Product suggestion to knowledgeable people.

[tcancian]

It's likely most people on this forum have already read Fudoh's page on scanlines and know why they're important and how to acquire them, however, we do not have thus far any recent, affordable product capable of generating scanlines on CRT SDTVs (which are pretty much the best kind of display for old games and some, if not most, shmups).

As such, if there's anyone out there, with enough knowledge on how video actually works, how to strip and combine signals, I suggest you try to make it happen. As said, there are alternatives (Emotia and Extron RGB, thanks to Fudoh and Fagin for this information) but those products are bulky and were phased-out a long time ago, then you need a custom AC power adapter and a sync stripper to get it working, and in my case, yet another device to transcode it to YPrPb so I can actually use it on my TV (not to mention all the custom-made cabling involved in this).

I'm not ingenious with electronics, i'm merely an end-user with some knowledge about some stuff, all I can do is suggest that said product has a SCART input (for easily inputting 480i from all consoles), 480i and 480p compatibility (so that PCs can also be used) and output in true 240p. The only device I know of that does something similar to this is the Ultracade UVC (Universal Video Converter), but just like the other solutions, it was phased-out and now it's a rarity, there's a seller on eBay selling some for a hundred bucks, and Happ Controls demand nearly two-hundred for a single unit!! All I know about it is that it utilizes the AD9883A and another companion IC whose functions are unknown to me.

http://retroblast.arcadecontrols.com/ph ... _12461.jpg

Needless to say the UVC is copyrighted by Ultracade, but if the Emotia did it before, I don't see how future products might do any infringement, but i'm no lawyer outside Ace Attorney .

In case you guys might not have noticed, I'm basically trying to say to maybe the makers of the SLG3000 and SyncStrike or whosoever technically capable: try to pull off something like this, some people need it and the current solutions aren't exactly great....

Possible uses:

Eliminating flicker on SDTVs. Flicker on 480i has got to be THE MOST annoying thing ever on CRTs. And i'm pretty sure it takes some image quality too. Might have been a great trick back in the day for movies and stuff, but for games it's bad. All games should have been coded for progressive, always. Then this is also one of the top reasons why I avoid some MAME cabinets I often stumble across, from far you can notice the flicker, and kind of deal with it, but from close, it's unbereable to watch, and painful to play.

MAME cabinets. As far as I know, most arcade monitors will work natively with 240p, and if necessary, there are POTs inside for calibration.

General-use downscaler for shmups and other 2D games (all those collections that apparently developers don't bother with implementing 240p code, even though the consoles have hi-def connections that support 240p like YPrPb, as far as I know, only Nintendo did it on the Virtual Console, but the VC is pretty much abandoned nowadays).

Getting native scanlines on those old games we all love, and doing it on CRTs, which is where they belong.

That's it.

[cools]

Trolling attempt fail.

[tcancian]

Trolling attempt fail.

Thanks kind sir, would have any other great contributions to the thread?

[cools]

Okay I'll bite.

What you're asking for is a waste of time. You get scanlines as part of using a standard definition CRT screen. If a console can output 240p (which unless I'm very much mistaken, ALL of them can), then you get scanlines.

All you need is a scan convertor to get rid of interlace flicker. http://scanlines.hazard-city.de/

[Fudoh]

And don't forget that most $20 Extron RGB interfaces can convert 480i to 240p if used with a CRT. I haven't done a website entry about them, but it has been discussed here on the board quite often before.

[tcancian]

Okay I'll bite.

What you're asking for is a waste of time. You get scanlines as part of using a standard definition CRT screen. If a console can output 240p (which unless I'm very much mistaken, ALL of them can), then you get scanlines.

All you need is a scan convertor to get rid of interlace flicker. http://scanlines.hazard-city.de/

Actually no. As the website has stated, many developers were lazy in coding their ports, and instead of turning on the 240p mode, they simply leave it at 480i, most users didnt complain back in the day so no one bothered. The PlayStation 2 has many games that are 480i only, and unless you patch them (which often result in glitches and demands a modded console to boot) you'll have to deal with the flicker. I prefer 240p over 480i at any day, if you ask me...

