HD retrovision - Did anyone join the kickstarter?

[JBC]

I love that little TV

It's a Philips 24pt6341/37 & gives me such beautiful color. I have an RCA TruFlat (lost model # note, but has component inputs) & Trinitron KV-27fs12 as well & they're fine but I just like this little guy more. Feels more like the tube I had as a kid.

[unmaker]

How do the SNES Component cables compare to the regular RGB Cables in terms of picture quality? Does the Mini produce a better Component picture like it does with RGB?

I've used these cables on a PVM and it gives pretty much the same picture quality as RGB. The difference between RGB and component is that with component you're going to have to tinker with your settings to get it to look like RGB. RGB has settings that are fixed and cannot be changed so there's no need to adjust settings. A RGB modded Mini will produce a better picture with these cables and is required if you're going to use a Mini.

[Einzelherz]

Rgb can certainly be tinkered with. It just doesn't allow for higher level tweaking like the other signals

[neorichieb1971]

Has anyone tested the 3.5mm jack?

I put my headphones in last night and nothing came out. It stopped the audio being carried to the TV but nothing came out of the headphones. I also couldn't get any audio from my receiver using a 3.5mm RCA adapter.


This was the Genesis version. Not tested the SNES one yet.

[Guspaz]

That isn't a heapdhone jack, it's an audio input jack for enabling stereo audio on the Genesis 1.

In other words, that jack is connected to your TV, not the genesis.

Slightly longer explanation: The Genesis 1 only outputs mono audio on its video socket, but outputs stereo audio on the headphone jack on the front of the console. The audio jack on the HDR cables is meant for you to connect an audio cable to the front of the Genesis to enable stereo sound. Without doing that, it will only have mono sound from the video jack. The Genesis 2 doesn't have this problem, and the SNES cable doesn't have a jack at all.

[neorichieb1971]

I Can see why they did that. I never really thought it would be used for anything other than audio output.


Thanks for the explanation. And there was me sitting there wondering why my receiver was not receiving a signal.

[bonzo.bits]

The Genesis cable > OSSC gives an awesome picture. Noone probably cares, but I thought with all the conjecture and such that was going on earlier in this thread, an opinion of the product doing its thing might help.

That said, users without a scaler of some sort may not be too chuffed with how the outputted(?) component signal is handled by modern displays. My 2013 panny plasma does a pretty terrible job. Better than composite, but if I'd dropped $50 on this cable and didn't have a scaler between it and the TV, I'd be disappointed.

That said, I bought this cable without a specific use in mind and just thought it would come in handy one day. If I get around to doing direct comparisons between the HDR cable and a SCART cable, I might end up with something more useful to post.

[neorichieb1971]

That said, I bought this cable without a specific use in mind and just thought it would come in handy one day.

My original sentiments exactly. I hate SCART as a connector so much prefer component video cables generally. My TV is a 2007? Sony KDL40W4500 model and its getting really old in the tooth now.

When I use the HDretro cables straight into the TV I get a 480i mess. The scrolling is really nice, but clarity is 50/50 and I get the "Blinds" look on some games. But to be fair all of that was well documented before I bought them. My original idea was to get them and use them direct to the TV until the HDMizer came out. But now the OSSC has leap frogged that project I am weighing up getting an earlier OSSC or wait for the HDMizer.


I have the SNES cable and use it on my SFC. I don't know what is wrong and perhaps someone can chime in, but the connection to one of the internal pins seems hit and miss. If I plug the cable as hard as I can into the SFC the screen goes from normal to showing the game through a red screen. Once its stable it stays good, but I'm a bit worried over time it will lose its grip on that pin.

[FinalBaton]

That said, I bought this cable without a specific use in mind and just thought it would come in handy one day. If I get around to doing direct comparisons between the HDR cable and a SCART cable, I might end up with something more useful to post.

I'm geting one of my friend a consumer CRT with component inputs for retro gaming, and I was interested in picking up a SNES component cable for him. So I have a very clear use case for the cable. But sadly they're sold out.

