Retro AV Club Thread 2: Classic Gaming Done Right!

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SheepyGuy said:
Speaking of Tim's RGB board, I finally got mine yesterday, tried to install it and it worked! But I'm getting no audio! I tried composite as well and same problem. By this point it was 2am so I went to bed but it's been kinda bugging me all day.

I think I just need to double check my soldering on my MAV-NUS chip but just in case is there anything else that could cause that?

Edit: Actually pin 14-16 look like digital audio inputs to the MAV chip so I must have messed something up there.

5089-mav-ntsc-png
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Yay, I fixed it. There was a not at all visible bridge between the LRCLK and voltage.
 
Vespa said:
Nice, glad you got audio back! Did you install a switch for the deblur function? I might try doing this mod on another machine when I have time.
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I don't have a spare switch on hand but I think I'll get some to put one in. I soldered it to "on" for now to see how it is but so far I'm not sure I notice much of a difference. Personally the original SNES softness doesn't bother me and arguably the N64 softness is just part of the look of that system.
 
SheepyGuy said:
I don't have a spare switch on hand but I think I'll get some to put one in. I soldered it to "on" for now to see how it is but so far I'm not sure I notice much of a difference. Personally the original SNES softness doesn't bother me and arguably the N64 softness is just part of the look of that system.
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Ahh thought you were doing it on your N64, apparently deblur looks bad on a handful of games, 480i games? I think SNES would be fine for it to be wired to on.

I'm looking forward to playing around with deblur but yeah the blurry nature of the N64 doesn't bother me, I had experienced it with composite too so RGB alone will probably blow my mind.
 
Vespa said:
Ahh thought you were doing it on your N64, apparently deblur looks bad on a handful of games, 480i games? I think SNES would be fine for it to be wired to on.

I'm looking forward to playing around with deblur but yeah the blurry nature of the N64 doesn't bother me, I had experienced it with composite too so RGB alone will probably blow my mind.
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Shouldn't be 480i, the main thing is games that use dithering. It's tricky then too cause I rather like the way dithering patterns look.
 
Pancakes R Us said:
Thanks all. Are you guys playing in 4:3 mode? Anyone tried full screen? I'm one of those guys that likes to play full screen, even if it stretches the image a little.
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Framemeister looks stupendous on anything bigger then a 50" HDTV. Likely the second best feature of the system after RGB...the ability to have sizes of image well beyond anything CRTs good ever reach.

As for stretching...it will soften the image and be frowned upon by most folks but do what you like! You will be happy with the upscaler.
 
It's no 240p test suite but since ps2 plays dvd's you could use a dvd calibration disk if that's what you aiming to do (it won't work* via RGB though..found that out the hard way lol).

* it "works" but the image is all greened out via RGB
 
dubc35 said:
It's no 240p test suite but since ps2 plays dvd's you could use a dvd calibration disk if that's what you aiming to do (it won't work* via RGB though..found that out the hard way lol).

* it "works" but the image is all greened out via RGB
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sure you didnt have it set to YPbPr?
 
NormalFish said:
sure you didnt have it set to YPbPr?
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Yeah, you can get it to work with an exploit or Action Replay but no dice otherwise on a stock ps2 via RGB. Games work fine it's just dvd playback. Old but somewhat relevant thread on shmups. I searched around a bunch when I noticed it because it was my "cheap" way of calibration since I didn't have anything to run the 240p test suite...then I realized it didn't work, lol. I have since purchased an sd2snes so not a problem now.
 
dubc35 said:
Yeah, you can get it to work with an exploit or Action Replay but no dice otherwise on a stock ps2 via RGB. Games work fine it's just dvd playback. Old but somewhat relevant thread on shmups. I searched around a bunch when I noticed it because it was my "cheap" way of calibration since I didn't have anything to run the 240p test suite...then I realized it didn't work, lol. I have since purchased an sd2snes so not a problem now.
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oh weird. I wonder if my PS2 can even play a dvd, I've never tried. the weird copy protection shit on the PS2 seems to be have some variance in ways i don't expect.
 
speedlolita said:
Pretty sure later (maybe starting with V12/slim hardware) you no longer get a green screen via RGB for DVD playback.
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This would not surprise me at all. The dev hardware changed their compatibility with DVD playback for the 50k models, so that might be the cut off but I've got no clue.
 
