Should I sell my Hi-Def NES and NESRGB for Analog Nt Mini?

[sofakng]

I've purchased and installed both the Hi-Def NES and NESRGB (in different systems obviously) but I'm thinking about selling both of them for an Analog Nt Mini.

I don't have a CRT and really don't have any plans on purchasing one, so the NESRGB was used with my Framemeister until I received my Hi-Def NES. However, I wish the Hi-Def NES had 5x vertical scaling which is bothering me a little bit.

I do like the 'original' hardware (and nostalgia of my front-loader NES) but it seems more practical to use the 99 - 100% compatible FPGA Analog Nt Mini plus I can use all of the other cores.

Can anybody give me any advice? Has anybody else gone down this path?

[Woozle]

I replaced my HDN and NESRGB with an NT mini, no regrets. My HDN/NESRGB sit in a closet boxed up.

In my setup I have my LCD TV right next to my PVMs. Everything is connected to an extron crosspoint so there's a lot of wires to deal with...NT mini really helped by giving me RGB/HDMI from one device.

If you just use a digital display then it's hard to recommend selling the HDN for an NT mini, unless the other cores are important to you. I really like the horizontal interpolation filter on the HDN and it's missing from the NT mini, but other than that it seems to be an all around upgrade in terms of HDMI NES.

[Dochartaigh]

If you're going purely digital with your HDTV, why not just emulate on an actual computer? You can tweak the upscaling to whatever however you want. I've never owned a framemeister, but even the simple $35 Raspberry Pi 3 had enough power to emulate NES ten times over. It also seems to upscale perfect on my 1080p 60" LCD TV. (and yes, I am ready to be schooled by the "experts" lol).

Just seems like a bunch of shiny new toys to play with. My thoughts are go original (form-factor wise, like a nice gray toaster NES) or go home - everything else is just a computer wrapped in a different package.

[kamiboy]

Here is my expert opinion, PC's suck.

[sofakng]

I'm not against emulation but I am a bit of a perfectionist and like the idea that I'm playing the game 100% as it was intended.

Of course, the FPGA approach is not original hardware but from what I understand it's so darned close that it might as well be. I don't feel good playing on emulators but the FPGA-approach is different and is absolutely many steps above software emulation. In fact, it seems so close to 'original' hardware that the remaining differences seem purely cosmetic (ie. the original NES case).

Anyways, my main thoughts for selling the HiDef NES and NESRGB are because of the 5x vertical scaling on the Analog Nt Mini and the extra cores. It sounds really great to play Atari 2600 games very close to 100% accurately (and Commodore 64 support is coming?)

[Dochartaigh]

Here is my expert opinion, PC's suck.

I don't even own a PC. I own 4 Mac's ;') (and 5 Raspberry Pi 3's, about 20 Pi Zero's, and 13 different consoles

[Guspaz]

I tried the Pi approach. Put Retropie on a Pi 2. It was super laggy and configuring each emulator to get the scaling just right was a massive pain.

[Yamato]

I tried the Pi approach. Put Retropie on a Pi 2. It was super laggy and configuring each emulator to get the scaling just right was a massive pain.

Yeah, I tried Recalbox on a Pi3 and had a noticeable lag with NES games. Framemeister in combination with an original NES is way faster.

The Nt Mini has virtually zero lag though.

[Dochartaigh]

I tried the Pi approach. Put Retropie on a Pi 2. It was super laggy and configuring each emulator to get the scaling just right was a massive pain.

Yeah, I tried Recalbox on a Pi3 and had a noticeable lag with NES games. Framemeister in combination with an original NES is way faster.

2-3 FPS lag is normal on a LCD tv like the OP wants to use, right? (I couldn't find what it is on a CRT TV) Emulation is maybe 4-6 on a Pi 3 for NES according to this pretty thorough study. If you can tell the difference down to 4-5 HUNDREDTHS of a second, you're a friggin computer and my hat's off to you lol ...I have over 40 Pi's "out in the wild" - including two with people -albeit like 10+ years ago- who have been on G4 TV in their competitions (one of whom I've known for 10 years and never even mentioned this awesome feat!). Neither of them have mentioned a word about lag. Maybe they do experience it like you guys, but not enough to even ask me about fine-tuning their Pi's to be a little quicker. All I hear is praise from them.

oh, and never use Recalbox, FYI. It won't even run on a Pi Zero - very slow from my limited testing (as is the outdated Pi 2).

[Guspaz]

Umm, you're off by a few orders of magnitude. To quote that source:

"Input lag on RetroPie is pretty high with the OpenGL driver, at 6 frames for NES and 7-8 frames for SNES."

