Companion video processor for the OSSC?

[ErebusMaligan]

First, Disclaimer: I really don’t know what I’m doing for lag testing. I do not own a TV at all let alone a CRT, so the method below is all I could really think of.

I have a strictly NTSC setup. Subjectively, i’ve never noticed any consoles having more lag than any others, at least none have it to the degree that i can notice while playing, but I’m not an arcade game/fighting game player much, so I may not be as sensitive to lag as some people.

I hooked up a splitter for the ossc output, one side goes

SPLIT->DUO->HDMI Matrix->Monitor 1

other

SPLIT->HDMI Matrix->Monitor 2

where monitor 1 and 2 are the same model asus computer monitor.

I took various picture with my phone of the two side by side while running 240p test suite lag test. Did this for both my CDX With 32X and SNES Mini. I didn’t see any appreciable difference in lag between the two consoles, in all cases it looks like around half a frame was added by the duo.

[SirRockALot]

Lots of interesting factoids, thanks everybody for chiming in 😉 Buying a TV is such a pain, wading through endless forum threads, uniformity issues, dead pixels, lag, OS crashes, tearing, bizarre problems like aspect ratio controls missing in game mode. It’s also clear that I have totally different needs than the average TV buyer. It pains me that TV makers waste all this energy and money on build-in Netflix and fake surround sound speakers and all kinds of ‘enhancements’ that just make the picture look worse. It sometimes feels more like trying to find the least annoying solution rather than actually getting a fun upgrade :/ OSSC compatibility is just another thing to fuss about now.

Looks like those A-Neuvideo processors might be worth checking out then. Great. I guess I just haven’t been lucky, but I haven’t seen the DVDO machines at reasonable prices on eBay yet.

I’ve been thinking about just getting a Framemeister. The HDMI inputs can be set to passthrough, but they can also be fed into the scaler/framebuffer, deinterlacer etc., so certainly useful. I’ll also likely get a gSCART switch sooner or later and could hook up both machines directly with the dual outs. Might be a neat option.

Oh, and we’re a composite & S-Video free household 😉

I can live without zoom & pan (I’m living the zoom & pan-less live atm as my TV doesn’t offer these controls for ‘PC’ resolutions), but in some cases (i.e. Game Boy Interface) it would be nice to have.

I agree that ringing / oversharpening in the scaler is not such a big issue if you use 3x/4x modes. My TV doesn’t look too good with 480p, but it’s all very minor if it scales up from higher resolutions.

[Jdurg]

When I got my OSSC a little while back, I was able to get the 240p passthrough to work when my SNES was connected via SCART, but of course my TV did the upscaling and it looked like crap. Sadly, any mode other than normal passthrough would just die for me on my SNES.

Can’t really state the make and model of my setup since it’s fairly complicated. All of my consoles which have an HDMI output are plugged into a 5-port HDMI Auto-Switcher which then goes into my Denon A/V Receiver into my LG TV. So there are a bunch of things in the way which could have problems with the “non-standard” OSSC.

My LG TV is from 2007 and is a 42″ TV which I have set to PC Mode and that gives me a bunch of ways to modify how it looks. Still, the OSSC and NTSC SNES didn’t like each other.

I previously got this little generic SCART-to-HDMI adapter from Amazon when I JUST got my SNES. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0177DG71S/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It was okay, but it would always stretch the SNES to full screen and seemed to have a bit of noticeable lag to it. So it wasn’t ideal. Later on, I replaced then with a cheap Gonbes 8220 Scaler and a scanline generator I designed in Eagle and etched out, and finally into a VGA to HDMI adapter. This was okay, but it was a TON of devices to pass through and was not very easy to store in my entertainment center.

As a last resort, I took the HDMI out from the OSSC and put it into the HDMI Input of the cheap converter I linked to above and connected the output to my HDMI Switch. It worked! EVERY signal except x5 now works great for my NTSC SNES and my setup. Even better is I cannot notice any lag from the SCART to HDMI adapter which makes me think the analog-to-digital conversion is where the cheap adapter is putting in all the lag.

So now, I have my OSSC sitting on top of the SCART-to-HDMI adapter that is acting as a signal smoother, so to speak.

