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[New002]

Modding an AV Famicom is probably your most versatile option if you want FDS compatibility plus all Japan-exclusive sound channels. I'd go with that and pick up a converter for US releases.

The only thing you'd be missing is the microphone functionality of an original Famicom. But very few games ever used this anyway.

I hear ya. I've really been liking this idea. I'm trying to plan a vacation to Japan, which would be 15+ months way...am I strong enough to wait and try and get one cheaper there?? Lol

As you're playing on a modern display, I'd say go for the solution that outputs HDMI instead of upscaling RGB. Either the the HI-Def NES mod or the AVS should be good for that.

Am I wrong to be worried about the fact that it only outputs at 720p? Is this actually a non-issue?

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Aaaannd SFC cable bought.

There's something kind of endearing about her store closing at night, and on the weekend... and there being a limited inventory available each day.

 

[IrishNinja]

so since we're talkin' hardcore #'s here: i found the model # label on my CRT! pretty intensive shit, i know...but i'm a professional

gonna look into menu stuff (and how to get at it) today, honestly the geometry on this thing is good for most systems i've thrown at it, it's just the colors feel a bit...blown out? like, red is heavy and i have to minimize the shit out of that to get anything resembling a decent green.

do ya'll think there's much chance i can fix some of that from said service menu, or is it more likely the tubes? i figure it can't hurt to try either way, so long as i don't completely bork shit in this menu.

 

[JLynn]

Modding an AV Famicom is probably your most versatile option if you want FDS compatibility plus all Japan-exclusive sound channels. I'd go with that and pick up a converter for US releases.

The only thing you'd be missing is the microphone functionality of an original Famicom. But very few games ever used this anyway.

What about a Twin Famicom?

 

[televator]

A couple of hundred pages back I said that there were some hardcore motherfuckers in this thread.

I stand by my words.

We must be willing to go deep for dat RGB perfection. I don't consider myself hardcore by missle's standards. This dude is like a fish in a pond of display technology. Half of what I understand is probably the result of me talking to him. lol

The other half is me wracking my brain over papers and explanations. What I understand of color space and bit depth is the result of that.

I'm not sure where I stand on the softcore to hardcore scale

Missle is like, maximum OG hardcore

Me reading his post:

I honestly can't believe I went from reading his posts the same as that image some months ago to actually being able to interpret most of what he says now.

I understood all of it!

Glad there are at least some of us who can. Though you're certainly more proficient than I.

 

[Mega]

I'm a little shocked myself at being able to understand nearly all of that post. Although I'm lost when he busts out the math equations explaining signal carrier stuff. :|

The wrench in the gears of this assumption of mine is that emulators are perfectly capable of reproducing 32bit color from these games... It could mean several things to me. The processor of the PS1 is capable of drawing from a wide RGB pallet before writing to the FB, or the emulator is simply expanding 15bit to 32bit like how the Framemeister does, or something else entirely.

I have been playing with PS1 and N64 emulators on my Android handheld and for now I can say that switching between 16bpp and 32bpp makes no difference. It's like missile said, most textures are capped at 15 bits.. and from what I have read that's intensive for the hardware and not common either. 4bpp (16 color) textures were really more of the norm. In one of those old threads some of them were using a color count reader to detect that most PS1 games had only 1000 to a few thousands colors on screen at once. It makes sense. Stop and look at any spot on the floor or wall of just about any pixelated 32-bit console game and you can count the colors of individual textures on one hand. The only place where it makes a difference, which missile again touched on, is the gouraud shading that's applied to single flat color objects and the occasional transparency.

I could still be off here, but the conclusion seems to be that basically pre-dithered textures and textures banding see no benefit to mucking around with color depth. And of course as established here, full screen dithering is a pattern applied on purpose afterward and not a result of low color depth. Applying a full screen dithering option in the epsxe emulator actually does a nice job of hiding the banding and of adding "complexity" to the many low-color textures in Gran Turismo.

Anyway, thanks to missile for his incredibly enlightening post. I wish I had his grasp of this stuff.