It's too bad, I would have bought one for sure if it performs about just as good as RGB, which is what I'm reading on here

[neorichieb1971]

That said, I bought this cable without a specific use in mind and just thought it would come in handy one day. If I get around to doing direct comparisons between the HDR cable and a SCART cable, I might end up with something more useful to post.

I'm geting one of my friend a consumer CRT with component inputs for retro gaming, and I was interested in picking up a SNES component cable for him. So I have a very clear use case for the cable. But sadly they're sold out.

It's too bad, I would have bought one for sure if it performs about just as good as RGB, which is what I'm reading on here

I do feel for those who are still waiting. The model on which HDretrovision get cables is a bit slow and laborious (getting supplies from China).

[Guspaz]

There isn't any other option that would be economical. Even if they wanted to do it all themselves (and that has been a disaster for BadAssConsoles), the time investment and cost of the molding would be huge.

[Ikaruga11]

There isn't any other option that would be economical. Even if they wanted to do it all themselves (and that has been a disaster for BadAssConsoles), the time investment and cost of the molding would be huge.

this

Is HD Retrovision making any more Genesis and SNES Component cables?

[Guspaz]

Not in the immediate future. They're planning to investigate first if there is anything they can do to improve the sync jitter issue, where certain digital displays are overly sensitive to small variations in sync signals on their component inputs. I don't believe that they are currently doing any processing to the sync signal beyond stripping it off composite video and adding it to the luma output, so they may try to modify the design to do some sort of sync stabilization. Once they've addressed that issue, they'll see if they can justify the up-front expense of another production run.

Here's their page on the research they've done to date on the problem:

http://www.hdretrovision.com/jitter/

[bonzo.bits]

That said, I bought this cable without a specific use in mind and just thought it would come in handy one day. If I get around to doing direct comparisons between the HDR cable and a SCART cable, I might end up with something more useful to post.

I'm geting one of my friend a consumer CRT with component inputs for retro gaming, and I was interested in picking up a SNES component cable for him. So I have a very clear use case for the cable. But sadly they're sold out.

It's too bad, I would have bought one for sure if it performs about just as good as RGB, which is what I'm reading on here

I was doing some investigation last night, as far as I can tell, both to my eye and from taking a shit-bunch of photos (on a Sony Xperia 3 Compact, so a bog standard mobile phone camera), component and RGB have no discernible difference in colour.

For disclosure's sake, I'm a 100% amateur/hack with zero tech knowledge of RGB. Both cables were fed into the Framemeister with comparisons done at 480, 720 and 1080p. Resolution shouldn't impact colour, but I was also comparing the FM with the OSSC. I don't have enough data for a fair comparison of the two scalers, so I'll be keeping any premature conclusions to myself until I can back them up.

I will vouch for the HD Retrovision cable being pretty awesome at what it does, as long as the display or scaler doesn't butcher the signal/image.

[MoonlightWolf85]

I am new to the forums but have been into Retro Gaming and video quality for quite some time now. I just recently bought an NTSC Super Nintendo Non-1-Chip model here in Germany. Then I learned about the differences in picture quality (pixel sharpness) between 2Chip and 1Chip models. As I am not willing to spend more money on another Snes (1Chip 01-03) I am looking into options to improve image quality on my 2Chip Snes. 1st idea: do a component mod from the BA6592F video encoder. Seems to give pretty great results compared to standard rgb from 2chip consoles. 2. Wait for the next batch of HD retrovision cables. What do you suggest?

1st

[pyroman512]

The HDretrovision cables work extremely well. I wouldn't mess with the component mod. I have heard mixed things about it anyways. But you will probably have to wait awhile for those cables.

[copy]

If I understand correctly, the 3-chip SNES picture is already blurred at the source (the PPU). All the outputs are encoded after that point, so every type of output will retain the blurriness, including component mods and HD Retrovision cables.

[Guspaz]

The HD Retrovision cables at least have the advantage that they'll work with any RGB-capable SNES, unlike a component mod that is permanently installed.

[Ed Oscuro]

HD Retrovision's name still leaves something to be desired, but beyond that it looks like they are trying to do the right thing. I agree with the opinion that for a lot of buyers this could be the best cost-effective option.

