CollectorVision Phoenix Game Console

[retroillucid]

If you already bought a Phoenix Early Access or Pre-order, I just want to personally thank you for your precious support!

Remember, nothing of this would happen without you

So, HUGE THANKS!

You all rocks!

''Your vision is our vision!''

[phoenixdownita]

Wrt HDMI and wanting to have support for the native TV resolution it has to do with the fact that 1080p is not integer of 480p or 720p so the TV may mess up the upconversion ... so told it is what it is.

 

By perusing the 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170826113757if_/https://www.ketos.eu/fs/11a71061-4b14-11e5-ad75-85850ba828cf-meridian-general-info-eng-hdmi-specs.pdf#page=28&zoom=100,0,0

i noticed optionally HDMI 1.0 could support 240p and 288p (at insane horizontal res at that) ... never seen a TV advertising compatibility with those though.

 

Wrt to video format support at 640x480p it seems it should be there in some form:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170826113757if_/https://www.ketos.eu/fs/11a71061-4b14-11e5-ad75-85850ba828cf-meridian-general-info-eng-hdmi-specs.pdf#page=26&zoom=100,0,0

 

"An HDMI Sink which accepts 60Hz video formats shall support the 640x480p @ 59.94/60Hz
and 720x480p @ 59.94/60Hz video format timings.
An HDMI Sink which accepts 50Hz video formats shall support the 640x480p @ 59.94/60Hz
and 720x576p @ 50Hz video format timings."

 

bummer that your implementation seems to trip some TVs, but yeah 720x480p should work on US sets (not sure if for EU 720x576p is what's needed) .... btw 720x480 is that supposed to be 4:3 or 16:9?

(it's a 3:2 to be sure but I do not know if pixels are square for it and if it should fill the whole screen, doubtful).

[JBerel]

On 8/13/2019 at 10:12 PM, rodge2001 said:

I’m having an issue with my system which is I’m getting sound but no picture on my tv. My tv displays the message: “Unsupported Signal. Please check the device output”.  It’s all hooked up correctly so I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.  I’ve tried different hd ports but to no avail.  I can’t imagine it’s my tv since my other hd consoles work fine.  For now I’m going to try it on another tv. 

You probably did this already, but I wanted to point out, you sometimes get this behavior with some HDMI devices when using lower quality HDMI cables. I see this a lot with Roku boxes using skinny cables on finicky TVs. When I replace with a meatier HDMI cable, it works as expected. Might help you there. Sometimes the notice is about it not detecting the copy protection it's looking for in a digital signal, which is often not even relevant, but the cable confuses it.

[mr_me]

DVD resolution is 720x480 and meant for 4:3 televisions.  All hdmi TVs handle 720p high definition and probably 720x480 standard definition resolution; that means they do non-integer scaling.  Looks like 640x480 may have been optional with standards at one time.

 

I'd be surprised if a cable that handles higher bandwidth signals fine has trouble with lower ones, but you never know.

Edited August 15, 2019 by mr_me

[Mika73]

Will there be more Phoenix? If preorder one those come later ?


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[128Kgames]

8 hours ago, retroillucid said:

If you already bought a Phoenix Early Access or Pre-order, I just want to personally thank you for your precious support!

Remember, nothing of this would happen without you

So, HUGE THANKS!

You all rocks!

''Your vision is our vision!''

 

J-F thanks right back at ya for making this happen.  I have yet to try hooking my ColecoVision to my 4K set via a RetroTINK-2X I picked up (I needed it for my OMEGA Neo Geo system) so I haven't touched my Coleco or any games I've picked up for a while now.  I'm looking forward to hooking the Phoenix right up and catching up on some gaming. 

 

Do you guys have a time frame for when the standard preorders will start shipping?  (obviously after a period of testing / debugging with the early adopters). 

[retroillucid]

5 hours ago, 128Kgames said:

Do you guys have a time frame for when the standard preorders will start shipping?

 

I was told in October 

[zyzzle]

My point was that the Colecovision won't look any better output at 1080p or 720p, but many displays have problems upscaling 480p to their native 1080p or 4k resolution. I guess that is not a fault of the Phoenix or the FPGA, but of the algorithms that the HDTV vendors choose to use for upscaling. I just thought a native 1080p image means not having to use any upscaling in the TV side of things, so no processing of the image would be required by the TV, which can introduce its share of artefacts and problems with the image. Colors can be off / jaggies / aspect ratio problems can be introduced, etc. I'm not saying most HDTVs have this problem, but some do.

[Keatah]

Thing is that television manufacturers will never cater to the videogamer by making specialized features. Oh you might get "Game Mode" or an extra connector. But nothing significant. Computer monitor makers OTH have entire product lineups for gaming purposes.

 

The FPGA/Phoenix should be the "part" the conforms to existing television standards.

 

[Swami]

14 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Thing is that television manufacturers will never cater to the videogamer by making specialized features. Oh you might get "Game Mode" or an extra connector. But nothing significant. Computer monitor makers OTH have entire product lineups for gaming purposes.

