2600 w/s-video mod (Electronic Sentimentalities) cliping black signal

[Mitkraft]

Just this weekend I finally modded my 2600 (light sixer) using the svideo mod from electronicsentimentalities.com and I'm disappointed to find that its severely clipping the black signals. I noticed it when I went to calibrate and found that when playing Super Breakout I could not see the gray borders at all (I was using Stella as a comparison). Now I'm looking on the electronicsentimentalities website at the examples and see that the behavior is clearly shown in their examples. I was just going off everyone's suggestion that they were the best place to buy the sivdeo mod from and that it was basically the same as the Cybertech mod. If you look here you can see it clearly in the gray-scale bars:

 

In Stella you can clearly see 8 shaded bars with the 8th being solid black.

 

On the electronicsentimentalities site here is the same pattern and you can see that only 6 bars are distinguishable (with 7&8 appearing solid black) and even the 6th bar just barely so. http://electronicsentimentalities.com/Images/GREYBAR.JPG

 

On the Cheeptech website you can see that how only the RF adapter shows similar clipping (although you can still barely make out the 7th bar). Both the Ben Heck and Cybertech mods show all 8 bars:

 

RF: http://www.cheeptech.com/2600mods/captures/rfadapt/ra_tc_3.jpg

Ben Heck: http://www.cheeptech.com/2600mods/captures/benheck/bh_tc_3.jpg

CyberTech: http://www.cheeptech.com/2600mods/captures/cyadjst/ca_tc_3.jpg

 

My questions are these:

 

1 Is this really an issue? Were we supposed to see the gray bars in Super breakout? No seriously, I can't remember, are they visible on a non-modded system?

 

2. Can this be caused by anything I did (although I suspect not since the ES site clearly shows this behavior)?

 

3. Can it be improved upon at all?

 

4. As a side note, my color adjustment (the pot with the big clear adjustment knob) seems to have no effect after the mod, is that normal behavior?

 

I have to say I'm a little bit disappointed by this since in regular video I'm particularly sensitive to black levels and can't stand when they are too high or clipped. However this is only an issue on the Atari if there are parts of games in the shade of grey that are meant to be seen but will be clipped on my system. Btw, I've tried cranking all my settings up to see if I can force the visibility of that 7th bar and it seems to be clipped before leaving the Atari because I can't see it no matter how much I bump up the brightness or where I set the contrast either on the TV or the mod board.

[Mitkraft]

Ok, strangest thing. I decided to hook up an old video corector I had laying around that was used for making VHS dubs. It has a full compliment of video adjustments and figured I could use it to get the signal as close to perfect as possible. When I first started I was still unable to see the gray border in Super Breakout so I was adjusting all the levels as best as I could get them. Then I decided to pop in regular Breakout to see how it looked and low and behold I could see the gray border! For a minute I thought I'd managed to find the settings to overcome the issue, but when I put Super Breakout back in I could now see the gray bars there to. So I eliminated the video corrector and sure enough everything was not looking proper. I have no idea what happened but it must have been something with my unit. I don't know if a bad connection corrected itself, if the mod board needed some burn in time or what, but suddenly everything was looking as it was supposed to. I didn't open the unit back up to try and adjust the pots on the Atari or mod board because the colors were so close I decided to live with it for now. I have no idea why they were clipping so severely to begin with. But for the moment I'm happy and everything looks awesome!

 

Oh, and the pause mod from the Atariage store is the bomb!

[+FujiSkunk]

I'm glad to see you got it worked out. Don't be afraid to ask the guy who runs Electronic Sentimentalities, though. From my experience, he has great customer service, and will work with you as best he can to make you happy.