PixelFX Morph

[ldeveraux]

Man you always find the most oscure A/V shit!

That's my M.O.

lol

Can confirm

[kitty666cats]

Man you always find the most oscure A/V shit!

That's my M.O.

lol

Can confirm

Is that badass Toshiba CRT I gave ya with both DVD player, VCR AND the rare component input - almost never seen on a DVD/VHS CRT (as well as digital audio out, which I imagine is strictly for the DVD portion) and an ATSC tuner treating you well? That CRT can really freakin' do it all, haha

[Bahn Yuki]

I was wondering if anyone knew if the morph would support FRL 2 at all? I have an HD Fury VRROOM than can upscale FRL up to 8k/60hz. My projector's fastest mode happens to be 8k@60hz(internal 240hz) so that would really be a deciding factor for me.

[ldeveraux]

Can confirm

Is that badass Toshiba CRT I gave ya with both DVD player, VCR AND the rare component input - almost never seen on a DVD/VHS CRT (as well as digital audio out, which I imagine is strictly for the DVD portion) and an ATSC tuner treating you well? That CRT can really freakin' do it all, haha

It's bonkers!

[kitty666cats]

Can confirm

Is that badass Toshiba CRT I gave ya with both DVD player, VCR AND the rare component input - almost never seen on a DVD/VHS CRT (as well as digital audio out, which I imagine is strictly for the DVD portion) and an ATSC tuner treating you well? That CRT can really freakin' do it all, haha

It's bonkers!

Glad you're enjoying it. I was fucking hyped that both the VCR and DVD player were still functional, too

[Ricdeau]

I was wondering if anyone knew if the morph would support FRL at all? I have an HD Fury VRROOM than can upscale FRL up to 8k/60hz. My projector's fastest mode happens to be 8k@60hz(internal 240hz) so that would really be a deciding factor for me.

The Morph appears to be HDMI 2.0 which has TDMS signaling while HDMI 2.1 has FRL and is backward compatible with TDMS. Unless we can get validation that it's got HDMI 2.1 I'm going to say the answer is no.

[Bahn Yuki]

That's disappointing. I was hoping for FRL2 which is 4k/60hz@4:4:4.

[Konsolkongen]

But it is already 4k60 4:4:4

[Bahn Yuki]

Yeah I don't make the HD Fury VRROOM, so I don't know what their deal is. Also my friend has a Denon receiver that behaves the same way. It'll only upscale FRL signals to 8k

[VEGETA]

That's disappointing. I was hoping for FRL2 which is 4k/60hz@4:4:4.

can you explain why you would need this instead of regular HDMI 4k60 444 which already exists?



BTW, there is some drama going on now in Twitter about Tink4K vs Morph due to some tweets and posts. I think it is completely ridiculous and childish that people are trying to bash PixelFX over a word here and there. When will such drama just stop happening every time a major product or competition happens?!

[KnightNZ]

BTW, there is some drama going on now in Twitter about Tink4K vs Morph due to some tweets and posts. I think it is completely ridiculous and childish that people are trying to bash PixelFX over a word here and there. When will such drama just stop happening every time a major product or competition happens?!

When people stop making subtle (or not so subtle) digs at the competition. aka - be professional.

Do we know how much the additional analog boards are likely to be for the Morph? Having RGB/S/HV BNC inputs would be really useful.

[VEGETA]

BTW, there is some drama going on now in Twitter about Tink4K vs Morph due to some tweets and posts. I think it is completely ridiculous and childish that people are trying to bash PixelFX over a word here and there. When will such drama just stop happening every time a major product or competition happens?!

When people stop making subtle (or not so subtle) digs at the competition. aka - be professional.

Do we know how much the additional analog boards are likely to be for the Morph? Having RGB/S/HV BNC inputs would be really useful.

hmm you mean who did it??

TBH, when you want to design a new product for an existing market, you must know all about your competition in order to beat them or at least make some market for yourself. this is what professionals do.

I don't mean get into personal stuff and start doxxing or so, but rather just about the product.

[Ricdeau]

That's disappointing. I was hoping for FRL2 which is 4k/60hz@4:4:4.

can you explain why you would need this instead of regular HDMI 4k60 444 which already exists?

He’s got a pretty extreme edge case where the projector he’s using has the lowest input latency when being fed an 8k60 signal. So the goal is to use the VRRoom to upscale the 4k60 signal to 8k60 to achieve the best latency. The VRRoom needs to receive an FRL signal to upscale to 8k60.

