Some Lfaq

[Chip]

1. The best it will do is S-video, so aprox. 700×486 on an NTSC TV

But I do 1024x768 over composite :huh:


A standard TV does not have 768 lines of resolution. You can set the resolution of the device to 1024x768, but you will be losing information when it is actually displayed.

 

[atomicthumbs]

A standard TV does not have 768 lines of resolution. You can set the resolution of the device to 1024x768, but you will be losing information when it is actually displayed.

Ah, but that doesn't mean that someone with an HDTV couldn't push 1024x768 or higher through composite. It also doesn't regulate TV-out max res.

 

[Vorporeal]

2Tb of storage!? oh my .... is that per card or would that allow 4Tb :wacko: ?

That is the theoretical maximum stated by the SDHC standard. Right now, the largest SDHC card you can find is 32GB. Having two of those would give you 64GB of removable storage space.

 

[TJSomething]

At the risk of sounding like a jerk, I'd like to add my own question. I noticed that the front pages says that the Pandora will be 199 GBP or 330 USD. I then noticed that 199 GBP is 390 USD currently. I see the developers are each of different countries, none of which are the US. May I assume that the Pandora's price will be fixed in some non-US currency?

 

[Prometheus]

I'd be surprised if someone doesn't develop an app that takes advantage of the touchscreen's natural variable sensitivity. Nobody thought the DS could do that (least of all Nintendo), until Colours! came out.

D.

As I understand it (although I may very well have been privy to misinformation, so make of it what you will), it was known that the DS could do that, but it was left out of the official specifications list due to the natural variations in resistive touch-screens. If you try Colours! on multiple DSes, you'll find that they all most likely have spots on them which don't sense the pressure as well as the rest of the screen, meaning you have to recalibrate it for each individual machine. This is likely not a feasible approach for commercial titles for the machine to take, I imagine, hence that ability wasn't promoted or suggested officially.

That said, I'd be interested to know whether the same would be possible with the Pandora's touch-screen (it would be quite handy) - in a community like this (or, indeed, the DS homebrew one ), having to calibrate the software yourself isn't going to be viewed as an issue like it may be with, say, a commercial DS release.

EDIT;

At the risk of sounding like a jerk, I'd like to add my own question. I noticed that the front pages says that the Pandora will be 199 GBP or 330 USD. I then noticed that 199 GBP is 390 USD currently. I see the developers are each of different countries, none of which are the US. May I assume that the Pandora's price will be fixed in some non-US currency?

Note that in the UK, we pay 17.5% VAT ("Value Added Tax"). That's why the Pandora home-page says ~$330, not ~$390.

 

[Vorporeal]

At the risk of sounding like a jerk, I'd like to add my own question. I noticed that the front pages says that the Pandora will be 199 GBP or 330 USD. I then noticed that 199 GBP is 390 USD currently. I see the developers are each of different countries, none of which are the US. May I assume that the Pandora's price will be fixed in some non-US currency?

It is fixed at 200 (199) GBP. This includes VAT, which doesn't apply to countries other than England. When you subtract the VAT and convert to USD, it comes out to about $330. The developers are hoping to keep the price there (despite the falling economy of the US), but if it goes up due to inflation, the change won't be terribly significant.

 

[nubie]

A standard TV does not have 768 lines of resolution. You can set the resolution of the device to 1024x768, but you will be losing information when it is actually displayed.

Ah, but that doesn't mean that someone with an HDTV couldn't push 1024x768 or higher through composite. It also doesn't regulate TV-out max res.

Yes it does, the composite standard is well defined, and I doubt the Ti implementation is set up to monkey around with improper implementations.

Besides the fact that no HDTV supports S-Video at anything other than 480i, and I mean none of them.

This is really a limitation of the actual hardware, it is only designed to output S-Video and composite (not that you couldn't in theory add some sort of output chip to the Pandora, but it would cost way too much).

As a bonus you can draw separately to the TV output and the inbuilt screen, this way you can have more screen resolution, even if it is split between 2 screens.

 

[x68000]

Maybe he is getting composite mixed up with component as Nubie is spot on when he stated that s-video cannot output anything higher than 480i.

 

[Chip]

Maybe he is getting composite mixed up with component as Nubie is spot on when he stated that s-video cannot output anything higher than 480i.

I think I know what he's talking about. If you have a computer with S-video out and set the computer resolution to 1024x768, you will get a picture on a SD TV. I believe the TV-out hardware on the PC automatically downconverts the signal.

 

[nubie]

Maybe he is getting composite mixed up with component as Nubie is spot on when he stated that s-video cannot output anything higher than 480i.

