Using a Diamond HD 750 USB TV Tuner (or equivalent)

[atari_400]

Has anybody had any experience using a Diamond HD 750 USB TV Tuner (or other equivalent USB TV Tuner) with an Atari 400/800 ?

I am looking for a cheap alternative to buying a dedicated TV monitor or upscaler etc. by running the Atari through my PC to my 27" HP LCD monitor.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Kyle22]

Hi 400,

 

I have tried many different kinds of TV tuners. I run Windows XP Media Center, and it is a beautiful thing, EXCEPT for the tuner problem... Tuners are very finicky to set up, and most of them will cause a LAG between input and what you see on your screen.

 

Media Center aside, I have found that most, if not all tuners, especially USB ones will have a significant delay.

 

Look at it this way: You are playing Star Raiders, and you have the enemy in your sights. You rapidly press FIRE, but the enemy has already destroyed you. That is because YOUR view was delayed, and the enemy was ALREADY firing on you BEFORE you started pressing the button.

 

You MUST use a lag-free solution. Does your monitor have any other inputs you can use? There were some old and cheap boxes that would convert composite to VGA without introducing any measurable amount of lag, but I don't know of anything that will connect via USB and display video without lag.

 

As for watching TV with Media Center, the lag doesn't matter, unless you also have another TV connected directly to the antenna/cable source, then it becomes quite annoying if you can hear it in the background. It's like the 5 second echo effect.

[phaeron]

I've tried the "computer with TV tuner" route before with old computers and consoles. Trust me, it sucks, and I was writing the capture software myself.

 

First, don't even try a TV tuner that has hardware compression (MJPEG / MPEG-1/2/4 / H.264) unless you know it can pass through uncompressed RGB or YUV video. The lag with a compressed stream will be horrible -- upwards of a third of a second. You'd do better playing on a regular TV while plastered with your alcoholic beverage of choice.

 

Second, I've also never found a TV tuner that could capture non-interlaced video. They always instead just grabbed pairs of frames to produce an interlaced frame. This instantly gives an extra 16ms of delay on top of all the usual delays and also produces a horrible 30Hz combed display... which is not easy to cleanly separate back to non-interlaced frames because the capture device doesn't tell you the field ordering it used, which can switch mid-stream. Deinterlacing won't cut it as it'll make the output look less fluid and/or add even more lag.

 

Finally, the device may not produce very good color with the Atari's non-interlaced display, even if it works well on normal video. I think I have the tuner you're looking at, and if it's the same one, it produces striped color patterns with Atari output:

 

If you want to use a monitor as a TV device, you're far better off using a dedicated hardware device rather than a computer with a TV tuner. One neat one I've had luck with is an AverMedia LGP, which can convert HD component to HDMI live while recording. However, I haven't checked if it'll handle noninterlaced video well.

 

[atari_400]

Kyle22 & phaeron thanks very much indeed for the input.

Looks like the TV tuner may not be the best option due to the delay but it might perhaps be fine for basic testing or text adventures etc.

My monitor has VGA and HDMI inputs so I'll check the suggested path of something that can convert the Atari signal to VGA.

Thanks !!