Wolf_ wrote:DirkSwizzler wrote:Wolf_ wrote:Yes the firmware would need to change, but it makes the connection simpler/possible and unlocks a lot more potential future functionality.
Great. Amazon has plenty of those connectors. You're welcome.
That's not how that works. For starters there are only 3 rca video inputs for component and you need up to 5 inputs for bnc to be universal and also some inputs on the ossc like the scart input only accept scart and won't accept s-video via an s-video to scart adapter. So no, you're welcome. (For the free education)
It is so much simpler and just common sense to use a single universal input and have it accept everything and clean up the i/o.
The OSSC not auto-detecting sync types: different sync types are essentially treated as different inputs. Marqs has indicated that the OSSC could try to auto-detect by cycling through the types and trying to see which gets a sync, but there are potential issues with that, and it wouldn't be able to tell RGsB and YPbPr apart because they look identical from a signal standpoint. Profiles aren't automatic either, there is unfortunately no good universal solution.
Extron devices with five BNC inputs do auto-detect sync to a certain extent, but they're limited to three modes: they detect which cables are physically connected (by measuring impedance, IIRC). By this they can tell if there are five wires connected (RGBHV), four wires (RGBS) or three wires (RGsB/YPbPr). You'll note that it still can't tell RGsB and YPbPr apart, but for the Extron SC-210 that I've got, it doesn't matter, because it can process them the same because it's just a sync processor.
Having separate BNC connectors wouldn't necessarily help the OSSC auto-detect sync. The impedence check that the Extron does isn't quite enough, and it could do the same thing on a SCART connector by checking which pins are wired up. Like I said, ultimately there isn't any good universal solution.
Now, in terms of composite video and S-Video, it's important to understand why the OSSC doesn't support them, which has nothing to do with the type of connector. In fact, the OSSC supports more or less the same signal types on each input (even YPbPr via the VGA input). The thing is, every signal type the OSSC supports is basically the same type, with the sync method being the only difference. They're all RGB of some sort, and YPbPr is the same as RGB from an electrical standpoint. The reason the OSSC doesn't support composite and s-video is because those require an NTSC (or PAL) decoder. Basically, with RGB, it's straightforward voltage levels for different signal intensities. But for composite and s-video, the chroma (colour) is encoded into a single signal, and needs to be decoded. The OSSC doesn't have such a decoder.
In other words, having five BNC connectors wouldn't be any more universal because the limitation is in the processing, not the physical connection. I believe the plan for the Wolf edition is to support NTSC/PAL decoders on a daughterboard, but having that, composite and s-video to SCART adapters would work just as well as five BNC connectors. That's why I think it would be ideal for the input connectors to be on a daughterboard, because then you could use SCART, or BNC, or whatever you want. For composite and s-video, it would actually make more sense to have a daughterboard with actual composite and s-video connectors on it, because you could put the NTSC/PAL decoder chip on the same daughterboard.