As an aside, televator, I found settings that give me a cleaner and sharper image from my Wii U. Beermonkey is still correct that some weird averaging/blending goes on in the Wii U hardware that doesn't allow for nice even scanlines regardless of res or scaling used. I forgot my HDMI converter and upscaler has HDMI digital out for passthrough of the signal so that I can use it just for the scaling features. I still need to try some combinations but what I found to possibly be best is to set the Wii U to 720p, leave the converter aside (lol), and let my plasma upscale to 1080p. What I learned is that setting my Wii U to 480p, my TV does a horrible job of upscaling to 1080p (looks like glop). And setting the Wii U to 1080p yields a soft hazy image. 720p has sharp, clean, even edges.

Towards the end I remembered the converter has aspect ratio adjustment in addition to scaling. I need to go back and fully test how it upscales 480p so that neither the Wii U nor the TV are doing that.

 

[televator]

I'm a little shocked myself at being able to understand nearly all of that post. Although I'm lost when he busts out the math equations explaining signal carrier stuff. :|



I have been playing with PS1 and N64 emulators on my Android handheld and for now I can say that switching between 16bpp and 32bpp makes no difference. It's like missile said, most textures are capped at 15 bits.. and from what I have read that's intensive for the hardware and not common either. 4bpp (16 color) textures were really more of the norm. In one of those old threads some of them were using a color count reader to detect that most PS1 games had only 1000 to a few thousands colors on screen at once. It makes sense. Stop and look at any spot on the floor or wall of just about any pixelated 32-bit console game and you can count the colors of individual textures on one hand. The only place where it makes a difference, which missile again touched on, is the gouraud shading that's applied to single flat color objects and the occasional transparency.

I could still be off here, but the conclusion seems to be that basically pre-dithered textures and textures banding see no benefit to mucking around with color depth. And of course as established here, full screen dithering is a pattern applied on purpose afterward and not a result of low color depth. Applying a full screen dithering option in the epsxe emulator actually does a nice job of hiding the banding and of adding "complexity" to the many low-color textures in Gran Turismo.

Anyway, thanks to missile for his incredibly enlightening post. I wish I had his grasp of this stuff.

As an aside, televator, I found settings that give me a cleaner and sharper image from my Wii U. Beermonkey is still correct that some weird averaging/blending goes on in the Wii U hardware that doesn't allow for nice even scanlines regardless of res or scaling used. I forgot my HDMI converter and upscaler has HDMI digital out for passthrough of the signal so that I can use it just for the scaling features. I still need to try some combinations but what I found to possibly be best is to set the Wii U to 720p, leave the converter aside (lol), and let my plasma upscale to 1080p. What I learned is that setting my Wii U to 480p, my TV does a horrible job of upscaling to 1080p (looks like glop). And setting the Wii U to 1080p yields a soft hazy image. 720p has sharp, clean, even edges.

Towards the end I remembered the converter has aspect ratio adjustment in addition to scaling. I need to go back and fully test how it upscales 480p so that neither the Wii U nor the TV are doing that.

Yeah, shading/lighting/transparency are the benefactors of the higher bit depth. That's why you can see dark areas or transparencies that sometimes have banding unless they are dithered. Dithering can look really bad on an HDTV depending on the pattern.

Good to hear you've sorted out a decent config for WiiU scaling. It's still odd to me that the Wii dash looks so atrocious with scaling and heavy chroma shift problems. Makes me wonder if the affect extends to certain apps like the 240pTS. Meanwhile actual games use a better scaling filter.

 

[HDgaming42]

After just missing out on the initial pre-order, my OSSC arrived today in the mail.

So stoked. Of course today my basement flooded so I'll be spending the foreseeable future saving possessions and tearing out rotten floor and drywall.

Ugh. Just couldn't have arrived YESTERDAY, hmmmmmm?

 

[MrNelson]

So, an update on my search for a new CRT:

I managed to find a Sony KV-27FS320 on Craigslist. What sucks is that it's about 40 miles from me, but they say that it's like new (judging from the pic it looks fine) and they only want $30 for it, so I'll be grabbing it tomorrow.

Not looking forward to trying to get that damn thing up the stairs to my apartment.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Can't wait to get home and play more video games, but I've gotta sober up first. I'll test out Vampire Savior on the Saturn tonight.

