PixelFX Morph

[spmbx]

Why wouldn't we want Voultar testing products before release? If anything, I want devs to get more machines to him sooner (if he's willing to test). Voultar is knowledgeable and honest. If you don't like his honesty, imagine him as a beta tester. That brutal honesty and his informed feedback could prevent a lot of bugs and problems. He's perfect. Voultar should test more, not less.

I can think of quite a few but i don't really want to drag this even further offtopic

[768peeistrash]

Why wouldn't we want Voultar testing products before release? If anything, I want devs to get more machines to him sooner (if he's willing to test). Voultar is knowledgeable and honest. If you don't like his honesty, imagine him as a beta tester. That brutal honesty and his informed feedback could prevent a lot of bugs and problems. He's perfect. Voultar should test more, not less.

The short and skinny, from a distance, is Voultar is 'team Retrotink' and some of PixelFX's founders remarks have rubbed him the wrong way the way they've accused Mike Chi of being 'greedy' and speculating on total cost of materials of his products, to the point of bowing out. He even recently sent back a ps2 Gem back to Dan rather than do an overview / install video on it.


Those clear cases for Morph 4K look great!

--


https://i.imgur.com/6HEPM0y.jpg

Here's a pic Woozle showed off on PixelFX discord a few days ago too, as a tease with disclaimer:
"Yeah the super NT is nice on the morph 4K. Disclaimer, that pic is many months old and probably from a very old morph build"

[DejahThoris]

Why wouldn't we want Voultar testing products before release? If anything, I want devs to get more machines to him sooner (if he's willing to test). Voultar is knowledgeable and honest. If you don't like his honesty, imagine him as a beta tester. That brutal honesty and his informed feedback could prevent a lot of bugs and problems. He's perfect. Voultar should test more, not less.

The short and skinny, from a distance, is Voultar is 'team Retrotink' and some of PixelFX's founders remarks have rubbed him the wrong way the way they've accused Mike Chi of being 'greedy' and speculating on total cost of materials of his products, to the point of bowing out. He even recently sent back a ps2 Gem back to Dan rather than do an overview / install video on it.


Those clear cases for Morph 4K look great!

--


https://i.imgur.com/6HEPM0y.jpg

Here's a pic Woozle showed off on PixelFX discord a few days ago too, as a tease with disclaimer:
"Yeah the super NT is nice on the morph 4K. Disclaimer, that pic is many months old and probably from a very old morph build"

That seems like enough of a bias to not want to read anything he'd have to say about this product anyway. Plenty of people to review things and I'm sure we'll have all sorts of other folks looking at it who do not have any sort of history.

Moving right along: big not fan of the case. Looks like a clear version of any number of cheap adapters (I think I have a $10 Component to RGB box that's *real* close but black). But y'know what? The look of the case isn't important at all, as long as it does the job it's supposed to do.

[orange808]

Well, I trust what he has to say about things.

You know, there are multiple people involved with MiSTer that I would never want to come around or have a pint. They're still quite knowledgeable and I respect their professional abilities. Of course, they give you free pirate games, so they have a license to be assholes. You love to pirate. Apparently, Voultar doesn't gift you enough free shit to have an opinion. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Whatever.

[768peeistrash]

That seems like enough of a bias to not want to read anything he'd have to say about this product anyway. Plenty of people to review things and I'm sure we'll have all sorts of other folks looking at it who do not have any sort of history.

The second part = true. Macho Nacho already covered it and sure more are on the way soon

as for the former, interesting recent tweets from Voultar just an hour ago about his past experiences involving PixelFX members..

Not wanting to bust out a pitchfork but if true, seems like the bias is not entirely unfounded bias at face value.

Sucks though because lots of talent to go around in all directions :/

If it's true PixelFX told people who got 5x 's to not cover the product, that seems sorta crappy too.

[spmbx]

Glad i'm not on t̶w̶i̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ x, could do with less drama and more actual interesting stuff. Ultimately i don't give a flying f**k who has beef with who, it won't change the output resolution of <insert product>.

[768peeistrash]

Glad i'm not on t̶w̶i̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ x, could do with less drama and more actual interesting stuff.

yeah it sucks, I follow retro creators for their new products not for the extra stuff but sometimes cant avoid seeing it.

unfortunately X is also the best place to go to see prototypes / WIP tease type stuff

[DejahThoris]

That seems like enough of a bias to not want to read anything he'd have to say about this product anyway. Plenty of people to review things and I'm sure we'll have all sorts of other folks looking at it who do not have any sort of history.

