TUTORIAL for TVOne Corio2 240p Downscalers

[Dochartaigh]

I can confirm that the C2-2205A can be added to the "it works!" list on the main post.

Glad you got it working! Edited the main post with thanks to you for the .XML file!

[Coope]

I can confirm that the C2-2205A can be added to the "it works!" list on the main post.

Glad you got it working! Edited the main post with thanks to you for the .XML file!

No worries. Don't forget to remove the model from the "should work based on what we know" part as well, as you've left it, I think in error.

Cheers,

Coope

[Coope]

Does anyone know why the scalers output 720 x 240 and not 640 x 240? Just trying to figure out the best output res for my SD 16:9 TV. My 4:3 is perfect at 720 x 240.

Coope

[Unseen]

Does anyone know why the scalers output 720 x 240 and not 640 x 240? Just trying to figure out the best output res for my SD 16:9 TV. My 4:3 is perfect at 720 x 240.

Assuming that you follow the tutorial: Because that is what the timing parameters are calculated for.

Or do you mean for SD in general? Because that is the commonly used horizontal resolution for SD content, specified by Bt.601. There is an article out there somewhere about the history of that standard, they settled on 720 pixels with a 13.5MHz pixel clock because that had sufficiently-high resolution and was a sweet spot where several parameters aligned for both PAL and NTSC.

[Coope]

Does anyone know why the scalers output 720 x 240 and not 640 x 240? Just trying to figure out the best output res for my SD 16:9 TV. My 4:3 is perfect at 720 x 240.

Assuming that you follow the tutorial: Because that is what the timing parameters are calculated for.

Or do you mean for SD in general? Because that is the commonly used horizontal resolution for SD content, specified by Bt.601. There is an article out there somewhere about the history of that standard, they settled on 720 pixels with a 13.5MHz pixel clock because that had sufficiently-high resolution and was a sweet spot where several parameters aligned for both PAL and NTSC.

Thanks. Your reply cused me to go read more on the subject. I'm going to have a mess around and see what I can come up with.

Coope

[Coope]

So I got my PSU for my new scaler so both of them can be used at the same time. Unfortunately I've just found out that my GPU only supports 4 monitors at a time so I can't have my 3 main monitors and my 2 CRTs on all at once. Sad times.

Coope

[alexkinch]

Hi all, I've been reading this thread with interest and got my hands on a C2-2250 which arrived over the weekend. Firstly, thanks Dochartaigh (and others) on here for the amazing work to crack these powerful - but mysterious - little units.

I'm a Mac user, so half of my weekend has been wrestling with UTM, Bootcamp, different versions of Windows ISOs and wondering whether the C2-2250 was working properly as I couldn't talk to it over serial or ethernet. After a long battle I finally managed to get it's firmware upgraded and connected to CORIOtools (Windows 10 running on a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro in UTM, in case you wondered).

I've managed to program the first resolution in, then figured I could probably just cut and paste the rest into the XML dump from my unit - which did the trick. I now have a working XML file for the C2-2250 with the latest firmware, how should I share it on here?

Next step is to go test everything, but so far so good. When I tested it before any programming by feeding in and out on RGBS via the Extron and some VGA <> BNC cables I got an out of sync picture, so it seems to be passing RGB ok. Will confirm back once I've done some more testing.

[EDIT: fixed some grammar/typos and clarified that I have a working XML file to share]

[alexkinch]

After a little more testing I've managed to get 240p test suite on the Megadrive outputting 1024x768 XGA (according to the Retrotink 4K) and 280p over both RGBHV and RGBS. I've got the MD plugged into the Extron which then has the Corio2 connected to an output and input. The output of the Corio2 is then routed via the same Extron to a pair of JVC TM-H150C monitors and a Retrotink 4K. I had thought both JVCs would show the same if I ran one via the Corio2 and one direct, but the Corio2 version has the test card filling the screen more.

I've not managed to figure out how the DVI inputs works yet, feeding it with a bidirectional DVI-HDMI cable with a PS3 via an Extron HDMI switcher. Need to find an analogue console that's both working and will output 480p so I can downscale, might have a tinker with the MiSTer later if I get some time.