My Super Famicom I bought has already made it to the US, so I think I'll have that to dick around with by the middle of next week. I opted for a non-1chip system, but I think it should still look pretty killer. It'll be interesting to see how the OSSC performs with that.

 

[BTails]

My Super Famicom I bought has already made it to the US, so I think I'll have that to dick around with by the middle of next week. I opted for a non-1chip system, but I think it should still look pretty killer. It'll be interesting to see how the OSSC performs with that.

Just never go straight from Genesis/Mega Drive to SNES/SFC if you don't have a 1chip. Trust me, I've done it a few times, and the stock Genny is so sharp compared to the stock SNES. Speaking strictly image quality here, not trying to start a fanboy war.

Spoiler

Genesis4life tho

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Just never go straight from Genesis/Mega Drive to SNES/SFC if you don't have a 1chip. Trust me, I've done it a few times, and the stock Genny is so sharp compared to the stock SNES. Speaking strictly image quality here, not trying to start a fanboy war.

Spoiler

Genesis4life tho

Yeah, I know it's not going to be spectacular by comparison. But the downsides to the 1-chip seem to kinda outweigh the gains in sharpness. I think. Maybe?

 

[RadarScope1]

Yeah, I know it's not going to be spectacular by comparison. But the downsides to the 1-chip seem to kinda outweigh the gains in sharpness. I think. Maybe?

Wha? A couple very, very minor graphical errors in no way outweigh a sharper overall IQ. Don't let the Internet nitpickers fool you.

 

[PumpkinSpice]

Downsides is finding one without paying extra for a Jr. and needing to RGB mod. If you've already got that covered yeah it's extremely minor stuff.

 

[Peagles]

I don't think I've ever noticed any glitches on my 1CHIP and it's all I've used the past few years. I'm sure I could find them if I went looking for them, but meh.

 

[Madao]

i get comments from people around me that i'm very hardcore into the hobby but i feel like a total noob when i visit these threads and search the more in depth stuff.

it's pretty lucky that i understand enough to have set up most of my equipment as i have now but i couldn't really understand much beyond what's in the box and what's listed in most places.

 

[digita1alchemy]

My OSSC arrived today and I am thrilled with it so far. I tested pretty much every major non-HD system back to the NES and it handled everything wonderfully, except for maybe the PS2 due to the interlacing. To my surprise, my TV (Vizio e550i-b2) accepts the 240p lineX3 mode as well as the 480p lineX2 mode. Even better, my TV thinks the non-standard signals are from a PC and thus applies minimal processing to the image, which is something I can't choose to do manually on a standard 480p signal. The crisp, clean image I am getting from my Gamecube and Xbox is blowing me away. And probably best of all, for the first time ever, the component output from my PSP somehow doesn't look like a blurry mess. My TV also lets me zoom the image, and as a result I can finally play near pixel perfect, full screen PSP games on my TV.

And of course every single 240p source looks amazing in line triple mode as well. I'll try to take some good pictures tomorrow, but for now here are a couple awful phone pics I snapped:

Super Mario World 2 on an SNS-101

Phantasy Star Portable 2 on a PSP-2000

 

[televator]

So the PSP 3000 has a wider color gamut mode. Imma have to get one soonish. My plasma ought to make good use of the added color.

 

[Krelian]

Super Mario World 2 on an SNS-101

Can I ask how you connected the SNES to the OSSC? I thought it only accepted RGB input and the SNS-101 doesn't output RGB as far as I know.

 

[Peagles]

Can I ask how you connected the SNES to the OSSC? I thought it only accepted RGB input and the SNS-101 doesn't output RGB as far as I know.

It's pretty basic mod to re-enable RGB. That's what most people here do.

 

[Rich!]

Can I ask how you connected the SNES to the OSSC? I thought it only accepted RGB input and the SNS-101 doesn't output RGB as far as I know.

Yes it does.

I modded my Super Famicom Jr for RGB. Easy mod, only takes an amp and a few wires and resistors.

 

[Krelian]

It's pretty basic mod to re-enable RGB. That's what most people here do.

Yes it does.

I modded my Super Famicom Jr for RGB. Easy mod, only takes an amp and a few wires and resistors.

