OSSC (DIY video digitizer & scandoubler)

[FBX]

Orders after 29th of June are batch 2, should be delivered second half or end of october (I think).

I heard most of the 2nd batch have been shipped early, with only something like 100 units not making it out the door. I ordered mine on June 30th, so I'm hoping I made it into that faster shipment.

[BuckoA51]

They've shipped in early from the manufacturers yes, hopefully they land today or tomorrow with power supplies not far behind.

Regular updates are posted here - https://www.videogameperfection.com/for ... -6-thread/

and in the Telegram channel https://t.me/OSSC_announce

[Harrumph]

Ah right, didn't see the latest updates.

[Shining]

Sigh, getting tired of tinkering with my CRT TV i went back to the XRGB-Mini and the increase in input lag and is definitely noticeable to me. Do you guys think i will notice any decrease in input lag switching from the XRGB to the OSSC? My LCD TV's input lag is about 22ms @1080p.

[ZellSF]

I think you would notice, but you're asking a very subjective question.

[Gnomenthusiast]

Ok thanks for the response. FWIW, I actually had my original N64 from '99 modded and the games that I played extensively back then have never looked better and I enjoy playing them presently. However I did go out and purchase some games that I had wanted back in the day (but couldn't due to being a broke teenager) and I wasn't as impressed.

I wouldn't say it's just you, early 3D games in general haven't aged as well. Nintendo's own titles seemed to fair a bit better with the typically more simplified art style, but some games from that era just look bad and it's hard to get adjusted to them. The 6th gen all still look pretty good in my opinion, especially when paired with the OSSC or Framemeister.

I never played Zelda or Mario 3D at the time, and they are regarded as classics, so I'll definitely give them a shot.

Going to remove the N64 from my system though, as it's meant for when people come over, and the N64 looks so unimpressive compared to everything else.

[Xer Xian]

Well there certainly are more recent, hdmi-only video processors. Most are not well documented though (if at all). Here's a few from established brands:
Lumagen Radiance Mini
Kramer VP-424
Extron DSC HD-HD
TVOne 1t-vs-626
CYP SY-300h
TVOne 1t-c2-750

I've just (briefly) tested out one of these today - the 1t-vs-626. It accepts all OSSC modes minus 240p (passthrough) and Line3x480i (at least with the PS2 as source). Line4x480i is accepted but unusable (image is unstable/jittery). Here are some captures of the OSSC output upscaled to 1080p (the game supports 240p/480i/480p - thanks for that piece of info Fudoh):

480i: https://ibb.co/iysOkb
480p: https://ibb.co/kMOUQb
Line2x480p: https://ibb.co/hdhCdw
Line5x240p: https://ibb.co/c1hpQb
OSD of the device: https://ibb.co/j1Jw5b

As expected, Line5x240p is the sharpest. It's quite surprising then that Line2x480p is noticeably worse. It's even worse than 480p (it's softer and adds a tiny bit more ringing). I don't know what's up with the aspect ratio on 480i - it was ultra-wide/squished when set on "Follow input", and the closest I can get to 4:3 is by selecting the setting "Panscan"). Unfortunately there is no actual Hor./Ver. position setting to be found (but there's one for the OSD position ). The machine adds 23-24ms of lag for 720p->1080p processing. I'll do some more testing in the weekend, but for now I wouldn't recommend it.

Judging from the look and the user manual, the CYP SY-300h is possibly just a rebranded 1t-vs-626 (or vice-versa), so if you're looking for an hdmi scaler I'd stay clear of that one too.

[ApolloBoy]

If anyone's looking to get a power supply for their OSSC I recommend getting one of these, that way you can use almost any USB charger that puts out enough current.

[citrus3000psi]

I have an older OSSC that powers part of the device up through the DVI. Does the newer version have a diode in place? Any specs on it if so.

[Blair]

Borti figured out the ghosting is due to improper voltage input to the cpu, and can only be fixed by putting an in-line resistor on one of the pins. Syntax posted some images here. An added bonus is this also fixes the brightness.

