Capture Low Res DOS Games from a real PC

[Austin]

but since getting their VisionLC-HD2 HDMI card

I got the same card in one of my capture PCs. What application do you use for capture? The LD-HD2 does not have a frame buffer, so it can't flip the image in the driver as the E1S can. As a result captures in Amarec and other apps are flipped upside down.

I used the RGB-DVI 300 for my DC for quite a few years. Aside from the fact that you have handle audio "seperately" it's still a great box. You don't really have to route the signal through the FM just to get audio muxed into the signal. In your capture app (whatever it is) you should be able to grab video from teh Datapath and audio from a seperate analogue input on your PC.

I just bring the HD2 into OBS, it pops up there with no problem.

Regarding audio, yeah, for my retro PC setups I already route the audio into my workstation's sound card input, so I am set there.

[Austin]

Just wanted to post an update. I finally bit the bullet and got myself one of the RGB-300 Extron boxes (specifically the HDMI version). No issues running it into my capture card and it just worked the second it received a signal. I also happened upon one of the "A" versions as well that allows you to run audio into it and pass it through the HDMI cable, so I no longer need to run a cable from my retro computers to the line-in on my recording PC's sound card. I specifically tested it with my old Windows '95 rig for about four hours with a variety of Windows and MS-DOS games (Blood, Sega Rally, Doom, Stonekeep, Wolfenstein 3D, Hexen II, Quake, etc). Rock solid from start to finish. I wish I knew about these things sooner!

[Das Muel]

I use the Extron RGB 300A. It was inexpensive and works great for DOS stuff (and a lot more besides).

[NoAffinity]

Sounds like a solution has already been found, but I was curious if GBS Control could be an option here. Fed GBS Control a 72khz test signal from a VP30. Confirmed it will negotiate the signal.

Spoiler

[Dusko]

I can confirm that the Extron DSC-301HD has a much better image quality than the RGB-HDMI-300A to capture DOS.

[maxtherabbit]

I can confirm that the Extron DSC-301HD has a much better image quality than the RGB-HDMI-300A to capture DOS.

That's curious, I would have thought the analog frontend would have been about the same. What exactly is better about it?

[orange808]

There was a period where Extron machines used 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. Almost everyone did. I don't remember if the RGB-HDMI-300A is 4:4:4. The DSC-301HD is known to use 4:4:4 full chroma. The RGB-HDMI-300A may or may not.

Also, the DSC-301HD has frame lock and the RGB-HDMI-300A does not. Frame lock should help prevent frame rate conversion artifacts.

It could also be that the DSC-301HD does a better job getting the signal dialed in while sampling.

[Dusko]

Correct me if I'm wrong. Do I have to upload images somewhere in order to post the links here? I can't find a way to just upload images here. Am I missing something?
Edited:
A few minutes later... As per the FAQs, looks like I don't have enough permissions to post images for the time being.
I'll upload them to Dropbox or something. I'll be back.

[Dusko]

Here yo go Max, see the differences?

Extron RGB-HDMI-300A: (ignore that the image is cut off a few pixels on the left side, that was my bad)

Spoiler

https://app.box.com/s/ltkri3b81hbaugdhnkypl23o8lrmor29

Extron DSC-301HD:

Spoiler

https://app.box.com/s/9vasdmust329fepjq3cz4frjoq6c443e

And the Gefen VGA to HDMI Scaler looks even better!: (you can see that the pixels are better defined)

Spoiler

https://app.box.com/s/0fwoam24npaqlgn9l723iccq450s3gom

[maxtherabbit]

Uh it just looks like you have the sampling rate set wrong on the 300. VGA text mode should sample at 900px/line