TVGame style units don't work with TV tuner cards?

[NightSprinter]

Is it me, or do all of the TV-Game style units (RSI, Flashback 2, etc.) seem to be completely incompatible with TV tuner cards for the PC? I asked because I was testing out a client's TV tuner features of his All-In-Wonder Radeon9800 Pro after fixing his computer tonight (was a customer from an old job, and I fixed his computer as a freelance job), There was considerable lag when trying to just play Space Invaders on my Radica unit (tried it just now on my VCR and TV here at home, works just fine). Is there any reasoning as to why this would happen?

[Atariboy]

I think thats the nature of those cards isn't it? Its just not noticiable unless its a videogame.

[antron]

try different (non ATI) software. you may be able to display it raw, w/o mpg encoding. maybe try virtualdub.

[+Mitch]

It sounds like he had some PVR software running. Mine does that too, I have to turn that feature off when I want to play games.

 

Mitch

[Gregory DG]

Sounds like typical input lag to me. Happens when you hook a video camera to it too.

[+FujiSkunk]

It will depend on the video card, and how your display software is getting its feed from the video card. Most modern internal video capture cards allow analog pass-through, which basically means the video is fed almost directly to the monitor, with minimal lag. But if your software is digitally capturing and processing the video first, then there will definitely be some lag. Check your software options and look for an option like "analog overlay" or "pass-through" or something similar.

 

If you're using an external USB TV tuner, forget it. They only offer digital capture, often at rather low quality.

Edited October 2, 2005 by skunkworx

[NightSprinter]

Ah, I was wondering. Thing is, that my client only has the default ATI MultiMedia-Center software installed. I know of no freeware TV tuner programs that offer the raw input for an AIW.

[+FujiSkunk]

I have a first generation ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon. The hardware is great. The driver is serviceable. The rest of ATI's software suite is complete crap, in my humble opinion.

 

Try ATV2000. It's an excellent freeware TV viewing program for Windows, and it works just fine with my AIW.

[mstulir]

Is it me, or do all of the TV-Game style units (RSI, Flashback 2, etc.) seem to be completely incompatible with TV tuner cards for the PC?

941150[/snapback]

I have one of the Viewsonic NextVision units hooked up between my PC and a 21 inch Viewsonic monitor. The model I have is the N6, which is the high-end unit. During the development of the original Atari Flashback, I tried hooking up the development hardware to the NextVision and had nothing but problems. Same goes for the Jakks Pacific Atari 10-In-One joystick game.

 

When I have one of those games plugged in, the video looks like a scrambled cable TV station.

 

However, if I plug in an XBox, Gamecube, Dreamcast, or any other unit that supports composite video, everything looks fine.

 

I never bothered trying out anything else, or my FB2 prototype unit and FB2 production unit. I ended up buying a cheap 20 inch TV, and keep it next to my PC when I am working on Atari stuff.

Edited October 2, 2005 by mstulir

[supercat]

When I have one of those games plugged in, the video looks like a scrambled cable TV station.

941342[/snapback]

 

The sync timing on the 2600 and many other video games is decidedly non-standard. It's good enough for most television sets to deal with, but devices that actually care what the sync looks like can have problems.

[Bruce Tomlin]

When I have one of those games plugged in, the video looks like a scrambled cable TV station.

The sync timing on the 2600 and many other video games is decidedly non-standard. It's good enough for most television sets to deal with, but devices that actually care what the sync looks like can have problems.

I have a nice 17" LCD TV/VGA monitor which totally hates the sync from most 2600 games. Combat works fine, but apparently if the line count is just a little off, it completely messes up the picture. I also have a 7" monitor which can clamp to the back of my 7800. It has serious problems with its chroma (even through the S-video input) when you use the same color for a long time (the CC2 menu looks like a rainbow), but it syncs to just about anything.

 

The 17" also refuses to run VGA at 1024x768x60Hz, but works at 1024x768x70Hz. <sarcasm>because we all know that you need the right sync rate for an LCD!</sarcasm>

[Rybags]

It can depend on the capture hardware.

 

I have a Compro DVB-T300 (Phillips 7134 chip) and it is fine with the Atari XL. Only issue is that with TV input it merges alternate images to generate 25 frames/second.

 

What that means is that there are no interlacing artifacts for normal TV, and it also seems to merge the alternating fields without the blank lines which non-interlaced computers/consoles generate.

 

I also have VIVO on my ATI AGP card but haven't tried any consoles/computers on it, so unknown how it deals with it.

 

I used to have a Buster II capture card installed (ancient Zoran chip, c~ 1998) and it didn't handle non-interlaced input too well. It had residual screen data on the normally blank scanlines and wasn't too useful for capturing non-interlaced input.

 

It's worth trying lower resolutions for capture, especially vertically. Most hardware has some sort of filtering system which merges/filters the pixels to give an acceptable picture.

 

As a final resort, maybe try running through a video recorder first. It might clean up part of the signal a bit.

[Justin42]

I had a kind of retro splurge this weekend (got a Flashback 2, as well as the C64 stick and the Atari Paddle at the Toys R Us 2-for-1 sale) and due to cabling issues, the easiest way to test out the units I bought was to run them into my PC's ATI tv card, and I had pretty bad luck with all of them.

 

None of them worked right plugged right into my computer. The C64 stick worked the best but didn't quite look right (can't remember specifically the problem right now). The Flashback barely got 1/2 of the menu up on the screen, and the paddles kind of worked but not great, either.

 

I ended up hooking them up through my DVD recorder (into the computer), which has a time base correcter, and it was almost fixed. As a nice bonus there was almost no roll on the Flashback 2.0 "problem" games (as the time base corrector fixed it).

 

Of course, I did have enough of a lag that it was nearly impossible to play the games well. (about 1/2 second) Oh well. I will be trying to free up my front TV ports shortly...!!

[+bcombee]

The 20" LCD TV I got earlier this year from Costco, a Vizio model, doesn't work with most of my video game systems. So far, the only thing it's handled has been a Jaks Pacific Namco plug-and-play unit. The Nintendo 64, Super Nintendo, Dreamcast, and Flashback 2.0 all don't sync -- it looks like the frame buffer that samples the video signal doesn't handle non-interlaced composite or s-video -- the screen ends up showing half of the lines of the original signal, mixed with half of the lines of the current signal, with occasional resyncs. It's very disappointing.