full size "the 64" coming

[zzip]

7 minutes ago, eightbit said:

And, the TV's today with composite have a horrible composite decoder. It is obviously put in just to add something to the spec. But, as said previously, nobody really uses composite or s-video anymore. I had an older HDTV a few years ago (can't recall the brand) and it actually had S-Video...and the decoder was incredible. The Sega Saturn on that TV looked like RGB quality through s-vid. 

 

Things change and HDMI reigns supreme on everything now. B

It's nice to have at least one composite in case you ever want to watch old videotapes or hook up an old videogame console.   But yeah, HDMI seems to be the way to go and there never seem to be enough of them either.   Oh but then they will give you 2 or 3 USB ports which they list as inputs, and I'm not sure why a TV needs more than one?

[mdivancic]

24 minutes ago, zzip said:

If you're lucky you can find one with a single component or composite, but not both,  and maybe a 4th HDMI. 

Current Sony TVs have both. Not that my wife will let me hook my Atari up in the living room. ?

[zzip]

Just now, mdivancic said:

Current Sony TVs have both. Not that my wife will let me hook my Atari up in the living room. ?

Yup, that's why I ended up buying a Sony.    But the composite isn't 3 RCA connectors like it should be,  you have to get a 3.5mm composite cable.  

[+OLD CS1]

3 hours ago, mdivancic said:

This is a sentimental I have never understood. I’ve tossed all my old CRT or retired them to the basement years ago and good riddance. When I see people spending hundreds of dollars for old Atari or Commodore monitors it blows my mind. I find nothing special about old monitors. 

The preference itself may be of sentimentality or nostalgia, but practicality really depends upon the system and the TV.  Most composite-capable LCD displays use crappy conversion processors in one aspect or another.  Usually the problem is treating the input as 480i so you get motion tears and any object or moving blinking with the horizontal blank is displayed incorrectly if at all.  And while other issues exist, I find this the most irritating.

 

Commercial game developers would take advantage of CRT display quirks.  Mixing of colors and aliasing tricks, for instance.  I read an article a while back about Nintendo developers and "half-pixels."

[+OLD CS1]

2 hours ago, mdivancic said:

Current Sony TVs have both. Not that my wife will let me hook my Atari up in the living room. ?

Easier to ask forgiveness than permission

[eightbit]

I would also mention that if you are on a budget and want to experience old game consoles (and have them look good) you cannot beat a CRT TV. Online marketplaces usually have many ads just giving them away.

 

In the case of my Wega, it was free with the Sony stand for the cost of carrying it down two flights of stairs at the person's home

 

But, composite signals on this look outstanding. I mean...really really good. You would think I am running these to component or something.

 

 

While you can buy all of the needed equipment to get your old console to a modern TV and have it look pixel perfect, the cost involved in doing that is extremely pricey. I know, I did do that. Is it worth all of the cost just to get these looking proper on a modern TV over just scoring a nice old free CRT? To many, yes. Not so much to me though. I sold off all of the retrovision cables and OSSC a long time ago and recouped my money in order to buy other more important things.

 

 

Edited October 7, 2021 by eightbit

[+OLD CS1]

HA!  Yeah, maybe six years after I got rid of my two absolutely awesome 32" CRTs, I decided to replace them and I managed to find one around the corner curb-side (they no longer pick these up curb-side, you have to take them to be disposed,) and then a customer who needed to get rid of one but did not want to carry it anywhere.

[Keatah]

17 hours ago, mdivancic said:

Current Sony TVs have both. Not that my wife will let me hook my Atari up in the living room. ?

Ha! Mine doesn't like the clutterjunk look of consoles in the living room either. In our respective hobbyrooms anything goes. But the rest of the place has to be neat & tidy. SFF PCs can be made to fit nicely and practically out of sight. And that works. And I like it because that's how I wanted gaming to be from the beginning when I was a kid. An all in one unit. Shit! I can think of instances before that, when I was a few years old even. I wanted merge this old-school transistor tester and diode checker into one box. Then add a meter and a calculator. All that based on early 70's discrete technology.

[Keatah]

11 hours ago, eightbit said:

While you can buy all of the needed equipment to get your old console to a modern TV and have it look pixel perfect, the cost involved in doing that is extremely pricey. I know, I did do that. Is it worth all of the cost just to get these looking proper on a modern TV over just scoring a nice old free CRT? To many, yes. Not so much to me though. I sold off all of the retrovision cables and OSSC a long time ago and recouped my money in order to buy other more important things.