Since it involves lifting a hard to get to cpu pin, you'd need experience and guts to do it that way though. So 3x-resistor mod is as good as any to fix brightness.

awesome! Unfortunately it looks like it's quite a bit out of my skill level when it comes to electronics work. (if I can find somebody I can ship to that would do it for a fair price. I'd probably do it in a heartbeat.) btw, thanks for the explanation Harrumph.

it states "only digitization is applied". What does this mean? I've noticed (at least on my display) that the passthrough seems to look better for PS2 but when doing Line x2 with Bob interlacing, while it looks good, there is a noticeable blur from most of my PS2 games. Maybe the TV I'm using doesn't have a good 480p scaler?

Thanks so much for any help if these can be answered. I am SUPER satisfied with the OSSC. It's truly a dream come true. Playing Breath of Fire 2 on a 55 inch screen in all it's glory makes my heart swell and I'm transported back to 1994 and I'm a kid again

digitization just means it's taking the analog scart/component video signal and converting (digitizing) it to a digital HDMI signal. most of the time it's a good idea to use the 480i pass through on OSSC as you'll (usually) get a nicer picture that way. the internal deinterlacing on the OSSC is designed more for speed then looks. so you might to see some visual anomalies when using it versus other methods (blurring, combing etc.) personally I'll use the internal de-interlacing on the OSSC with its alternating scanlines setting as I think that makes up for some of the visual deficits of that mode. but for the most part your televisions internal de-interlacer is probably a better idea to use, unless it adds a significant amount of input lag versus progressive modes. I'm glad you're having a good time with the device. (my inner child says hi )

It's playable, but barely. I will have another go, I wasn't using scan-lines so that's an idea. Why they thought a long level like runway was a good idea with such a stupidly short draw distance is beyond me.

I might remove the N64 from the setup and sell it, and get something else instead

Just curious but did you own a N64 back in its heyday? As @citrus3000psi said, most of its games haven't aged well and a number of games that were pioneered on it were improved upon tremendously in successive consoles. You really need a strong sense of nostalgia to appreciate the N64 today.

and I appreciate the graphical and sound design in a lot of titles is excellent.never knew anyone that had a PC Engine, but I played a few games for it with an emulator and they seem good, I might try to get one. The N64 was professionally modded and I have 2 controllers and few games, should be able to get enough for it to get a PC Engine I think.

What other consoles give a good output from the OSSC?

excellent pics from your projector Gnomenthusiast!, as far as N64 video quality goes. I think there is an argument to be made when it comes to 3-D games on the N64, Saturn, or PSX actually looking and playing better with emulation and mods versus the actual hardware these days. 2-D graphics still have an excellent appeal and have aged much better than most of the low poly games. I think a lot of that hassle has to do with most of them having geometry and filtering issues and not just being low poly. you can fix a lot of the polygon and texture warping with emulators these days and in a high resolution at 60fps it actually looks pretty excellent. (SoulEdge or Mega Man Legends at 5x internal resolution with high-res textures and no warping looks amazing) I definitely recommend you give that a look.

The OSSC input issue has been resolved partially in regards to the towns.
The present machine on hand is set to automatically boot MS DOS for FM Towns from the HDD if no CD is input.
After loading the FM Towns OS CD the OSSC has recognised the device as an RGsB signal (Which albeit makes sense considering it is a 31khz signal) and has subsequently displayed a picture.

You might want to send a message directly to marqs, or make a post on the official OSSC forms at videogame perfection. He might be able to help troubleshoot what's going on with the FM Town's signal or make an edit to the firmware that could solve the issue.

( it might have something to do with the monitor you're using not liking the refresh rate the fm towns might be putting out, similar to the sharp X6800. only monitors that accept it's slightly odd refresh rate will display an image. but it works great with the OSSC).

[lettuce]

They've shipped in early from the manufacturers yes, hopefully they land today or tomorrow with power supplies not far behind.

Regular updates are posted here - https://www.videogameperfection.com/for ... -6-thread/

and in the Telegram channel https://t.me/OSSC_announce

As i didnt order either a remote or PSU with mine will my order be held up waiting for these or will it be sent out as soon as your receive the OSSC units?