And true, I can pick up a converter, but have you actually read the original post? Although the converters do work, and they do their job just fine, they require extra circuitry, custom-cabling and finding one is also kind of hard, specially when you don't live in the US (import taxes and expensive shipping). So there's no trolling here .

If someone managed to create a device with the exact same functionalities of the Emotia/RGB, a smaller size, standart AC adapter and without the need of additional devices (those devices will only accept composite sync, which needs to be stripped from composite video by a separate device, like the SyncStrike) and custom cabling (SCART to VGA, then BNCs to SCART) then I'm pretty sure some folks would be interested at it.

And don't forget that most $20 Extron RGB interfaces can convert 480i to 240p if used with a CRT. I haven't done a website entry about them, but it has been discussed here on the board quite often before.

Thanks again for the information, I'm looking forward to picking up one soon (after I build a cleaner and the cables) but I still find the original post suggestion valid and more user-friendly. . Do you happen to have one? Fagin said they were a "fake 480i" with scanlines, does the black fields blank now and then or it's just like real non-interlaced 240p?

[Fudoh]

I have a few extron interfaces, but I can't use them for 480i to 240p as I don't have any CRTs around. The result is like real 240p. The Extron doesn't really change the signal. It just adds an offset to the first field, so the TV displays 240p instead of 480i. In other words, it displays all the fields on the same odd scanlines instead of alternating between odd and even.

[SGGG2]

I'm going to recommend an Extron RGB interface as well. Although, I would like to see a device that converts/offsets 480i to 240p for XRGB upscalers. The XRGB-3's CRT emulation combined with a scanline device looks fantastic for 2D games, but is rather un-240p like for 3D titles.

[fagin]

You don't get a true 240p looking image from a 480i signal, utilising an Extron RGB interface on a CRT.

Whilst on the whole you see stable scanlines, you do still see flicker on parts of the screen.

[RGB32E]

Actually no. As the website has stated, many developers were lazy in coding their ports, and instead of turning on the 240p mode, they simply leave it at 480i, most users didnt complain back in the day so no one bothered. The PlayStation 2 has many games that are 480i only, and unless you patch them (which often result in glitches and demands a modded console to boot) you'll have to deal with the flicker. I prefer 240p over 480i at any day, if you ask me...

I think the whole 480i instead of 240p really started in that console generation since the original Xbox does not support 240p. So, if you have a cross platform port (PS2/Xbox/GCN), the lowest common resolution will be 480i...

[tcancian]

Actually no. As the website has stated, many developers were lazy in coding their ports, and instead of turning on the 240p mode, they simply leave it at 480i, most users didnt complain back in the day so no one bothered. The PlayStation 2 has many games that are 480i only, and unless you patch them (which often result in glitches and demands a modded console to boot) you'll have to deal with the flicker. I prefer 240p over 480i at any day, if you ask me...

I think the whole 480i instead of 240p really started in that console generation since the original Xbox does not support 240p. So, if you have a cross platform port (PS2/Xbox/GCN), the lowest common resolution will be 480i...

But why no resolution switch code? Third Strike for the Dreamcast has one, I haven't tried it out yet, but you press START + Y during boot it will go into 240p mode. Then it also has 480i and 480p. I know for a fact that Mega Man X Collection for the GameCube and ICO and Devil May Cry for the PlayStation 2 are 240p. I guess the issue was that some TVs weren't expecting to be recieving 240p and showed "No Signal" message whenever feed with such. But still, lazy porting is lazy... And some of them, didn't even bother to include 480p. As far as I know, it's just a code that tells the GPU how to handle the framebuffer, and I'm pretty sure it's "universal" and probably documented on SDKs.