Any suggestions for a small television in PAL region?

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Jubatian
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Any suggestions for a small television in PAL region?

Post by Jubatian »

Poking around here I see it isn't anything arcane to get and play around with the actual Uzebox hardware even without programmer or anything else (Just get the starter kit, and it will even load the .uze games from the SD card right away).

For me, silly it may sound, but the bottleneck (apart from the cost) is acquiring some suitable display for the thing. I live in a PAL region, have a small early 90's TV set for my C64, and a very cramped lodging, where I seriously consider adding any further kilo to the load which I would regret dearly whenever I have to move. I have nothing right now which would do anything sensible with an NTSC signal.

I see those little LCD TV panels at Adafruit, a bit steep combined with the starter kit, anyone having an opinion on those? Maybe also consider I have a PAL C64 and a PAL Enterprise 128K which might benefit from a small display easier to lug around in need. The 4.3" feels maybe a bit too small for my tastes, but the 7" one is described to have only 234 pixels height, not really enough for PAL (well, enough normally for the retro computers I mentioned, although they both can be tweaked to display more than 200 lines, PAL C64 demos frequently exploiting it, but maybe OK). Anyone experienced how bright they are, or any other similar device recommendable? I especially would prefer to not have them bright since my eyes are a bit overly sensitive to light, and some LCD's already proved to be impossible to set up in a manner not excessively straining for my eyes.
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uze6666
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Re: Any suggestions for a small television in PAL region?

Post by uze6666 »

You can certainly find a similar screen as the Adafruit one on AliExpress for much cheaper, like this one.
rootuid
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Re: Any suggestions for a small television in PAL region?

Post by rootuid »

I take it that your small 90's tv has scart ? If so then Hartmut Wendt has a solution for you , a Uzebox with scart output
http://www.hwhardsoft.de/english/webshop/euzebox/
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Jubatian
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Re: Any suggestions for a small television in PAL region?

Post by Jubatian »

Hi! This is a bit old, since then I have an acceptable solution, although maybe I will also get an E-Uzebox for its RGB output. Plugging E-Uzebox into a 90's PAL television wouldn't work since Uzebox produces NTSC timing. I would have to change the crystal, and modify the kernel to produce 50 FPS PAL signal instead of 60 FPS NTSC, at the very least causing everything to run slower. This wouldn't be very practical (50 Hz refresh rate isn't widely supported while the industry standard VGA timing for 640x480@60Hz was derived exactly from NTSC, and many displays natively prefer to run at that rate).
rootuid
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Re: Any suggestions for a small television in PAL region?

Post by rootuid »

ahhhh I got it wrong. Even with the scart cable the Hartmut Wendt's box still produces NTSC. My bad :)
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