Thanks! Good to know it's easy to mod.

 

[Shin Johnpv]

You are assuming that when I say "not better than a cheap Chinese cable" I imply broken or non-working or flawed. This is not what I meant.

If you don't have any problem with their £12 cable, then you would have no problem with a Chinese cable either. Both use simple thin wires, have a single cable shield, without plating of any sort on the connectors. The only reason the Chinese cable is cheaper is because it's made in China.

There's more to the quality of a cable than just the thickness of the wires used. There's the quality of the soldering, and how well they're put together. Just because something is individually shielding each cable, doesn't make it the same quality as shit chinese cables. I've got cables from retrogamingcables.com and retro_gaming_accessories on ebay. Opened up, most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them. Her cables aren't individually shielded, are they the same as chinese shit cables too?

Both offer coax versions if you want, and both are pretty damn expensive, and MOST people out there don't need them.

 

[Khaz]

There's more to the quality of a cable than just the thickness of the wires used. There's the quality of the soldering, and how well they're put together. Just because something is individually shielding each cable, doesn't make it the same quality as shit chinese cables. I've got cables from retrogamingcables.com and retro_gaming_accessories on ebay. Opened up, most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them. Her cables aren't individually shielded, are they the same as chinese shit cables too?

Both offer coax versions if you want, and both are pretty damn expensive, and MOST people out there don't need them.

Man, you really hate Chinese stuff, don't you?

And I never said people needed the coax. If you're fine with non-coax cable, it's cool.

 

[Peltz]

What about a Twin Famicom?

Do they have detachable controllers that use the standard NES port? If not, I wouldn't recommend a second-hand one at this stage.

Edit:

Damn, now you got me googling pictures of Twin Famicoms.... I want one... but I already have like 4 different NES systems.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Thank you, those two options seem exactly what I meant, in order to fix that issue.
And also, with Vampire Savior, you can check this stage and the way the scarves on the ladies on the background look. If they don't flash badly/slowly (as they do in the video itself), but way faster - almost like they're transparent - then it's all good.

This OSSC sounds like my ideal solution...
Do you guys know if subscribing to the newsletter/mailing list at videogameperfection is the only way at the moment, in order to buy one unit once they'll become available again? Seems like they don't even accept preorders right now.

Alright, I checked that level, and it works exactly as it should -- no issues with the flicker.

 

[D.Lo]

Damn, now you got me googling pictures of Twin Famicoms.... I want one... but I already have like 4 different NES systems.

Made curious so I counted, I have eight lol.

 

[Peltz]

Made curious so I counted, I have eight lol.

approval nod

 

[Shin Johnpv]

Man, you really hate Chinese stuff, don't you?

And I never said people needed the coax. If you're fine with non-coax cable, it's cool.

 

[missile]

... I could still be off here, but the conclusion seems to be that basically pre-dithered textures and textures banding see no benefit to mucking around with color depth. ...

You can, but you have to obey aliasing due to the many patterns involved.
(or beat frequencies being the result of similar patterns when combined)

... I could still be off here, but the conclusion seems to be that basically pre-dithered textures and textures banding see no benefit to mucking around with color depth. And of course as established here, full screen dithering is a pattern applied on purpose afterward and not a result of low color depth. Applying a full screen dithering option in the epsxe emulator actually does a nice job of hiding the banding and of adding "complexity" to the many low-color textures in Gran Turismo. ...

With today's dither patterns these games could have looked much better.
(with virtually no additional hardware cost, just a few bytes more RAM).

Yeah, shading/lighting/transparency are the benefactors of the higher bit depth. ...

One thing of old I've heard and read a lot is;
"better shading is more realistic than having better textures instead".

There's more to the quality of a cable than just the thickness of the wires used. There's the quality of the soldering, and how well they're put together. ...

And that's a key-point! Reflections (impedance changes) happen right there.

 

[Galdelico]

Alright, I checked that level, and it works exactly as it should -- no issues with the flicker.

Thanks again, dude.
Subscribed to VGP mailing list for the OSSC: I'm definitely gonna get one, as soon as they'll notify me I can buy/preorder it.

 

[missile]

Full - limited, there's no difference as long as the monitor knows what's up. Heck component is 16-240 which is just a rescale of 16-235.