speedlolita said:
Pretty sure later (maybe starting with V12/slim hardware) you no longer get a green screen via RGB for DVD playback.
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Interesting, I was using a phat ps2. Any links/info you can share? I've been debating getting a JPN slim ps2 as a cheap way to play English friendly JPN ps1/2 games.
 
dubc35 said:
Yeah, you can get it to work with an exploit or Action Replay but no dice otherwise on a stock ps2 via RGB. Games work fine it's just dvd playback. Old but somewhat relevant thread on shmups. I searched around a bunch when I noticed it because it was my "cheap" way of calibration since I didn't have anything to run the 240p test suite...then I realized it didn't work, lol. I have since purchased an sd2snes so not a problem now.
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I really wish calibration discs were a formally supported thing. Typical film based calibration suites on disc don't account for RGB output. Even if you get it to work perfectly through hacking, the native assets on the disc will be limited to 4:2:2 and old broadcast gamma. It's better than nothing though.
 
Savon-pat, retired Sony tech interviewed by RetroRGB, brought up the good point about the questionable use of calibration patterns/tools fed from non-industry-grade devices. He said for example that on a BVM you go into the service menu, navigate to channels 90-100 or so, and bring up built-in professional-made patterns for calibration. The implication was that this superior to an amateur-made program like 240pSuite, doubly so because it's at the mercy of the quirky consumer grade hardware that it's running on such as a 80s-90s video game console. Before I heard him say that last month I had often wondered myself the accuracy of our calibration habits, concluding it was "good enough" for old video games and not to drive myself crazy dwelling on it!
 
Inversely, if you use, say, only an FPGA multi-console solution on your BVM, doesn't it make more sense to calibrate using the input rather than with the TV itself?
 
NormalFish said:
Inversely, if you use, say, only an FPGA multi-console solution on your BVM, doesn't it make more sense to calibrate using the input rather than with the TV itself?
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Yeah, that crossed my mind. "I'm calibrating to play SNES, not watch the finest DVDs or to color grade skintones for clients' video productions." I don't dwell on it anymore. Each of my monitors looks somewhat different but the differences melt away once I'm engrossed in one screen.

davidwhangchoi said:
so we're doing it wrong?
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NormalFish's answer below your post is spot on.
 
Mega said:
Savon-pat, retired Sony tech interviewed by RetroRGB, brought up the good point about the questionable use of calibration patterns/tools fed from non-industry-grade devices. He said for example that on a BVM you go into the service menu, navigate to channels 90-100 or so, and bring up built-in professional-made patterns for calibration. The implication was that this superior to an amateur-made program like 240pSuite, doubly so because it's at the mercy of the quirky consumer grade hardware that it's running on such as a 80s-90s video game console. Before I heard him say that last month I had often wondered myself the accuracy of our calibration habits, concluding it was "good enough" for old video games and not to drive myself crazy dwelling on it!
Click to expand...

so we're doing it wrong?
 
Mega said:
Yeah, that crossed my mind. "I'm calibrating to play SNES, not watch the finest DVDs or to color grade skintones for clients' video productions." I don't dwell on it anymore. Each of my monitors looks somewhat different but the differences melt away once I'm engrossed in one screen.
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Yeah, not sweating it too much seems like the pragmatic conclusion given there are compelling points on either side.
davidwhangchoi said:
so we're doing it wrong?
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well, if you're using a bunch of sources, it makes sense to calibrate using a more agnostic source, like a built in test pattern, but if you were only using 1 source, or a few sources that are very similar, then calibrating for those specific sources might be more accurate. It's kind of a messy thing.
 
Mega said:
Savon-pat, retired Sony tech interviewed by RetroRGB, brought up the good point about the questionable use of calibration patterns/tools fed from non-industry-grade devices. He said for example that on a BVM you go into the service menu, navigate to channels 90-100 or so, and bring up built-in professional-made patterns for calibration.
Click to expand...
Say what? What do you mean? BMV have built in test patterns? Since when?
 
