XRGB-mini Framemeister

[jdawg131]

I did some tinkering this weekend with the XRGB Mini, PS3, Xbox 360, and HDMI Direct. The XRGB Mini does not properly pass 1080p signals. It constantly drops the signal. Tested both the PS3 and 360. After I switched both consoles to 720p, I haven't run into any issues.

I found some posts in this thread from 2 years ago about this issue. It looks the past few firmware updates didn't address it. It's not a major deal breaker as the vast majority of PS3 games are only 720p, but it is definitely disappointing.

[H6rdc0re]

Deep Color allows 12 bits per pixel (instead of the default 8 bits) I thought, it has nothing to do with scaling at all?

I see. As far as I can tell from Googling, 12-bit color reduces banding, but is that even an issue with these limited color consoles? Maybe it's good for 16.7 mill color consoles after scaling? So say it's maybe useful for PS1/Saturn and on up?

Unfortunately it doesn't because 24-bit true color has 256 shades (8-bit) of red, green and blue allowing for 16.777.216 colors (256 x 256 x 256).

For more colors you'll need a source outputting in 30/36/48-bit deep color and there's nothing out there doing that at this point nor can we see it. The human eye can only see about 10 million colors. Hardware does support it from HDMI v1.3 but no source material.

30-bit deep color has 1.024 shades (10-bit) of red, green and blue allowing for 1.073.741.824 colors (1.024 x 1.024 x 1.024), 36-bit deep color has 4.096 shades (12-bit) of red, green and blue allowing for 68.719.476.736 colors (4.096 x 4.096 x 4.096) and finally 48-bit deep color has 65.536 shades (16-bit) of red, green and blue allowing for 281.474.976.710.656 colors (65.536 x 65.536 x 65.536). So fun in theory but just that, theory as we can't see it.

[K0rN b4LL]

I'm having a problem, I'm not getting any sound out of my Framemeister and the screen gets a pinkish/purple hue when I'm using the d-terminal or s-video inputs. RGB input has a clear picture but still no sound. (Don't have anything plugged into the others)

The other day I moved all my stuff into another room in our house and it started doing this after I plugged everything back in again and turned it on. Before I changed rooms it was working fine. I have no idea how fragile this thing is (for $300+ I was hoping for a bit of durability) cuz when I moved it I left the cables attached to the Framemeister and just unplugged the cables from the various systems so I hope them hanging from it didn't damage it. Any thoughts?


** Forget it, it was the tv. I changed which input it was plugged into and its working fine now.

[austin532]

So just for shits and giggles I been using the PS1 5X profile for PS2 and I think it looks pretty good. You're basically getting a 2.5X scale. PS1 at 5X and PS2 at 2.5X equals the same resolution which is 1600 x 1200. When viewing on a 1080p display you are cutting off 120 pixels which sounds like a lot but since most PS2 game run at 512 x 448 it only cuts off just a smidge on the top and bottom of the screen. It's about the same as your typical CRT overscan giving it a more authentic look.

[NZRetroGamers]

Has anyone got a PAL NES RGB profile? 720p 3x integer?

[Cosmonal]

I did some tinkering this weekend with the XRGB Mini, PS3, Xbox 360, and HDMI Direct. The XRGB Mini does not properly pass 1080p signals. It constantly drops the signal. Tested both the PS3 and 360. After I switched both consoles to 720p, I haven't run into any issues.

I found some posts in this thread from 2 years ago about this issue. It looks the past few firmware updates didn't address it. It's not a major deal breaker as the vast majority of PS3 games are only 720p, but it is definitely disappointing.

Interesting, because my Framemeister works flawlessly with 1080p (HDMI Direct On) from 360, PS3 and even PS4.

Of course PS3 games are outputting always 720p signal, but on the main console interface it works perfectly on 1080p, also on long sessions of Netflix and YouTube -- always 1080p, without any drops.

Still on PS3, I'm playing Demon's Souls and scaling 720p to 1080p via Framemeister (of course I turn off HDMI Direct when I play this game or anytime I want the profile to take place) just to get a very slightly sharper scaling when comparing to my TV doing the 720p>1080p scale. Even made a simple profile for that, PS3SHARP.BIN -- it's great.