The second part = true. Macho Nacho already covered it and sure more are on the way soon

as for the former, interesting recent tweets from Voultar just an hour ago about his past experiences involving PixelFX members..

Not wanting to bust out a pitchfork but if true, seems like the bias is not entirely unfounded bias at face value.

Sucks though because lots of talent to go around in all directions :/

If it's true PixelFX told people who got 5x 's to not cover the product, that seems sorta crappy too.

Oh I'm not saying the bias is or isn't valid or making any commentary about any of the parties involved. What I'm saying is that when there is clearly a strong bias (in either direction) then that person's review/opinion/whatever is a lot less meaningful and should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

If you hate Apple and everything they do is wrong, I don't care to hear your new iPad review any more than I care to hear it from the guy who runs out and buys every new Apple product and discounts any issues when brought to his attention.

Better to rely on opinions from impartial folks.

Well, I trust what he has to say about things.

You know, there are multiple people involved with MiSTer that I would never want to come around or have a pint. They're still quite knowledgeable and I respect their professional abilities. Of course, they give you free pirate games, so they have a license to be assholes. You love to pirate. Apparently, Voultar doesn't gift you enough free shit to have an opinion. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Whatever.

See above, has nothing to do with trusting someone's opinions, or "gifting me enough free shit" (I have no idea what Voultar's ever given me, but sure, let's go with that?), it has to do with giving an *impartial* review. Which it seems evident isn't an option here, and I'm not sure why you would ever want a biased review over a fair one regardless of who is giving it.

[tongshadow]

Impartial >opinions<. Lol.

[bobrocks95]

God damn tensions are ridiculously high at this point. I feel like Jeff Chen just exploded on me on Twitter, because as best I can tell he thought I was accusing him of bias in favor of Retrotink products? He screenshotted what I had publicly replied to in a thread he was in saying "I saw them" like it was a gotcha and I have never seen a conversation devolve into what felt like an argument that quickly, even on Twitter which is awful for actual human communication.

All I had posted about is something I think is relevant here too *regardless* of which scaler you're thinking about buying, and that's that adding a digital mod to a console (in this case PS2) means I no longer have to think about what resolution the game I'm playing is running in, right? I don't think any new scaler will be able to automatically select sampling modes for me because you just inherently can't get the horizontal resolution of a game from an analog signal where "resolution" kind of doesn't exist. So I was saying a digital mod for the PS2 is still useful, blurry as the system may be, so that I don't have to remember or test what games run at what resolution and switch between profiles each time.

But I guess that's seen as accusing someone of something by this point, if that's what Jeff thought I was doing? It seems better to stop posting entirely at this point...

[fernan1234]

I don't think any new scaler will be able to automatically select sampling modes for me because you just inherently can't get the horizontal resolution of a game from an analog signal where "resolution" kind of doesn't exist.

On this point, there's been interesting talk (maybe at the Tink discord) about these new scalers being able not to auto detect analogue input resolutions for optimal sampling, but to read off a game ID and apply the appropriate optimal profile, at least when loading games from a flashcart, or loader (like OPL), though this of course would require collaboration from the corresponding devs and contributors. So at some point in the future you may not need a digital mod for this kind of purpose.

[SuperSpongo]

Sounds interesting, how would the loader software communicate this to the scaler?
If it's an ODE, I could see some kind of WiFi communication, but other than that? It would have to be encoded into picture or something can't be done only once on startup either, because games can switch resolutions.

Must've been an interesting read.

[fernan1234]

I think the conversation was about adding the identifier in the blanking area, similar to closed captions in analogue broadcasts. It should be viable but will need people to get on board.

[bobrocks95]

That would be very cool, though with games that have multiple resolutions it would have to send more than an ID. Not that it's too important to get perfect sampling in Chrono Cross's menus, but if the blanking area is saying "Chrono Cross" and then you switch to the menu, it would have to be able to know that you've opened the menu and change what it's sending. Don't think that'll ever exist in analog, but getting a general mode to switch to would be nice.

Also something like SNES or Genesis you definitely couldn't do it with real carts, maybe flashcarts (oh you did specify this earlier, sorry)

[Konsolkongen]

That would be very cool, though with games that have multiple resolutions it would have to send more than an ID. Not that it's too important to get perfect sampling in Chrono Cross's menus, but if the blanking area is saying "Chrono Cross" and then you switch to the menu, it would have to be able to know that you've opened the menu and change what it's sending. Don't think that'll ever exist in analog, but getting a general mode to switch to would be nice.