8 frames on a 60Hz signal represents 133ms of lag, more than one eighth of a second. That is SUPER noticeable, speedrunners tend to complain at even 2 frames of lag. I don't know where you're getting "5 or 6 hundredths of a second" from!

EDIT: People around here tend to go for low-latency TVs, the good ones are a little less than one frame of lag.

[Dochartaigh]

I don't know where you're getting "5 or 6 hundredths of a second" from!

Hi Guspaz, I was quoting the DIFFERENCE between an original NES console on a LCD TV, and a Raspberry Pi 3 emulating the NES on a LCD TV - that may be where the confusion lies.

Can we can agree that 2 frames is pretty standard (if not pretty good) for an old-school console on a modern LCD TV (in game mode, yadda, yadda, yadda)? I was then being kind with my 4-6 number. In the "final conclusion" in that article he actually says he's "getting 4 frames of input lag with NES" (think he had better results with a certain video driver? or that's his average across all testing?).

So the difference between the 4 frames on a Pi 3, and the 2 he would normally get on a LCD, you're left with 2 frames.

2 / 60 = 0.03333333333 seconds.

Carry the two...

3 and a third hundredths of a second difference between those two (and we're totally talking generalities here...but my point is that sounds pretty good to me...)

[orange808]

No. A HiDefNES or RGB NES via OSSC will be about a frame of lag on a truly good display.

Four frames of lag makes Super Mario Bros feel like Prince of Persia. Screw that.

[Guspaz]

6 frames of lag on the NES with RetroPie, which is three times the lag on a TV with a moderate amount of lag (2 frames). An extra 4 frames of lag is definitely noticeable, and RetroPie has even more lag on the SNES (which I care about far more than the NES). In that case the Pi gives you 8 frames of lag instead of 2. The Pi just feels super laggy for playing SNES games, and having slightly less lag for the NES isn't really a big selling point. 6 frames of lag is still way too much when the alternative is zero frames of lag with my PVM or 2 frames of lag with my projector via the OSSC.

In terms of how noticeable lag is, well, I was playing Super R-Type with 4 frames of total lag, and having trouble, and then switched to a CRT with 0 frames of total lag, and did much better, so... yeah, a 4 frame difference sure matters. And if you *doubled* that amount of lag to get to RetroPie levels, yikes!

[BazookaBen]

Digital Foundry had a pretty in depth video with the Nt Mini recently, looking at analog and digital ouptuts, and comparing them to NES through framemeister and with HDMINES installed

https://youtu.be/BR5MZh-AYVs

They didn't mention any inaccuracies, and I'm sure they were looking for them. A couple weeks earlier in another video they found faults with sound effects on the NES Classic

[DiegoPonga]

I've purchased and installed both the Hi-Def NES and NESRGB (in different systems obviously) but I'm thinking about selling both of them for an Analog Nt Mini.

I don't have a CRT and really don't have any plans on purchasing one, so the NESRGB was used with my Framemeister until I received my Hi-Def NES. However, I wish the Hi-Def NES had 5x vertical scaling which is bothering me a little bit.

I do like the 'original' hardware (and nostalgia of my front-loader NES) but it seems more practical to use the 99 - 100% compatible FPGA Analog Nt Mini plus I can use all of the other cores.

Can anybody give me any advice? Has anybody else gone down this path?

I would keep that NESRGB and sell everything else. With the money you get, you could buy a OSSC. Plug NESRGB into the OSSC through SCART. Then, connect your OSSC to your TV through HDMI and 3.5 mm minijack (for audio), and you'll have quite a good result.

That's what I plan to do, but probably most people won't agree.

[bobrocks95]

Digital Foundry had a pretty in depth video with the Nt Mini recently, looking at analog and digital ouptuts, and comparing them to NES through framemeister and with HDMINES installed

https://youtu.be/BR5MZh-AYVs

They didn't mention any inaccuracies, and I'm sure they were looking for them. A couple weeks earlier in another video they found faults with sound effects on the NES Classic

One thing I thought was odd was they totally glossed over playing in 4:3 and preferred an incorrect, pixel-perfect aspect ratio.

Is the "Interpolation" feature missing in the NT Mini a form of bilinear filtering to make 4:3 look correct? So is there no filtering available on the Mini for 4:3 aspect ratio, or is it called something else?

[BazookaBen]

My guess is they thought a 4x vertical and 5x horizontal (or was it 6) was close enough geometry wise, and that way you wouldn't see the pixel scaling artifacts when scrolling. Plus they mentioned on some 4k TV's, you could set custom zoom levels with little noticeable artifacts or lag. That seems like a pretty good compromise.

Don't know about the other stuff you mentioned.