One more thing: maybe I don't experience any dropouts on the 1080p signal from these consoles (yes, 360 at 1080p works all the time, never any dropouts) because there's a HDMI splitter right before the XRGB HDMI input: one HDMI cable goes to the XRGB of course and the other to the capture card (Elgato HD60). The HDMI splitter is a cheap one but it's perfect, never had any problems: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ultra-HD-4K-2-P ... 2106340900

I have 2 of these, using for years, always capturing footage and playing with those on the system.

Another thing to note: I just got the Elgato HD60, but before I captured footage with the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle USB, and this card captures on 720p@60 only. So, to capture PS4 *and* at the same time enjoy the game on 1080p on my TV, I connect the PS4 HDMI out to the HDMI splitter, then to XRGB which downscales the 1080p resolution to 720p which the Blackmagic can capture. It worked perfectly, I used this setup for about 3 years. This is the last video I did using this setup (The Last Guardian, which is native 1080p on PS4): https://youtu.be/5P1awApq4zg

(it's on portuguese, I'm linking just to check the quality)

Anyway, hope that something I said helps on any way Have a great day!

[jdawg131]

One more thing: maybe I don't experience any dropouts on the 1080p signal from these consoles (yes, 360 at 1080p works all the time, never any dropouts) because there's a HDMI splitter right before the XRGB HDMI input: one HDMI cable goes to the XRGB of course and the other to the capture card (Elgato HD60). The HDMI splitter is a cheap one but it's perfect, never had any problems: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ultra-HD-4K-2-P ... 2106340900

I think that this may be the reason for your success. I'm not sure what the device could be doing to the signal before passing it off to the XRGB though. Maybe standardizing it? I have the PS3 and 360 going directly into the two HDMI inputs on the XRGB Mini. Unfortunately, I don't have the space or an extra power outlet to connect (yet) another device.

[Link83]

Has the XRGB-Mini seen any internal hardware/board revisions since its release? It just seems strange that some people have had different experiences with their XRGB-Mini compared to others.

<EDIT> After searching this thread I read that there is at least a version 1.2 and version 1.3 of the PCB, and that you can easily discover which version you have by checking the PCB ver. listed in the Special section of the menu.

Can anyone who has bought an XRGB-Mini from a recent batch confirm what the latest PCB revision is?

[Cosmonal]

One more thing: maybe I don't experience any dropouts on the 1080p signal from these consoles (yes, 360 at 1080p works all the time, never any dropouts) because there's a HDMI splitter right before the XRGB HDMI input: one HDMI cable goes to the XRGB of course and the other to the capture card (Elgato HD60). The HDMI splitter is a cheap one but it's perfect, never had any problems: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ultra-HD-4K-2-P ... 2106340900

I think that this may be the reason for your success. I'm not sure what the device could be doing to the signal before passing it off to the XRGB though. Maybe standardizing it? I have the PS3 and 360 going directly into the two HDMI inputs on the XRGB Mini. Unfortunately, I don't have the space or an extra power outlet to connect (yet) another device.

Maybe some extra power its the reason, as the splitter has its own power supply. But don't know for sure. Also, it breaks HDCP on PS3 as a needed bonus feature for capturing footage via HDMI. So, the standardizing you mentioned may really be the case, as it manipulates the digital signal (at least to break the HDCP).

[Rasdock]

Fire,

When I got my Framemeister back in December, one of the first things I did was to put your profiles on an SD card. Unfortunately, I got your instructions exactly backwards and used Load_Select to load them, and things were, of course, not right. So, I stayed with pretty much the default. Well, I had to get a new SD card, and I had to relearn where to put the files on the card. In doing so, I reread your instructions and saw that I had to use Load. As you may expect, things look tremendous doing it the right way! No more of that unsightly extra picture information on my Genesis games! Thanks.