For the sake of completeness;
Y is 16 - 235, and
{Cr,Cb} is 16 - 240 (with 128 equal to zero).

 

[sixteen-bit]

Damn, this SCART switcher actually doesn't look like a complete eyesore. Aesthetically my Bandridge looks like playskool garbage in comparison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBXMl0tbtGE

 

[RadarScope1]

Damn, this SCART switcher actually doesn't look like a complete eyesore. Aesthetically my Bandridge looks like playskool garbage in comparison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBXMl0tbtGE

That does look quite nice. Very sleek.

 

[TeaJay]

Joytech for life:

Remote control, 5x RGB SCART, great for my current needs. Could put one composite console in the front panel if I had one.

If I get more consoles I'll have to re-think my setup, but that's a worry for another time.

 

[MysticX]

How are good old bang & olufssen for retro gaming? I remember those tellues being awesome.

 

[Funky Papa]

How are good old bang & olufssen for retro gaming? I remember those tellues being awesome.

You are going to have a hard time finding a better non professional CRT and none of them are going to have a better sound system. Old school Loewe and B&O tellies are TV perfection.

 

[RadarScope1]

Joytech for life:



Remote control, 5x RGB SCART, great for my current needs. Could put one composite console in the front panel if I had one.

If I get more consoles I'll have to re-think my setup, but that's a worry for another time.

Yo, this looks fantastic. Love that it has the full spectrum of input types for all five inputs! Is this pretty easily available in the US?

EDIT: Looks like the answer is no. Not available whatsoever via eBay or Amazon right now. Setting up an eBay alert, though ...

 

[TeaJay]

Yo, this looks fantastic. Love that it has the full spectrum of input types for all five inputs! Is this pretty easily available in the US?

EDIT: Looks like the answer is no. Not available whatsoever via eBay or Amazon right now. Setting up an eBay alert, though ...

Unfortunately it's kinda rare here in Europe too. I got mine as a sheer stroke of luck on a local auction site and it didn't even cost more than 40 €.

The Bandridge switches that people recommend every now and then should be more readily available but the Joytech beats them IMO. Hope you'll find one.

 

[Peagles]

Joytech for life:



Remote control, 5x RGB SCART, great for my current needs. Could put one composite console in the front panel if I had one.

If I get more consoles I'll have to re-think my setup, but that's a worry for another time.

Ooh this is like a fancier version of my Joytech switches, with one more input, how cool!

 

[Rich!]

I'm happy with my two linked hama switches, but that joytech one looks awesome

 

[Mega]

I'm happy with my Extron switch's 12 inputs. I wasn't happy with only the 4 outputs. The seller I got it from mistakenly listed it as an Extron 128 instead of 124 (12 inputs, 4 outputs).

Last week I found a seller selling the newish Ultra 128 units for pretty cheap and I snatched one up. Should be here next week.

 

[Madao]

does anyone know a good resource to check for HDMI receivers?

currently, the oldest piece of tech in my setup is my receiver and i've been thinking about upgrading it for a while but i have no idea about any good places to check them to see things like input lag and any other thing that could affect gaming.

i'd like to start planning and saving but first i'd need to look up a good model.

 

[RadarScope1]

Unfortunately it's kinda rare here in Europe too. I got mine as a sheer stroke of luck on a local auction site and it didn't even cost more than 40 €.

The Bandridge switches that people recommend every now and then should be more readily available but the Joytech beats them IMO. Hope you'll find one.

Yeah, honestly the Bandridge ones seem just fine to me. But this one looks so sleek!

 

[Mega]

There was someone here selling a red, RGB modded Twin Fami but that was months ago. If I had the space for it... Also didn't know there were more than two variations. They look awesome.

https://retro-video-gaming.com/2015/03/07/sharps-twin-famicom-and-the-twin-famicom-turbo/

So the PSP 3000 has a wider color gamut mode. Imma have to get one soonish. My plasma ought to make good use of the added color.

I have one plugged into my HD CRT via Component. The color gamut selection does nothing for the output display from what I can tell.