[bobrocks95]

My guess is they thought a 4x vertical and 5x horizontal (or was it 6) was close enough geometry wise, and that way you wouldn't see the pixel scaling artifacts when scrolling. Plus they mentioned on some 4k TV's, you could set custom zoom levels with little noticeable artifacts or lag. That seems like a pretty good compromise.

Don't know about the other stuff you mentioned.

For a $450+ piece of hardware, I would think we should demand more than "close enough".

The filtering I was talking about was to allow for 4:3 non-integer scaling but remove the scrolling artifacts. That's the standard way of dealing with non-integer scaling. Unless you understood and just weren't sure if the NT Mini offered it or not, then my bad.

[BazookaBen]

For a $450+ piece of hardware, I would think we should demand more than "close enough".

The filtering I was talking about was to allow for 4:3 non-integer scaling but remove the scrolling artifacts. That's the standard way of dealing with non-integer scaling. Unless you understood and just weren't sure if the NT Mini offered it or not, then my bad.

Yeah I dunno what sort of filtering does a satisfactory job, and whether Nt has it. But DF's interger scale+4k TV-zoom solution seemed like a good idea, though it wouldn't help anybody running with a 1080p display.

[Guspaz]

Digital Foundry had a pretty in depth video with the Nt Mini recently, looking at analog and digital ouptuts, and comparing them to NES through framemeister and with HDMINES installed

https://youtu.be/BR5MZh-AYVs

They didn't mention any inaccuracies, and I'm sure they were looking for them. A couple weeks earlier in another video they found faults with sound effects on the NES Classic

One thing I thought was odd was they totally glossed over playing in 4:3 and preferred an incorrect, pixel-perfect aspect ratio.

Is the "Interpolation" feature missing in the NT Mini a form of bilinear filtering to make 4:3 look correct? So is there no filtering available on the Mini for 4:3 aspect ratio, or is it called something else?

A perfect 4:3 aspect ratio requires non-integer scaling, which with nearest-neighbour filtering, produces uneven pixel sizes. That is most obvious with a shimmering effect in motion.

Horizontal interpolation solves the issue by making each pixel effectively the same size, at the cost of a bit of fuzziness. How much fuzziness depends on the exact algorithm used. One of the more effective ways to do this can be explained in two passes: scale to the next larger integer scale factor, and then use bilinear interpolation to downscale slightly to the final scale factor. This approach produces maximally sharp results for interpolation, since usually the only pixel that changes from a nearest-neighbour scale is the one output pixel that overlaps both input pixels. You can do this in a single pass, it's just easier to explain.

The NT Mini does not support interpolation of any kind, so basically all you get is nearest-neighbour scales. You can either choose to do integer-but-not-4:3, or you can do non-integer-but-4:3. MLiG's general approach for the NES is to do a 5x vertical scale and a 6x horizontal scale. This is an integer scale, is relatively close to 4:3 (1.37 vs 1.33, I think), and has a roughly similar amount of overscan to how a real NES did on a real CRT.

I think the reason that the NT Mini doesn't support interpolation is the same reason that it doesn't support a low pass filter on simulated FDS audio: the FPGA doesn't have enough multipliers, which Kevtris didn't realize until it was too late in development to change the FPGA.

[bobrocks95]

Digital Foundry had a pretty in depth video with the Nt Mini recently, looking at analog and digital ouptuts, and comparing them to NES through framemeister and with HDMINES installed

https://youtu.be/BR5MZh-AYVs

They didn't mention any inaccuracies, and I'm sure they were looking for them. A couple weeks earlier in another video they found faults with sound effects on the NES Classic

One thing I thought was odd was they totally glossed over playing in 4:3 and preferred an incorrect, pixel-perfect aspect ratio.

Is the "Interpolation" feature missing in the NT Mini a form of bilinear filtering to make 4:3 look correct? So is there no filtering available on the Mini for 4:3 aspect ratio, or is it called something else?

A perfect 4:3 aspect ratio requires non-integer scaling, which with nearest-neighbour filtering, produces uneven pixel sizes. That is most obvious with a shimmering effect in motion.

Horizontal interpolation solves the issue by making each pixel effectively the same size, at the cost of a bit of fuzziness. How much fuzziness depends on the exact algorithm used. One of the more effective ways to do this can be explained in two passes: scale to the next larger integer scale factor, and then use bilinear interpolation to downscale slightly to the final scale factor. This approach produces maximally sharp results for interpolation, since usually the only pixel that changes from a nearest-neighbour scale is the one output pixel that overlaps both input pixels. You can do this in a single pass, it's just easier to explain.

