Framemeister: A video upscaler for retro consoles

[uze6666]

Not to steal Folken's thunder but I've also been waiting for a while for a HDMI converter box I ordered. It's no surprise: composite and S-VIDEO interfaces will just get rarer in the future on our new TVs and the included upscalers are pretty bad for old consoles, giving murky pictures at best and often with some unwanted latency. Lately, there's been a bunch of devices out there to tackle the problem. I've decided to get one because I could not just carry on my old Wega TV weigthing 50+Kg and the ouput of my Uzebox, SNES and Genesis is just terrible on by LCD TV.

So I bought a Framemeister. It's ridiculously expensive, but seem to get the job right and be aimed specifically at up-converting retro game consoles. Hopefully this box is going to last at while and allow me to play all my retro console for the foreseeable future. I could babble about it for a while, but have a look at a video that sums it way better than I could:

[f0lken]

Use, check this out
http://uzebox.org/forums/viewtopic.php? ... 737#p13737

[f0lken]

Oops, I missed paragraph about "thunder"
Sorry for duplicate link

[D3thAdd3r]

Ouch, that is an expensive but very tempting device. I was considering, and probably still will be, going the same route f0lken did and buying an EUzebox and seeing how well a SCART->HDMI converter box works out because it's quite affordable(and I want an EUzebox anyhow). As for FrameMeister, first off the name makes me love it unconditionally, and I haven't seen any presentation for any device that looked to have such a nice improvement for retro console pixels. It's nice too that it can do well with just s-video and no RGB mods for my other retro systems, so it might be justifiable price wise if it has enough options to make all those look good. Flexible inputs, remote, options for simulated scanlines...man, I really want one.

[uze6666]

Yeah and it has a remote too. Folken's box seems a very good deal at 40$ and if you were to buy a Euzebox anyways it's a winning combo. To use the Uzebox with the Framemeister I'll use S-Video first since I should get obvious gain right aways (and scanlines!). However the goal is to use the A/V EXT extension header on the Uzebox PCB to break out the RBG signals to a SCART cable and then plug that into the Framemeister (with an adapter).

[D3thAdd3r]

I have hesitated to buy anything because I can't find any kind of latency figures. The LCD I use has a horse s**t upscaler for 240p, but it seems like the latency isn't too bad. I have played on LCD's where you can really feel it. It sucks using a television that makes it feel like I'm playing over the internet I would assume for the price though that Framemeister's hardware is top of the line.

I was messing around with an NES zapper a while back and it seems it can detect light/dark from at least some LCDs. Would be an easy way to calculate what the actual latency was on, say, s-video. If it's less than 1/30 sec that would be incredible and you'd feel the improvement.

[uze6666]

For the lag, I have seen another video which indicate its pretty damn low for the Framemeister. Interestingly, the guys uses so kind of latency test tool that would be interesting to replicate on the Uzebox.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3fOde0EBnY#t=226

[f0lken]

Scanlines is a killing feature, indeed.
So if you are "professional retro-fan", you need it...
200+ USD... But according to video, quality of LCD TV still matters.

[D3thAdd3r]

stss0.jpg (28.33 KiB) Viewed 9021 times

I hacked this together quick as a way to test out a few things on the monitor/television of your choice. It is a series of tests that you cycle through which may or may not help you figure some information about your display. The first test flashes between dark and light every 60 frames, and also fluctuates the LED at the same time. This is mainly intended for someone to do a very accurate camera based method where a very high frame rate video is made of both the screen and the status LED. That way you can calculate the latency between when a frame is actually sent and when it is shown if you care to go to the trouble of setting that up. The next test is 256 tiles, each one in order a color from the Uzebox pallet. This could be used for adjusting your picture settings or something. The third test might seem a bit strange at first. Press and hold any button to pause the animation. You may have to do it a few times to jitter the timing correctly. What this is doing is showing a sprite 1 frame, then not showing it the next, and continuing on. This allows you to see if any interlacing is being done. This has a side effect on the emulator that you may have to press the button a few times to actually see the sprite. The emulator appears to draw whatever happens on 1 frame for the period of 2 frames. So any changes that happen in that second frame but go right back will never be shown, done for speed purposes I imagine. If your display is interlacing the picture it should appear to have horizontal lines in the solid red color, if it does not interlace and does 240p60 then it should show the sprite flickering on and off entirely instead of alternating lines. There is checkerboard and line patterns in case there is some information you could derive from those. The last test is hopefully an accurate way to test latency without doing a fancy camera setup. Simple press any button exactly as the sprite lines up with the tiles underneath. If you hit it too early it will not register. That's it, like I said I hacked this together in a hurry so the source is in terrible shape hacked from a copied project and might not even work as expected, but it's there if anyone wants to check it out.

stss1.jpg (33.06 KiB) Viewed 9028 times

[uze6666]

Nice tool! I will try it out with the real hardware and report in it.

Made me think about another way to test the lag. Use some sort of light sensor (photoresistor, photdiode, etc) connected to the EXT port and that you put on the tv screen. Combined with your flashing screen method, that should yield a simple, cheap and precise way to measure lag.