ColecoVision with HDMI MOD installed pics

[juice2839]

I paid $80 for the F18a and $20 for the vga-hdmi board at Fry's.

 

This also saves you from needing to buy a console5 ram set if you come across a swap-meet CV without power supply, (as was in my case) you can just use a 5V wall wart instead.

 

Matt confirms that he's manufacturing more as we speak.

 

Just a couple questions since you have this all installed and working. Is the Hdmi output scaled or does it have a huge boarder around the picture? Have you had any issues with the F18A not initializing when the CV is first powered on like some have reported? How does the F18A produce the CV colors and are they perfectly accurate? Also do you uninstall the original ram or is it left in and still drawing off from the new 5V wall wart?

Edited October 16, 2015 by juice2839

[juice2839]

While HDMI is nice, I think I would stick with the standard output of the F18A via the VGA connection as it maintains the 4:3 aspect ratio compared to the stretched look you get via an HDMI converter.

 

While this is all personal preference. I personally would not like to be limited to only being able to use a small VGA monitor or an older tv with VGA input (if you can find one) and looking at the annoying huge black boarder around the picture area when this is ran on a high definition TV. If you are going to do that then I think it would be better to use yurkies RGB mod on an RGB monitor and then you are assured the absolutely original colors and aspect ratio, along with the best picture you can achieve.

Edited October 16, 2015 by juice2839

[TPR]

 

How does the F18A produce the CV colors and are they perfectly accurate? this is all personal preference. I personally would not like to be limited to only being able to use a small VGA monitor or an older tv with VGA input (if you can find one) and looking at the annoying huge black boarder around the picture area when this is ran on a high definition TV. If you are going to do that then I think it would be better to use yurkies RGB mod on an RGB monitor and then you are assured the absolutely original colors and aspect ratio, along with the best picture you can achieve.

 

Yes, the colors are perfectly accurate. I did a side-by-side comparison video to show:

 

 

What's nice about a mod like this (and Yurkie's RGB mod) is that you can choose to either have VGA hook-up, or HDMI with a converter. I like having those options. IMO, the picture looks MUCH better with the VGA output but if I ever ended up with an HDTV that did not have a VGA input, I'd have to go the HDMI converter route and find one that does not stretch the screen to 16:9 so I can keep the original aspect ratio.

[juice2839]

 

Yes, the colors are perfectly accurate. I did a side-by-side comparison video to show:

 

 

What's nice about a mod like this (and Yurkie's RGB mod) is that you can choose to either have VGA hook-up, or HDMI with a converter. I like having those options. IMO, the picture looks MUCH better with the VGA output but if I ever ended up with an HDTV that did not have a VGA input, I'd have to go the HDMI converter route and find one that does not stretch the screen to 16:9 so I can keep the original aspect ratio.

 

How did you come to the conclusions that the colors are accurate aside from a side by side comparison (which is subject to personal opinion). How are the colors derived in the F18a hardware?

[TPR]

 

How did you come to the conclusions that the colors are accurate aside from a side by side comparison (which is subject to personal opinion). How are the colors derived in the F18a hardware?

I'm done responding to you after how you just treated me in my other thread. I hope you don't sell many of your mods and I'm 100% on Yurkie's side. I'll do everything I can to support Yurkie and I hope other people see what a jerk you're being.

[juice2839]

I'm done responding to you after how you just treated me in my other thread. I hope you don't sell many of your mods and I'm 100% on Yurkie's side. I'll do everything I can to support Yurkie and I hope other people see what a jerk you're being.

 

So that's how you respond when someone asks a technical question? You just cry? Nice.

[TPR]

While HDMI is nice, I think I would stick with the standard output of the F18A via the VGA connection as it maintains the 4:3 aspect ratio compared to the stretched look you get via an HDMI converter.