[alexkinch]

OK so the C2-2250 definitely downscales - I've managed to feed it 1080p from a PS4 Pro into the DVI input (using an HDMI to DVI cable) and got it to output 240p (confirmed by the Retrotink 4K). It looks terrible, colours are oddly dark on my CRTs, and I seem to be losing sync (or the PS4 is outputting an out of spec resolution), but it's downscaling nonetheless. Config XML is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-8TAPq ... Tw-Ly/view

[freedomland-35mm]

Hey,
does anybody know how to get to restore everything on a corio2?
My main goal is to get to the first two NTSC and PAL resolutions back into place. They are not usable anymore after using the xml-file for 240p. I tried a firmware update, but it was still not usable anymore. Then again, it was the same firmware I had installed already, sadly I cant download older versions as it seems they are not on the corio-servers anymore. Maybe someone tried to downgrade their firmware and upgraded again?
My problem frankly is that I have a small trinitron 14" and somehow all 240p resolutions show lots of distortions unlik my 21"trinitron. And I would like to use this unit as preview for interlaced material.

[alexkinch]

Hey,
does anybody know how to get to restore everything on a corio2?
My main goal is to get to the first two NTSC and PAL resolutions back into place. They are not usable anymore after using the xml-file for 240p. I tried a firmware update, but it was still not usable anymore. Then again, it was the same firmware I had installed already, sadly I cant download older versions as it seems they are not on the corio-servers anymore. Maybe someone tried to downgrade their firmware and upgraded again?
My problem frankly is that I have a small trinitron 14" and somehow all 240p resolutions show lots of distortions unlik my 21"trinitron. And I would like to use this unit as preview for interlaced material.

I'm far from an expert but I'll try! I posted my XML file here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-8TAPq ... Tw-Ly/view - you should be able to change the model number in the XML node scaler_ProductType and upload that. What model and firmware are you using?

[freedomland-35mm]

Hey,
thanks for that. My firmware is newest from corio, version 368. My modelnumber is: C2 2250.
In the meantime I was able to download the older firmware and downgraded and upgraded the firmware with no effect on the blocked two slots. Interestingly, any other resolutions get a reset, but nothing changes for the NTSC and PAL slots, they are permanently blocked.
Would your xml file circumvent this problem?
Edit: I tried your xml-file, it seems to be the same as the one from the first page. Having back 240p resolution, which is fine, I have no ntsc nor pal output accessable.
Edit2: Is there no way of bringing those two slots back?(NTSC and PAL)

[orange808]

Hey,
thanks for that. My firmware is newest from corio, version 368. My modelnumber is: C2 2250.
In the meantime I was able to download the older firmware and downgraded and upgraded the firmware with no effect on the blocked two slots. Interestingly, any other resolutions get a reset, but nothing changes for the NTSC and PAL slots, they are permanently blocked.
Would your xml file circumvent this problem?
Edit: I tried your xml-file, it seems to be the same as the one from the first page. Having back 240p resolution, which is fine, I have no ntsc nor pal output accessable.
Edit2: Is there no way of bringing those two slots back?(NTSC and PAL)

Just key it in.

For NTSC, try 720 horizontal samples and 858 total. Next, use 480 lines and 525 total. Adjust the porches to keep the image "centered" and maintain the correct totals. Don't forget to check the "interlaced" box. Use around 59.94Hz refresh.

It should be fully programmable, so type in the signal you want.

[Shogun]

I'm really struggling to dial in the vertical and horiztonal image settings on my C2-750. Horizontally I can get things dialed in pretty well. Vertically is where the problem is. The image is so large that if I try to use the adjust settings to shrink it down weird things happen. I've gotten weird squiggly lines and also a complete signal loss requiring a reboot of the Corio. I'm feeding a 480p image from my PC and am trying to set up 480i first then do 240p. So I'm working on the standard NTSC 60hz setting at the moment. Does anyone have any advice? I'm not sure why the image is so large vertically.



EDIT

After some fiddling I found a setting about aspect ratio I set that to 1:1 which gave me a bit more space. I'm still having some of the top and bottom of the screen cut off but this is the best I can get. Maybe it has something to do with the NTSC settings? If anyone has any suggestions let me know.

[Shogun]

After many more hours of messing around I got 480i ok-ish. Its still cutting off some of the screen vertically. I switched over to 240p and the vertical cutoff is even worse. If I could set the zoom levels below 100 that would fix this issue. No amount of settings I've messed with on the Corio2 can reduce the screen size vertically. I did confirm I am outputting 640x480 on the PC however the Corio2 says its 720x480. All other resolutions show up on the Corio 2 resolution info correctly. I checked my TV's settings to see if that was the problem and it wasn't. My Mister fpga for example works fine and doesn't have any cutoff vertically.

If I move the image using the Corio2 the rest of the screen is there. For example I can use H/V Zoom Pan % and see the rest of the screen. H/V out shift appears to crop the image though. Shrnk h/v seems to do nothing. Aspect correct is interesting its currently set to 1:1. If I change it to "Aspect" I can see everything vertically but the image is smushed horizontally.