Good to hear you've sorted out a decent config for WiiU scaling. It's still odd to me that the Wii dash looks so atrocious with scaling and heavy chroma shift problems. Makes me wonder if the affect extends to certain apps like the 240pTS. Meanwhile actual games use a better scaling filter.

I tested 240p Suite on my actual Wii connected to 480p CRT and, like Beer mentioned, the scanline filter looks fine there. Next is testing the Wii on my plasma, or testing Wii U on the CRT, but I think the results will be the same (good for Wii, bad for Wii U). I was looking for other Wii Homebrew apps that have scanline filters to verify that 240p Suite's ugly scanlines on Wii U are not a fluke. I found a version of SNES9XGX with a scanline filter... very similar uneven lines!

I should also mention that some terrible filtering is also happening in the Wii U Gamepad despite the fact it's 480p and should handle this stuff 1:1 without issues. The scanline problems in the 240p Suite and SNES9XGX look worse than on the TV. It fails to evenly display the Horizontal Stripe test pattern on the NES and SNES versions of 240p Suite. Using a 720p Android handheld, I was able to see that similar emulators with integer scaling display the stripe pattern and scanline filters evenly.

After comparing the SNES9X with Scanlines on both Wii U and my Android handheld's HDMI out, I can safely say something is very wrong with vWii. I'll upload some camera pics, not direct grab but you will see how blurry and dull it looks compared to basic Android emulation output to a TV. No combination of resolution setting, upscaling setting and aspect ratio adjustment could fix the scanlines in the Suite and the SNES emulator. It stinks.

In regards to Wii U producing the best PQ at 720p on my Panny plasma (the uneven scanliness look the least awful at this res), all other resolutions and scaling combinations yield an inferior picture. But I wondered why 1080p would look worse than 720p.

To test this a bit, I fired up Dolphin on PC which lets you set internal res and display res separately. Leaving internal res at native res, I booted up Melee and went to the screen deflicker menu because it has little test patterns. I compared what happens with 1280x720 and 1920x1080. The latter was quite blurry, comparable and worse than Wii U 1080p. Dolphin 1280x720 was a big improvement, almost as sharp as Wii U 720p. So I'm thinking the internal res of GC/Wii games scales better to 720p before the TV scales to the panel's native 1080p.

I did a third test using the Ultra HDMI N64. Games on it are line doubled to 480p. The non-integer scaled 1080p option looks a lot like the blurring I was seeing before. But all settings (480, 720 and 1080p) look very sharp with integer scaling, confirming it's not something uniquely wrong with my TV's 1080p PQ.

It seems Wii U lacks proper integer scaling AND it adds weird filtering to the picture... I'm almost convinced it adds a smeary blur filter when set to 480p. After changing to 480p, the lettering in the Settings menu looks incredibly blurry. And as mentioned in my prior post, it's at this res that everything takes on a visibly smeared look (vs. clean pixelation). Playing with aspect ratio and using the external upscaler to bump output to 720p/1080p doesn't get rid of this smearing.

TL, DR: Wii U has messed up PQ, possibly least of all at 720p for reasons. I need to test vWii with my PC monitor (1440p IPS) to see if I can replicate these results.

 

[televator]

There was someone here selling a red, RGB modded Twin Fami but that was months ago. If I had the space for it... Also didn't know there were more than two variations. They look awesome.

https://retro-video-gaming.com/2015/03/07/sharps-twin-famicom-and-the-twin-famicom-turbo/

I have one plugged into my HD CRT via Component. The color gamut selection does nothing for the output display from what I can tell.



I tested 240p Suite on my actual Wii connected to 480p CRT and, like Beer mentioned, the scanline filter looks fine there. Next is testing the Wii on my plasma, or testing Wii U on the CRT, but I think the results will be the same (good for Wii, bad for Wii U). I was looking for other Wii Homebrew apps that have scanline filters to verify that 240p Suite's ugly scanlines on Wii U are not a fluke. I found a version of SNES9XGX with a scanline filter... very similar uneven lines!

I should also mention that some terrible filtering is also happening in the Wii U Gamepad despite the fact it's 480p and should handle this stuff 1:1 without issues. The scanline problems in the 240p Suite and SNES9XGX look worse than on the TV. It fails to evenly display the Horizontal Stripe test pattern on the NES and SNES versions of 240p Suite. Using a 720p Android handheld, I was able to see that similar emulators with integer scaling display the stripe pattern and scanline filters evenly.

