User avatar
Mixel

Posted Wed Apr 29, 2020 5:09 am

Hoping to pick your brains about running high(ish) resolutions from an A1200.. Mine is plugged into a widescreen lcd monitor using this little box -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/LiNKFOR-Conver ... 51&sr=8-20 - which has some weird pros and cons.. it’s a lovely stable picture when nothing’s moving, but It does have a degree of smoothing, particularly when things are moving. Another nice thing is it completely strips out flicker on interlaced screen modes.. but when things move you get very odd interlace artefacts following the movement. (I can’t decide if this is a price I’m ok with..)

One big advantage of this box is how I’ve been able to simply split the hdmi out and plug it into my PC’s capture card.. Which could be a requirement moving forward.

I was thinking about getting an OSSC, until I realised it didn’t fix interlace flicker.. buuut, it would theoretically allow me to use HD720 instead in workbench. It’s not like many games or apps use Interlaced screen modes so maybe that’d be best? OSSC is about £150, making it probably the most expensive option..

Then there’s the Indivision flicker fixer.. https://amigakit.amiga.store/product_in ... ts_id=1148 I don’t know if/when they’ll be available again, and I think they were £100? I’m not sure! That seems to give dvi out which is great as it’s easy to split that and send it to my capture card.

Then there’s this strange thing I found on eBay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Amiga-Scando ... SwoSld~q4O - which has vga out.. which I probably can’t figure out how to capture from.. And I can’t find any reviews of, but it looks pretty interesting. If that would allow hd720 too it miiight be nice? But it’s £80 for a totally unknown (to me) device.

How are other people stopping interlace flicker? Do the proper C= CRT monitors just.. not flicker? If so could it make more sense to get an old monitor and point a camera at the screen than using a hacky add on? :)

Thanks, Jeez I’m rambling.. It helped to get everything written down though.

User avatar
obitus1990
USA

Posted Wed Apr 29, 2020 4:37 pm

The ebay device is a cheap Gonbes GBS 8220 device you can buy for under $20 on ebay any time. The person selling them in that link gives you a few extra bells and whistles, like a smartphone app (who cares?) and an enclosure to put it in.

User avatar
nonarkitten

Posted Thu Apr 30, 2020 8:48 am

It's worth mentioning that there's really no ideal way to deinterlace video.

If you want ultra low-latency for gaming, then the best option out there is the RetroTink. This performs a "smart bob" deinterlacing with line interpolation. It adds a few lines of delay (single milliseconds) as opposed to a few frames (dozens or hundreds of milliseconds). The RAD2x is probably the best implementation of the RetroTink and tailored to RGB gaming consoles, but there are no SCART or Amiga video options...

For general use, I find LG and Samsung 4K televisions to be outstanding. There's clearly more lag, but because the TV can operate on the LCD framebuffer, they're potentially more capable than any external solution. I say potentially because cheap TV's will only perform the most basic deinterlacing possible to save the LCD which is usually line doubling and it can add that "blurry" look I think you're talking about. What you want is a TV with enough CPU power to perform adaptive deinterlacing.

This is what my LG does. When I'm on the Workbench, everything is razor sharp. I've played F/A-18 Interceptor, played with overscan and pushed video modes and it's handled them all with aplomb. The only time I notice anything "weird" is when the scan rates are changing, so there's a "banking period" when you switch from lores to hires -- however, it's maybe a frame or two, so it's barely noticeable. Even hooking up my Amiga 1000 via composite looks impressive.

User avatar
Mixel

Posted Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:09 am

obitus1990 wrote:
Wed Apr 29, 2020 4:37 pm
The ebay device is a cheap Gonbes GBS 8220 device you can buy for under $20 on ebay any time. The person selling them in that link gives you a few extra bells and whistles, like a smartphone app (who cares?) and an enclosure to put it in.
Ooh thanks that’s good to know. I’ll look up the image quality of those.. I guess I would need an enclosure for it to sit in and cables to make it work anyway. I’ll see if anyone’s doing it cheaper/if I could figure out how to do myself. 🙂

User avatar
Mixel

Posted Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:17 am

nonarkitten wrote:
Thu Apr 30, 2020 8:48 am
It's worth mentioning that there's really no ideal way to deinterlace video.

If you want ultra low-latency for gaming, then the best option out there is the RetroTink. This performs a "smart bob" deinterlacing with line interpolation. It adds a few lines of delay (single milliseconds) as opposed to a few frames (dozens or hundreds of milliseconds). The RAD2x is probably the best implementation of the RetroTink and tailored to RGB gaming consoles, but there are no SCART or Amiga video options...

For general use, I find LG and Samsung 4K televisions to be outstanding. There's clearly more lag, but because the TV can operate on the LCD framebuffer, they're potentially more capable than any external solution. I say potentially because cheap TV's will only perform the most basic deinterlacing possible to save the LCD which is usually line doubling and it can add that "blurry" look I think you're talking about. What you want is a TV with enough CPU power to perform adaptive deinterlacing.

