Turbokon from pcfx and myself have been working on other HDMI Solutions using the various Pound and Hyperkin cables out there made for other systems to be used on Duos, pc engines etc.. in order for these to work the system has to have a RGB amp installed.
The results are very good And the HDMI quality is much better than those cheap RGB scart to HDMI converter boxes.
I STRONGLY disagree. Even ignoring that they are just an off-the-shelf-chip intended for handling analog input on a modern display panel that gets routed to an HDMI transmitter instead, they are poorly engineered with no consideration for proper RGB levels. Just look at all the issues Hyperkin had with their early Genesis cables. On top of the video issues, they didn't even use the right DIN connector for Genesis 1! These things are pure garbage physically and electrically with absolutely nothing to offer over using a generic converter and dedicated cables *except* that some can power off the console and the TG16/PCE ones can get RGB where no official cables exist. Obviously, the later isn't relevant to adapting SNES/Genesis cables for TG16, Duo, etc and if you are modifying anyway then the first doesn't matter either.
2nd, female scart connector so it can be used on multiple retro consoles that have RGB scart. I honestly don't know why this isn't offered from the manufacturer.
...because that's literally what these are. Internally they are the exact same thing as the generic converters out there that cost less and already have a SCART connector. They are a scam. They simply integrated them with bad RGB cables (or worse for their N64 cables) and then charged $10-20 more. Like the generics, they aren't even suitable for most of the consoles they are being sold for since they deinterlace non-interlaced 240p. By all means, get one for your Dreamcast, XBOX, or Playstation 2, but expect the same issues with 240p that most modern TVs already have with their analog inputs. If a sheap off-the-shelf image processor correctly handled 240p it would be BIG news. So far, the cheapest chip we can find is the one in the RetroTink 2x, Super64, RAD2x, etc, and it doesn't accept RGB so you have to include a RGB ro component video circuit to build a cable around it... which the RAD2x cables have done.
Don't hack-up a Hyperkin, Pound, LevelHike, X-Treme, etc. You are better off hacking up a $20 generic converter to use with your own RGB cable, and the same effort would be much better spent hacking together an adapter for a RAD2x cable... easier with significantly better results.
I tested on 3 different TVS. 2 of them produced slightly better quality images over the generic scart to HDMI converter boxes. With both of these TVS the picture did still get blurry when the screen would scroll but not nearly as bad as when using a generic scart to HDMI converter box.
This is all down to signal impedance, voltages, etc and not a superior scaler scaling tech. The Pound and Hyperkin cables get it objectively wrong for the consoles they were made for. When building an RGB amp and custom cable you have to do a bit of electronics engineering to get a proper 0.7v p-p 75-ohm signal for the generic converter. Same goes for modified cables, even if we subjectively think it looks better (often this comes down to brightness).
The blurry scrolling is the same issue with 240p as every other generic box and the vast majority of digital TVs with analog inputs. The fact that they are selling these for 240p consoles when they do not properly support 240p should tell us everything we need to know about these: They are an exploitative cash-grab. They literally just shoved an RGB cable into a generic converter ans marked the price up, pretending that it provides some advantage over the existing solutions in order to take advantage of us.
Stay far away.
The 3rd TV had a slightly cut off picture no matter what I tried to do with the TV settings. I should add though that this TV has the same issue with other Pound and Hyperkin HDMI cables but does not have any issue with a cut off image when using a generic scart to HDMI converter box.
Many TVs hide the option and require you to do something like rename the input or use a specific "PC" input in order to bypass their overscan simulation. What is the model number?
So these cable solutions might be very TV specific as to if they will work well for you or not. Lag also seems to be TV specific as the 2 TVs I tested that had great picture also had very minimal lag but the 3rd TV that had the cut off image had a good amount of lag.
Yes, zoming the picture is additional processing and any additional image processing potentially adds latency. You often can't do as much about the TV's latency so it makes more sense to eliminate the latency you can from the adapter, which would mean using something like RAD2x, RetroTink2x, OSSC, etc. The think is, some of those only do 480p and the TV still has to scale that. The less processing the TV has to do, the better, so if you can pre-scale to the TV's native resolution and bypass any unnecessary image processing the TV does (like oversance simulation), you usually get better results. This is why Line 5x on OSSC can be faster than Line 2x.
Oh and in case anyone was curious here is what the insides look like. Who you do think came up with the idea for these cables first? They look almost identical inside. Even the cases/housings are the same size. On top is Pound SNES HDMI and the bottom is Hyperkin PS1 HDMI cable.
It's not coincidence that they all showed up at the same time with nearly identical components and layouts. They are all made from the same ODM/manufacturing partner, shopping them around to different retail partners with little tweaks and options to differentiate them from the others.
The Hyperkin HDMI cable for TG16 does not fit PC Engine without an additional $10 adapter. It seems to me that the connectors inside this adapter could be salvaged to make a proper RGB adapter with a replacement PCB... something like Martin's adapter but without the 3D printed enclosure. You could then use it with HD Retrovision cables or RAD2x cables or whatever else you want... including a generic RGB to HDMI adapter. I'd rather explore this option.
The boards are definitely different, but extremely similar.
My guess is that they are based on a reference design from the chip(s) manufacturer.
And I would bet that the chips were intended for perhaps a far higher-volume use - maybe, say, as a means of accepting a composite video input, for display on an otherwise-completely-digital TV set.
Exactly...
...but that's also exactly where those generic converts come from. They just send the output to an HDMI transmitter instead. Some even have the info HUD that you would see on a TV!
hdmi mods on the actual console hardware is a bad idea.
Agreed. Unless you are doing something like UltraHDMI, Hi-Def NES, DCHDMI/DCDigital, PSDigital, PlutoIIx, GCDual, WiiDual, etc, there is no advantage versus an external solution. Even when the console requires an internal RGB or S-Video mod, converting your new signals in the console to HDMI just eliminates options you would still have if you did the exact same conversion externally.
Quality external scalers are cheaper in the long run and keep your consoles future proof. People spending thousands of dollars putting hdmi upscalers in their consoles are ignoring the past and will have to replace them all once hdmi gets replaced by a new short term standard that supports 8K, 64K, etc TVs. Even using a quality external upscaler at that time on already upscaled video will result in a poorer image.
All-in-one cables are a better solution for people who only ever play one or two consoles and don't need the best video quality.
Disagree, if I understand you correctly.
Think about how long-lived DVI has been. I still regularly use DVI devices and displays that I forget are DVI because they have DVI to HDMI cables. DVI can be freely converted to ADC, HDMI, miniHDMI, microHDMI, DisplayPort, miniDisplayPort, Lightning/Thunderbolt, USB-C, and on and on. Not even HDMI2.1 throws it for a loop. You can even adapt back to VGA passively (from analog pins) or convert actively (from digital). Once you have digital you can go anywhere with it. Digital spelled the end of the troubles caused by adapting/converting analog.
As long as they handle the particulars of the signal conversion that everything else has trouble with (240p, non-standard refresh rates, color space conversions, deinterlacing, etc), UltraHDMI, DCDigital, WiiDual, etc will be easier to deal with in 30 years than various resolutions, scan methods, and refresh rates over VGA/RGBHV, RGBS, RGsB, CVBS, Y/C S-Video, YPbPr Component, etc.