I attempted a 320x240 resolution posted by zombiz:

<Resolution_info>
<ResolutionName>320 x 240 60Hz</ResolutionName>
<HWidth>320</HWidth>
<VHeight>240</VHeight>
<HFreq>15730</HFreq>
<HTotal>440</HTotal>
<VTotal>262</VTotal>
<HSync>64</HSync>
<VSync>3</VSync>
<HPos>28</HPos>
<VPos>15</VPos>
<Sync>NN</Sync>
<Flags>R</Flags>
</Resolution_info>

However that just resulted in a really zoomed in image (ie the image is massively cut off horizontally and vertically). I'm not sure what to do at this point as the 240p resolution is unusable. If anyone has set up a Corio2 for downscaling on a consumer tv (I have a Sony Trinitron KV series tv) and could post their settings and what they had to do to get a decent image it would be greatly appreciated.

[Shogun]

Ok so what helped massively which I saw in an earlier comment was to set Aspect Correct to Fill. I then used the TL and BR adjustments to reduce the image vertically but I think this was a mistake as it is causing distortions as seen in the text in the screenshot below. So I have a decent amount of the image on screen now but how to size it properly without the distortion is the next task.

[orange808]

Well... Yeah.

There's overscan on consumer "tube" CRT televisions. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

What do you get if you plug in a DVD player directly and use a test pattern disk?

[Shogun]

Well... Yeah.

There's overscan on consumer "tube" CRT televisions. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

What do you get if you plug in a DVD player directly and use a test pattern disk?

I think I've got things dialed in now. I don't have a test pattern disk though. I've got most of the screen on the tv now. I understand overscan but its large enough to block out entire elements like health bars and whatnot so I was trying to shrink things down enough to fit essential stuff on screen. I think I've done that for the most part. I think the scanline issue is how it just looks judging from the downscaler chronicles video and people's screenshots I've seen.

[MarcoRetro]

Well... Yeah.

There's overscan on consumer "tube" CRT televisions. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

What do you get if you plug in a DVD player directly and use a test pattern disk?

I think I've got things dialed in now. I don't have a test pattern disk though. I've got most of the screen on the tv now. I understand overscan but its large enough to block out entire elements like health bars and whatnot so I was trying to shrink things down enough to fit essential stuff on screen. I think I've done that for the most part. I think the scanline issue is how it just looks judging from the downscaler chronicles video and people's screenshots I've seen.

I recently set up a 750 for a friend. What I recommend is displaying a line doubled/tripled test pattern to adjust the Sources menu first as this effects everything globally. I used a Dreamcast to display the 240p test suite horizontal stripe pattern while adjusting Sources, you could use the test suite on an SNES mini with proper integer scaling turned on. My Sources TL pos settings are 20 (H) and -1 (V), BR is 0 and 0. Then save startup settings so it will always recall. In Window settings I have Aspect set to Pixel and H V shift is 0. Then I have created several copies of the 240p and 480i resolutions and renamed them their Input/Output combo eg 480p to 240p. Then adjust the H Active and HV Start for that specific resolution, but I leave the V active as is. Hope that helps with downscaling integer-upscaled content

[Shogun]

Well... Yeah.

There's overscan on consumer "tube" CRT televisions. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

What do you get if you plug in a DVD player directly and use a test pattern disk?

I think I've got things dialed in now. I don't have a test pattern disk though. I've got most of the screen on the tv now. I understand overscan but its large enough to block out entire elements like health bars and whatnot so I was trying to shrink things down enough to fit essential stuff on screen. I think I've done that for the most part. I think the scanline issue is how it just looks judging from the downscaler chronicles video and people's screenshots I've seen.

I recently set up a 750 for a friend. What I recommend is displaying a line doubled/tripled test pattern to adjust the Sources menu first as this effects everything globally. I used a Dreamcast to display the 240p test suite horizontal stripe pattern while adjusting Sources, you could use the test suite on an SNES mini with proper integer scaling turned on. My Sources TL pos settings are 20 (H) and -1 (V), BR is 0 and 0. Then save startup settings so it will always recall. In Window settings I have Aspect set to Pixel and H V shift is 0. Then I have created several copies of the 240p and 480i resolutions and renamed them their Input/Output combo eg 480p to 240p. Then adjust the H Active and HV Start for that specific resolution, but I leave the V active as is. Hope that helps with downscaling integer-upscaled content

I have mine similarly set up. Thanks for your videos I've been going back to them repeatedly. I think with the Corio2 you get it good enough and you just accept text will look a little wonky. I was curious does the Extron DVS 605 not have this issue? Can you shrink the image down vertically and horizontally without too much of an issue? It looks like with the Corio you are stuck between having a lot of overscan or some odd looking text in places.