Mega said:
Savon-pat, retired Sony tech interviewed by RetroRGB, brought up the good point about the questionable use of calibration patterns/tools fed from non-industry-grade devices. He said for example that on a BVM you go into the service menu, navigate to channels 90-100 or so, and bring up built-in professional-made patterns for calibration. The implication was that this superior to an amateur-made program like 240pSuite, doubly so because it's at the mercy of the quirky consumer grade hardware that it's running on such as a 80s-90s video game console. Before I heard him say that last month I had often wondered myself the accuracy of our calibration habits, concluding it was "good enough" for old video games and not to drive myself crazy dwelling on it!
Click to expand...

Patrick is a nice guy and I bought a BVM from him but the way he calibrates isn't what you are going to want either. Every console I run on my BVM has a black border around the whole picture. His calibration method is ruled by how they did it at Sony. My biggest guess is that because these have rounded screens they shrink the area so that you have about 1/2-1" border around any video source that you feed into the system.

20170122_11000677f49.jpg


I have tried to expand it using the test pattern but I am completely shit at it. The fact that he should really disclose this to those buying his monitors would go a long way. I had no idea that I couldn't get it remotely to a point where I was happy with so I just reverted to his calibration and called it a day.

OSSC:

I came here to ask if anyone has tried using a VGA monitor w/ scan lines and line double/tripple modes to see if they were happy with how it looked compared to one of these Sony pro monitors. I like the idea of how cheaply one can get computers monitors that are in relatively good shape instead of dealing with BVMs that don't support 480 or higher resolutions.
 
Kawika said:
Patrick is a nice guy and I bought a BVM from him but the way he calibrates isn't what you are going to want either. Every console I run on my BVM has a black border around the whole picture. His calibration method is ruled by how they did it at Sony. My biggest guess is that because these have rounded screens they shrink the area so that you have about 1/2-1" border around any video source that you feed into the system.

20170122_11000677f49.jpg


I have tried to expand it using the test pattern but I am completely shit at it. The fact that he should really disclose this to those buying his monitors would go a long way. I had no idea that I couldn't get it remotely to a point where I was happy with so I just reverted to his calibration and called it a day.
Click to expand...

Rounded screen is likely nothing to do with it. It's probably so that any raw video they work on can be seen in its entirety (no overscan). But your problem should be an extremely easy fix. Adjust H and V size/position and you're done. I can check the exact menu settings tomorrow.
 
Mega said:
Savon-pat, retired Sony tech interviewed by RetroRGB, brought up the good point about the questionable use of calibration patterns/tools fed from non-industry-grade devices. He said for example that on a BVM you go into the service menu, navigate to channels 90-100 or so, and bring up built-in professional-made patterns for calibration. The implication was that this superior to an amateur-made program like 240pSuite, doubly so because it's at the mercy of the quirky consumer grade hardware that it's running on such as a 80s-90s video game console. Before I heard him say that last month I had often wondered myself the accuracy of our calibration habits, concluding it was "good enough" for old video games and not to drive myself crazy dwelling on it!
Click to expand...


As long as you use the 240p test suite with a good quality RGB or component signal, I fail to see how it's "questionable". Now if you use it through composite, then yeah it probably is.
 
Looks like people are already starting to make branches of the OSSC hardware. Got one with HDMI out, audio integration, and a slightly more compact layout in dev. Thread's on Shmups.
 
I watched the video on My Life in Gaming about OSSC. It's a little old now, but is it possible to get 3x or 4x doubling now or whatever brings it less to 1080p?
 
Yes Boss! said:
Framemeister looks stupendous on anything bigger then a 50" HDTV. Likely the second best feature of the system after RGB...the ability to have sizes of image well beyond anything CRTs good ever reach.

As for stretching...it will soften the image and be frowned upon by most folks but do what you like! You will be happy with the upscaler.
Click to expand...

televator said:
RetroGAFers don't let fellow RetroGAFers stretch their games. It's a civic duty.
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Jake from State Farm said:
XRGB mini looks great on my 40" LCD. Don't stretch to full screen, thats just gross. You'll get used to it.
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Timu said:
I wouldn't like doing that!
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Thanks guys, noted.

I'm not keen on step down converters. Is it possible to get an power adaptor with your own country's plug system to use it with? I'm in the UK where we have a 3-pin plug.
 
NormalFish said:
Looks like people are already starting to make branches of the OSSC hardware. Got one with HDMI out, audio integration, and a slightly more compact layout in dev. Thread's on Shmups.
Click to expand...

