Vga Cables And Pandora Carry Case

[zohnnyg]

hi does anyone know if the pandora carry cases and vga cables will be readily available for purchase when pandora ships? when i ordered my pandora i didnt have enough extra money to also order the vga cables and carry case. i hope OP is making a surplus of them. oh yeah and extra pandora batteries too.

 

[plupp]

There is no VGA cable since there is no VGA output.

The only cable available is a Composite/Svideo output for television, but it is television resolution i.e. a bit lower than the pandora screen.

And I do believe that the minimum cable order was substantially more than what was needed directly.

 

[amortvigil]

There is no VGA cable since there is no VGA output.

The only cable available is a Composite/Svideo output for television, but it is television resolution i.e. a blit lower than the pandora screen.

And I do believe that the minimum cable order was substantially more than what was needed directly.

if you have a mac you can use composite -> minidisplay converter, i asume you have those for the pc also

 

[rabidpoobear]

a blit lower than the pandora screen.

screen.blit(img, (0, pandora_screen.height)) ?

 

[kingoddball]

I'm sure they're making enough. They plan to sell everything in their store, not just Pandora systems.

 

[gruso]

There is no VGA cable since there is no VGA output.

The only cable available is a Composite/Svideo output for television, but it is television resolution i.e. a blit lower than the pandora screen.

if you have a mac you can use composite -> minidisplay converter, i asume you have those for the pc also

Those adapters will get your display onto a PC monitor no worries, but it won't look any better than an SD TV signal. Possibly worse.

 

[Dead1nside]

I'm considering one of these USB DisplayLink things so that you can attach the screen over USB. Noticed on Phoronix there's been further improvement of the drivers in kernel 2.6.34. Quite expensive though aren't they?

 

[taras]

I thought it was meant to be a handheld/portable console...

 

[cosurgi]

I thought it was meant to be a handheld/portable console...

I've never seen a console with vga output, have you?
So it's good that with sisusb we can have vga an pandora.

 

[overjupiter]

the dreamcast had an attachment to output vga. you had to buy this cable separately.

 

[Balzac2m]

I thought it was meant to be a handheld/portable console...

I've never seen a console with vga output, have you?
So it's good that with sisusb we can have vga an pandora.

There was a version of the Dreamcast with VGA.

 

[Dead1nside]

I used to use the VGA adaptor so I could play Phantasy Star Online all night without hogging the only TV.

 

[Polossatik]

These day's it might be cheaper to just get you a cheap 22" LCD TV then adaptors and stuff

 

[DaveC]

Actually I have thought from the beginning that the lack of any HD output such as VGA or component video was a big mistake.

Craposite and ShitVideo look terrible on today's fixed pixel TVs. Worse yet those formats can't do the Pandora's native 800 x 480 so everything has to be scaled down to low-def which will then be scaled again by your TV again to do what it likes. You will be stretching a scaled image. This makes reading text on the TV a poor experience among other things, the image will be a blurry mess..

Oh well maybe next time.

 

[WizardStan]

Actually I have thought from the beginning that the lack of any HD output such as VGA or component video was a big mistake.

Craposite and ShitVideo look terrible on today's fixed pixel TVs. Worse yet those formats can't do the Pandora's native 800 x 480 so everything has to be scaled down to low-def which will then be scaled again by your TV again to do what it likes. You will be stretching a scaled image. This makes reading text on the TV a poor experience among other things, the image will be a blurry mess..

Oh well maybe next time.

Wasn't much choice, though. The OMAP only has the one digital output.
In theory it should actually be possible to set the TV out to be 800x480 (or 800x576 for pal) which might be handled properly on some newer TVs. You just cram more data along the H, it's the V resolution that's necessarily fixed.

 

[cbox]

It's been discussed over and over, any usb>vga adapter is not going to be adequate for gaming/video. It may be good enough for a powerpoint slide show, but that's about it. USB bandwidth is just not good enough to push the kind of bandwidth you get from games or video, not to mention there may not be drivers for the device in ARM linux.

 

[Aninhumer]

Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious, but just doing some calculations now, running video over USB doesn't seem so infeasible.

640*480 pixels = 307200
*24bpp = 7372800
*30fps = 221184000

That's around 211Mb/s which is well below the USB peak rate of 480Mb/s, and that's before considering any possible compression.

Whether there is actually a device which can do this, I don't know, but it seems at least possible?

I feel like I have missed something really stupid? :huh:

 

[WizardStan]

I feel like I have missed something really stupid? :huh:

You forget that we already have a standard def output. No one wants 640x480 via USB when we can get 702x480(ish) via s-video.
The suggestion of USB output is for HD output, at least 1024x768, if not higher.
1024x768x24x30=566Mb/s, 1280x720x24x30=664Mb/s, 1920x1080x24x30=1493Mb/s
You could apply compression, to get a little better, but then you've got the CPU decoding it from the file and then re-encoding it for the USB.
480Mb/s is also peak under perfect conditions. I have doubts that it's consistent enough to rely on more than half of that.

 

[Dead1nside]

I think we'd all have liked a high quality digital output but as WizardStan pointed out, it just wasn't possible with the OMAP3 we're using.

On my Pandora 2 wishlist though.

 

[Asmo]

In theory it should actually be possible to set the TV out to be 800x480 (or 800x576 for pal) which might be handled properly on some newer TVs. You just cram more data along the H, it's the V resolution that's necessarily fixed.

A problem then is the aspect ratio. If you want the TV out to make use of all the available screen area on either a 4:3 or 16:9 TV display, it won't match the aspect ratio on the Pandora's screen.
That's aside from numerous other impediments vis-a-vis analogue signals on 'modern' TVs.