I think I know what he's talking about. If you have a computer with S-video out and set the computer resolution to 1024x768, you will get a picture on a SD TV. I believe the TV-out hardware on the PC automatically downconverts the signal.

I know about the TV output on a PC, I have had a dozen different PC's hooked to a few different TV's. They do offer up to 1024x768 resolution with scaling, and since they underscan heavily (down to 500x400 something actual resolution) there is absolutely no chance of making out any text in windows at standard DPI settings. Even if you can suss it out you will have a headache if you try to watch it for very long. I remove the underscan on the output, and the overscan on the TV, and the result still isn't stellar. For watching movies it is very nice though. (I play mostly racing games, and low resolution makes it very hard to clearly see the next corner or apex, or avoid obstacles, perhaps in games where the resolution is not so important there is less of a problem.)

As for gaming, I have found it smarter to use a super-sampling AA mode (4x4 resolution, 16 pixels are down-sampled to one) or a multisampling mode (2x2 SuperSample + 2x AA), and 16x anisotropic filtering, the anisotropic filtering is responsible for a very great increase in quality for me.

The upshot is that a TV is not a good computing output, and a passable gaming output. It is probably great for movies though.

The main problem is the interlaced output because it causes text and details to flicker violently (most TV output cards offer, or enable natively, a blurring mode to reduce flickering, it doesn't make it any easier to read text, your choice is too blurry to read, too flickering to read, or so low resolution that you can't reach the "OK" button in any dialog box)

 

[rokdcasbah]

Maybe he is getting composite mixed up with component as Nubie is spot on when he stated that s-video cannot output anything higher than 480i.

yes, just going to add my agreement with everyone here. an s-video out on a laptop or whatever is going to send an ntsc signal. which, far from having 768 horizontal lines, is not even made up of pixels.

component can do better, obviously, but if you *only* have component in on your tv (and no vga/dvi/hdmi/displayport) then you probably don't have an hdtv, so you're again limited to what amounts to 480. if you do have one of the digital connectors, then why the heck use component?

unless you're using a wii, i guess. i will get my revenge, nintendo, in this life or the next.

 

[Milamber777]

1. Is there a name for the company / startup / group that is making the Pandora (since it's not GamePark or GamePark Holdings)?

I suggest Open Pandora Project (or OPP).
The Open Box!

>

 

[Chip]

I suggest Open Pandora Project (or OPP).

You down with OPP?
Yeah, you know me.


Seriously though, I'd bet my money that Craig wouldn't put up his money for the project unless it had already been sorted out on the business end. There is a company name already.

 

[iprice]

I don;t know if this has been asked before, but what's the approx. boot time from switch-on to usable?

I thought the F100 took an age until I got an F200...zzzzzZZZZZZZZZ

The PSP and DS only take a couple of seconds, so I wasn't expecting to be able to make a cup of tea before I could play something!

 

[fishybawb]

Seriously though, I'd bet my money that Craig wouldn't put up his money for the project unless it had already been sorted out on the business end. There is a company name already.

Well his current one is "GP32/2x Distribution Ltd", so perhaps "GP32/2x/Pandora Distribution Ltd". Snappy, it just rolls straight off the tongue

 

[Chip]

I don;t know if this has been asked before, but what's the approx. boot time from switch-on to usable?

It is not likely to be very fast - certainly longer than the DS or PSP. However, boot time is not going to be much of an issue since actual reboots will be infrequent. Pandora has both suspend-to-RAM and suspend-to-disk sleep modes, which a smart user will use instead of shutting the machine down every time he puts it away

 

[Gilrad]

Is this suspension similar to what a DS goes through when you close it in terms of battery life? I have often ended up with zero battery after unintentionally suspending my DS for a good portion of my day.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Is this suspension similar to what a DS goes through when you close it in terms of battery life? I have often ended up with zero battery after unintentionally suspending my DS for a good portion of my day.

That's funny, I left my DS on for three months unintentionally. You might need a new battery.

 

[Chip]

Is this suspension similar to what a DS goes through when you close it in terms of battery life? I have often ended up with zero battery after unintentionally suspending my DS for a good portion of my day.

If it drained the battery that quickly then it probably wasn't actually in suspend mode. The Pandora should be good for at least a couple weeks while in suspend-to-RAM mode, and indefinately in suspend-to-disk. Wake time from STR shouldn't be more than a second or two. Wake from STD shouldn't take much longer - however long it takes to copy 128MB of data from the SD card to RAM.

 

[captainhairy]

You down with OPP?
Yeah, you know me.

Wait, was that an MC Hawking reference?