That's really cool, unless it's like some guys on there asked, as in the HDMI out would limit the project to a DIY kit form only. Aside from the technical aspects, its more compact design and the plans to give the board a proper housing/shell are also pretty major selling points, for me.
 
Galdelico said:
That's really cool, unless it's like some guys on there asked, as in the HDMI out would limit the project to a DIY kit form only. Aside from the technical aspects, its more compact design and the plans to give the board a proper housing/shell are also pretty major selling points, for me.
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I don't remember if you were present prior to the OSSC's production, but there was a pretty involved conversation about whether those HDMI fees were actually enforced against hobby projects like this. Leonk mentioned it, but it seems really unlikely that they would bother with a unit that will end up with ~3000 units sold or something
 
I'm going to be Goodwill shopping soon for a CRT for my garage for Light Gun and racing games. Am I pretty safe to grab any Sony Trinitron/Wega? Is there a sweet spot for size? Looking for a good s-video or component picture. Planning on using a PS2 and Dreamcast out there.
 
Psxdad said:
I'm going to be Goodwill shopping soon for a CRT for my garage for Light Gun and racing games. Am I pretty safe to grab any Sony Trinitron/Wega? Is there a sweet spot for size? Looking for a good s-video or component picture. Planning on using a PS2 and Dreamcast out there.
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Definitely aim to get component, and try to avoid 100hz TV's.
 
Maxpacker said:
As long as you use the 240p test suite with a good quality RGB or component signal, I fail to see how it's "questionable". Now if you use it through composite, then yeah it probably is.
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A test pattern is at the mercy of the device that's transmitting the image to your display. 80s/90s consoles are not reference quality and probably have odd quirks and shortcomings. Far as I know, a professional would use something like an expensive non-consumer DVD player made for this line of work, with a calibration disc to fine-tune a display. I'm not aware of the exact intricacies of what makes an SNES inadequate for pro calibration, I'm just taking the word of someone who was a Sony tech and seems to know his stuff.

That being said, I do think SNES with 240p Suite is perfectly fine for what all of us in this thread are doing (making old games look good), which is not as advanced and precise as live video editing for broadcasts and film.
 
Just gonna say, playing Killer Instinct Gold on an XRGB mini is almost impossible due to the resolution change. unless I time it perfectly pausing the game, my health is halfway down when the screen appears lol. A little annoying.
 
looking for a sound solution for my retro setup at the moment im thinking small 2.1 set up and a scart switcher with audio out to connect or is there a budget sound bar that will accept optical (PS2)
 
After getting my 20F1U I just threw up my hands and could not believe this was the Holy Grail of monitors for some. I just think going backwards with screen tech is neat for some but wrong for me. The best idea going forward is to see what we can do with modern displays and despite the CRT glow and input lag there is not a lot to love about them.

So I bought a 4K 40" Samsung for my home office because I was sick of such a small display. In my office I had a 32" Samsung LCD, a few CRTs, Computer monitor and nothing seemed to look right on that 32".

I've used the firebrand X profiles for a long time. I used to prefer the sharp pixel look of his 5X profiles but when I got the new tv I thought the effect didn't look as good on my 4K.

BVM
MMX_BVMde5f2.jpg


4K w/ 5X profile

MMX_5XLCDdd136.jpg


I wasn't really happy about it but I didn't really care that much. Later on I was in the menu of the tv and noticed the tv had a scaler that could stretch and shrink the image I was feeding it. I never used the 4X profiles because it left a lot of the screen unused but with this option on my new tv I could enlarge the viewing area w/o going to the 5x profile. My results really look closer to the CRT look I have been trying to attain since getting the xrgb. Cell phone images w/ no tripod. Sorry about that.


BVM

TMNT_BVMa9e82.jpg


4K w/ 4x Profile + TV Zoom.

TMNT_4XLCD80182.jpg



The lag on this tv is so low even the audio remains in sync to my crt. I think I finally found a way to enjoy my retro games without sitting 2-3 feet hunched over playing on my CRT.

I am going to keep my small pvm and sell my BVM. It kind of feels good.

(waits for someone to shit on it and make me second guess keeping my bvm).
 
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