[orange808]

Your CRT is mechanical and it "draws" the screen by sweeping the electron gun. There's a path to the scanout process. The video source sends a signal, but it doesn't directly tell the mechanical electron gun how to do it's job.

Downscaling the signal too odd resolutions damages it--and averages lines of image information together. That will happen on any machine you use. You have to send all the information to the display properly.

The gun sweeps each scanline until it reaches the bottom of the screen. There is a "blanking" period after each scanline is "drawn" for the gun to reset to the beginning of a new line--below the one that was just finished. The gun sweeps across each line, resets, moves down, and scans out each line. When all the lines are complete (about 525 on an NTSC consumer CRT--actually about 262 per field), there is another blanking period. This time, the gun resets all the way to the top of the screen. This is followed by more blanking as the gun sweeps a few blank lines before it begins to draw lines again. The path and timing of the gun is really a mechanical issue inside the CRT.

All the source can do is try to increase the vertical blanking periods and total lines (front and back porches) to change the path of the electron gun. Unfortunately, most consumer CRTs aren't very tolerant of odd signals and you can't use large blanking periods to "squish" the signal very much. At some point, the CRT can't handle it and it doesn't display properly (or at all).

It's a mechanical thing inside the CRT. The gun sweeps where it physically sweeps during scanout. If you really want to get into the weeds, you might look into a service manual for your CRT and see if there's a way to adjust the scanout behavior.

You might feel tempted to ask a lot questions about that here, but this is a Corio2 thread. Please don't hijack the thread into a discussion about the service menu for a specific display.

And, be careful if you go down that rabbit hole... You really can mess up your CRT playing around with those settings.

[MarcoRetro]

I think I've got things dialed in now. I don't have a test pattern disk though. I've got most of the screen on the tv now. I understand overscan but its large enough to block out entire elements like health bars and whatnot so I was trying to shrink things down enough to fit essential stuff on screen. I think I've done that for the most part. I think the scanline issue is how it just looks judging from the downscaler chronicles video and people's screenshots I've seen.

I recently set up a 750 for a friend. What I recommend is displaying a line doubled/tripled test pattern to adjust the Sources menu first as this effects everything globally. I used a Dreamcast to display the 240p test suite horizontal stripe pattern while adjusting Sources, you could use the test suite on an SNES mini with proper integer scaling turned on. My Sources TL pos settings are 20 (H) and -1 (V), BR is 0 and 0. Then save startup settings so it will always recall. In Window settings I have Aspect set to Pixel and H V shift is 0. Then I have created several copies of the 240p and 480i resolutions and renamed them their Input/Output combo eg 480p to 240p. Then adjust the H Active and HV Start for that specific resolution, but I leave the V active as is. Hope that helps with downscaling integer-upscaled content

I have mine similarly set up. Thanks for your videos I've been going back to them repeatedly. I think with the Corio2 you get it good enough and you just accept text will look a little wonky. I was curious does the Extron DVS 605 not have this issue? Can you shrink the image down vertically and horizontally without too much of an issue? It looks like with the Corio you are stuck between having a lot of overscan or some odd looking text in places.

The DVS 605 can look similarly messy if you alter the vertical size purely to scan to the edges of the CRT without regard to the scaling. That is why I recommend to display a line doubled/tripled 240p test suite horizontal stripe pattern when adjusting the scaler’s vertical size if you’re downscaling integer-upscaled games. If blindly adjusting vertical size on the 750 then it will look messier especially with several menus that can alter the size and effect other presets. I’d start from scratch and only adjust Sources the first time, and never touch it again. Otherwise like orange808 said it could be your CRT that’s overscanned

[Shogun]

The DVS 605 can look similarly messy if you alter the vertical size purely to scan to the edges of the CRT without regard to the scaling. That is why I recommend to display a line doubled/tripled 240p test suite horizontal stripe pattern when adjusting the scaler’s vertical size if you’re downscaling integer-upscaled games. If blindly adjusting vertical size on the 750 then it will look messier especially with several menus that can alter the size and effect other presets. I’d start from scratch and only adjust Sources the first time, and never touch it again. Otherwise like orange808 said it could be your CRT that’s overscanned

Thanks that helped. Turns out it was snes9x's settings that was causing some scaling issues. Outputting a clean 2x signal to my CRT and all the test patterns look great now so it was configured fine the whole time.