[CobraKing]

I wouldn't say it's just you, early 3D games in general haven't aged as well. Nintendo's own titles seemed to fair a bit better with the typically more simplified art style, but some games from that era just look bad and it's hard to get adjusted to them. The 6th gen all still look pretty good in my opinion, especially when paired with the OSSC or Framemeister.

I never played Zelda or Mario 3D at the time, and they are regarded as classics, so I'll definitely give them a shot.

@pyrotek85, I should've clarified that it's not the look but rather the gameplay that wasn't as impressive to me. The games that I did play extensively back then I can jump into with no issues (WM2K, No Mercy, Battle Tanx: GA, Excitebike, Smash Bros).

@Gnomenthusiast, interestingly those were 2 games that I never played back then and I tried playing them now. Problem is that they were innovative in their day but 3D platform games in general have evolved and have been refined so much since then.

[DirkSwizzler]

Loving my OSSC the more I play with it.

Question for some of the more experienced modders. The OSSC has brought my attention to aliasing artifacts in my NESRGB modded AV Famicom. I'm using RetroGamingCables.co.uk's packapunch ntsc snes cable wired for ttl csync.

I've got a snes mini with a voultar mod (LPF off) sitting right next to it. Using the same cable run, with the same model cable, into the same gscartsw, and even sharing the same 9V power supply that hd retrovision suggested. I tried swapping their cables to ensure it wasn't a bad cable. The NES definitely has an order of magnitude more visible aliasing than the snes.

Branching out to other consoles to see if there was a pattern, I'm not getting any aliasing from my n64, model 1 genesis (with jailbar fix), or dreamcast. So I'm highly confident that there's a problem directly with the NES at this point.

Seeing as how I'm coming up empty on searches for "NESRGB aliasing". I'm assuming it's not systemic. And I'm realizing I don't know a lot about solving sources of aliasing. Just that I can cover them up with low pass filters. I tried turning my gscartsw LPF on, and the cycled through all the OSSC LPF settings. It helped a bit, but didn't eradicate the darkened lines completely.

What should I be looking into next? I thought I got the internal wiring for NESRGB to multi-out pretty dang short. Should I be taking another look there? Should I be looking at recapping the whole NES? Looking for advice on a good methodology for trying to eliminate aliasing sources.

[BuckoA51]

As i didnt order either a remote or PSU with mine will my order be held up waiting for these or will it be sent out as soon as your receive the OSSC units?

If your order lands within this batch (remember it shipped early but was around 100 units short so some people will lose out unfortunately) then I'll ship it as soon as I can.

[FBX]

Do we get email notifications of shipment? I ordered mine on June 30th and just wondering if I made the lucky early 2nd batch.

[lettuce]

As i didnt order either a remote or PSU with mine will my order be held up waiting for these or will it be sent out as soon as your receive the OSSC units?

If your order lands within this batch (remember it shipped early but was around 100 units short so some people will lose out unfortunately) then I'll ship it as soon as I can.

Yeah i should be this batch as i must have just missed out on the last order as i ordered on the cut off day for the first batch but still didnt get in on the first batch for whatever reason

[Bahn Yuki]

I hope I'm part of this "early" batch also.

[BuckoA51]

Yeah everyone get's a tracking number.

[FBX]

Yeah everyone get's a tracking number.

The I guess I didn't make early shipment with my June 30th order. I've not received tracking notification.

[Bahn Yuki]

Yeah everyone get's a tracking number.

The I guess I didn't make early shipment with my June 30th order. I've not received tracking notification.

Same ;(

[BazookaBen]

I haven't seen anybody post screenshots with 1080i content so I thought I'd give it a try

OSSC+PlayStation 2 (RGsB)+GSM direct 1080i

(Display:Lacie Electron+E-More HDV M618 DAC)

You know you can hook your PS2 up to that monitor directly, right? LaCie's support sync on green, so you just need a small adapter cable to route a component cable signal to a VGA plug.

Also, 1080i isn't the way to go. 480p or 1024p (which is actually 960p with black bars) is the way to go, since 480 and 960 are multiples of, well, 480. 960i is also a way to go if you have progressive-incompatible games.