Also, a couple of months back, I mentioned seeing smearing and other distortions when I had output_color set to Auto. Your settings also have output_color on Auto, and all of that stuff is gone. I don't really know why, but I'm sure there's some setting somewhere in there that is causing it, and output_color just happened to get rid of it as well. Weird. Weird, but if it's no longer happening, that's fine.

[FBX]

Fire,

When I got my Framemeister back in December, one of the first things I did was to put your profiles on an SD card. Unfortunately, I got your instructions exactly backwards and used Load_Select to load them, and things were, of course, not right. So, I stayed with pretty much the default. Well, I had to get a new SD card, and I had to relearn where to put the files on the card. In doing so, I reread your instructions and saw that I had to use Load. As you may expect, things look tremendous doing it the right way! No more of that unsightly extra picture information on my Genesis games! Thanks.

Also, a couple of months back, I mentioned seeing smearing and other distortions when I had output_color set to Auto. Your settings also have output_color on Auto, and all of that stuff is gone. I don't really know why, but I'm sure there's some setting somewhere in there that is causing it, and output_color just happened to get rid of it as well. Weird. Weird, but if it's no longer happening, that's fine.

It could be the AUTO_SCALER settings. In order to get the sharpest picture, I turn that off and set H and V manually to 5 and 7. Now the Framemeister does have a weird quirk where if you change the color mode, it "forgets" the scaler settings are active and reverts to a smeared look. Simply going into H_SCALER and adjusting the setting down to 4 and back to 5 forces the Framemeister to "remember" they were active.

[Kagigod]

I've been tweaking FBX's 720 settings for the SNES and for the Genesis to make it look a bit more like my Sony KV-14LM1E CRT TV. My setup is a Samsung KS7000 ( the EU model for the KS8000) using a Framemeister.

FBX's were great to start but I realized that the image was very dark ( using scaliness ) and muted on my TV, and scaliness too thick compared to what I saw on the CRT. These modified setting look much closer to the experience on the CRT for my TV, even the look of the scaliness is much similar.

Btw, I'm on PAL land, so I'm using 60hz moded consoles.

Extra info: I'm using warm2 as color temp and Native as color palette in the TV.

Is it ok to share the files here using Google Drive?

Snes 720 profile: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B06_Mq ... sp=sharing
Megadrive 720 profile: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B06_Mq ... sp=sharing

Please, let me know what you think of these settings

One question for FBX, I see you're using zoom scale and zoom overscan to 95 each and then reduced zoom width to get the correct aspect ration, but why those values at 95? Having them both at 95 is not giving the same image that having both at 100? I'm curious

[TheShadowRunner]

Btw, I'm on PAL land, so I'm using 60hz model consoles.

You mean 50hz, don't you?

[Kagigod]

Btw, I'm on PAL land, so I'm using 60hz model consoles.

You mean 50hz, don't you?

I meant moded

[FBX]

One question for FBX, I see you're using zoom scale and zoom overscan to 95 each and then reduced zoom width to get the correct aspect ration, but why those values at 95? Having them both at 95 is not giving the same image that having both at 100? I'm curious

Zoom scale? Do you mean Zoom_Size?

Zoom_Size allows you to scale the image, but only within framing of the signal window.

Zoom_Overscan allows you to shrink the entire signal window into view and adds in black borders as you shrink past the screen edges.

Using a combination of both allowed me to hit a 'sweet-spot' that landed on integer 3x scaling of NTSC SNES. This is confirmed by enabling scanlines to see if they are uniform.

Long story short: There's a very good reason the zoom settings are the way they are. If you're playing on PAL equipment, please remember that I do not support PAL formats in my work.

Lastly, I always encourage everybody to calibrate their color settings in these profiles to their liking. Mine are aligned with full-color HDMI modded consoles like the N64 and AVS, so they will appear dark and muted. Then of course, many consoles need color calibrations specific to themselves. The best way to do this is to use Artemio's Test Suites and load up the RGB color bars test pattern. Then you adjust A/D until the brightest two green shades are distinguishable. This is very important on the SNES and N64 as they commonly get colors crushed on the Framemeister when A/D isn't calibrated.

