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S-video to HDMI converter (that's actually available)


Erzak

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I've got my UAV install done and realized that neither my main TV in the house nor my AVR have S-video inputs.  S-video looks much better than composite, at least on the TV in my garage/work bench area, so am wondering what people's thoughts are on decent S-video to HDMI converters?  I see some cheap (~$20) ones on Amazon like this: https://www.amazon.com/Converter-Composite-Adapter-Support-Charge/dp/B08VJBX52T, but doing a search here in the forums leads me to believe that these are troublesome with a 7800.  Just better to spend the extra $ and buy a RetroTINK-2X-Pro, or are there others that work well at an in-between price point?

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I bought one "anything to HDMI" converter for €36. The instruction booklet was from a hair dryer and the box had a lot of spelling mistakes. But the product worked ok. So my guess is that just try your luck and buy a cheap one.

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I've used an OSSC for a few years. It's quite good, like any solution, there were generally be pros and cons, depending on your desired outcomes and budget.

 

I use the OSSC for more than just the 7800 as it would probably be OTT to buy a device like that for one console or computer.

 

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5 hours ago, Erzak said:

I've got my UAV install done and realized that neither my main TV in the house nor my AVR have S-video inputs.  S-video looks much better than composite, at least on the TV in my garage/work bench area, so am wondering what people's thoughts are on decent S-video to HDMI converters?  I see some cheap (~$20) ones on Amazon like this: https://www.amazon.com/Converter-Composite-Adapter-Support-Charge/dp/B08VJBX52T, but doing a search here in the forums leads me to believe that these are troublesome with a 7800.  Just better to spend the extra $ and buy a RetroTINK-2X-Pro, or are there others that work well at an in-between price point?

While it doesn't seem to really be available anywhere anymore, I basically used the Monoprice branded version of this exact converter for several years before I moved over to my current Extron+OSSC setup I use now. And it worked really well on s-video sources. But it did introduce some lag that I only picked up on once I upgraded my setup and it can be annoying to see the initial message on the screen for a few second each time you power on the system where it is trying to lock in. I also recall that is had issues with different resolution outputs so it might blank out sometimes when the signal changed on it abruptly as might happen with some 2600 games for instance. So if you can find something that looks like this... it should work pretty well. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Aemyo-Composite-S-Video-Converter-converter/dp/B01M4N48JZ/ref=sr_1_157?crid=21YBCZKOTS62X&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.3i_crtzXsbb5mOF_xScO8zwaw78s80RVqGaTqJTZIVGBy84X0R8b0xerqQaVVOcxsVSBpqetnbeslp9kW6tfEpZAzw0casYiUF-0Lq5We2jLSxExrVK1KKSw0eVaajYSFU_ha_LIKLuvOqHK5LTvuasQsfNAM3Y2098OfYxTTzEQ83gsF419WYUJkYkAA0V6.hEGpSNJlqWHGlUkj_-SL31DZXFNwMoR9zS1JeZs3j50&dib_tag=se&keywords=s-video+to+hdmi&qid=1710710298&sprefix=s-video+to+hdmi%2Caps%2C115&sr=8-157

 

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Keep in mind the Retrotink 2x and mini are line doublers as such the output frequency follows closely the input one and some TV don’t like non strict hdmi signals … the 7800 is one of those console with a weird analog signal but far from being the only one.

 

It may have gotten better with more recent TVs but it’s a draw of luck … I don’t think there is a list of TVs <-> console-mod combo to tell you what works and what doesn’t… the elcheapo hdmi converters are full frame buffer so the out signal is usually hdmi conformant alas they add one or more frames of lag and also some stutter (at times they have to drop or repeat a frame) … even the retrotink 5x in triple buffer mode does that but it is the only mode that works 100% … the other 5x modes (low lag/direct) are back to relying on the TV accepting out of spec hdmi signals.

 

TV were supposed to handle VRR by now but I have not followed and not sure what limitations that entails. HDMI used to require 60hz sharp (I think but I heard some monitor/TV handle also 59.94 which was the old NTSC std refresh rate) but consoles can be all over the place ( check https://www.neo-geo.com/forums/index.php?threads/neo-geo-aes-ntsc-refresh-rate.220691/ for AES/MVS numbers just for fun).