 

Are there any HDMI converters that will allow you to retain the 4:3 aspect ratio? I have asked this before in other threads, but didn't really get a specific answer. I ask because it would seem that newer HDTV sets are not including the VGA inputs and it would be a shame to lose that aspect ratio. I have only tested it on one TV, but if I use my ColecoVision with the HDMI converter, even if I set the TV to "normal" mode, it stretches it to 16:9.

 

What are the other options out there to keep the 4:3 aspect ratio using HDMI?

[juice2839]

 

Are there any HDMI converters that will allow you to retain the 4:3 aspect ratio? I have asked this before in other threads, but didn't really get a specific answer. I ask because it would seem that newer HDTV sets are not including the VGA inputs and it would be a shame to lose that aspect ratio. I have only tested it on one TV, but if I use my ColecoVision with the HDMI converter, even if I set the TV to "normal" mode, it stretches it to 16:9.

 

What are the other options out there to keep the 4:3 aspect ratio using HDMI?

 

Like Matt was saying , it all boils down to pixels. The really short answer is no not really. You can keep the ratio, but you are going to have a lot of black around the boarder of your tv screen. This bugs me, personally I don't mind it being stretched to compensate. I got used to it just like I got used to watching TV that way.

[towmater]

 

While this is all personal preference. I personally would not like to be limited to only being able to use a small VGA monitor or an older tv with VGA input (if you can find one) and looking at the annoying huge black boarder around the picture area when this is ran on a high definition TV. If you are going to do that then I think it would be better to use yurkies RGB mod on an RGB monitor and then you are assured the absolutely original colors and aspect ratio, along with the best picture you can achieve.

I don't think any two televisions are going to show the same color , much less have absolutely original colors.

[towmater]

 

Just a couple questions since you have this all installed and working. Is the Hdmi output scaled or does it have a huge boarder around the picture? Have you had any issues with the F18A not initializing when the CV is first powered on like some have reported? How does the F18A produce the CV colors and are they perfectly accurate? Also do you uninstall the original ram or is it left in and still drawing off from the new 5V wall wart?

I followed the console5 instructions on cutting a couple of chokes and a cb trace to the ram, just to be certain, but then just took out the old chips, because you are correct, they would still draw power.

 

There's no huge border. The colors look spot-on.

[towmater]

 

Are there any HDMI converters that will allow you to retain the 4:3 aspect ratio? I have asked this before in other threads, but didn't really get a specific answer. I ask because it would seem that newer HDTV sets are not including the VGA inputs and it would be a shame to lose that aspect ratio. I have only tested it on one TV, but if I use my ColecoVision with the HDMI converter, even if I set the TV to "normal" mode, it stretches it to 16:9.

 

What are the other options out there to keep the 4:3 aspect ratio using HDMI?

My TV has a "ratio" button that controls this.

[TPR]

My TV has a "ratio" button that controls this.

My TV has a "ratio" button that controls this.

So does mine, but since the up scaling from 4:3 to 16:9 is being done at the converter level, the TV doesn't even register a 4:3 ratio so I can't display that. What I need is a VGA>HDMI scaler that will not automatically convert to 16:9 or at least has options not to stretch to 16:9.

[juice2839]

I don't think any two televisions are going to show the same color , much less have absolutely original colors.

 

Right, I was just going to make a point to TPR at the time about personal opinion and things being subjective..

[juice2839]

I followed the console5 instructions on cutting a couple of chokes and a cb trace to the ram, just to be certain, but then just took out the old chips, because you are correct, they would still draw power.

 

There's no huge border. The colors look spot-on.

 

Those old 4116 memory chips are weird. They do some strange things if they only get one voltage. I used to see some bissare stuff with them when repairing old williams arcade games.

Edited October 16, 2015 by juice2839

[TPR]

Right, I was just going to make a point to TPR at the time about personal opinion and things being subjective..

 

While I agree it's subjective, especially when talking about different TV's what I meant was that the colors appear the same side by side. Yes the VGA output is obviously richer and look better than the AV mod, but they appear the same colors. I have seen some outputs on other systems or connections where blues appear more purple, yellows and greens are swapped. When I used to work on arcade machines I'd see a lot of tint issues between different boards and different monitors. I haven't seen anything like that on any of the CV outputs I've used.