[IrishNinja]

I don't expect any more FW updated either as they are working on the successor. Honestly what more can they add to it? Due to the success of the OSSC, I wouldn't be surprised if the XRGB-4 goes back to being a line doubler/trippler.

yeah, that's my current assumption as well, personally. won't help folks still trying to find a mini for a good price either, i imagine.

[austin532]

Lastly, I always encourage everybody to calibrate their color settings in these profiles to their liking. Mine are aligned with full-color HDMI modded consoles like the N64 and AVS, so they will appear dark and muted. Then of course, many consoles need color calibrations specific to themselves. The best way to do this is to use Artemio's Test Suites and load up the RGB color bars test pattern. Then you adjust A/D until the brightest two green shades are distinguishable. This is very important on the SNES and N64 as they commonly get colors crushed on the Framemeister when A/D isn't calibrated.

For most consoles A/D needs to be around 117 to make out the last two shades of green if I remember correctly.

[FBX]

Lastly, I always encourage everybody to calibrate their color settings in these profiles to their liking. Mine are aligned with full-color HDMI modded consoles like the N64 and AVS, so they will appear dark and muted. Then of course, many consoles need color calibrations specific to themselves. The best way to do this is to use Artemio's Test Suites and load up the RGB color bars test pattern. Then you adjust A/D until the brightest two green shades are distinguishable. This is very important on the SNES and N64 as they commonly get colors crushed on the Framemeister when A/D isn't calibrated.

For most consoles A/D needs to be around 117 to make out the last two shades of green if I remember correctly.

It entirely depends on the console. There is no set standard. I've got SNES units where 121 is the target, another where 138 does it, and another where 148 works.

[FBX]

New profiles package:

http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/fra ... -06-02.zip

This rewrites all the profiles to have 'deep color' mode turned off. I got yet another report a couple days ago of a user having problems with the profiles glitching out after hooking up an HDMI matrix switcher. Turns out it was once again the deep color mode, so I made the commitment to shut it off in every profile I've made.

Also included in the package is a folder of '1080 Producer Profiles' that have a few completely unmasked profiles. These are for video production experts that prefer to do masking and cropping within their own video editing software.

At any rate, even if you don't have any problems right now with the old profiles, you may still want to replace them with the new package. This is just in case down the road you decide to add a new piace of hardware like a matrix switcher or a new display that might not like 12-bit HDMI color.

[Harpo1967]

FBX, thank you for providing the profiles. I just got my XRGB mini a week or so ago and I'm still figuring things out but the Sega Genesis profiles are really nice. It took me a minute to fully understand the 4x3 versus the 5x3 as I now realize I lose a bit of the top and bottom on the latter.

I have it hooked up to a new Sony 1080P TV. I have it in Game mode and set it at Full Pixel. However, can you or someone explain what I might be losing when I switch the Wide Mode function on the TV? I have 4 options, Normal, Full, Wide and Wide Zoom. The latter 2 don't look right at all. Normal seems like there is a lot of room on the sides, smaller than a 4:3 it seems to me. Full screen also looks nice but I do think it is stretching side to side. Is the truest best picture only in Normal?

I do like the Full setting but maybe it's just the games I've tried so far. I do want to obtain an understanding of what the Wide Mode on my TV is doing with the XRGB picture though.

Any information is greatly appreciated?

[sleazefrenzy]

Hi I'm pretty new to this and just trying to clarify some things before making any purchases.

I live within PAL territory and would like to know how this affects the Framemeister, and what the best workarounds are.

Is it best to buy NTSC consoles, or mod PAL consoles? I hear scanlines can be a problem amongst other things.

[Harpo1967]

I'm still on the hunt for an Atari 2600 RGB profile. Anyone have one they really like?

[RaphM]

Hi I'm pretty new to this and just trying to clarify some things before making any purchases.

I live within PAL territory and would like to know how this affects the Framemeister, and what the best workarounds are.

Is it best to buy NTSC consoles, or mod PAL consoles? I hear scanlines can be a problem amongst other things.