Edited by phoenixdownita
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Here's a recommendation for one to not buy: Tendak 3RCA AV CVBS Composite & S-Video R/L Audio to HDMI Converter Adapter Support 720P/1080P with 3RCA S-Video Cable for NES SNES N64 PS2 PS3 HDTV.  There are a number of clones sold under other names, but as I had (note the past tense) the Tendak-branded model, that's the one I'm sticking with.

 

While it absolutely will convert S-Video to HDMI as advertised, the real problem is lag.  Since I was mainly using mine to capture footage of bugs, this wasn't a huge deal - with the Tendak split off from the main video feed to the monitor, it was tolerable since I could use the monitor for gameplay.  However, since the lag was on the order of about 250ms, real-time gaming on any display directly attached to the Tendak was out of the question.

 

I've also heard anecdotal evidence to suggest that some have firmware that drops every other frame while others don't.  This isn't something I can really speak to as it didn't crop up in my application, but it is at least worth being aware of.

 

Overall, it worked - but with some significant caveats.  My recommendation would be to skip it and put the money towards something with fewer rough edges.

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6 hours ago, Erzak said:

Based on the port and button layout, that looks like it may be a Tendak converter in a different housing.

 

Having said that, I'm hoping it does better for you than the one I had did, and am definitely interested in your results. An affordable, good-quality analogue-to-HDMI box is something I'm 107% in support of regardless of who makes it.

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It arrived today, hooked it up and it works, picture looks great.  I only played a few minutes of Demon Attach, but I did not notice any lag.  Any particular game(s) that lag tends to be noticeable on?

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1 hour ago, Erzak said:

It arrived today, hooked it up and it works, picture looks great.  I only played a few minutes of Demon Attach, but I did not notice any lag.  Any particular game(s) that lag tends to be noticeable on?

Anything twitchy (last minute avoidance of shots/punches/attacks/bombs etc...) that you used to play on CRT and you know you are very good at ... if this was the NES then Mike Tyson's Punch Out is the obvious test.

For a 7800 I would think that Galaga (acing the bonus rounds) and probably Food Fight may be good tests, in 2600 mode Kaboom is likely a good indicator, but to be fair the 2600 has its own issues wrt HDMI conversions, still if you are up to it it's worth a shot as well (I'd try also Phoenix 2600 as lag there would make it much harder, especially in the ufo base level).

 

Usually this type of el-cheapo converter adds at least 1 frame of latency at times 2 or more so 17 to 33 msec (the 250msec mentioned above seems way out there to me as that is 15 frames of lag ... cause that would require a lot of buffers or entail tons of stuttering but it can be pretty bad indeed), plus the judder/stutter inherent in this kind of conversion.

 

For many games it's irrelevant if they allow plenty of reaction time, but if dodging at the last second or twitchy gameplay is the main course then too much added latency and the game becomes extremely hard if not outright impossible (aka you'll die a whole lot more than you remember and no, it's not just because it's been 40 years since [even if that plays a part]).  

Edited by phoenixdownita
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16 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Here's a recommendation for one to not buy: Tendak 3RCA AV CVBS Composite & S-Video R/L Audio to HDMI Converter Adapter Support 720P/1080P with 3RCA S-Video Cable for NES SNES N64 PS2 PS3 HDTV.  There are a number of clones sold under other names, but as I had (note the past tense) the Tendak-branded model, that's the one I'm sticking with.

 

While it absolutely will convert S-Video to HDMI as advertised, the real problem is lag.  Since I was mainly using mine to capture footage of bugs, this wasn't a huge deal - with the Tendak split off from the main video feed to the monitor, it was tolerable since I could use the monitor for gameplay.  However, since the lag was on the order of about 250ms, real-time gaming on any display directly attached to the Tendak was out of the question.

