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Atari 2600 with an HDMI port anyone?


JefferysGhost

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^^Link sits behind a login wall. Lotta good thar does for the half-dozen or so of us who don't use Facebook. :ponder:

Please read as if Vectrex Roli were speaking.

Quote, "

Ralf Puchner

July 3 at 4:41am · Edited

A week ago friends of the "Atari Hardware Resurrection Project" (known by high quality mod's here in germany) made a short trip to my house to demonstrate a new project they are currently working on.

My AV+ mod available for A2600/A7800/Coleco and Intellivision is the base of their mod (because it delivers much better output quality than other AV mods) which allows direct HDMI connection. The A2600 Darth Vader model houses a small PCB including my mod together with additional chips (mainly a HDMI video processor) and a HDMI plug. As it is a problem offering HDMI without beeing part of the HDMI family (for royalty/legal reason) they choose a chip including the fee per piece - a really wise decision in my opinion else you are not allowed to offer them.

Current output quality is equal to better AV mod's but lacks some A/D problems like filled bright areas with rastered patterns or ghosting lines depending on playfield colors. Games with dark background looks great. So there is room for improvements specially as the possiblities of the video processor are currently not used because the design does not include a MCU yet to control the chip by tweaking the output parameters. May be that's the reason they made the visit: they need a firmware

First tests with normal AV mods and HDMI upscalers failed miserably, the quality was so worse in comparison so they decided to use their own design as china vendors were unable to alter the firmware of their offered devices to satisfy the requirements for retro-consoles (scaling, anti-aliasing etc). Expensive HDMI upscalers delivered a slightly better picture than the cheaper devices but are too expensive and lacks requirements for consoles.

So I look forward to next demonstration after tweaking the parameters of the video processor and may be some hand-on's on my mod. The target price for the mod will be $50. A second option could be the RGB mod I currently develop for the Atari consoles which may deliver a slightly better picture than the AV+ mod (which is equal to most S-Video mods currently)

SCONTENT-B.XX.FBCDN.NET

" end quote.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have been using this converter from Monoprice which does a decent conversion. Not perfect but definitely very good for the price:

 

Monoprice LKV-361 (Currently $38.66)

 

71112.jpg

Here's a great site with tons of reviews of upscalers:

http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/

Edited by tremoloman2006
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  • 8 months later...
  • 4 years later...

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but there is someone on facebook (Video Game Repair) and eBay (Retromachinerepair) who is HDMI modding 2600s but he's not giving any info how or selling kits.

Any ideas to what he's doing? I'm assuming that he is just using an upscaler 

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While I don't know the specifics of the ones that particular seller is using, I do know that I've physically looked at 2 7800s that were HDMI modded, and in both cases, they were using the standard single transistor composite mod board in them directly attached to the composite input side of one of these small upscalers that was taken apart and crammed inside the system. It had been wired to get its power directly from the 7805 already in the Atari. Here is what I observed with these two:

 

- the overall image was much darker than it should have been as compared to other composite mods I've seen done on the 2600 and other 7800s.

- while it was outputting through HDMI it did NOT look any better than if you had just gone straight composite

- there was a 2 - 5 second delay from power on to when you actually got an image because the upscaler inside had to initialize and took longer to do that and establish the video than the atari itself would have taken

- the upscalers I looked at stated they needed about 1amp of current to operate at +5 volts. While this might not be accurate, the default 7805s in the 2600 are only about 500ma and the 7800 is only like 750ma. As a result the 7805s were getting hotter than normal. Not enough where I saw it shutdown, but definitely hotter than they would would normally operate at.

- because these are upscalers being used, they are introducing lag to the video signal that is further compounded by the processing on your TV

- while they do exist, these two I had sent to me did NOT have 4:3/16:9 switches on them. As a result all the of the output through the HDMI was stretched

 

Both of these 'HDMI' modded 7800s ended up having all of this pulled from them, taken back to stock and getting UAV mods installed in their place. The picture quality even on the composite was still better in the end with no lag from the Atari side itself.

 

So...do these HDMI modded Atari systems work? Sure they do and they provide a convenient way to easily connect your Atari to a modern TV. Just keep in mind they aren't true HDMI all digital output and there is a converter/upscaler providing your HDMI output. They most likely won't have the ability to switch to the proper aspect ratio and introduce about 4 - 8 frames of lag in most cases. Many Atari games that lag might not be an issue. But I think Kaboom! and a few other twitch games would cause some frustration.

 

 

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1 hour ago, -^Cro§Bow^- said:

Here is what I observed with these two:

That is what I suspected that happened. I have about 20 systems that I need to mod and if there was a good way to do HDMI I would have loved to but I'll stick with composite.

Thanks for the answer!!

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