Resolution Of Video-out


cappuchok said:
CandidStan said:
I don't know about you but I never had a TV with S-Video in to this day. It was always RF, Composite, RGB or HDMI.

I don't know where you're based but S-Video was never a big hit in Europe (as RGB beats it hands down) and consequently I've rarely seen (and never had) a European CRT set with S-Video (it was always RF, Composite and RGB). In fact, and somewhat ironically, it's only with the arrival of HDTV sets that I've seen S-Video become more commonly available as an input option here in Europe. :huh:
At least in Europe you got SCART.

S-video never made it in Australia either, but until digital TV came along we never gotr any of the other options available, all we had was composite and RF, that's it (I think component made it not long before digital TV but it was not widespread at all).

Up until a couple of months ago when I got my new TV with all the sockets in it (S-video, component, HDMI etc) the only TV I had had only RF and composite with MONO audio input (it didn't even have stereo audio). And that TV was not very old (only about 5 years).
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Just to make sure everyone here knows: An S-Video->Composite adapter is a tiny $3 part that you can probably find at any decent local electronics store. Also a great part to have handy for laptops that only have S-Video out. Pick up one of those 1/8" headphone -> red/white RCA stereo plugs and you'll be all set for playing video and/or games on your pandora on your TV. ;)
 
Chip said:
S-video/composite support is built into the SoC. Anything else would have been prohibitively complicated and expensive. I suppose we could have just said "screw it" and not had any video out like the Wiz, but something is better than nothing, and this something was free from a design standpoint.
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It's good to know that it will have composite support. If needed there are cheap adapters we can buy from Radioshack if needed. Good thing I have one less then a quarter mile from my house.
 
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johnx said:
Just to make sure everyone here knows: An S-Video->Composite adapter is a tiny $3 part that you can probably find at any decent local electronics store. Also a great part to have handy for laptops that only have S-Video out. Pick up one of those 1/8" headphone -> red/white RCA stereo plugs and you'll be all set for playing video and/or games on your pandora on your TV. ;)
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The Pandora has audio line outputs, so that Y-Adapter shouldn't be necessary :)
 
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White Demon said:
S-video never made it in Australia either, but until digital TV came along we never gotr any of the other options available, all we had was composite and RF, that's it (I think component made it not long before digital TV but it was not widespread at all).

Up until a couple of months ago when I got my new TV with all the sockets in it (S-video, component, HDMI etc) the only TV I had had only RF and composite with MONO audio input (it didn't even have stereo audio). And that TV was not very old (only about 5 years).
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Huh? S-Video is all over the place here. A "new" $150 TV I got about 6 years ago had S-Video in. Granted it wasn't on every TV but it's on every flat panel made nowadays and has been on most good brands of CRTs for the past ~12 years. I think you just bought a crappy TV.
 
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Chip said:
The TV-out is not fully sorted out yet. Everything is done in software, so in theory you could convert/letterbox/clone/do whatever you want. In practice, I don't know how many options will be available on day one. S-video is a pretty limited format. The only way to get widescreen out of it is to either letterbox the output (reducing your effective vertical resolution) or use non-square pixels, which not all TVs will be able to account for.
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I think the ability of the Pandora to output widescreen anamorphic through the NTSC output will be a very important feature. This will allow much sharper resolution on widescreen televisions. For widescreen games and movies, quality difference of the video output on a widescreen TV would be dramatic, and it's the main reason why DVD material looks so much sharper on widescreen TVs when compared to NTSC broadcasts of the same material.

My question is, would outputting anamorphic from the NTSC video out need to be done individually by each program, or could this be handled by the video output driver so it's a standard option?

I imagine that the bulk of the emulators won't benefit from this option since many of these programs work in a 4x3 aspect ratio. But widescreen material would look much sharper on a 16x9 television if it could be output anamorphic. (Let's avoid the term letterbox since it's confusing and often describes a hard mask on a 4x3 image which is most definitely what we don't want)

I'm curious, who is working on the video out driver and what's the status?