 

I've also heard anecdotal evidence to suggest that some have firmware that drops every other frame while others don't.  This isn't something I can really speak to as it didn't crop up in my application, but it is at least worth being aware of.

 

Overall, it worked - but with some significant caveats.  My recommendation would be to skip it and put the money towards something with fewer rough edges.

 

I had one like this too,  but I don't recall a brand name on it.  I think mine was blank,...TBH I don't recall lag,  per se...But one day it worked then the next,  NOPE!  It just quit working.  This was the "quality" of it.  I had another which had SCART to HDMI and it had the same box and artwork etc.  I think the SCART jobber still works,  but now I have a a Retro Tink 2X Pro, A Retro Tink 5X Pro, and a Retro Tink 2X SCART so I don't use it...

 

OK,  I got very curious all of  a sudden, (even as I am tired as all hell,  nearly fell asleep at the keyboard twice) so I dug them out!

 

Here's pics:

20240319_021955.thumb.jpg.25909ab8bf551ffcd63db4bab7394d5b.jpg  20240319_022200.thumb.jpg.400ba42479ff679356917c39f81c9100.jpg

 

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I find Kaboom to be one of the best tests for lag.  You don't even need to truly play, just spin the paddle control between rounds and watch the response of your buckets.  If you spin the knob one way quickly then stop before they would hit the side of the screen, your buckets should also stop as soon as you stop turning the paddle knob.  If they continue to move on screen for a bit a after you've stopped physically turning the knob, then there is some lag.

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11 hours ago, Erzak said:

It arrived today, hooked it up and it works, picture looks great.  I only played a few minutes of Demon Attach, but I did not notice any lag.  Any particular game(s) that lag tends to be noticeable on?

Beef Drop was particularly noticeable, but I don't remember if it was the 5200 or 7800 version that was really badly affected.

 

If possible, can you run this in tandem with whatever your regular display is? I'd be very interested to see how it compares.

 

Also, check that it's not dropping frames at 1080i/p.  A number of these devices can only handle 30fps at that resolution regardless of aspect ratio.

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9 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

Usually this type of el-cheapo converter adds at least 1 frame of latency at times 2 or more so 17 to 33 msec (the 250msec mentioned above seems way out there to me as that is 15 frames of lag ... cause that would require a lot of buffers or entail tons of stuttering but it can be pretty bad indeed), plus the judder/stutter inherent in this kind of conversion.

FWIW, the 250ms I mentioned earlier was a best-guess estimate.  However, I could stand directly watching the TV that the converter was connected to, move the joystick or press a fire button, and almost count the the time taken to respond.  Note that this was observed both directly connected to my other TV as well as capturing on my MacBook Pro via OBS.  If the chain was HDMI converter -> MBP -> TV, I could understand the lag - but this was with either one being the only device connected to the HDMI adapter, and the observed delay looked to be about the same in both cases.

 

Having said that, Beef Drop was almost impossible to play.  There's too much twitch response / precision turning needed to be able to get through the game for this to be workable.

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Something else about the Tendak coverter that I'd forgotten about: it had really weird colour handling.

 

What I mean by this is that some colours (mostly greens, IIRC) came across as massively muted to the point of almost being invisible.  7800 Ms. Pac-Man really showed this up in the attract mode: on the first level, the dots were all but gone; on the second level, they were really bright.  The picture coming from the 7800 was fine on four different TVs.

 

My guess is that the Tendak wasn't handling something to do with luma correctly, but, after opening it up and finding no trimpots of any kind, that's really only speculation on my behalf.

 

One difference between @Erzak's converter and the Tendak: the Tendak shows a date of first availability on Amazon of 23 March 2015; the other one (manufactured under the name Die Xi) a date of 12 December 2023.  Whether or not that means that the Die Xi converter hit the market for the first time on that day is dubious, but it does suggest the possibility of newer - hopefully improved - hardware and / or firmware.

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2 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

FWIW, the 250ms I mentioned earlier was a best-guess estimate.  However, I could stand directly watching the TV that the converter was connected to, move the joystick or press a fire button, and almost count the the time taken to respond.  Note that this was observed both directly connected to my other.