 

The FPGA/Phoenix should be the "part" the conforms to existing television standards.

 

...and...they said they're working on it, repeatedly. The greatest thing in the Colecovision community would be a new Colecovision with the SGM and F18A. Most of the people demanding 720p had never heard of the F18A, looking more for the next FPGA and preferring it were an SMS. The F18A does make getting 720p a lot more complicated, but they are working on it.

[Loafer]

Maybe one option as a fall back can be “enabling 720p disables f18A support”

[TPR]

11 minutes ago, Loafer said:

Maybe one option as a fall back can be “enabling 720p disables f18A support”

I'm pretty sure the developers will have a solution. I wouldn't worry about it too much... 

[Tursi]

7 hours ago, Loafer said:

Maybe one option as a fall back can be “enabling 720p disables f18A support”

It's not the F18A part that makes it complicated. The F18A extensions don't change any timings from the original 9929.

[mr_me]

I'm thinking the incompatibility with some TVs might have to do with colourspace.  If the phoenix outputs RGB, the TV might be expecting YCbCr. All hdmi TVs should handle RGB and there should be a colourspace id flag in the signal.  I doubt 640x480 resolution is a compatibility issue; scaling quality is another matter.

[JBerel]

It's hard to say. HDMI is a standard, or a group of several, but it's still a quagmire of various versions and supported formats with the technical ability to support many non-standard formats. I'd say, unless a device is delivering one of the established video formats, your results with a consumer grade TV are going to be hit or miss. A computer can generate signals at any number of resolutions, frame rates and color spaces over HDMI, but that doesn't mean the odd ones (like 640x480 etc.) will be accepted or interpolated correctly. I'd think it very important to insure the box output a valid 720P format at a minimum. Other formats, if possible would be optional. 

 

Video Format				HDMI Version / Maximum Data Rate
Shorthand	Resolution	Refresh Rate (Hz)	Data Rate Required[a]	1.0–1.1	1.2–1.2a	1.3–1.4b	2.0–2.0b	2.1
				3.96 Gbit/s	3.96 Gbit/s	8.16 Gbit/s	14.4 Gbit/s	42.6 Gbit/s
720p	1280 × 720	30	720 Mbit/s	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
		60	1.45 Gbit/s	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
		120	2.99 Gbit/s	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
1080p	1920 × 1080	30	1.58 Gbit/s	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
		60	3.20 Gbit/s	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
		120	6.59 Gbit/s	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
		144	8.00 Gbit/s	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
		240	14.00 Gbit/s	No	No	4:2:0

 

Edited August 16, 2019 by JBerel

[Tursi]

I'm not sure you can legitimately call 640x480 an "odd one" - it's the base format in HDMI (at least in 1.4). The wording is: "An HDMI Sink that accepts 60Hz video formats shall support the 640x480p @ 59.94/60Hz and 720x480p @ 59.95/60Hz video format timings".

 

Interestingly, it has a similar requirement for 50Hz: "640x480p @ 59.94/60Hz and 720x576p @ 50Hz".

 

There's a further note in the E-EDID section: "Explicit indication of 640x480p is optional but is not required because all Sinks are required to support that video format."

 

The reason for it is that this mode is for VGA backwards support.

 

Regarding color space, RGB 4:4:4 is the minimum required color space support for all sinks. YCbCr is optional.

 

I don't have the current 2.1 spec, but I can't find anything that says it was dropped. If it's incompatible with a display, that display either doesn't meet the HDMI spec, or there's something wrong with how it's presented (but it's not the resolution).

 

Anyway, none of that has to do with what the Phoenix outputs - that I don't actually know in detail. But since it's being worked on anyway, a resolution will come.

 

[Bmack36]

Yes, according to the HDMI spec sources must support 640x480. The issue is related to the 25MHz Pixel clock which is out of spec, it should be 25.2MHz to get 60Hz. The 2600 core uses a 27MHz pixel clock which is the  requirement getting 59.94Hz at 720x480.

 

[JBerel]

That's the thing. I'm not sure that consumer televisions subscribe to that electronic standard. Computer devices definitely should. Television manufacturers have their own governing FCC requirements to comply with video transmission and broadcast standards which they meet at a minimum. While it's definitely possible to support other HDMI formats, in digital television signal processing, I believe they could choose not to comply with or support certain HDMI protocols. I've never found an HD television to be a true replacement for a computer monitor due to their insistence on having odd overscan and resolution setups optimized for television service. You can often make them work, but not as well or easily as a computer monitor.    
 

[Swami]

Do HDTVs have VGA ports anymore? My 1080p one does. VGA is 640 x 480 standard, so it would have to support it and HDMI to VGA converters are like $10. Maybe the presence of the VGA port on my HDTV explains why it has the ability to display the Phoenix Colecovision through HDMI so perfectly or maybe it would allow it to work better on problematic HDTVs. I honestly have no idea when it comes to VGA and the 25MHz Pixel clock.