 

But aside from that, yes, different TV's will in their very nature look slightly different from each other.

[ApolloBoy]

No dog in the fight here either but if either of you two guys were to do anything, please offer DIY kits for the RGB/HDMI mods, etc..

I can't remember how many time people asked about DIY. Myself and many others are DIY kind of people so that would move a lot more units, for sure.

I would kill to have DIY RGB kits for both the CV and INTV. It's infuriating that there aren't because I can easily do these mods myself and I don't want to go through the trouble of sending a console out, especially since my CV has some unconventional mods.

[+Yurkie]

Most peopoe want a DIY kits to mod and sell consoles, then guys that have thousands of dollars invested in the mod as well as parts are losing business. It is not easy to recoup $2000 + in a small community like ColecoVision.

[Marcks73]

Most peopoe want a DIY kits to mod and sell consoles, then guys that have thousands of dollars invested in the mod as well as parts are losing business. It is not easy to recoup $2000 + in a small community like ColecoVision.

I fully understand your point, but on the other hand this is what dealing business is all about. In any sphere of society!

[juice2839]

I fully understand your point, but on the other hand this is what dealing business is all about. In any sphere of society!

 

An Intellivision RGB DIY kit will be available from http://retrorgb.com/systems.html.. If your interested give him an email.

[matthew180]

Just a couple questions since you have this all installed and working. Is the Hdmi output scaled or does it have a huge boarder around the picture? Have you had any issues with the F18A not initializing when the CV is first powered on like some have reported? How does the F18A produce the CV colors and are they perfectly accurate? Also do you uninstall the original ram or is it left in and still drawing off from the new 5V wall wart?

The F18A "initialization issue" is caused by the CV having a very fast (about 20ms) power-on reset circuit, while the F18A's FPGA takes about 100ms to load its configuration at power-on. This is documented and I highly recommend that anyone using the F18A change the capacitor in their CV's power-on reset circuit to slow it down a little bit. If the user does not want to do this small change, a simple reset is all that is needed to remedy the issue once the CV is powered on.

 

As for the colors, NTSC is jokingly referred to as "never the same color twice". There are also known differences in the output color between the chips (9918A / 9928 / 9929, etc.) as well as differences introduced during manufacturing. However, the datasheet does specify the colors that the VDP is *attempting* to produce (see pg. 2-17, table 2-3) which I used to convert to RGB values and scale to the F18A's 12-bit color space. Now, how those colors actually "look" on a monitor compared to the original VDP is completely subjective. I guarantee you that my TV growing up produced colors that looked different from everyone else, if only for how the hue and saturation were set on the TV. If you are looking for a 100% authentic color experience from "back in the day" then I can only recommend using a TV from back in the day. The F18A shows the colors as they were intended by the TI engineers based on what they published in their datasheet, which will certainly look different from what we saw on our TVs growing up.

 

Leaving the original DRAM ICs in the system is up to the user. Once you install the F18A the original 16K of VRAM is no longer used (the F18A reproduces the 16K VRAM internally.) I have a system where I completely removed the DRAM from the motherboard. If you leave the DRAM in the system, the chips will still be powered but not operating which will use less power than when they were constantly switching. The F18A uses less power than the original VDP. I believe the voltages in the CV other than 5V were only used to power the DRAM ICs, so with the F18A you can reduce the voltage requirements to 5V only.

 

While this is all personal preference. I personally would not like to be limited to only being able to use a small VGA monitor or an older tv with VGA input (if you can find one) and looking at the annoying huge black boarder around the picture area when this is ran on a high definition TV.

Like you said, that is personal preference. I don't find a need to have a 256x192 pixel display on my 50" TV or whatever, and I don't like a 4:3 image stretched to a different aspect. Black borders don't bother me, they just fade away. I also don't find it hard to find TVs with a VGA input (and VGA / composite are not going away anytime soon.) I prefer a 17" or smaller 4:3 aspect CRT or LCD monitor. To each their own.