Oh … I am not gonna defend any of these elcheapo converters that were mostly meant for connecting old vhs/dvd players to watch movies as such lag is irrelevant as long as the audio is in sync.

 

They can be bad, just that at a certain point the longer the lag the more the memory needed to buffer … unless as you say they drop half the frames … but to be fair a ntsc 480i signal like for the movies does have only 30 frames split into odd/even fields so if the converter does realistically 30fps progressive out of it it ain’t wrong necessarily (it can present the same deinterlaced image twice to achieve 60hz and be “right”) … we all know the 240p60 of old consoles was an “ingenious trick” to keep cost down.

 

(By deinterlacing 2:1 and presenting it twice I can see easily 4 240p frames of lag aka 66 msec, the current deinterlaced image and the next one… sort of double buffer current/next) 

Edited by phoenixdownita
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I'm sure mine probably had the lag,  but I was so busy just trying to get the picture to the screen back then,  I hardly noticed...Then it died anyway.

 

 

The thing about all these cheapos,  is they will strengthen your resolve to buy a Retro Tink and just spend the money,  maybe even revel in what it does and be happy paying a premium for something that works!  

 

 

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43 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:

Oh … I am not gonna defend any of these elcheapo converters that were mostly meant for connecting old vhs/dvd players to watch movies as such lag is irrelevant as long as the audio is in sync.

 

They can be bad, just that at a certain point the longer the lag the more the memory needed to buffer … unless as you say they drop half the frames … but to be fair a ntsc 480i signal like for the movies does have only 30 frames split into odd/even fields so if the converter does realistically 30fps progressive out of it it ain’t wrong necessarily (it can present the same deinterlaced image twice to achieve 60hz and be “right”) … we all know the 240p60 of old consoles was an “ingenious trick” to keep cost down.

 

(By deinterlacing 2:1 and presenting it twice I can see easily 4 240p frames of lag aka 66 msec, the current deinterlaced image and the next one… sort of double buffer current/next) 

Totally agreed on all of the above.  BTW: the following is just a mild rant and not directed at you, @phoenixdownita :)

 

FWIW, one thing I really don't like about these boxes (and ones like them) is that other than being able to change resolution and aspect ratio, there's no real control over them or insight into what they're doing.  Sure, the OSD might tell you that it's outputting 1080p at 60fps, and the monitor might even agree, but that doesn't mean that something like dropping every other frame and doubling output of the others isn't happening.  'Drop once, decode once, push twice' saves on computing power (and therefore cost), but it's a) a crappy way of doing it and b) deceptive, since real 1080p at 60fps doesn't work that way.

 

Note that I'm not saying that they all do this, or that the one @Erzak picked up does, or even the ones that @GoldLeader and I seemed to have were guilty.  It's just that not being able to have a little more insight can be frustrating at times.

 

6 minutes ago, GoldLeader said:

The thing about all these cheapos,  is they will strengthen your resolve to buy a Retro Tink and just spend the money,  maybe even revel in what it does and be happy paying a premium for something that works!

 

^ This! :)

 

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I tried a couple converters before and didn't like the picture. But I found this Samsung dvd recorder that puts out a beautiful picture on the HDMI output.

 

I run my 7800, 5200 & 2600 through it! No lag as long as the 3D enhancement is turned off!

 

You can set the output all the way up to 1080p!

 

 

 

R160 front.jpg

R160 back.jpg

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7 hours ago, doubledown said:

I find Kaboom to be one of the best tests for lag.  You don't even need to truly play, just spin the paddle control between rounds and watch the response of your buckets.  If you spin the knob one way quickly then stop before they would hit the side of the screen, your buckets should also stop as soon as you stop turning the paddle knob.  If they continue to move on screen for a bit a after you've stopped physically turning the knob, then there is some lag.

I'll have to wait to test with Kaboom, as I discovered that there's something wrong with my TIA chip, paddle inputs don't work at all on port 1.  Have a new TIA coming soon, so will swap that out.

 

I used to be good at Galaga, and have that cart, so will give that a try and see how it seems.

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