I have a projector from the same lineup as his and I tried going down this path with the VRRoom. Manufacturer states its lowest latency is an 8k60 signal. Ultimately I felt it wasn’t worth the hassle. I wasn’t able to tell the latency difference, but I won’t pretend to say I’m super sensitive. As long as I’m around 32ms (2 frames at 60) or less I’m good to go. I stick to 4k60 and 4k120 on my projector for gaming. I can’t fault him for trying to chase the best case scenario though.

[SGGG2]

Tangently related, but the standard GEM should really have motion adaptive deinterlacing or support for 480i output. Say I buy a Morph, but want to HDMI mod my PS2 to eliminate temporal noise, since the GEM doesn’t output 480i, there’s no way to use MAD on the Morph, or at all, without buying the shiny license.

[Woozle]

Tangently related, but the standard GEM should really have motion adaptive deinterlacing or support for 480i output. Say I buy a Morph, but want to HDMI mod my PS2 to eliminate temporal noise, since the GEM doesn’t output 480i, there’s no way to use MAD on the Morph, or at all, without buying the shiny license.

The basic RetroGEM has a direct output mode, which can send 480i to the Morph. The Morph can apply MA to that.

[Konsolkongen]

Slightly off topic, but is the PixelFX Xbox HDMI mod still in the works?

Will a non-shiny edition of that support 480p, 720p and 1080i output still? I would choose that + a Morph over the MakeMHz HDMI mod.

[Woozle]

Slightly off topic, but is the PixelFX Xbox HDMI mod still in the works?

Will a non-shiny edition of that support 480p, 720p and 1080i output still? I would choose that + a Morph over the MakeMHz HDMI mod.

It is. The basic RetroGEM has direct output which can pass through 480p/720p/1080i.

[Konsolkongen]

Slightly off topic, but is the PixelFX Xbox HDMI mod still in the works?

Will a non-shiny edition of that support 480p, 720p and 1080i output still? I would choose that + a Morph over the MakeMHz HDMI mod.

It is. The basic RetroGEM has direct output which can pass through 480p/720p/1080i.

Great Do you still plan on having the user remove the ethernet port in favor of wi-fi? I remember talk of that being necessary to fit the HDMI port.

I hope that’s not required. I would much rather cut a hole or loose the analog AV port

[Woozle]

Slightly off topic, but is the PixelFX Xbox HDMI mod still in the works?

Will a non-shiny edition of that support 480p, 720p and 1080i output still? I would choose that + a Morph over the MakeMHz HDMI mod.

It is. The basic RetroGEM has direct output which can pass through 480p/720p/1080i.

Great Do you still plan on having the user remove the ethernet port in favor of wi-fi? I remember talk of that being necessary to fit the HDMI port.

I hope that’s not required. I would much rather cut a hole or loose the analog AV port

It takes place of the AV port. But the RetroGEM is pretty small (about size of m.2 ssd), you can always route the hdmi to another cut in the case if you’d prefer.

[Konsolkongen]

It is. The basic RetroGEM has direct output which can pass through 480p/720p/1080i.

Great Do you still plan on having the user remove the ethernet port in favor of wi-fi? I remember talk of that being necessary to fit the HDMI port.

I hope that’s not required. I would much rather cut a hole or loose the analog AV port

It takes place of the AV port. But the RetroGEM is pretty small (about size of m.2 ssd), you can always route the hdmi to another cut in the case if you’d prefer.

Perfect. I don’t see any scenario where I would ever want to hook up my Xbox with analog cables again. So that suits me just fine

[darcagn]

TBH, when you want to design a new product for an existing market, you must know all about your competition in order to beat them or at least make some market for yourself. this is what professionals do.

I don't mean get into personal stuff and start doxxing or so, but rather just about the product.

What does market research have to do with calling someone names? Calling someone greedy isn't about the product, it's personal. Some people on Twitter are probably making too big of a deal out of it, yeah, but it was completely unnecessary to say that over something speculative.

It's also pretty weird considering Mike Chi has usually had the more practical and affordable products in this space, and PixelFX is choosing to put features behind paywalls. (And now I have to worry about 25+ year old consoles phoning home to operate properly?)