This is what my LG does. When I'm on the Workbench, everything is razor sharp. I've played F/A-18 Interceptor, played with overscan and pushed video modes and it's handled them all with aplomb. The only time I notice anything "weird" is when the scan rates are changing, so there's a "banking period" when you switch from lores to hires -- however, it's maybe a frame or two, so it's barely noticeable. Even hooking up my Amiga 1000 via composite looks impressive.
This is really good, in depth info it’s great to know. I’ll look up RetroTink stuff, thank you’

I haven’t even thought about plugging my Amiga into my (admittedly old now) SONY Bravia in the living room, I wonder if that’ll be a shaky mess? Probably. 😅

I had no idea higher end TVs did adaptive deinterlacing. Lots to think about here for the future. :)

User avatar
nonarkitten

Posted Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:51 am

Mixel wrote:
Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:09 am
obitus1990 wrote:
Wed Apr 29, 2020 4:37 pm
The ebay device is a cheap Gonbes GBS 8220 device you can buy for under $20 on ebay any time. The person selling them in that link gives you a few extra bells and whistles, like a smartphone app (who cares?) and an enclosure to put it in.
Ooh thanks that’s good to know. I’ll look up the image quality of those.. I guess I would need an enclosure for it to sit in and cables to make it work anyway. I’ll see if anyone’s doing it cheaper/if I could figure out how to do myself. 🙂
I have one of these as well. It's not *BAD* but I wouldn't say they have great quality. There's all sorts of weird artefacts. I've seen some youtube videos where putting some copper foil tape (very carefully) on the underside to help remove these, but I haven't bothered. My go-to solution has been the Indivision ECS and Vampire V2.

User avatar
Mixel

Posted Thu Apr 30, 2020 8:19 pm

nonarkitten wrote:
Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:51 am
Mixel wrote:
Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:09 am
obitus1990 wrote:
Wed Apr 29, 2020 4:37 pm
The ebay device is a cheap Gonbes GBS 8220 device you can buy for under $20 on ebay any time. The person selling them in that link gives you a few extra bells and whistles, like a smartphone app (who cares?) and an enclosure to put it in.
Ooh thanks that’s good to know. I’ll look up the image quality of those.. I guess I would need an enclosure for it to sit in and cables to make it work anyway. I’ll see if anyone’s doing it cheaper/if I could figure out how to do myself. 🙂
I have one of these as well. It's not *BAD* but I wouldn't say they have great quality. There's all sorts of weird artefacts. I've seen some youtube videos where putting some copper foil tape (very carefully) on the underside to help remove these, but I haven't bothered. My go-to solution has been the Indivision ECS and Vampire V2.
Ahh, I think I’d have gone with the Indivision AGA if they were affordable and available still, but vga out isn’t ideal either.. But there’s something to be said for the external boxes as I can attach a whole bunch of devices.

I’d love a vampire but €450 for the A1200 version.. Ouch. I don’t think I can justify that.. but I’d LOVE rtg graphics modes.. is there any less pricy way to get them on an A1200? I mostly want to do graphics.. a fast Amiga is slightly wasted on me I think as if I wanted a really fast Amiga (for 3D games maybe?) I’d probably just use UAE.. A certain amount of slowness is sort of part of the feel of using the original hardware, but I may just be being nostalgic. I certainly miss the days when I had an ‘040.. So a bit more speed wouldn’t hurt. 😅

The more I read up on the OSSC the more I think I want one. 😭 Now they have hdmi out instead of dvi and have dropped in price somewhat too!

This thread: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=84788 is really winning me over. That 720p photo of an ECS machine is just really funny to me and I love the idea that you can customise all of the timings for individual resolutions and save them as a profile.. And the simulated scan lines look surprisingly good!? it might even get me to pull out some of my other retro systems that are generally a PITA/impossible to use on my monitors.

User avatar
nonarkitten

Posted Thu Apr 30, 2020 9:14 pm

An inexpensive (relatively) option might be a SCART cable and the RetroTink 2X SCART which are still available (https://www.retrotink.com/product-page/ ... k-2x-scart). This would be $100-ish and reviews on YouTube seem to think it's great for the Amiga. More expensive, but with a few more options, would be to grab an Amiga to Component adapter from https://www.retronicdesign.com/en/ and run Component cables to the Classic RetroTink. Then you get the options of upscaling, filtering, etc. Worth a thought.

User avatar
Mixel

Posted Mon May 11, 2020 8:49 am

Thanks all, I decided for now I'm sticking with my little cheapo Scart-HDMI box, "smooth" and weirdly artifacting when things move as the picture is.. In the long term I'm definitely looking to get an OSSC and I'll be using it on other devices too most likely. I love the look of the retrotink too though.. Something about the OSSC's setting flexibility really impresses me!

I've also decided to try a VGA cable after watching the 10 Min Retrocast about it. I did use to use VGA in the 90s but I switched between the PC CRT monitor (which wouldn't display many resolutions at all, so it was only good for WB and productivity apps) and a CRT TV for games. I have literally no idea if my LCD display can display any 15khz or similar stuff.. It's not on the list. It seems a fun experiment anyway. :D





Return to “Hardware”