work anyway. Its a bit hard to start from scratch when someone else has done most of the work.


On another note. These profiles on the OSSC, are they the same regardless of output cable utilized?

eg. Do I use the same profile for component as I do for SCART from the same console?

I won't buy a framemeister. If I do not buy a OSSC I will buy the HDmizer. The reason being is that the HDMIzer is designed specifically to work with a certain cable and that the R+D on that should get you a reasonable picture without doing much else. It also helps that daisy chaining through my amp will be tidier with HDMI. But regardless of all that, if you did work together better products would be a result in my humble opinion.


As for me not having a say in the final specification of the unit. It was me that convinced Viletim to make a SCART to Jamma adapter. That turned out pretty awesome.

[marqs]

neorichieb1971 wrote:
Seems a shame that HDMizer will not support RGB and the OSSC doesn't have the overall design down. If the market is so niche why not get these guys talking to each other?
There has been a couple contacts regarding potential co-operation, but it's not easy to put together devices with dissimilar targets and people with different schedules.

Why is time a concern? Surely getting a nice casing, HDMI, audio throughput is a bonus for you. And for them, they get your expertise to boost their R+D to 80% without doing anything. I personally think if you cut down the amount of options you want the OSSC to support your life would be easier as well. I don't think for a second they will ignore your work anyway. Its a bit hard to start from scratch when someone else has done most of the work.

I wasn't referring to any specific group/device, nor I was ruling out the possibility of a joint operation. However, just adding HDMI audio to OSSC hw and putting into a nice box could make it more attractive to some people, but it wouldn't solve the compatibility issues or add much new to the result. Higher compatibility and completely new features require non-trivial amount of research first, and currently I barely have time to add the missing features to current OSSC fw.

On another note. These profiles on the OSSC, are they the same regardless of output cable utilized?

eg. Do I use the same profile for component as I do for SCART from the same console?

The plan is to make a profile a container for all settings (including modified timing parameters). Instead on just saving settings as it is now, you'll be saving them under profile "0", "1", etc. You don't thus need a separate profile for different cable types / inputs, but it's still possible to use them that way if you want.