Console modding used to be my biggest hobby, and I always had to have the best in my consoles -- which meant buying PixelFX products -- but certain aspects of their business have really turned me off over the last few years, essentially killing my enthusiasm for the hobby all around.
They still haven't realized they are a professional business charging premium prices, and operate as if they are a freeware open source project: Over-reliance on having the community do support for them, firmware not working well on day 1, poor documentation on the website, information spread among different sources making social media/community participation practically mandatory, etc.
Ironically, their partnership with the same social media influencer blasting them right now broke the camel's back for me a while back -- I just said screw it and completely quit doing any PixelFX mod install work.
(I found myself blocked over a petty disagreement about removing the ethernet port on an Xbox install -- never had a problem with him before, but demoralizing when you might need to rely on that person's content for info because PixelFX's documentation is poor and he gets advance protoypes to make content)

I had never intended to buy a Tink product because I was so loyal to BDT/PixelFX -- but in 2021 I had the opportunity to sell my Framemeister for $700 and buy the Tink5X to replace it at $275. I figured I'd sell it and get the MorphFX later that year, but the Tink5X is such a great product with few headaches, I'll probably get the Tink4K for my 4k OLED.

[Voultar]

Ironically, their partnership with the same social media influencer blasting them right now broke the camel's back for me a while back -- I just said screw it and completely quit doing any PixelFX mod install work.
(I found myself blocked over a petty disagreement about removing the ethernet port on an Xbox install -- never had a problem with him before, but demoralizing when you might need to rely on that person's content for info because PixelFX's documentation is poor and he gets advance protoypes to make content)

I don't know if you're referring to me, as I don't believe I've ever spoken to you before, but let me be very clear; I never have gotten advanced prototypes for any of their products and I've never had any sort of partnership with them (PixelFX).

I'm glad that my FREE instructional videos helped you and everyone, but I'm not even on their official recommended installer list. So if you are complaining about me, I don't know why you would have beef with my free, unpaid for instructional content. I was just trying to help people. Damned if you do and damned if you don't, I guess.

[darcagn]

I don't know if you're referring to me, as I don't believe I've ever spoken to you before

I don't really expect you to recall everyone you've spoken to, and it doesn't really matter. The last time we had anything bordering on a meaningful conversation was probably about a decade ago, in those old NESRGB and Framemeister days.
Although, funny enough, I think this is the second time you're telling me you don't believe you've ever spoken to me before.

I don't know why you would have beef with my free, unpaid for instructional content.

Please re-read. I never said I had beef with your free, unpaid-for instructional content. I specifically said above, yes, in reference to you, "never had a problem with him before [getting blocked]" (unless one counts my wife not wanting to be in the same room when your videos were on )

The point was the over-reliance of BDT/PFX on community resources. I'm thankful for those community resources, not upset at them. I'm venting my frustration with those community resources frequently being necessary in the first place due to poor documentation and communication on BDT/PFX's behalf. Example -- when extremely basic documentation is missing at launch, it becomes necessary to hop on social media and talk to other users just to get to the bottom of things. Or another example -- Bugs not being disclosed, despite being known, until I've racked my brain, wasting time troubleshooting and re-soldering. Oh wait, actually, the PSNee instructions were completely missing from the launch instructions until they added them later. I think I had to figure that one out myself looking at someone else's photos or something. Bugs themselves are one thing, I understand it's impossible to know every edge case until a release, it's the documentation/lack of communication that's at issue. I've never known any other mod vendor to be so messy and unorganized, and it's pretty much been the case with every product launch.

but let me be very clear; I never have gotten advanced prototypes for any of their products and I've never had any sort of partnership with them (PixelFX).

Are you trying to lawyer me here with shifting tenses and semantics?

First, none of this really matters because complaining about you isn't the point of my post. Your existence is merely tangential to this topic. Otherwise, I would have specifically mentioned your name.

But since you wanted to be so "clear" in your claims, I really have to answer. For the purposes of this discussion, this includes Black-Dog Tech products. I consider them one and the same, especially when the product in question has been sold under both names. The Twitter discussion in question above when you blocked me also included Woozle (but it was unknown to the public, including myself, that he had joined with Dan and Christof) and so it was practically PixelFX at the time anyway.

The PS1Digital went on sale on September 17, 2020; you published an install video on August 8, 2020 with the description "Both the PS1Digital and xStation are in late beta stage and will be available for everyone to purchase VERY soon." The flex cable used in your install video is not the same as the final released version. At timestamp 1:35 you set down the PS1Digital and pick up the XStation and say "The other little piece of prototyping dev hardware we have," implying that both the PS1Digital and XStation units you are showing in the video are prototype units and you didn't travel back in time from a future when the public received finished units.

I'm not even on their official recommended installer list.

At the time, you were on the installer list, and in fact, still are on the list on the (now-irrelevant) Black-Dog Tech website. Since you brought up the installer list, clearly you believe your inclusion on such a list would have some significance.