The NT Mini does not support interpolation of any kind, so basically all you get is nearest-neighbour scales. You can either choose to do integer-but-not-4:3, or you can do non-integer-but-4:3. MLiG's general approach for the NES is to do a 5x vertical scale and a 6x horizontal scale. This is an integer scale, is relatively close to 4:3 (1.37 vs 1.33, I think), and has a roughly similar amount of overscan to how a real NES did on a real CRT.

I think the reason that the NT Mini doesn't support interpolation is the same reason that it doesn't support a low pass filter on simulated FDS audio: the FPGA doesn't have enough multipliers, which Kevtris didn't realize until it was too late in development to change the FPGA.

Not a huge deal overall since you can ballpark the aspect ratio, but again kinda disappointing in a $450 product. That's not on Kevtris though, it's on Analogue.

[Galgomite]

I own an RGB NES, AVS, NT v2 and traditional top loader (okay, with AV mod). My short answer is keep your HDMI NES and buy nothing.
The NT Mini is actually a great value IF you really want the extra features it offers: built-in flash drive, 1080p, and other console cores. When I broke it down for myself though, I saw that I already own a flash drive, I use 720p for better scanlines, and I already own every 8-bit console I want (read: the NES). This makes the Mini's value proposition kind of an illusion when compared to other options: it has more features, and they sound cool, but I know I either don't need them or already own them. The Mini will also probably have a revision in the next year or so that fixes what sounds like a hypersensitive cartridge slot.

A couple other things which helped me with my decision but are completely subjective (my opinion):
-The most important thing to me was lag-free gaming, and I already have it with both my older NT and the AVS.
-An aluminum-bodied console feels completely wrong with soft plastic cartridges. I wish they at least ringed the cartridge slots in plastic.
-I prefer my NES to have authentic Nintendo hardware inside. I know it doesn't matter, but it kinda does to me.
-The resale value of the Mini will be nothing because it has no rare hardware inside. The NT and original Nintendo consoles contain authentic, vintage parts that will not be seen again. From here on out, we're talking FPGA setups that will only get better and render old configs obsolete. No doubt the next NT Mini will have the bluetooth controller receivers and wifi built-in. Then the next will have controller ports for all the other 8-bit consoles it can play and simultaneous video outputs; then the next will be 4K. And we can't be too far now from a console that adds more cartridge slots and 16-bit consoles to the mix. Unless you want every NES-compatible system that comes along, and there will be tons, you're in good shape to wait a few years IMHO.

[BazookaBen]

Unless you want every NES-compatible system that comes along, and there will be tons, you're in good shape to wait a few years IMHO.

But if you're just getting started, like if you don't have a NES, or only have a NES and it's unmodded, then the Nt mini could be a decent value. Especially if you'd end up paying somebody to install the HDMI mod. At that point the Nt mini is only a couple extra hundred bucks for more features.

I'd still like to see some sort of scientific test of the accuracy of the Nt mini and AVS.

[Darksakul]

I can say in compatibility the NT Mini is fully compatible with all NES and Famicom games and acessories, including Famicom disk drive and floppy disk games, Zapper titles (CRT Only), R.O.B. (CRT Only), Famicom 3D Glasses (CRT Only) and has a Mic jack for Famicom games that used the 2nd controller Microphone.
The NT Mini is capable of analog video out put in Composite, Component, S-video and RGB formats as well as 1080p via HDMI (the system can't do Analog and HDMI at the same time).
Using Kevtri's NES Core, the NT Mini plays roms more accurately than the Everdrive N8, and every mapper is supported.
Examples for compatibility includes: Lagrange Point with full VC7 Audio, the fan game Zelda: The Legend of Link that only runs on ether emulation or Real hardware (game too big to be loaded on any flash cart)

The AVS only does 720p via HDMI.
Also the AVS has compatibility issues with certain games, so with that I say the NT Mini is closer to Original NES/Famicom Hardware then the AVS.
Tech review sites said the NT Mini is reference quality. And Oscilloscope tests finds the NT Mini.

If you pay a modder to do all the necessary mods to a NES or Famicom for a Hi Def NES Mod (including the cost of the console) and maybe a Cart adapter for imports you pay $380 or more.
I say the custom milled aluminum shell is about $100, which is about right for custom milled aluminum. You also get the 8Bitdo NES Controller, which is about $30 for the Gamepad and another 10-15 for the receiver included with the price of the NT Mini. And yes you can use a real original NES controller with the Mini.

[ApolloBoy]

Also the AVS has compatibility issues with certain games

I've tried pretty much everything I have for the NES and Famicom on my AVS and I haven't run into any compatibility problems yet. That includes carts with special mapper chips like Akumajou Densetsu, Lagrange Point and Castlevania III.