[juice2839]

The F18A "initialization issue" is caused by the CV having a very fast (about 20ms) power-on reset circuit, while the F18A's FPGA takes about 100ms to load its configuration at power-on. This is documented and I highly recommend that anyone using the F18A change the capacitor in their CV's power-on reset circuit to slow it down a little bit. If the user does not want to do this small change, a simple reset is all that is needed to remedy the issue once the CV is powered on.

 

As for the colors, NTSC is jokingly referred to as "never the same color twice". There are also known differences in the output color between the chips (9918A / 9928 / 9929, etc.) as well as differences introduced during manufacturing. However, the datasheet does specify the colors that the VDP is *attempting* to produce (see pg. 2-17, table 2-3) which I used to convert to RGB values and scale to the F18A's 12-bit color space. Now, how those colors actually "look" on a monitor compared to the original VDP is completely subjective. I guarantee you that my TV growing up produced colors that looked different from everyone else, if only for how the hue and saturation were set on the TV. If you are looking for a 100% authentic color experience from "back in the day" then I can only recommend using a TV from back in the day. The F18A shows the colors as they were intended by the TI engineers based on what they published in their datasheet, which will certainly look different from what we saw on our TVs growing up.

 

Leaving the original DRAM ICs in the system is up to the user. Once you install the F18A the original 16K of VRAM is no longer used (the F18A reproduces the 16K VRAM internally.) I have a system where I completely removed the DRAM from the motherboard. If you leave the DRAM in the system, the chips will still be powered but not operating which will use less power than when they were constantly switching. The F18A uses less power than the original VDP. I believe the voltages in the CV other than 5V were only used to power the DRAM ICs, so with the F18A you can reduce the voltage requirements to 5V only.

 

 

Like you said, that is personal preference. I don't find a need to have a 256x192 pixel display on my 50" TV or whatever, and I don't like a 4:3 image stretched to a different aspect. Black borders don't bother me, they just fade away. I also don't find it hard to find TVs with a VGA input (and VGA / composite are not going away anytime soon.) I prefer a 17" or smaller 4:3 aspect CRT or LCD monitor. To each their own.

 

 

You have to admit the engineers back in the day did an incredible job hacking together the NTSC standard to be able to display color and a B/W signals from all the noise in the radio spectrum.

[TPR]

While this is all personal preference. I personally would not like to be limited to only being able to use a small VGA monitor or an older tv with VGA input (if you can find one) and looking at the annoying huge black boarder around the picture area when this is ran on a high definition TV. If you are going to do that then I think it would be better to use yurkies RGB mod on an RGB monitor and then you are assured the absolutely original colors and aspect ratio, along with the best picture you can achieve.

 

Like you said, that is personal preference. I don't find a need to have a 256x192 pixel display on my 50" TV or whatever, and I don't like a 4:3 image stretched to a different aspect. Black borders don't bother me, they just fade away. I also don't find it hard to find TVs with a VGA input (and VGA / composite are not going away anytime soon.) I prefer a 17" or smaller 4:3 aspect CRT or LCD monitor. To each their own.

 

I'm confused about a couple of things here because I had originally read Juice's comment when the only VGA>HDMI converter I had is one that automatically stretched the screen from 4:3 to 16:9, and now that I have one that retains the 4:3 aspect ratio and allows me to stretch the screen if I want to using my TV's controls, shouldn't the VGA Mod, F18A Mod, and HDMI Mod all display the same aspect ratio on the screen? I would assume the preferable HDMI converter would be one that does NOT auto-stretch the screen and would leave it up to the user's choice, correct?

 

As as far as how the 256x192 pixels look on a bigger screen, take a look at the screen shots below. This is running through the F18A, but here is how it looks on both my 46" HDTV and 22" HDTV via the VGA input, and it looks almost exactly the same when I use my HDMI converter (I posted side-by-side pics in my thread and the two were so close that you really couldn't tell the difference.)

