Various musings about Twitching 240p vs 480i classic games.

[tripletopper]

Hello.

 

I just bought a retro tink SCART RGB to 5 RCA YCbCr/L/R from Stone Age Gamer in Ohio (mail order).

 

I plugged it in and some games work and some games do not.

 

First of all I have to clean off the contacts on the cartridges with isopropylhol.

 

So far I tried two systems.  The first is the Sega Tower of Power and I test the stream with Eternal Champions CD.  the TV was very low ping; I was able to block a lot of my opponents attacks.  I'm playing on a component TV Sony Wega,. And I chain 2 capture cards, a combination of a Hauppauge Rocket in standalone mode converted to HDMI and then one of those $10 HDMI capture cards in a USB 2.0 port.

 

By the way there's two reasons why I don't use the Rocket in normal mode.  One is I have a Macintosh  and two  in order to use it in Mac mode you have to buy third-party software which relies on VLC and VLC is tied to your house bqndwidh and my house has a maximum bandwidth of 1.5 Meg in 400k out but I can improve it with a direct Cellular connection of the output.  The Mac is acting as a television studio but is limited by VLC it seems like, even though I'm actually streaming from the second screen of my Mac into the Android which uses Android apps to screen send to Twitch.

 

I thought I was going to have a good time until next tried the SNES.  First I tried Killer Instinct, that showed up perfectly fine on my screen but it didn't show up at all on my capture card.  Also the Rocket was blinking blue which means signal not recognized.  Then I tried legend of the mystical ninja and that was the same thing.

 

No I don't know how you tell the difference between a 240p and a 480i but if Eternal Champions is 480i and Killer Instinct and Legend of the Mystical Ninja is 240p, then my suspicion is that my Hauppauge Rocket cannot capture 240p accurately. It just comes out as an error.

 

I currently have a external adapter that takes component audio and video YPbP + LR to HDMI converter.  It's one of the ones I found on eBay.  If my component to HDMI converter can accurately deal with 240p then I should plug that into the HDMI capture box.

 

By the way I split the signal with a powered splitter to my Wega as well as my capture card to have the lowest ping.  On a normal television, how do you tell if you're in 240p mode or 480i mode?  Do TVs convert one into the other usually or do they both usually display both natively?  Do Sony Wega CRT TVs display both native 240p and 480i?

 

I noticed Eternal Champions CD looks kind of dotted and pixeled in the cinemas.  Is that just color blending adjacent pixels on a CRT TV?

 

By the way, so far I see

only five systems that can work with SCART without modifying any consoles: the master system/genesis 1, Genesis 2/32x, SNES (only the big model), Saturn, and Dreamcast. (and PlayStation 1 but the PlayStation 2 works good as a PlayStation one player for over 99% of the games.  And I heard Turbo Grafx would work with a add-on retro adapter and a Genesis 2[?] SCART cable.)  The other ones that can display RGB require some surgery on machines, right?

 

Also I'm using a CRT VGA monitor for higher definitions without giving up the ping.  I noticed that any interlaced games do not work with a standard CRT VGA.

 

All games on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Switch (and beyond) should require progressive displays so therefore should all be easily convertible to CRT VGA (with a playing around with of the monitor controls.)  I assume if I find a 240p game for an old console, that will work on a CRT VGA with low enough delay for everything except light gun games.

 

there are six systems that are kind of weird the ones, from PlayStation 2 to Wii U.  I heard the PlayStation 2 only has about 20 games that are compatible with progressive monitors, well the original Xbox has ALL BUT 20 games compatible with progressive monitors.  How do the Xbox 360 and PS3 do with games that run off progressive monitors?  I assume every game on those systems is compatible with some progressive mode.

 

Finally we got the GameCube Wii and Wii U all compatible with 480i.  Just wondering what games would fail if you have a progressive only monitor like a typical CRT VGA.

 

By the way I do have a device which lets you play 480i stuff on a VGA monitor.  I noticed Pac Mania for Genesis was one frame behind the default CRT on a slo-mo test.  If Genesis packmania was in 480i then that means the MTVBOX takes around one frame to de-interlace the signal.  Right.  May I have a old game that's done in 240p and see if that game is quicker on an MTVBOX because it doesn't have to de-interlace?

 

 

[newtmonkey]

There are no SNES or Genesis games that run in 480i, so 240p vs. 480i has nothing to do with this.

 

There are some games that run in interlaced resolutions (though not 480i) on both systems, but they are only a handful and typically only use an interlaced resolution for static screens or menus.

[tripletopper]

Then why do my games run perfectly fine through compositing this video but through SCART to component conversions it fails?  Is it because they assume the component is going to be at least 480p and if you're giving it a 240p signal, it doesn't understand it?

 

And would my Hauppauge Rocket be able to understand 240p via composite and S Video, but not component?

 

If that's the case, do you know of any UVC compatible component connectors that could deal with resolutions at 240p as well as 480i that work with Mac OS 10.11.

 

I also have a Roxio game cap but I can't seem to get it working with my Macintosh.  Can anyone recommend a Mac compatible capture card that can do 240p component?

[tripletopper]

I also read that UVC capture cards sometimes don't register on certain Mac OS is very well.  Sometimes you have to replug them in and try again.

 

Does anyone know of any UVC components capture cards?  It appears my Hauppauge Rocket doesn't understand 240p via component.  does anyone know of a UVC capture card that does do both 240p and 480i by component, preferably an analog one, for my retro TV, to do all Sega systems plus the Super NES in full color?

[tripletopper]

Well I found out my Hauppauge can capture 480i natively via component but not 240p.

 

I read there are some things called line doublers which take a 240p device and turn it to 480p by repeating each line once and moving on.

 

Are there such things as conditional line doublers where if it senses 240p it activates line doubling mode and if it does not, (480i or 480p mode)  it just passes it through with no processing.  My Hauppauge Rocket can do 480i? 

 

Also would a line doubler take a 480p signal and make it playable on a VGA monitor?

 

Finally how much ping does de-interlacing typically add? (Hopefully 1 ms or less, just like a Rocket). Heck maybe I can use a rocket as a de-Interlacer + booster to HD  to work on my VGA.