The Interlace/scanlines Issue.

[codeninja]

Thanks Craigix. I was hoping someone with a more official position would answer. Very reassuring to know that the problem will be looked over

​

I'm no official but the followng link is, since it's from the "official" Korean website:

http://www.gpx2.co.kr/support/support_noti...=00&chk=&direc=

It's public announcement back in Dec 14th mentioning about 4th firmware update. Somewhere down the line, it said:

"* LCD 화질 개선:
화면 밝기 개선 / 화면 떨림 개선 / 화면 물결 현상 개선
LCD의 경우 이번 리콜을 통한 AS 후에도 화면에 미세한 가로줄 무늬가
발생하고 있습니다만 이는 현재 사용 중인 LCD의 특성이므로 LCD 개선은
이번 리콜을 통해 최종적으로 마무리 되었습니다."

The translation goes:

*LCD display quality improvements:
Screen brightness/shaky display/wavy display problems are improved.
Even after recall, slight horizontal line would exist. This is a characteristics of LCD that GP2x is using, and this recall will complete LCD improvements.

Sounds hardware to me. <_<

 

[craigix]

I'd not believe anything gamepark tell you, they don't have a clue about their own hardware. I and Evil Dragon have had to stop them making some major mistakes in the past when they thought software faults were hardware faults.

I am working on getting an answer about the scanlines asap.

 

[Radek]

Anyway, if you want to be absolutely sure you just haven't noticed them before now. Download this game and play it: Rockdodger The scanlines are very apparent in this game. Look at the rocks and you will most definately see them if you unit has this problem:

Left side shows image with no scanlines, right side shows how it appears on the LCD.

This distortion is like ones to be found when having interlaced screen. Say a game is updating its whole screen at 60Hz but lcd is refreshing using not whole frames but every second lines (1, 3, 5, 7... for first scan then 2, 4, 6, 8... for second and again). This effect shoud not be visible when aplications update its screen every second frame.

The faster is something is moving then gap between odd and even lines should be bigger.

 

[jmetal88]

I'd not believe anything gamepark tell you, they don't have a clue about their own hardware. I and Evil Dragon have had to stop them making some major mistakes in the past when they thought software faults were hardware faults.

I am working on getting an answer about the scanlines asap.

​

That's pretty funny. :lol:

Well, at least you two know what you're doing.

 

[Jarska333]

Atleast they think they know what they are doing... :unsure:

 

[codeninja]

I'd not believe anything gamepark tell you, they don't have a clue about their own hardware. I and Evil Dragon have had to stop them making some major mistakes in the past when they thought software faults were hardware faults.

​

Well...That's comforting to know...

 

[Radek]

I'd not believe anything gamepark tell you, they don't have a clue about their own hardware. I and Evil Dragon have had to stop them making some major mistakes in the past when they thought software faults were hardware faults.

​

Well...That's comforting to know...

​

Well... at least you know what you don't know!

The gp2x is using the MMSP2 chipset and GPH is just packing it in the product we call "gp2x". You have to realize that it is very niche one and 10.000 of units sold is something big to the GPH. It isn't Sony or even Nintendo here...

This is low input - low output business and very narrow to be exact.

The GPH's mistakes aren't nice but the gp2x's concept is great. We should be gratefull only to one reason it's happening!

Again - I'm not that happy because of gp2x's bugs but really... what else we have?
The Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DS aren't the same. Sony's polices are harsh and Nintendo wasn't that much better in its history.

Perhaps the gp2x will be great success (even in a comercial scale), perhaps it will not be. But for many years there wasn't comparable machine when considering its benefits. You can develop for the gp2x freely and try this with the Sony!

 

[sam fisher]

I have a newest type model with newest firmware and can sort of see a whit line through the edge of the screen. On both sides but on teh left more.

 

[Alpha2]

When I first got my 2X (first edition) it worked as expected, the only problems being the XviD issue. I used one of the two patches released early on and assumed this was the reason I DID NOT have the flickering issue many people reported in DrMDx. Later I decided to skip the supposed "fixed firmware" Patch 1.01 for the diagonal wavy line issue but I DID use the 1.1 patch. After using it I immediatly gained the scanline issue.

It IS firmware related and I assumed the purpose was to help increase battery life.

It's not entirely troubling but I just wish the screen wasn't effected like that.

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

I'm sorry if you took offense, I didn't mean to come off as aggressive or anything. But in your first post you seemed to say that the LCD Tweaker only fixed the permanent scanlines.

It's ok, i'll be more careful next time

Or are you saying that the LCD Tweaker also can fix the scanlines that appear when you move your unit?

I'm saying that the LCD Tweaker fixes some scanlines: the ones that appear, for example, when you move your unit in the main menu (orange screen). The still appear, but are much less noticeable. However, I still see the scanlines you mention in DrMD, for example.

Anyway, this is roughly what I see when I move the unit when it's showing the "bootstrap screen":

(left image when holding still, right side when moving the unit)

To me the scanlines are very apparent. If you can't replicate this on your unit, we clearly have difference in hardware. Mine is second batch unit, 2005-12-09, updated from 1.0.1 to 1.1.0.

If you're completely sure that you see scanlines in the gray screen, we definitely have different hardware. I don't see a single scanline in that screen, they start when linux is loaded (green screen). The problem in the gray screen is different. It looks without scanlines, but with contrast problems:

 

[DaveC]

It is definately a software issure. Before I upgraded to 1.0.1 (out of necessity, because 1.0.0 would not write to my SD card) I had NO SCANLINES. That's right, no scanlines, no diagonal ghost lines, no filickering, no LCD problems at all, and that was with 1.0.0 and the LCD patch. I've got no idea why they changed it in the next version, as it was working fine....

