[shawly]

Have a look here for firmware – https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=58498

Thanks man! Seems like Google didn’t want to index this thread properly, no wonder I couldn’t find it (or maybe it’s just me).

Profiles will be the same as you are basically just replacing your TVs scaler

Yeah what I meant was having a collection of profiles ready to import via http://pbnl.byethost7.com/ossc/profiles/ so I wouldn’t have to configure everything manually or at least get a basic pre-configuration that I can tweak for myself. Like the profile settings linked on firebrandx.com, but ready to import as json files.

I’m not sure if it supports serial port remote control, not something I’ve ever tried.

I found this http://www.the-gordons.net/homepage/DLF_DVDOutility.html which supports “RS232 Command execution” so it seems to be possible to execute commands via RS232. Only thing left to find out is what the software is sending over the serial connection, but hooking up an Arduino to read the sent commands should solve this mystery. That way I could hook up an ESP to the serial port of the VP50 and control it via MQTT.

[shawly]

I’m also looking for a new SCART switch, while my Bandridge was OK for using on my CRT, I’d need a second switch with two outputs so I can switch between my OSSC and my CRT. But since the automatic Bandridge switch is proven to be degrading the signal a little, I want to completely replace it.

Apart from the gscartsw, is there any other switch that provides two outputs? I know the Extron Matrix switches support multiple outputs.
But I’m not sure if it is that much cheaper than the gscartsw since I’d have to get a around seven SCART to BNC cables and two BNC to SCART cables or assemble them myself.

Also is there any european reseller for the gscartsw?

Edit: Nvm, I saw that the Hydra2 also has two outputs so I ordered one.

[shawly]

It’d be easy to map current user I/O functionality to UART, i.e. treating a received char as remote control key and printing out same data that is output on character display. I’m not sure how useful that’d be, though.

While a fancy interface would be more preferrable, it would still be nice to map the current functionality to UART and print out the same stuff as displayed. It would make remote controlling the OSSC possible. Since I’m sitting so far away from the OSSC, I can’t even see what’s being displayed.
Using an ESP to send commands and parse the output, would provide at enough to make a small webinterface which can be used on a smartphone, displaying the same buttons as on the remote and showing the display output.

But I am right in the assumption that this still has to be implemented and is not part of the current firmware, right?

[shawly]

My setup looks like this:

OSSC -> AVR -> HDMI Splitter with Audio Extractor -> PC with Optical Input (via separate Soundcard)

I’m also getting a little noise when the game is completely quiet, while there is no (noticable) noise over my home theatre, but I’m certain this is because of the analog to digital conversion which is inevitable.
Your best bet is equipping your consoles with an optical audio output, which is pretty simple to do on most consoles. Then you’d have to get a Toslink switch, theoretically there should be absolutely no noise with that setup.

For merging the audio with your PC you’d just have to get a cheap soundcard with an optical input, I’ve had success with a 20 buck soundcard from LogiLink (this one). But since this soundcard has problems with some encodings specifically the encodings of most games on the PS3, I had to get an older internal PCIe card (Creative X-Fi Titanium) which works with every console I have. And since the SPDIF input is listed as recording device, you can simply mix it with OBS so you can easily use it for streaming.

The newer Creative Soundblaster AE-5 and AE-9 also have optical inputs, while they aren’t cheap, they provide pretty good sound quality and have replacable op amps, which might be worth considering if you don’t have a good DAC+AMP combo already.

[shawly]

A little late to the party, but the reason for this is that the Xbox uses a flicker filter for 480i.

Since you already got a hard/softmodded Xbox, take a look at this thread https://web.archive.org/web/20180817202356/http://www.theisozone.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=72006

Disabling the flicker filter either via XBMC (only works for games installed on the HDD, not for disc based games) or by patching the XBE files manually to remove the flicker filter should improve your picture. I don’t know if it improves the image enough to solve all your problems though.

I’ve done something similar to this for my Gamecube/Wii in the past, and achieved extremely good results.

A little off-topic but would you mind sharing your results? I’m interested in what this looks like with the GC/Wii. 🙂

[shawly]

Alright then, thanks for your input!

[shawly]

I got one crystal 1.4 and a black 1.2. So what about the Focus chip on the 1.4?

When using RGB the Xbox is limited to outputting 480i, which is the reason why I want to know if there is a visual difference between YPbPr and RGBHV from the Xbox.

In the end I’m just curious, since I wanna play on the OSSC and on my consumer CRT which only supports RGB. Because of that I came up with a solution where I can switch between RGB and YPbPr without using any converters. I’m just going to solder a little dip switch on the AV cable which grounds pin 17/18/19 when closed and only 18/19 when open, that way I can switch easily without unplugging cables.

But since I got a second Xbox I’m still kind of interested if there is a notable difference when using RGBHV and YPbPr.

