For those of you who didn't get the pleasure of seeing me spam promotional announcements on social media, we were invited to sit on a panel at the first annual RetroWorld Expo in Wallingford, CT this past weekend. Other than Ste missing his flight - and thus forcing me to pick his sorry self up from the airport 8 hours later - things went very smoothly for us. The panel was given by us and Robert Neal from RetroRGB, and it was titled "Ultimate AV: Getting the best video from retro consoles." Robert's cousin was kind enough to record and upload it to YouTube for us, and so here it is for those of you who weren't able to attend.

Giving the talk was tons of fun! Our crowd was a pretty decent size, and we had some great questions at the end there. If we didn't run up against the hour, we probably would have had even more questions coming. Thanks again to everyone who came! After the panel, we sat on a podcast with Second Opinion Games, which I believe will be coming out Wednesday. If you're interested, follow us on Facebook or Twitter as that's where I'll be posting a link.

The rest of the convention went off without a hitch, and it was hard to believe it was the first year they did this thing. The guys from RetroWare TV really nailed it. There was the usual vendor fare - including some with reasonable prices, an arcade room with consoles and cabinets and a tournament zone, and a main stage where 3 main acts played after an all day DJ (kudos dude, I don't know how you stood up there that long!). 

If you're curious about the slides we were showing, I've posted them below so feel free to flip through.

Posted
AuthorNickolaus Mueller

Hey, everyone.  We at HD Retrovision wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year.  We hope you have a great 2015.

I also wanted to post some information regarding the Twitch.tv live stream we had set up during our Kickstarter campaign to demo the component cables in action.  Because we scrambled quickly to get everything set up, it looked like a hopeless mess of wires.  But now looking back, it wasn't all that complicated.  I drew up the following diagram which details our setup almost entirely:

The main component that needs additional explanation is the YPbPr capture device.  This particular USB capture card is a rather affordable item.  It works well, but does have a few caveats.  The first is that since it's not specifically designed for game streaming, it has no passthrough to allow for simultaneous connections to both the computer and the television.  The distribution amplifier is there to perform this function by splitting the video and audio signals to the respective devices.

The second thing is that I had trouble getting the Open Broadcasting Software (OBS) to activate the audio input on the capture device.  I found that I had to load the custom software that came with the device just to trick the audio driver into activating itself.  I avoided that annoyance by connecting the audio directly into the computer's sound card.

Lastly, while the picture looked flawless on the television, we noticed there was a minor greenish tint to the colors in the captured video stream.  I was able to adjust the video parameters for the capture device to get a much more accurate picture.  It still wasn't 100% perfect, but it was much better.  In case anyone is interested, here are the settings we used:

Brightness: 6006
Contrast:    5694
Hue:           5070
Saturation: 5694

Some of our streams had split-screens with both the component video and composite video running at the same time.  We accomplished this using a special prototype which has both video connections brought out from the console.  This is the same prototype we used to record the split-screen content on this website.  The composite video went to a 2nd capture card (AVerMedia C027) internal to the PC.  We didn't use the split-screen that much during the stream, so for the sake of simplicity I left it out of the diagram.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to find a YPbPr component video capture device that supports 240p video signals used by retro consoles.  I have tested a good deal of them over the past two months, and you can see the results here.  Due to its popularity, several people have contacted us regarding compatibility with the Elgato Game Capture HD, but that unit does not support 240p on its component video input.  I reached out to Elgato informing them and asked if they could do anything about it.  They were definitely interested in exploring a solution, and said they will keep me posted if they are able to do anything.

As always, feel free to contact us with any questions/comments/concerns via our contact page.  Enjoy the new year!

 

Posted
AuthorSte Kulov

After a whirlwind of a couple months, the Kickstarter is finally over! Thanks to your support, we are fully funded to produce our first products: component cables for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. It was a fast paced month with little sleep and lots of time networking on social media, and we wound up with 697 backers. Outstanding! Rough estimates right now are that we have obligations for about 1000 cables.

I have already gotten emails from several people expressing to me how they missed the Kickstarter and still want to be able to be a part of getting us off the ground. We discussed this internally and decided not to pursue any other funding platforms (like Megafounder) for the time being. We instead want to focus our efforts on finishing the product development and getting the manufacturing process in line, rather than adding any additional complexity to our lives. Those who are still interested in getting their hands on some cables will be able to buy them from us after they are produced and become available.

We've also been asked about the stretch goals we did not meet. We're polling our backers to see what products they're most interested in. Initial polling data suggests the HDMIzer is likely to be the most sought after item, but we'll wait to see what everyone has to say. Our first obligation is to backers, and since we didn't hit stretch goals we don't have enough extra resources to fully pursue our next product in parallel. However, we will put whatever spare cycles we can towards whatever people seem most interested in as a future product.