[BuckoA51]

First, Disclaimer: I really don’t know what I’m doing for lag testing. I do not own a TV at all let alone a CRT, so the method below is all I could really think of.

NTSC Megadrive and SNES should be ok, it needs to be something like a Saturn that has a refresh in the region of 59.82Hz (as shown on the OSSCs LCD).

The DVDOs calculate how much lag they’re adding and it’s been verified as accurate in most cases. Make sure your Duo is in game mode, then connect your Saturn (if you have one) and power everything up so the Saturn is displayed through your Duo. Now, go into the menu on the Duo and choose settings->audio settings->adjust audio delay. Drag the slider control as far down as possible into minus numbers.. when it gets to the bottom this is the delay the Duo is adding (or thinks it is). Now do the same with the SNES. If it’s the same as the DVDO Edge there should be more lag with the Saturn. If there isn’t, please let me know right away 🙂

[SirRockALot]

Nice story Jdurg, looks like you were exceptionally unlucky with 2x incompatibility on your LCD! Really cool that you got the TNP unit for the SCART input and ended up just using the HDMI one 😉 Congrats on fixing your compatibility problem this cheaply…

Did you ever try connecting the OSSC directly to your switch or the TV? I still have an older no-HDMI Denon receiver and I plan on avoiding HDMI audio like the plague. It just seems like yet another thing to add lag, glitches and compatibility problems. I have all new-ish consoles (PS 2/3/4 generation) plugged into an optical switch. Everything older eventually ends up coming out of the TV’s optical out and also goes into the switch to the amp. Zero issues with that. All my HDMI devices go into a switch, but I connected the OSSC directly to the TV to be absolutely sure the switch doesn’t add any incompatibilities.

[BuckoA51]

HDMI audio does not add lag unless you pipe it through an AV receiver that adds lag. With optical you limit the audio to maximum dolby digital 5.1/DTS 5.1 (compressed) or 2 channel PCM, this severely limits the audio capabilities of consoles like the PS3 and PS4 and modern gaming PCs.

[Jdurg]

Yeah, I tried a direct connection between the OSSC and the HDMI Switch when I first got the thing. 🙂 When I first turned on the OSSC, there was immense flickering on the TV and eventually the image went black. None of the adjustments I tried worked until I just told it to do a straight pass-through. Straight pass through of 240p then has my TV do the scaling and that looks atrocious.

I then read about passing the OSSC signal through an HDMI passthrough device to “standardize and clean” the signal and tried it and was very happy.

I took a look at the 240p test suite software and did the lag tests. While very rudimentary there, it did indicate a total lag of 2 frames. To me, that is not noticeable. It’s kind of stunning to me that the SNES signal goes SNES=>OSSC=>HDMI-Pass=>Switch=>Receiver=>TV and that only creates 2 total frames of lag. Simply fantastic.

[BuckoA51]

Switches, splitters and AV receivers should not add any input lag. External scalers will, of course. HDMI switches should not cause compatibility problems either, unless there’s some hocus pocus going on in there.

[ErebusMaligan]

there should be more lag with the Saturn. If there isn’t, please let me know right away

I did this, and indeed there is more delay for the saturn. 8ms for the SNES and 25ms for the saturn.

I also tested some of the other systems listed in your article https://videogameperfection.com/2014/09/24/curious-dvdo-edge/

Nintendo 64 NTSC
PC Engine

I only got 6ms for my N64

And 8ms for my PCE DUO-R

[BuckoA51]

Ah, as suspected then, well that saves me buying in a Duo to test.

What’s the refresh rate for your PC engine and N64 according to the OSSC?

[ErebusMaligan]

N64 59.94
PCE 60.28

[BuckoA51]

Your N64 runs bang on 59.94? Were you running an interlace game or something at the time?

Interesting your PC engine runs at a higher refresh too, what model is it?

Edit – Oh wait you already said which PCE it was, derp.

[ErebusMaligan]

Ah yeah, i wasn’t running a game on the N64, just my Everdrive startup menu which yes runs in interlace. When I actually run a game that isn’t interlaced, the delay is 25ms.

The PCE is a DUO-R from doujindance on ebay, although i added a switch to toggle between composite video as sync and a version i run through a sync stripper board. Not sure if that effects anything in terms of refresh rate, but it makes the picture clearer on my setup.

[Author]

Posts