Some time ago I briefly started down the road of mods and converters and didn't have the patience for any of it.

 

I'm of the school of keeping it as simple and matched as possible. RF-to-RF, Composite-to-Composite, all the way to current HDMI and eventually beyond.

 

Since all our sets are HDMI, then it's only fitting they have HDMI sources. And for classic gaming that's going to be emulation on a PC. Might not be as authentic as a vintage CRT. But the color vibrancy and saturation and geometrical consistency are super-huge pluses in my book. Some (but definitely not all) emus have trickster-like shader & filter capabilities. And properly set-up they can be a mix of CRT and the "imaginary" professional displays like I envisioned back in the day.

 

As a kid, the CRT look was alright. It's what we had. I was already dreaming of professional displays back then. Ones with insane resolutions and supersaturations way beyond any Zenith ChromaColor my parents had. Today I can have that look. And tweak it to all kinds of flavors.

 

It's just how I cruise. There is no right or wrong.

[youxia]

12 hours ago, eightbit said:

While you can buy all of the needed equipment to get your old console to a modern TV and have it look pixel perfect, the cost involved in doing that is extremely pricey.

"Pixel perfect" on a modern panel still looks way different than a CRT, no matter how many devices you throw into the chain. Scanlines are just a fraction of the CRT look.

 

To get close you need to use shaders and that excludes real hardware and comes with PC lag. I suppose in the next 5-10 years (when OLED or some new TV tech improves as well) this gap will diminish to the point of nearly indistinguishable. An  advanced shader-capable box might also appear for the use with real gear (think OSSC Pro had it planned at some stage) . For now though it's strictly CRTs for me...well, I guess I will always keep one+spare around anyway. In my case  lack of space (which they don't take that much of anyway) is not a problem.

[carlsson]

Well, it seems THEC64 full size edition still is in stock, both on Amazon US and at the two local Swedish resellers I've been watching. One of them lists 20+ units and the other went down from 9 to 6 this week so it sells off slowly. Probably don't wait too long though, if this indeed is one of the last batches and that the product is doubtful if it will get manufactured again, either in this or updated form.

 

Hopefully the availability from first party vendor will at least temporarily halt those scalpers on eBay reselling it at stupid prices, and saturate the market enough to make selling at overprice a rare occurrence. I'm not sure you should wait for the batch to remain unsold and discounted though.

[eightbit]

6 hours ago, carlsson said:

Well, it seems THEC64 full size edition still is in stock, both on Amazon US and at the two local Swedish resellers I've been watching. One of them lists 20+ units and the other went down from 9 to 6 this week so it sells off slowly. Probably don't wait too long though, if this indeed is one of the last batches and that the product is doubtful if it will get manufactured again, either in this or updated form.

 

Hopefully the availability from first party vendor will at least temporarily halt those scalpers on eBay reselling it at stupid prices, and saturate the market enough to make selling at overprice a rare occurrence. I'm not sure you should wait for the batch to remain unsold and discounted though.

 

I agree, I do not see these are going to be discounted as I see no reason they cannot sell on their own at the price point. It is an extremely good deal to be honest. My brother purchased three for cheap/cool Xmas gifts, and I purchased one as a spare.

 

While only HDMI out (although I will have to test some ways to get this to composite soon) I will say that this made the perfect Xmas demo computer to hook up in the living room on our modern 55 inch HDTV last year. For many years it has been a tradition to run various Xmas demos (twisted Xmas, Christmas Carols, etc) on a C64 during the holiday. 

 

[+OLD CS1]

Yeah.  I could have bought from eBay for $225 each, give-or-take.  I chose to purchase from an actual retailer outside of the US and pay my "Amazon boycott tax," which will cost me just under the eBay pricing.

[mdivancic]

On 10/8/2021 at 4:19 AM, Keatah said:

Ha! Mine doesn't like the clutterjunk look of consoles in the living room either. In our respective hobbyrooms anything goes. But the rest of the place has to be neat & tidy.

If I could find a wireless PS2 keyboard I like for my 572NCU+ I could put that in the living room out of sight. I have the wireless joystick already. She actually thing this one is cute and got it for my birthday. 

