Atari 2600 on modern Visio TV

[Will Nickisch]

Hello everyone

 

Im finally getting around to hooking up my 2600 to my newer Visio TV.  This TV does not have a tuner or composite (RED, WHITE, YELLOW) hookups.  It only has HDMI and component input.  I have been looking for quite a while and cannot find anything that will allow me to use my 2600 on this TV.  Does anyone have any products they can recommend to use.  Located in the US and dont want to spend a fortune.  TIA

[+-^CrossBow^-]

There are RF to HDMI converters but they aren't going to produce very good results I don't believe. I know that many people use old VCRs as demodulators to convert the RF to composite, but you stated that isn't an option on your TV either.

 

So ultimately what you will need to do, is to invest in a good AV mod on the 2600 to at least provide you with composite (Although s-video would be better), and a Retrotink2x to take that composite/s-video signal and provide you with an HDMI output signal you can then use on your modern display.

 

The absolute cheapest option might be to at least go with the simple composite mod on your 2600, and then use a composite to HDMI converter box. But again, that will likely introduce some lag in the response between what you see on the screen and what is actually happening in the game and might require some other fiddling to dial it in more or less.

 

 

[hizzy]

Even with a mod, would he still have that jumpy screen/rolling screen problem, or does the retrotink2 fix that?

Edited July 27, 2020 by hizzy

[+-^CrossBow^-]

56 minutes ago, hizzy said:

Even with a mod, would he still have that jumpy screen/rolling screen problem, or does the retrotink2 fix that?

Nope, the games that don't conform 100% to NTSC scanline specs will still do some odd things between video changes. Newer TVs are much less tolerant of this than older ones. I was surprised to hear that even on the newer Tink2x Pro, this is even more of an issue apparently?

 

[hizzy]

Just now, -^CrossBow^- said:

Nope, the games that don't conform 100% to NTSC scanline specs will still do some odd things between video changes. Newer TVs are much less tolerant of this than older ones. I was surprised to hear that even on the newer Tink2x Pro, this is even more of an issue apparently?

 

Could a scanline generator help generate scanlines that conform to NTSC specs?

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I've not tested that myself as my AV setup doesn't have too much issue with the games. My TV displays PAL signals in black and white but at least they are stable. But the rest of my AV equipment is designed to handle either or and doesn't have much issue with odd scanline counts on 2600 games.

 

[Tavi]

It might be worth a try to buy one of the 'RCA to HDMI converter' mini boxes off eBay.

I bought a few of them, which I used to hook a Blu ray player to an older TV for family members; and they did work surprisingly well. Even the one that was running though two different adapters (RCA to HDMI; and also Coax to RCA)

for around 12$ it might be something to try?

 

[CapitanClassic]

6 hours ago, Will Nickisch said:

Hello everyone

 

Im finally getting around to hooking up my 2600 to my newer Visio TV.  This TV does not have a tuner or composite (RED, WHITE, YELLOW) hookups.  It only has HDMI and component input.  I have been looking for quite a while and cannot find anything that will allow me to use my 2600 on this TV.  Does anyone have any products they can recommend to use.  Located in the US and dont want to spend a fortune.  TIA

Are you certain your component inputs are not also composite RCA inputs. Some newer TVs incorporate the two together rather than having separate inputs. What you will normally see is a yellow ring around the Y input and white lines linking to the RW audio inputs.

 

There is no standard, so you need to test the TV to see if it recognizes the console.

 

https://www.hdretrovision.com/240p

Edited July 28, 2020 by CapitanClassic

[+DrVenkman]

On 7/27/2020 at 5:22 PM, hizzy said:

Even with a mod, would he still have that jumpy screen/rolling screen problem, or does the retrotink2 fix that?

Personal experience here: the RetroTink 2X and 2X-Pro models are line doublers. They do not produce a fixed HDMI output resolution. They expect the system input to be 240p (for NTSC anyway). The 2600 can produce more or less than the standard number of output lines depending on how the programmer has created the display kernel and more than a line or two either way will almost certainly result in your TV complaining that the HDMI signal is not the expected resolution and give you a black screen (Activision’s STARMASTER for instance). Similarly, some 2600 games do weird things with their display kernels during gameplay resulting in apparent skipped frames and missing on-screen motion (Atari’s Battlezone and Parkers Bros.’ Empire Strikes Back).

 

However, the 2600 is not the only vintage system that can give you a non-standard output signal. The 5200 and A8 computers generate their output displays based on the ANTIC Display List setup by the running program. It’s quite possible for the programmer to have too many or too few lines in their Display Lists and thus produce an output that, when line-doubled through the RetroTink and output over HDMI, confuses the TV and results in a black screen and likely some kind of message from the TV that the resolution is not supported. 

Edited July 29, 2020 by DrVenkman
typos

[hizzy]

Has anyone figured out a device to make the image stable on an LCD tv, like some kind of vertical hold switchbox? I would love to be able to get a stable image from my s-video modded Atari into an LCD tv.

[+SpiceWare]

On 7/27/2020 at 2:24 PM, Will Nickisch said:

Im finally getting around to hooking up my 2600 to my newer Visio TV.  This TV does not have a tuner or composite (RED, WHITE, YELLOW) hookups.  It only has HDMI and component input.

 

On 7/27/2020 at 8:41 PM, CapitanClassic said:

Are you certain your component inputs are not also composite RCA inputs. Some newer TVs incorporate the two together rather than having separate inputs. What you will normally see is a yellow ring around the Y input and white lines linking to the RW audio inputs.

 

That's how my VIZIO is, a single set of inputs used for both component and composite.  My laser disc player's composite output is hooked up using it.  My composite AV cable(yellow, white, red) wasn't long enough for the new TV & stand, so I used a component video cable and just used the blue and red for the audio's white and red.

 

 

Green cable removed, to show the composite yellow is labeled inside the component green.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Steve Guidi]

On 7/27/2020 at 1:44 PM, -^CrossBow^- said:

The absolute cheapest option might be to at least go with the simple composite mod on your 2600, and then use a composite to HDMI converter box.

+1 for this suggestion.  I tried two composite mods to my 2600 and settled with the following.

 

https://www.instructables.com/id/ATARI-2600-Video-Composite-mod/

 

This requires the removal of a transistor and some resistors, then installing a small board with replacement components.  I found that this produced a better signal/colors than my first attempt, which involved installing a jumper and tapping into certain pins/traces to get the video and audio signals: https://www.atariage.com/howto/composite.html.

 

Also, I'll add that both my LG and Sharp TVs have composite inputs with the Sharp unit allow composite via the component input jacks.  Best to check your manual to be certain, but I suspect that most reasonably new TVs will do the same as suggested by the other users in the thread.

 

On 7/27/2020 at 4:45 PM, Tavi said:

It might be worth a try to buy one of the 'RCA to HDMI converter' mini boxes off eBay.
 

+ 1 for this suggestion too!  I have one of these units and use it with my 2600 when hooked up to my computer monitor and/or video capture (neither of those have composite inputs).  Video quality is fine for the 2600 but some of my colleagues complained about it when using systems that produce more detailed graphics (i.e. Nintendo Game Cube and Commodore Computers).  I did some testing on this converter by hooking the composite output of point-and-shoot camera to it, and noticed that it crops the image (4MP) when compared to the composite converter that is built into my TVs.

 

Finally, I'll add that the converter uses requires between 200-250mA of current, so you can totally run it from a USB battery for several hours if needed.  It also detects PAL signals and attempts to convert them accordingly.