 

46" HDTV 4:3 Aspect Ratio:

 

46" HDTV 16:9 Aspect Ratio:

 

22" HDTV 4:3 Aspect Ratio:

 

22" HDTV 16:9 Aspect Ratio:

 

I feel this looks REALLY GOOD on both TV's and I don't feel like having either VGA mod or the HDMI mod means you're limited to smaller size screen at all, unless that would be your personal preference. But again, it goes back to my original question - What exactly does this mean "I personally would not like to be limited to only being able to use a small VGA monitor or an older tv with VGA input?" Because I don't really see much of a difference between the VGA directly connected to the TV versus the VGA plugged into an HDMI converter. The image looks great on a bigger HDTV screen and it also looks the same running through the converter.

 

I'm just wondering if there is something I'm missing here because I'm not as technical of a person you guys are, and I would just like to know if there is something else I should be looking out for when making decisions on these mods.

[NIAD]

TPR... it sounds to me that you are overthinking this whole display issue now especially seeing as you have found the perfect solution with this new HDMI converter that you recently acquired that does not auto-stretch the screen to 16:9.

 

You have one of the two TOP video upgrade options loavailable with the F18A VGA Mod that also has the added benefit of bypassing the built-in CV RAM and eliminates sprite flicker completely. If you move onto a TV that does not have a VGA connector, you have the HDMI converter that outputs in 4:3 aspect ratio and you can use the TV controls to stretch the screen to 16:9 if you like.

 

The Yurkie RGB Mod seems to output video in comparable quality and the option is available to upscale to HDMI.

 

With either Mod, you will have an external HDMI upscaler and if you use the same upscaler and TV with each of these mods, you will probably have very similar display quality with slight differences in color output due to the respective Mods. Sprite flicker is gone completely with the F18A Mod and sounds like it's not noticeable with the RGB Mod.

 

One question to ask is does Juice's RGB Mod with the Internal HDMI upscaler output in 4:3 aspect ratio and allow the user to stretch to 16:9 using the TV controls or does it automatically output to 16:9 like the first HDMI upscaler you bought. If the HDMI upscaler that Juice is using only outputs in 16:9, it would be a poor choice.

[TPR]

TPR... it sounds to me that you are overthinking this whole display issue now especially seeing as you have found the perfect solution with this new HDMI converter that you recently acquired that does not auto-stretch the screen to 16:9.

 

I may very well be. I guess what I'm trying to find out is if Juice's mod is doing something that the others aren't, other than just putting the external HDMI converter inside the box. The way he was questioning what the other mods (F18A and RGB) were doing and how they appeared on the screen, the number of pixels, the black boarders, richness of colors, etc, made me believe he has something else going on with his, and I want to make sure I've explored all options for modding out a ColecoVision.

 

As far as the first HDMI converter I bought, it appears that was just a naive mistake made by me and I didn't do enough research about it as it seems that most of the converters don't stretch out the screen, which is what I wanted initially, but just made the assumption that all converters output 16:9 since that one did. Turns out, I just made a very uneducated knee-jerk purchase going with the first cheap one I found which is another reason I'm wanting to explore all options for my CV.

 

 

One question to ask is does Juice's RGB Mod with the Internal HDMI upscaler output in 4:3 aspect ratio and allow the user to stretch to 16:9 using the TV controls or does it automatically output to 16:9 like the first HDMI upscaler you bought. If the HDMI upscaler that Juice is using only outputs in 16:9, it would be a poor choice.

 

Yes, this would be important information to me considering that the choice to stretch the screen should be on the users end, not in the hardware, IMO.

[NIAD]

Btw, I can only assume that Juice did not reinvent the wheel with the RGB Mod he installs (a Yurkie and Juice creation) first before taking it to HDMI with the internal upscaler he uses. So the video quality (RGB output) would be the same as the one Yurkie has available and then it would be up to the HDMI upscaler used from there.