I'm using the Framemeister with PAL consoles (SNES / Sega Mega Drive / N64 / PS2) without any problems - just make sure to update to the latest firmware (they officially added PAL support with version 1.06).
I would also advice to use 50hz output modes to match the input signal from the consoles (although I didn't notice any stutters when trying 60hz output).

Scanlines are independent of NTSC/PAL, the important thing is to have the input image scaled by an integer factor for scanlines to look good.
For NTSC Firebrandx provides a great set of preconfigured integer scale profiles (http://www.firebrandx.com/framemeisterprofiles.html), while for PAL no such package exists so you'll have to manually fiddle with the scale/zoom settings. (Of course I can share mine if you happen to play on one of the mentioned consoles).

[sleazefrenzy]

I'm using the Framemeister with PAL consoles (SNES / Sega Mega Drive / N64 / PS2) without any problems - just make sure to update to the latest firmware (they officially added PAL support with version 1.06).
I would also advice to use 50hz output modes to match the input signal from the consoles (although I didn't notice any stutters when trying 60hz output).

Scanlines are independent of NTSC/PAL, the important thing is to have the input image scaled by an integer factor for scanlines to look good.
For NTSC Firebrandx provides a great set of preconfigured integer scale profiles (http://www.firebrandx.com/framemeisterprofiles.html), while for PAL no such package exists so you'll have to manually fiddle with the scale/zoom settings. (Of course I can share mine if you happen to play on one of the mentioned consoles).

Thanks that's good to hear, and I would be very interested in knowing how people have set theirs up for PAL SNES, MD and PS2 for sure. Of course it'll still be some time before I actually get hold of my own Framemeister to test them out :p

I've heard setting the output to 576p (instead of the usual 720p) helps PAL scanlines look more natural?

[copy]

I have it hooked up to a new Sony 1080P TV. I have it in Game mode and set it at Full Pixel. However, can you or someone explain what I might be losing when I switch the Wide Mode function on the TV? I have 4 options, Normal, Full, Wide and Wide Zoom. The latter 2 don't look right at all. Normal seems like there is a lot of room on the sides, smaller than a 4:3 it seems to me. Full screen also looks nice but I do think it is stretching side to side. Is the truest best picture only in Normal?

I do like the Full setting but maybe it's just the games I've tried so far. I do want to obtain an understanding of what the Wide Mode on my TV is doing with the XRGB picture though.

Any information is greatly appreciated?

FBX's profiles preserve the original 4:3 game image within the XRGB-Mini's 1080p 16:9 output signal, so you want to set your 1080p TV to whichever mode reproduces the signal as exactly as possible. From a quick check of an online Sony manual, I believe you want "Wide Mode: Full," and yes, keep the "Display Area: Full Pixel" option. Anything other than Full will be zooming or stretching the image to some degree, which you don't want.

[Wariolicious]

I have it hooked up to a new Sony 1080P TV. I have it in Game mode and set it at Full Pixel. However, can you or someone explain what I might be losing when I switch the Wide Mode function on the TV? I have 4 options, Normal, Full, Wide and Wide Zoom. The latter 2 don't look right at all. Normal seems like there is a lot of room on the sides, smaller than a 4:3 it seems to me. Full screen also looks nice but I do think it is stretching side to side. Is the truest best picture only in Normal?

I do like the Full setting but maybe it's just the games I've tried so far. I do want to obtain an understanding of what the Wide Mode on my TV is doing with the XRGB picture though.

Any information is greatly appreciated?

FBX's profiles preserve the original 4:3 game image within the XRGB-Mini's 1080p 16:9 output signal, so you want to set your 1080p TV to whichever mode reproduces the signal as exactly as possible. From a quick check of an online Sony manual, I believe you want "Wide Mode: Full," and yes, keep the "Display Area: Full Pixel" option. Anything other than Full will be zooming or stretching the image to some degree, which you don't want.

For Sony TV's FBX actually recommends to set the Display Area to "-1" to scale the image optimally.