Finally, for those interested, here's some observations about Kickstarter:

  • The first few days I got very little sleep as I tried very hard to be responsive to the many, many messages sent to us asking questions. 
  • Making good contacts with similar minded people was essential for our success. I can't possibly name everyone that helped (you know who you are, and THANK YOU), but for example Games You Loved was an incredible supporter and amazingly helpful in spreading our campaign across Twitter and Facebook. 
  • Contacting media outlets early was important too. I started two weeks before the campaign began and didn't receive much attention until RetroCollect picked us up. Things really snowballed from there, so a big thanks to @cauterize.
  • If we run any Kickstarters in the future, I'd probably want to have less reward levels. It'd just be easier to deal with less variety when we start shipping stuff out. Unfortunately Kickstarter doesn't make it easy to pledge and get X number of a product; you ultimately have to have separate reward levels for separate quantities. Which in the end means writing the same backer survey several times.

That's all I've got for now. Surveys have made their way out. Please make sure to fill them out ASAP so we can start placing orders!

Cheers,

Nick

Posted
AuthorNickolaus Mueller

It appears as though that some people have felt us to be misleading in our representation of the component cables. So much so that we felt we should respond so that we are completely open, honest and clear about what our cables do and do not do.

The heart of the controversy seems to be the fact that we call our company HD Retrovision. This name was chosen to reflect the fact that there is a gap between retro gaming and modern day HD Television sets. So why the issue with our name? Because our first set of products - component cables for SNES and Sega Genesis - output the standard definition video that is created by the console itself.

So we want to be perfectly clear: Our cables provide no High-Definition output or upscaling of any kind. 

What we do provide is a clear, high quality picture from a simple plug-and-play cable that works with most HDTV sets. The quality you will see from them is a vast improvement over composite, and they provide a connectivity to modern TVs that S-Video does not. As we have noted elsewhere on the site, and others have pointed out, some HDTV sets do not play nice with 240p/288p video. For an in depth discussion on that topic, please see this page. That is a known issue that to the best of our knowledge appears to be going away with most newer television sets, but we are in development on a product that would resolve that issue as well.

As of right now, we're working toward adding more front-facing information to our entire online presence (website, YouTube, etc.) which explicitly state that these are not High Definition cables; including disclaimers on our various webpages and videos, additional information in our FAQ, and even re-rendering the trailer video to take out visuals that could be misleading.

Thanks for your time. We appreciate all feedback provided to us by the community that helps us maintain our strict standards of integrity with our products.

 

Posted
AuthorNickolaus Mueller

We are proud to announce the launch of the "Free Stuff" section of our website.  There, we will post things produced during development that we believe will be of use to people in the retro gaming community.  The first item we're releasing is a ROM of our custom test software for the Sega Genesis.  We hope to continue adding items to the Free Stuff section as much as we can.  You can head over there right now to download the ROM, or continue reading below for a detailed explanation of why this piece of software exists in the first place.


If you're making something with the intent of having people buy it with their hard-earned money, it has to be done right.  We've mentioned a couple times that not all RGB outputs are created equal.  Different game consoles have different characteristics in their video signals.  Even the same consoles have been revised internally over their production lives, which can change these characteristics.  Hence, we need a way to measure and characterize these signals to produce a standard output conforming to CEA-770.2-D (similar to EBU N10-1998), which TVs are designed to accept.  Our solution was writing test cartridge software: our own "ROM" containing specific test patterns with the intent of running it on physical game consoles.  While the ROM is running, we can measure the signals with an oscilloscope and gather the information required in designing the proper circuit for that specific console.

Our first piece of test software was for the Sega Genesis.  A high quality and easy to use SDK, called the SGDK, made development for the Genesis/Megadrive much easier than how it was done back in the day by real game developers.  We initially made the software for measuring signals only, but it has since expanded to be used for other design aspects and also for use in the factory for testing and quality assurance of our cables.  I'd like to showcase the different test patterns and functions of our Genesis software:

 

Title Screen:

After powering on the console, you'll get our title screen sporting a Genesis-ized version of our logo along with other information.  It shows the screen size and scan mode that the Genesis uses at bootup.  There is a countdown timer of 5 seconds until the first test pattern gets displayed.  The purpose of the timer is that I need the software to be able to start without any input required from a controller.  However, if you do have a controller plugged into port 1, you can skip the 5 second countdown by simply pressing START.

splashscreen.png
 

100/0/100/0 Colorbar Pattern:

This is the main pattern used for testing and is the first test pattern in the cycle (launches after 5 seconds).  It allows us to do most of the required measuring of the RGB signals coming from the console.  The pattern consists of 8 vertical bars spaced evenly throughout the screen.  Each bar is one of the fully saturated colors found at the extremes of the RGB cube.  They are ordered from left to right in decreasing order of Luma (or "lightness" content).  Knowing what voltages the console spits out for these colors, enables us to properly scale the signals for a standardized output.

colorbars.png
 

Help Screen:

Pressing START on Controller 1 once the software has launched, brings you a screen full of instructions.  Only controller 1 is used.  A & B cycle through the different test patterns.  C toggles between non-interlace and interlace scanning for the Genesis video output (see below).  Pressing LEFT or RIGHT on the D-Pad performs the audio test (see below).  Current screen size and scan mode are displayed on this page, followed by version information.  The scan mode can be toggled by pressing C on this page.  The only other button that works in the help screen is START, which returns you to the test patterns.

helpscreen.png
 

Grayscale Bar Pattern:

This is similar to the colorbar pattern, except using the grayscale representation of the colorbar colors.  I found that color sub-carrier noise was easier to see on this type of pattern.  Some consoles exhibit this noise, and this pattern helps me with designing the correct filters to reduce the effect of the noise.

graybars.png
 

Solid White Screen:

This is simply a screen that is completely filled with white.  This pattern helps me measure the active video width of the console video signals.  With that information, I can determine the proper square-pixel representation to use when capturing video and screenshots.  This is probably an overlooked fact, but all of our videos and screenshots on our website have the correct aspect ratio.  What you see on your TV should match our uploaded content, in terms of the horizontal and vertical ratios.  A discussion of the concept of non-square pixels is a confusing property of analog video and is beyond the scope of this blog post.

white.png
 

Solid Magenta Screen:

This pattern is used for measuring the maximum power dissipated by our circuit.  When magenta is displayed, the amplifiers in our circuit draw the most current.  Since our circuit is powered from the console itself, we want to minimize the current sucked out of it.  Minimizing this current prevents stressing of the voltage regulator within the console.  Fortunately, our circuit is very power efficient, by design, and measures very minimal current draw out of the console.

magenta.png
 

Solid Blue Screen:

There is a synchronization pulse that needs to be extracted from the composite video signal and injected into the Y' signal of the Y'PbPr component video structure.  This is accomplished by "slicing" the composite video signal at a threshold where everything above it is discarded and everything else below is retained.  Blue is represented by a signal that gets very close to this threshold value, and can interfere with this slicing operation.  This pattern helps us verify the robustness of our slicing circuit.

blue.png
 

Solid Black Screen:

The North American version of the NTSC standard has a weird quirk that doesn't exists in PAL standards and in the Japanese version of NTSC.  "Blanking Level" is the voltage at which the video is not active.  "Black Level" is the voltage of the color black when the video is active.  In PAL and NTSC-J, these levels are equivalent.  But in NTSC-M (North America), black level is slightly higher than the blanking level, by about 54mV.  This test pattern let's me see where the console decides to put black in relation to the blanking level.  So far, every North American gaming console I have tested keeps the two levels equivalent, which means they all follow the Japanese NTSC-J standard.

black.png
 

Scanning Mode:

Pressing C toggles between non-interlace and interlace scanning for the Genesis video output.  A notification displays on the screen telling you which mode you just changed to.  You can go to the help screen to see the current mode.  Normally, these older game consoles and computers output a non-interlaced (progressive) signal.  The Genesis's capability of interlaced scanning is a little known fact hidden at the depths of the internet.  The most prominent example of the use of interlaced scanning on the Genesis is the Versus mode in Sonic 2.  Anyway, the main purpose of having control of switching the scan mode is to test a future product we will be working on.  We also wanted to verify that the console didn't change anything in terms of video output level while it was scanning in a different mode.

scanmode.png
 

Audio Test:

Pressing LEFT or RIGHT on the D-Pad produces a sound effect in the respective audio channel.  A notification displays on the screen informing you which channel should be playing.  The main purpose of this test is to make sure the audio is wired up properly within the cable after it is assembled.  This is exclusively a test to be done in the factory during production, or when engineering units are assembled.

 

That's pretty much it.  We might add more tests in the future, if needed.  We have a SNES version of this software, but it's not currently ready for public release.  When it is ready, we will post it on our "Free Stuff" page.  If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us via the contact page.  As always, we appreciate your support.  Thank you.

-Ste

 

Posted
AuthorSte Kulov