After comparing the SNES9X with Scanlines on both Wii U and my Android handheld's HDMI out, I can safely say something is very wrong with vWii. I'll upload some camera pics, not direct grab but you will see how blurry and dull it looks compared to basic Android emulation output to a TV. No combination of resolution setting, upscaling setting and aspect ratio adjustment could fix the scanlines in the Suite and the SNES emulator. It stinks.

In regards to Wii U producing the best PQ at 720p on my Panny plasma (the uneven scanliness look the least awful at this res), all other resolutions and scaling combinations yield an inferior picture. But I wondered why 1080p would look worse than 720p.

To test this a bit, I fired up Dolphin on PC which lets you set internal res and display res separately. Leaving internal res at native res, I booted up Melee and went to the screen deflicker menu because it has little test patterns. I compared what happens with 1280x720 and 1920x1080. The latter was quite blurry, comparable and worse than Wii U 1080p. Dolphin 1280x720 was a big improvement, almost as sharp as Wii U 720p. So I'm thinking the internal res of GC/Wii games scales better to 720p before the TV scales to the panel's native 1080p.

I did a third test using the Ultra HDMI N64. Games on it are line doubled to 480p. The non-integer scaled 1080p option looks a lot like the blurring I was seeing before. But all settings (480, 720 and 1080p) look very sharp with integer scaling, confirming it's not something uniquely wrong with my TV's 1080p PQ.

It seems Wii U lacks proper integer scaling AND it adds weird filtering to the picture... I'm almost convinced it adds a smeary blur filter when set to 480p. After changing to 480p, the lettering in the Settings menu looks incredibly blurry. And as mentioned in my prior post, it's at this res that everything takes on a visibly smeared look (vs. clean pixelation). Playing with aspect ratio and using the external upscaler to bump output to 720p/1080p doesn't get rid of this smearing.

TL, DR: Wii U has messed up PQ, possibly least of all at 720p for reasons. I need to test vWii with my PC monitor (1440p IPS) to see if I can replicate these results.

Unless I'm mistaken, scaling usually is done via a filter. Some sharpen and others smear. I tend not to like sharpening filters because they can cause more ringing and possibly other artifacts that probably exacerbate aliasing. Missle can check me on whether I'm wrong about it all since I'm quite inadequate in my understanding yet.

There are all sorts of techniques for scaling. Bilinear, cubic, bicubic... They have lots of mumbo jumbo math behind them, but my understanding is that some sample whole areas of pixels like a 4x4 area... maybe the numbers don't work out on WiiU to where the final image is distorted? I feel like I'm just flinging shit at the wall at the is point, so I'll stop. lol

 

[Grief.exe]

does anyone know a good resource to check for HDMI receivers?

currently, the oldest piece of tech in my setup is my receiver and i've been thinking about upgrading it for a while but i have no idea about any good places to check them to see things like input lag and any other thing that could affect gaming.

i'd like to start planning and saving but first i'd need to look up a good model.

I doubt the HDMI receivers add any additional processing lag. They likely strip the audio and pass the rest through.

This is just theory though, I don't have any data to back that up.

 

[D.Lo]

There was someone here selling a red, RGB modded Twin Fami but that was months ago. If I had the space for it... Also didn't know there were more than two variations. They look awesome.

Red Twin Turbo is so expensive.

I just have the crappy normal red twin lol.

 

[NOLA_Gaffer]

I love the HVC-001 Famicom, though I'll probably pair it with a AV Famicom eventually and a Disk System as well.

Had this one bookmarked earlier, which ended up slipping through my fingers when someone else bought it before I did. Damn fine price for a system in that condition.

 

[Madao]

I doubt the HDMI receivers add any additional processing lag. They likely strip the audio and pass the rest through.

This is just theory though, I don't have any data to back that up.

my HDMI receiver can pass audio to the TV. that's how i get digital audio to my cature card.

i just want to dodge a bullet early and not pick a bad one since you never know when one of those things will come with weird quirks like some TVs.