[carlsson]

On 10/1/2021 at 2:45 PM, carlsson said:

Spel & Sånt [...] wrote that THEC64 Full size is going out of production so most likely this is the very last chance .

They repeated this message today, 5 1/2 months later and added they still have 7 units in stock. It seems reliable, as RGL will need all capacity for THEA500 and perhaps mini runs of the C64 in case it is easier to sell in repackaged versions.

 

Thus if anyone still is looking for the full version of THEC64 and finds it online, this might be your last call before it entirely becomes a scalper market (unless it already is).

[Leonard Smith]

I have one barely used if anyone is interested.

Non-scalper price too.

 

[digdugnate]

I posted a similar picture when I got my 99/4A up and going, but I got my Maxi setup in my new home office.  It'd be nice to have an original breadbox, but this suits my needs perfectly for now.

[Virtualsky]

6 hours ago, digdugnate said:

I posted a similar picture when I got my 99/4A up and going, but I got my Maxi setup in my new home office.  It'd be nice to have an original breadbox, but this suits my needs perfectly for now.

 

Oohhh.. Don't get those two rivals too close to each other!  Don't want to start another Micro-PC war! 

[Keatah]

I've never knownthe Ti-99/4A to battle the C64. Back then, or now. It's like the Apple II, what did it fight against? Always been Commodore vs Atari.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Keatah

[zzip]

4 hours ago, Keatah said:

I've never knownthe Ti-99/4A to battle the C64. Back then, or now. It's like the Apple II, what did it fight against? Always been Commodore vs Atari.

Supposedly Ti was the main target of Commodores price war in the 80s.   The Ti99-4A didn't last long after that.   After it was discontinued it became Atari v Commodore

[Hwlngmad]

4 hours ago, zzip said:

Supposedly Ti was the main target of Commodores price war in the 80s.   The Ti99-4A didn't last long after that.

Yes, that is true.  TI decided to go after Commodore, specifically the VIC-20 machine, like it had back in the 70s during the calculator wars.  However, this time around Commodore had vertically integrated and was ready to fight on all comers.  As a result by January 1984 Timex Sinclair was no more, Atari's computer division had pretty much been dealt a (near) mortal blow, TI was out of the consumer computer business, along with Coleco's and Mattel's machines going down in flames as well.  Finally, not to mention, any serious and/or potential Japanese computer rivals (such as the MSX) stayed out of the U.S. (due to the success of the C64).

[Virtualsky]

6 hours ago, zzip said:

Supposedly Ti was the main target of Commodores price war in the 80s.   The Ti99-4A didn't last long after that.   After it was discontinued it became Atari v Commodore

Yup... Jack wanted them gone.  There were some bad feelings between him and Ti for what they did to him in the electronic calculator market.  From what I've read, he purposefully targeted Ti with his pricing strategy, knowing that they could not compete with the prices Commodore was selling their micros.

 

Anyway, nice setup there and I hope TheC64 brings a lot of enjoyment.

[+OLD CS1]

In some circles, this was the original console-vs-PC war.  Especially among us kids

 

 

For me, it started with my TI-99/4A.  My C64 friends made fun of me, then later when I got my C64, my NES friends gave me crap.

[1980gamer]

On 9/9/2022 at 8:47 PM, OLD CS1 said:

In some circles, this was the original console-vs-PC war.  Especially among us kids

 

 

For me, it started with my TI-99/4A.  My C64 friends made fun of me, then later when I got my C64, my NES friends gave me crap.

Similar story...   I had and Intellivision and all my friends had Atari.   I had the TI-99/4A and they had Vic-20 and C64's.

Then one day, Dad came home with a C64!  I was the ultimate gaming system of the 80's.  I had thousands of games for it. Some good!  LOL.

Just kidding,  Accolade had great sports, better than everything NES had.

 

I had so many great arcade games for it also!   Rush N Attack etc.    But I still love Moon Patrol for the TI99.

I had a NES also.  But I didn't play it much.  I did like the controller. Oh, Cannot leave out Winter Games and most of the GAMES series.

 

[carlsson]

One of my friends moved straight from TI-99/4A to Amiga 500. I was in shock first time I visited him and saw the Amiga in real life for the first time, may have been some time 1988.