Macguyver
 
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cosurgi said:
mali said:
http://focus.ti.com/lit/ug/sprufa4a/sprufa4a.pdf
Wow! The ultimate answer to all questions! Thanks :)

Yikes, there's a massive amount of information in that display interface tech manual!! Thanks for providing the link. Makes the Vic20 programmers Reference guide seem like a walk in the park. Clearly this is one very powerful device as far as the chipset goes.

I did take a quick look at the video output chapter, and a clarification regarding anamorphic output, and if it's going to be an option in the video output driver is still welcome. That document made my head hurt a little. ;)
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It may be simpler to just stick with the standard NTSC S-video output, and squish the pixels in the program.
Displaying 640 by 480, but dimensionally squished vertically.
Then, use the "mode" feature found on most digital TV's to stretch to widescreen.
Not perfect, but probably easier.
 
cobaltage: A coworker of mine has a USB-VGA device for adding another display to his laptop. It is basically another complete "video card" that's on the USB bus instead of PCIe or directly addressable like the :pandora1:'s built in GPU. It's typically just a frame buffer, possibly with 2d acceleration. At least on a modern laptop, it works reasonably as a desktop extension for doing non-media stuff.

This is on Windows, so I don't know what Linux does for it.
 
pelrun said:
Like a 1084? Yup. There's no RGB out, though, so your monitor will need a composite or s-video input.

Edit: I think you mean 15kHz :D
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The 15kHz often quoted about arcade screen refresh rates refers to the lines per second, not the screens per second. 262 (524 interlaced) lines per frame * 60 frames per second = 15720.
I've never seen an arcade monitor that only did 15Hz refresh though. Even the older ones, simply being remodeled TVs or based on TV tubes, are 50 or 60 Hz.
 
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White Flame said:
cobaltage: A coworker of mine has a USB-VGA device for adding another display to his laptop. It is basically another complete "video card" that's on the USB bus instead of PCIe or directly addressable like the :pandora1:'s built in GPU. It's typically just a frame buffer, possibly with 2d acceleration. At least on a modern laptop, it works reasonably as a desktop extension for doing non-media stuff.

This is on Windows, so I don't know what Linux does for it.
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The main utility I could see to using a USB-VGA "adapter" would be for text and document editing, web surfing, and so forth. That could be useful but certainly won't help for gaming or anything using the GPU. It didn't seem like there was a whole lot of Linux support going on for them, though. From what I've read about them, they also use a certain amount of the CPU resources. Maybe someone who already has one will be able to test it out when the Pandora is released.

There are also the new USB 7" monitors or touchscreen monitors with 800x480 resolution. But it's unlikely that they support Linux at this point.
 
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I think tvout is just there due to requests, because basically no one likes svideo on a high end device like this
but I think this may save me when I need to make presentations and such :p I'm certainly not gonna use it for gaming...
 
WizardStan said:
I've never seen an arcade monitor that only did 15Hz refresh though. Even the older ones, simply being remodeled TVs or based on TV tubes, are 50 or 60 Hz.
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Yes, that's why I thought he must have mixed up his horizontal and vertical refresh values :) 15Hz vertical? Such a monitor would be so horrible it doesn't bear thinking about :D
 
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Gregor Richards said:
Rephrasing the question: I'm assuming what you mean by independent signals is that effectively I would run two X servers, one displaying on the builtin display, one displaying on video-out. But if that's the case, input devices are a giant hassle, as they would either end up associated with the wrong X server, or both (which is even worse).

Sorry, replied before the other reply. If that's the situation, that should work fine. The only wrinkle is that in my setup (which I'm not prepared to elaborate yet :) ), I won't be using the internal screen at all most of the time, so:

1) If it clones, the resolution will be wonky.
2) If it's side-by-side, in my experience (depending on the WM), the menu won't be availble.
3) If it's a separate X server, input devices will be confusing.
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You should have ordered a beagleboard (or something similar) instead then.. It has DVI (+ S-Video) its cheaper and has most of the features the pandora has too. With a bit of money for single components you could just have built your own stationary system for less than the pandora
 
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