[shawly]

Second this, it would allow me to hook it up with any SoC like a RaspberryPi or just a simple ESP and implement a REST API around it so I can control it through a web interface or any home automation software like Home-Assistant or OpenHAB. This way it could even be integrated with any voice hub like the Echo, Google Home or the Apple Homepod. So many possibilities!

[shawly]

So I just opened up an older Wii SCART cable and bridged the necessary pins with some solder, since I don’t have buttons yet. Hooked it up to my Wii and the OSSC and look at that, 480p looks soo much better on my TV instead of the deinterlaced 480i, no jittering no wobbly textures, just a little noise because the cable is cheap. Even my pc monitor produces a somewhat acceptable picture, but the aliasing way more noticable on it.
Guess I’ll order some buttons now and mod my cables, but first I’ll enjoy some GC games now, without wanting to gouge my eyes out. 🙂

[shawly]

Line tripling with 480i is interlaced according to the wiki http://junkerhq.net/xrgb/index.php?title=OSSC#480i.2F576i_proc

[shawly]

It’s component; composite video is something else (and composite sync is also something else); don’t get them confused.

Sorry, happens every time, I know the difference I just always type composite, lol.

Like I said, doable with the WiiDual, sadly nothing for the Xbox.

Since my Wii is an RVL-CPU-01, there is currently no way to add a WiiDual. Also the price of the WiiDual is putting me off too.

I just looked at the AV pinouts of the consoles. For Xbox it’s just a matter of grounding pin 17, 18 and 19 for RGB and 18+19 for component, so I’d just have to add a small spring switch which toggles the grounding for pin 17.
On the Wii it’s just a matter of shorting pin 8 and 10 and for the PS2 I don’t have to do anything since I can manually switch in the settings and apparently it can also provide up to 1080i via RGsB, so I guess I don’t even have to switch to YPbPr in the menu (guess I’ll try this later or tomorrow). Edit: Just tried it with the PS2, it definitely sends every signal over SCART depending on what has been set in the system settings, even though choosing YPbPr definitely makes sense with the OSSC, because switching from RGBS to RGsB every time the PS2 switches to 480p or 1080i is very annoying. So this concludes, I just need to mod my Wii and Xbox SCART cable to get what I want.

Manual switches like that are cool until you have to actually flip them every time you want to do something.

Well, you are right, but adding a button is a minimal and cheap procedure without having to give up any functionality. I still have to press the button if I want to switch displays, yes, but I don’t have to blindly switch cables which is harder than pressing a button. I also don’t have to wait until an Extron CVC is available and technically I don’t even need the Crosspoint anymore since I keep using SCART so my SCART switch won’t become obsolete.

The only thing IMO speaking for the component only solution is that I could output the same picture to multiple displays (for recording stuff) or with the Crosspoint I could use two systems at once. But since I don’t record gameplay, nor do I plan to and have no need of using two systems at once, I’ll go with the cable mod switch solution.

I’d rather invest more money into an upscaler which supports line-tripling and quadrupling, since I just found out that neither my pc monitor nor my TV support it. I’d have to play around more with the advanced timing options but I don’t have any hopes of getting it to work. Even though my monitor should support 960p and 1156p (tried setting these resolutions on my PC and it worked), it won’t display anything when I enable line-quadrupling (line-triple definitely won’t work since my pc monitor doesn’t like interlacing).

[shawly]

SCART is technically already wired for YPbPr, in that Y, Pb, and Pr share the green, blue, and red wires respectively; however, it’s not that simple. With the Xbox and Wii, the video mode used is determined by a set of mode pins that are bridged depending on which cable is connected, so a component cable will bridge those pins one way to tell the console to use YPbPr output, and SCART cables will bridge the mode pins in a different way to tell the console to use RGBS output and limit to 15kHz video modes.

Yeah exactly, which is why I came up with the idea to build a cable that has a little switch so I could switch between the two modes. If the wiring is actually the same, it makes this mod even easier, because I just have to open up the connector and solder in a switch that bridges either of those contacts to switch between modes. The cable I got for my PS2 already has a sync stripper, so I’m set.

As a switcher I looked at a Crosspoint 300 with 12 inputs and 4 outputs, since I can get one cheaper than the component one made by ShinyBow or a gcompsw. It also supports RGBHV, RGsB, RGBS and every other format there is, so I’m future proof. Because I know myself pretty good and I’m sure the three consoles are just the beginning, since I’m not really satisfied about emulating SNES and NES. Having an OSSC now will only increase the chance of me getting more consoles.

Going the composite to rgb route is a problem, since there is currently no Extron CVC 200 available. Also if modifying my existing cables is a solution, I see no reason to spend money on a converter. I also got some random cables where I could try this mod on so I can make some prototypes before messing up my Packapunch cables.

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