[FBX]

I have it hooked up to a new Sony 1080P TV. I have it in Game mode and set it at Full Pixel. However, can you or someone explain what I might be losing when I switch the Wide Mode function on the TV? I have 4 options, Normal, Full, Wide and Wide Zoom. The latter 2 don't look right at all. Normal seems like there is a lot of room on the sides, smaller than a 4:3 it seems to me. Full screen also looks nice but I do think it is stretching side to side. Is the truest best picture only in Normal?

I do like the Full setting but maybe it's just the games I've tried so far. I do want to obtain an understanding of what the Wide Mode on my TV is doing with the XRGB picture though.

Any information is greatly appreciated?

FBX's profiles preserve the original 4:3 game image within the XRGB-Mini's 1080p 16:9 output signal, so you want to set your 1080p TV to whichever mode reproduces the signal as exactly as possible. From a quick check of an online Sony manual, I believe you want "Wide Mode: Full," and yes, keep the "Display Area: Full Pixel" option. Anything other than Full will be zooming or stretching the image to some degree, which you don't want.

For Sony TV's FBX actually recommends to set the Display Area to "-1" to scale the image optimally.

I used to, but now I just leave everything at 1:1 for optimal sharpness and uniform scanlines. Laziness probably too.

In regards to the Genesis/Mega Drive, it has two major res modes of 320x224 and 256x224. The 320 mode looks better set to square pixels in my opinion, and the 256 mode looks better stretched to 4:3. However, the new "Producer" profiles I made in the most recent package have Genesis 320 and 256 modes combined and set to the same target of 1170x896 (1170 is generally considered the perfect AR correction for 4*256 horizontal res).

[Harpo1967]

I have it hooked up to a new Sony 1080P TV. I have it in Game mode and set it at Full Pixel. However, can you or someone explain what I might be losing when I switch the Wide Mode function on the TV? I have 4 options, Normal, Full, Wide and Wide Zoom. The latter 2 don't look right at all. Normal seems like there is a lot of room on the sides, smaller than a 4:3 it seems to me. Full screen also looks nice but I do think it is stretching side to side. Is the truest best picture only in Normal?

I do like the Full setting but maybe it's just the games I've tried so far. I do want to obtain an understanding of what the Wide Mode on my TV is doing with the XRGB picture though.

Any information is greatly appreciated?

FBX's profiles preserve the original 4:3 game image within the XRGB-Mini's 1080p 16:9 output signal, so you want to set your 1080p TV to whichever mode reproduces the signal as exactly as possible. From a quick check of an online Sony manual, I believe you want "Wide Mode: Full," and yes, keep the "Display Area: Full Pixel" option. Anything other than Full will be zooming or stretching the image to some degree, which you don't want.

Thank you for the reply. I have been using Wide Mode: Full as that is the best picture to me. I was really confused as Wide Mode: Normal sounds like it would be what I'd call the picture without any manipulation by the TV.

[MetalMilitia]

Has anyone been able to get scanlines to line up correctly while displaying 720p on a 768p display? I'm having issues with this and can't seem to get it right.

[Grimakis]

One more thing: maybe I don't experience any dropouts on the 1080p signal from these consoles (yes, 360 at 1080p works all the time, never any dropouts) because there's a HDMI splitter right before the XRGB HDMI input: one HDMI cable goes to the XRGB of course and the other to the capture card (Elgato HD60). The HDMI splitter is a cheap one but it's perfect, never had any problems: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ultra-HD-4K-2-P ... 2106340900

I think that this may be the reason for your success. I'm not sure what the device could be doing to the signal before passing it off to the XRGB though. Maybe standardizing it? I have the PS3 and 360 going directly into the two HDMI inputs on the XRGB Mini. Unfortunately, I don't have the space or an extra power outlet to connect (yet) another device.

I don't think so. I would guess your Framemeister is defective in some way.

I used the PS4 with the Framemeister for about a year without issue. I've seen added a splitter and capture card to the setup, but even before I never had an issue. 1080p60 of course.

Now what I have experienced is constant issues with the Framemeister and my HDMI switch, a Kinivio 501BN. It appears to have issues handshaking, as it frequently cuts out. Maybe HDCP related? I may need to add a second splitter just to strip HDCP from the Framemeister output.

Now I have the Framemeister bypassing the switch again.