EDIT: Typo...

​

The first FW was AWFUL. The gamma was WAY too high causing washed out colors and horizontal shadows in high contrast images. The latest FW has the gamma too hight too causing washing out of black level and colors. It looks best on the 1.0.1 FW except for the interlace.

 

[foft]

It is definately a software issure.  Before I upgraded to 1.0.1 (out of necessity, because 1.0.0 would not write to my SD card) I had NO SCANLINES.  That's right, no scanlines, no diagonal ghost lines, no filickering, no LCD problems at all, and that was with 1.0.0 and the LCD patch.  I've got no idea why they changed it in the next version, as it was working fine....

EDIT: Typo...

​

The first FW was AWFUL. The gamma was WAY too high causing washed out colors and horizontal shadows in high contrast images. The latest FW has the gamma too hight too causing washing out of black level and colors. It looks best on the 1.0.1 FW except for the interlace.

​

I actually found 1.0.0 the best too. I'm considering downgrading from 1.1.0 back to 1.0.0 because I don't _think_ I got any interlace issues like on these later ones.

Can't think why they would have turned on interlace. Unless:
a ) Its a mistake
or
b ) Enabling interlace worked around the high gamma (hw issue?), fixing the other issues you mentioned.
or
c ) Makes sense to enable it for enabling TV out support. But thats a seperate chip right so maybe not...

One interesting thing to note is that in Rlyeh's minilib when doing video flip it sets registers for Odd and Even frames! To the same image, but why bother setting both if its not interlaced?

Anyway, as Craig says, with HH driving the hardware directly all these issues will become clear.

Thanks.

Mark

Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about here. But it does seem interlaced to me...

 

[Eolair]

IMO, it's highly probable that the scanline/interlace problem has been there all the time. It's just impossible to see it if you have high brightness/low contrast like the 1.0.0 FW.

You can check this yourself by using the LCD-Tweaker and change the timing prescaler to increase the brightness. (Try FPLL -14 or UPLL -3). If you do that you'll basically go back to the LCD setting of the 1.0.0 FW. You'll get high brightness, low contrast and the white line on the left side of the screen will be back. The scanlines will also disappear but only because they can't be seen in high brightness/lower contrast images. Technically, they'll still be there though.

So changing the brightness is only a way to hide the problem. And like DaveC says the brightness is already too high on the 1.1.0 FW. It needs to be lowered back to the 1.0.1 setting but then the interlace problem will become even more obvious. What needs to be done is to find the real cause for the interlacing instead of trying to hide it by increasing the brightness.

 

[stepp]

so what everyone is trying to say is that the screen isnt that good really and we are stuck with these problems.

Get over it...no firmware is going to solve it, the only thing that would solve it is better screens but it looks like weve been lumped with the cheapest carp they could find.

Its not the end of the world but sometimes the scanlines on mine seem really bad but i can live with it.

 

[chris_r]

You obviously haven't actually read anything that's written in this thread then. Theyre saying the exact opposite.

The lcd itself is perfectly fine but gph have decided to update it interlaced instead of progressively like it should be. A firmware update would definitely fix this. The hardware doesnt have to be changed

 

[jmetal88]

It is definately a software issure. Before I upgraded to 1.0.1 (out of necessity, because 1.0.0 would not write to my SD card) I had NO SCANLINES. That's right, no scanlines, no diagonal ghost lines, no filickering, no LCD problems at all, and that was with 1.0.0 and the LCD patch. I've got no idea why they changed it in the next version, as it was working fine....

EDIT: Typo...

​

The first FW was AWFUL. The gamma was WAY too high causing washed out colors and horizontal shadows in high contrast images. The latest FW has the gamma too hight too causing washing out of black level and colors. It looks best on the 1.0.1 FW except for the interlace.

​

You're right, the first FW was awful. I'm talking about the first FW plus the LCD patch. That's completely different, it looked beautiful, not washed out or anything.

 

[reallynotnick]

Isn't the LCD the same one as on the gp32 or is that not so?

EDIT: it has to be a software problem, because this is the first time I have ever heard of a LCD in interlaced. Really think about it, what LCD have you seen that is not progressive scan?

 

[Alpha2]

Like I said I stuck with FW 1.0 for the longest because the screen actually looked great on mine aside from the "diagnal interferance" which wasnt really so noticable except on the menuscreen, in games like DrMD or homebrew games I never noticed it.

It wasnt untill 1.1.0 that I had any issues like the screen being too light or the scanlines.


*edited for getting my version numbers mixed*

 

[jmetal88]

I just downgraded to 1.0.0 kernel (not full downgrade, just kernel downgrade), the LCD does truly look much better. However, now that I'm trained to look for scanlines, I do see them, but only on a completely black screen. Interlacing is gone! Well, at least the annoying stuff, you can still see some stuff if you shake the unit, but nothing from just every little move.

Download the old firmware here.

EDIT: Too bad I have to upgrade back now, due to my SD card not being fully supported.

 

[Mr. Anderson]

the lcd tweaker helps for me, however it won't erase all of the scanlines, I guess that the tweaker needs a bit more tuning...

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Correct me if I'm wrong but the LCD tweaker is meant to fix the flickering issue. This isn't the same thing as the scanline problem. We need to keep these problems seperate. I don't think they are even related.

I'm quite sure that they ARE related. I don't have flickering to start with, I only have scanlines, however with the LCD Tweaker I also get flickering if the timing is wrong! But on the best Setting I found out for now, I get really small scanlines without any flickering and they are only visible at a certain angle...

I don't think scanlines are a problem of the screen, since scanlines shouldn't appear on any LCD screen in the first place...