The modders on that list, or a subset of them, received prototype units. For example:
leonk - 8BitMods - Dragon's Hoard - iFixRetro - RetroHacks
Dan acknowledging he sent prototype units to people on the install list after someone apparently complained

I think it's very fair at this point to assume: 1) You had a relationship with Dan that granted you greater access than the general public, and 2) that relationship enabled you to receive a prototype unit. And you made content with it. I consider that a partnership between Black-Dog Tech/PixelFX and Voultar, LLC, maybe you don't, I don't really care, though your denial comes across as very duplicitious to me.

[Voultar]

I understand. I apologize for making instructional tutorials for any of these products. I was just trying to help people. I apologize profusely to you for ever blocking you on social media as I can't imagine why I ever would.

Hope you can find the desire to mod again and be happy.

As for your wife not wanting to be in the same room with as you while my videos are playing, the easy solution to that is divorce. Nobody needs an insufferable person like that in their life. Sounds like a real thrill.

[ldeveraux]

I understand. I apologize for making instructional tutorials for any of these products. I was just trying to help people. I apologize profusely to you for ever blocking you on social media as I can't imagine why I ever would.

Hope you can find the desire to mod again and be happy.

As for your wife not wanting to be in the same room with as you while my videos are playing, the easy solution to that is divorce. Nobody needs an insufferable person like that in their life. Sounds like a real thrill.

The guy didn't call you out, you preemptively defended yourself, me and everyone else who had no clue who he was talking about now see this, you double down on the smarm. Enter your "what does this have to do with you?" reply.

[TooBeaucoup]

I understand. I apologize for making instructional tutorials for any of these products. I was just trying to help people. I apologize profusely to you for ever blocking you on social media as I can't imagine why I ever would.

Hope you can find the desire to mod again and be happy.

As for your wife not wanting to be in the same room with as you while my videos are playing, the easy solution to that is divorce. Nobody needs an insufferable person like that in their life. Sounds like a real thrill.

The guy didn't call you out, you preemptively defended yourself, me and everyone else who had no clue who he was talking about now see this, you double down on the smarm. Enter your "what does this have to do with you?" reply.

Not that it matters or means anything, but I assumed he was talking about Voultar before Voultar had replied. LOL! I think anyone who follows Voultar on Twitter may have suspected as much.

[Josh128]

Lets not clutter this thread with petty personal BS please. I regret my original comments about the Morph vs 4K tentative price in this thread as it seems to have instigated PFX into saying some of the stuff he did about Mike which has led to all this uproar. Mike if you see this, I apologize for whatever part I played in causing this.

Mike has already cemented himself as a bonafide legend in the retro tech space, and anyone worth their salt knows he's a fair and honest dude who 1.) Will price his product accordingly based on his engineering time and production costs, and 2.) Will undoubtedly be bringing the heat when it comes to capabilities ,features, and support.

I think PFX knows this and are just trying to rattle the cage to get their products name out in the space. This is to be be expected, they just have gone about it in the wrong way and I suspect they regret it. In the end, competition in the space is good and the quality of the products will speak for themselves.

[darcagn]

I understand. I apologize for making instructional tutorials for any of these products. I was just trying to help people.

You know that's not what I said, and there's no need to be this way. Moving away from any prior issues I have with you and trying to return to the topic of PixelFX, they sent you an advance PS2HDMI unit to make content and you yourself wrote on Twitter:

I'm sorry, everyone. PixelFX sent me a PS2HDMI kit to review. I'm promptly sending this kit back, return to sender. I can't, neither in good faith nor in good conscious support a company and invest 100 hours of free labor in producing a video for them all while they're willing to treat others like this, all because they want to make a few $$$ selling a theoretical product. My integrity to support a friend is worth far more than some stupid product.

So it's pretty obvious we actually agree on some level here.

I regret my original comments about the Morph vs 4K tentative price in this thread as it seems to have instigated PFX into saying some of the stuff he did about Mike which has led to all this uproar. Mike if you see this, I apologize for whatever part I played in causing this.

Mike has already cemented himself as a bonafide legend in the retro tech space, and anyone worth their salt knows he's a fair and honest dude who 1.) Will price his product accordingly based on his engineering time and production costs, and 2.) Will undoubtedly be bringing the heat when it comes to capabilities ,features, and support.

I think PFX knows this and are just trying to rattle the cage to get their products name out in the space. This is to be be expected, they just have gone about it in the wrong way and I suspect they regret it. In the end, competition in the space is good and the quality of the products will speak for themselves.

I think you are quite right on all points. But you needn't feel bad about what you said earlier in the thread. It was a legitimate point of discussion and you weren't stirring the pot.

[Woozle]

Got the latest samples from the plastic mold and the fit is where we want it Next step is surface finish. Images in spoiler below.

Spoiler

[orange808]

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.