[Gunstar]

Snes mini through the OSSC on a pc Monitor:


Scanlines don't match (Guile's health bar border is uneven) but it looks better than the stock CRT filter.

[Elrinth]

The OSSC would not sync a japanese MSX Panasonic Turbo-R GT with the game Ghost. The audio is scratchy and the image is going all around. Sometimes it says the resolution is 480 other times 476, 475 etc...
the firmware is 0.78a.
image is perfectly fine on the pvm monitor at all times.
tried directly connecting to the OSSC aswell without any switch or splitter, same result.

have anyone else been able to use a japanese msx with the OSSC?

[BuckoA51]

The I guess I didn't make early shipment with my June 30th order. I've not received tracking notification.

Or you ordered a PSU?

[Naiera]

Snes mini through the OSSC on a pc Monitor:

How do you run it through the OSSC?

In any case, I believe there are hacker-ish options for the SNESC to make its own scanlines, without the blur effect of the CRT filter.

[lettuce]

Snes mini through the OSSC on a pc Monitor:

How do you run it through the OSSC?

In any case, I believe there are hacker-ish options for the SNESC to make its own scanlines, without the blur effect of the CRT filter.

There is but the scanlines still look shite on the SNES Classic Mini

[Gunstar]

Snes mini through the OSSC on a pc Monitor:

How do you run it through the OSSC?

In any case, I believe there are hacker-ish options for the SNESC to make its own scanlines, without the blur effect of the CRT filter.

I'm using two HDMI to VGA adapters, not the most practical thing.

@lettuce - That's sad to hear the crt filter still isn't great after removing the blur. Is it because the lines are really faint?

[RGBSource]

Seeing as how I'm coming up empty on searches for "NESRGB aliasing". I'm assuming it's not systemic. And I'm realizing I don't know a lot about solving sources of aliasing. Just that I can cover them up with low pass filters. I tried turning my gscartsw LPF on, and the cycled through all the OSSC LPF settings. It helped a bit, but didn't eradicate the darkened lines completely.

Does the effect resemble horizontal line bleed? Did you get your NESRGB somewhat recently? A number of NESRGB kits from the latest batch shipped with faulty 3.3V regulators. You can either add a 10uF electrolytic cap to the 3.3V rail to minimize the oscillation causing the issue (+ end of cap to 3.3V, - end to ground), or replace the part (requires hot air rework tool to remove/replace).

[DirkSwizzler]

Seeing as how I'm coming up empty on searches for "NESRGB aliasing". I'm assuming it's not systemic. And I'm realizing I don't know a lot about solving sources of aliasing. Just that I can cover them up with low pass filters. I tried turning my gscartsw LPF on, and the cycled through all the OSSC LPF settings. It helped a bit, but didn't eradicate the darkened lines completely.

Does the effect resemble horizontal line bleed? Did you get your NESRGB somewhat recently? A number of NESRGB kits from the latest batch shipped with faulty 3.3V regulators. You can either add a 10uF electrolytic cap to the 3.3V rail to minimize the oscillation causing the issue (+ end of cap to 3.3V, - end to ground), or replace the part (requires hot air rework tool to remove/replace).

I got mine around February/March of 2017. The effect is entirely vertical. Sort of similar to jailbars.

I'm assuming the problem is probably how I'm wired to the multi-out. I initially had trouble soldering directly to the pins while not melting other wires on the ribbon cable. So I bought a blank RGB bypass board from Retrofixes (I think, my memory is crap) and used it to create easier solder pads. As long as it wasn't shorted I figured there was very little chance I could create interference on such a little space. But it's the most non-standard part of my setup that I can think of.

It's been most of a year now and I think my soldering skills have improved enough that I can solder directly to the multi-out pins once I get a chunk of time to retry it.

[eric90000]

Has there been any success on getting the SNES to play happy with the OSSC? I've got a SNES mini with Voultars RGB bypass. Losing sync like crazy on the OSSC with a csync SCART cable. I also installed Bad_Ad84's Ultimate CIC board, which includes timing crystals for both PAL and NTSC modes. I doubt that's affecting it?