[JBerel]

Most of the early HDTVs did have VGA ports, but I haven't seen them on the vast majority of models for some time. That would definitely know what to do with 640x480 VGA and 1024x768 SVGA. The analog VGA ports are still on some. TV manufacturers are notorious for shaving a few cents here and there to make their sets more cost competitive with the others on the show floor. Most did away with any analog connections a while back. Even before that, most limited analog input to one component input that doubled as composite in as well. Can't blame them for cutting features when the overwhelming customer need is HDMI connection to their cable box, Roku or BluRay player. Heck, most are putting the smart TV stuff right in the set as a value add, making WiFi the only signal input required, unless somebody has a game system to plug in or similar. So I still maintain, ya gotta output a television compliant video standard or there's no guarantee it's gonna work.

[Tursi]

1 hour ago, Swami said:

Do HDTVs have VGA ports anymore? My 1080p one does. VGA is 640 x 480 standard, so it would have to support it and HDMI to VGA converters are like $10. Maybe the presence of the VGA port on my HDTV explains why it has the ability to display the Phoenix Colecovision through HDMI so perfectly or maybe it would allow it to work better on problematic HDTVs. I honestly have no idea when it comes to VGA and the 25MHz Pixel clock.

It's got more to do with them choosing that as the base standard to support, than the presence of similar analog circuitry.

 

To put an HDMI logo on the box (well, legitimately), it has to meet the spec and pass the HDMI compliance testing. There's no differentiation in the spec between computer and television HDMI - the difference noted is how the display shows it (the overscan is composed of the existing pixels in HDMI, it doesn't add extra ones. I know analog inputs often did, but not HDMI).

 

That said, the spec also explicitly calls out that any formats supported on any of the devices's analog inputs must also be supported on the same device's HDMI port. I found that interesting.  (Likely to avoid making the HDMI port appear inferior... again, there's no reason to expect that the analog circuitry helps HDMI at all.)

 

We don't need to muddy the discussion with maybes and I thinks - the HDMI 1.3 spec is freely available to read.

[mr_me]

3 hours ago, Bmack36 said:

Yes, according to the HDMI spec sources must support 640x480. The issue is related to the 25MHz Pixel clock which is out of spec, it should be 25.2MHz to get 60Hz. The 2600 core uses a 27MHz pixel clock which is the  requirement getting 59.94Hz at 720x480.

 

 

Are you saying the phoenix currently outputs a 25.00 MHz pixel clock or 25.175?  

 

-----------

I think the specs say displays are to support 640x480 at both 59.94 Hz and 60 Hz.  That's 25.175 MHz and 25.2 pixel clocks.

 

Edited August 16, 2019 by mr_me

[insertclevernamehere]

First of all a big thank you and congrats to CollectorVision for making the Phoenix a reality.  Although I didn't opt to receive mine early, I pre-ordered on day 1 and am looking forward to getting my Phoenix in October or shortly after.  I hope all the issues with no signal on some hdtv's is fixed by then.  My enthusiasm is a little dampened by this issue and all the above tech jargon.  That is exactly what I wanted to avoid by getting this console vs modding a CV and potentially having to learn soldering.  Simplicity was what I was after.  I hope that's what I get. I don't want to have to plug it into a monitor and sit at a desk.  I don't want to have to read through pages of manuals to adjust settings.  I just want to hook it up to my hdtv, plug in a cart, kick back on my couch in my mancave and just enjoy.

Edited August 16, 2019 by insertclevernamehere

[JBerel]

Y'all are confusing the issue talking about HDMI spec. HDMI is a signal transport standard. It provides no guarantee the signal it sends will work on the intended device.  Any display device will have its own supported formats which is the point I'm trying to make. If one assumes the target device is going to be a consumer television in a living room, the source device must provide a signal at 720P, 1080i, or 1080p. Otherwise, you are not providing a standard television display output, and the results will be hit or miss. I have every expectation they'll be able to do that with the thing, but all this other talk is beside the point. 

[AtariBrian]

36 minutes ago, insertclevernamehere said:

First of all a big thank you and congrats to CollectorVision for making the Phoenix a reality.  Although I didn't opt to receive mine early, I pre-ordered on day 1 and am looking forward to getting my Phoenix in October or shortly after.  I hope all the issues with no signal on some hdtv's is fixed by then.  My enthusiasm is a little dampened by this issue and all the above tech jargon.  That is exactly what I wanted to avoid by getting this console vs modding a CV and potentially having to learn soldering.  Simplicity was what I was after.  I hope that's what I get. I don't want to have to plug it into a monitor and sit at a desk.  I don't want to have to read through pages of manuals to adjust settings.  I just want to hook it up to my hdtv, plug in a cart, kick back on my couch in my mancave and just enjoy.

Perhaps you should of did a bit of reading before you preordered the early adopter Phoenix?? ??  I am just giving you grief since I don't the specifics of what you did or did not order?