[BONKERS]

HD Retrovision's name still leaves something to be desired, but beyond that it looks like they are trying to do the right thing. I agree with the opinion that for a lot of buyers this could be the best cost-effective option.

It would be if they ever actually ramped up production. I could see these cables selling very well if they were more available. Especially given how quickly they've gone every time they've had some.-

[neorichieb1971]

I like mine. The SNES cable displays Virtual boy red mode unless its pushed in to the console to its absolute limits. Apparently i'm the only person who gets this. If you knock the console it goes from full color back into the red mode, it must be a fraction of a millimetre that is touching the connections, or perhaps its just dirty.

The Sega cable works as advertised.

[Guspaz]

HD Retrovision's name still leaves something to be desired, but beyond that it looks like they are trying to do the right thing. I agree with the opinion that for a lot of buyers this could be the best cost-effective option.

It would be if they ever actually ramped up production. I could see these cables selling very well if they were more available. Especially given how quickly they've gone every time they've had some.-

I suspect that after all was said and done, their profit from this entire endeavour was extremely modest. They probably took a small loss on the Kickstarter cables, considering how much cheaper they were than the retail price, and then I'd wager the limited quantity of retail cables pushed them back into the black, but not by all that much.

The problem is that, without a hefty profit from the first batch, that doesn't give them much money to spend on the huge production costs of another batch. Even if they can a run at $30 per cable, to buy another thousand cables means that they've got to put up $30,000 of their own money to order the things, and then hope that they can sell enough of them to make it back. It's for similar reasons why the OSSC has taken so long to move through the waiting list: the financial risk of placing an order that turns out to be too large.

I'm not sure that the cables will ever reach general availability (where there is a permanent surplus stock that can be purchased at any time) because they probably can't make enough money from selling the cables to be able to justify having enough unsold cables to keep them in stock. That said, they do hope to be able to do at least one additional production run so that they can put out a new revision that improves things for displays that are overly sensitive to sync jitter, and they do hope to move on to other products as well. They've floated the possibility of the HDMIzer, obviously, which seems to aim to be something like a a more simplified mass market scaler version of the OSSC (with RF/composite/s-video/etc inputs that typical consumers might have on their non-RGB-modded retro consoles), dreamcast component cables, adapters to use their Genesis component cables with other consoles like the PSX and Saturn, and possibly even GameCube component cables (presumably a plug-and-play version of GCVideo).

[neorichieb1971]

The only thing that bothers me is that some of these projects take years.

[Guspaz]

Physical manufacturing is hard. And expensive. And slow.

[Guspaz]

FYI, their new production run is now up for sale. They haven't sold out yet, but if they do they will be having two more restocks of this batch, and they have a much larger number of cables for sale to the general public now:

https://shop.hdretrovision.com/collecti ... ent-cables

They also now have adapters for the NeoGeo and Sega Saturn to be used with their Genesis cables. There have been some revisions to the cables since the first production run, which you can read here:

http://www.hdretrovision.com/s/GEN0-AH0_Changelog.txt

And here:

http://www.hdretrovision.com/s/SNS0-AH0_Changelog.txt

It's more tweaks than any radical changes, but it should help some edge cases like where TVs had jitter issues, or the wacky sync of the PAL GameCube.

[Einzelherz]

I'm glad to see they went the simpler route using din adapters.

[Guspaz]

I think that was always the plan for consoles that had output close enough to one of the two Genesis profiles they support (it's not actually a brightness switch, as I understand it). They're working on a PS1 din adapter, but the Dreamcast component cables will need to be separate cables. I'd imagine there's some sort of 480i/480p reason for that.

[Einzelherz]

I wonder if they're regretting not having had just a single cable and console specific adapters for everything else. Mini din 9s aren't hard to source and probably aren't going anywhere soon.

[Guspaz]

As I said, any console with sufficiently different output would need a new cable anyhow. My understanding is that the SNES is sufficiently different that it required a separate cable.

[Einzelherz]

Which the adapter could take care of.