Also something like SNES or Genesis you definitely couldn't do it with real carts, maybe flashcarts (oh you did specify this earlier, sorry)

Maybe the garbled graphics at the bottom of Mega Drive games could be used to identify if a game was running at 320 or 256px wide?
Can’t remember if there is a visible difference in junk pixels between the two modes.

[SGGG2]

Once a profile is loaded via Game ID, I don’t see why a scaler can’t be instructed to load a linked profile when it detects a resolution switch. I’d like to see the ability to load profile banks for any given title, to quickly cycle through different profiles for say, widescreen patches, overscan, different displays, etc.

[bobrocks95]

Once a profile is loaded via Game ID, I don’t see why a scaler can’t be instructed to load a linked profile when it detects a resolution switch. I’d like to see the ability to load profile banks for any given title, to quickly cycle through different profiles for say, widescreen patches, overscan, different displays, etc.

Hmm it's getting messy fast at that point. Could potentially work for a game like Chrono Cross with 2 resolutions, but Castlevania Symphony of the Night uses I think 4 different resolutions throughout a playthrough so it's a complete no-go by then.

Can a scaler detect a resolution switch between say 320x224 and 256x224 in analog? I'm not sure that part's even possible?

[SGGG2]

I was referring to 240p/480i switching. As you pointed out, it quickly gets complicated from there.

[bobrocks95]

I was referring to 240p/480i switching. As you pointed out, it quickly gets complicated from there.

I think that much is doable if the refresh rate changes slightly between them. I'm not sure though, maybe you don't need that. There could be some cool things in that space in the future, but I feel like it could have been possible from the OSSC on and still hasn't been looked into much.

[Konsolkongen]

I was referring to 240p/480i switching. As you pointed out, it quickly gets complicated from there.

I think that much is doable if the refresh rate changes slightly between them. I'm not sure though, maybe you don't need that. There could be some cool things in that space in the future, but I feel like it could have been possible from the OSSC on and still hasn't been looked into much.

The OSSC can distinguish between 240p and 480i and you can adjust sampling for both resolutions individually.

[tongshadow]

240p/480i transistions are also very dependant on the TV. My "dumb" 2009 Plasma model switches quickly (less than 1 sec) with the OSSC, when both modes are at 480p.
No need to wait... and wait... and wait... and wait...

[SuperSpongo]

Progressive and interlaced switches can be detected by the sync signal.

[BuckoA51]

Some more info and some screenshots of Morph were posted - https://www.pixelfx.co/post/mighty-morph-4k-screenshots

[orange808]

I haven't been following closely enough. I recall there were more options on the site previously. What happened to analog input?

[EnragedWhale]

I haven't been following closely enough. I recall there were more options on the site previously. What happened to analog input?

Coming Q1 2024 apparently. They call it the Analog Bridge.

[SavagePencil]

Does the Analog Bridge work alongside the HDMI input or replace it?

[Josh128]

Black Friday sale price is great....but are the units shipping immediately or is this a pay now, receive product at some unspecified later date type deal?

[SavagePencil]

Black Friday sale price is great....but are the units shipping immediately or is this a pay now, receive product at some unspecified later date type deal?

From product page:

Expected to Ship
Q1 2024 - Main PCBs are finishing production at factory, injection molded shells already in hand. Small chance the Morph will ship Q4 2023.

[SavagePencil]

Does the Analog Bridge work alongside the HDMI input or replace it?

Self response. This page clarifies that the Analog Bridge has swappable faceplates with different combinations of input ports. These are independent of HDMI in and HDMI out. Doesn’t look like there’s one with all three VGA, component, and SCART, but there’s possibility of making them later.

[tongshadow]

That's a killer price, but it's meant to be used with the their GEM products and other digital sources. Consider it a $350 4k "upgrade" for your setup.

The Morph 4K is perfect to give your current setup the visual boost it needs, without having to waste your current hardware's capabilities. Use the Morph 4K to re-scale your current HDMI devices and get native 4K scaling quality, or downscale modern games for a Retro Demake effect. Get the best bang for your buck 4K scaling with devices like,



-OSSC Classic, RetroTINK 5x-Pro, GBS-C scaler, XRB-Mini Framemeister
-Console HDMI mods: Retro G.E.M. (Nintendo 64, Playstation 1, Playstation 2, Dreamcast etc.), GCVideo, etc.
-MiSTer FPGA
-Analogue - Pocket, Mega SG, Super NT, NT Mini
-Steam Deck, Nintendo Switch

They managed to reach this price by cutting down certain features, like analog inputs, how much is the addon analog bridge going to cost? I'm personally not a fan of chaning multiple video scalers and would rather just have a standalone product that does the heavy lifting.