A1200 composite on Plasma = Horrid

[vimfuego]

Hi All,

My A1200 normally resides upstairs hooked up to a CRT Sharp TV via the composite input. It looks ok, but for fun I thought I would plug it in to the 50" Panasonic Plasma. Well, the picture is so fuzzy text is unreadable (looking at the workbench screen).
I've had composite signals in to this Plasma TV before (Wii) and they are ok, but it sure doesn't like the Amiga.
To me it looks like noise on the picture, not some sort of weird scaling issue. There is even some shadow effects on the text.
This TV has no SCART input (only HDMI or YPbPr) so I can't confirm it happens using any other input, though I have tried 3 composite inputs on the TV.
I'm not sure which to blame because the A1200 looks ok on the CRT TV and the plasma looks alright with other composite inputs.

Cheers,
Ross

[rkauer]

Try with a S-VHS hack (if the TV have component, it have S-VHS).

Composite always look horrid in anything I test it: blur picture, fussed/blended colours, image ghosts, you name it.

But the Atari 2600. By the way, the only Atari which is good for something.

[vimfuego]

S-VHS hack as in picking up the Y/C signals near the CXA1145?

Cheers,
Ross

[Pyromania]

@vimfuego

That's a bummer, I'll try it on my 50-inch Plasma and see if I get the same result.

[Anemos]

Another choice is the scart to hdmi converter ,like this > http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.22846

[vimfuego]

Well, here's an example of what it looks like.
The second picture, that text is supposed to show "ADF Transfer"
I don't know, maybe the composite inputs on this Panasonic Plasma are crapola.

Cheers,
Ross

[Adropac2]

It's going to look decidely worse of course on a big Plasma.My 42 doesn't do anything for how great the Amiga can look and i'm using RGB

LCD is even worse and when it's only a smaller set.Crt really is the only way i think unless you emulate or i guess use vga - even then i bet it isn't all that defined

The biggest shock i had was when i hooked my N64 NTSC to the Plasma - almost lego quality

[rkauer]

Those newer TV units (plasma or LCD, doesn't matter) will show the lousy quality of composite. That's it!

Even using a proper way to hook the Amiga to they, the original low resolution will appear bit blocky on modernish sets.

[Supamax]

@ vimfuego

My God...
Ok, composite quality is not good, but not as shitty as can be seen on the pictures you posted!
Characters are almost not readable... I suspect a non-perfect coupling between the Amiga composite output and your plasma composite input.

[vimfuego]

Originally Posted by Supamax

Characters are almost not readable... I suspect a non-perfect coupling between the Amiga composite output and your plasma composite input.

Yeah, that is the annoying part, my C64 looks ok on the same TV, the Amiga composite on the smaller CRT also looks ok. I guess I'll just have to stick with that. But as you can see, I wasn't been fussy, it is really bad. Even when playing games (rather than trying to read text) it produces enough noise and artefacts around the edges of the graphics it's not really usable.
I should not complain too much, my Xbox360 (via component) on this Plasma is amazing to look at.

Cheers,
Ross

[NovaCoder]

Also remember than when you scale-up from say 320x200 to 1920x1080 then it's never going to look that good no matter how 'clean' the signal is.

[Supamax]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Also remember than when you scale-up from say 320x200 to 1920x1080 then it's never going to look that good no matter how 'clean' the signal is.

Yeah, but he said that his C64 (320x200 or 160x200 graphic mode) looks good on his plasma via composite cable.
I would think that his Amiga composite output is the problem. Perhaps some components (capacitors?) need substitution.

But again, he said that the same Amiga 1200 with the same composite output looks good on his CRT TV.
So it must be this: his plasma doesn't like his Amiga output. Perhaps the composite output voltage is too low or too high?

You could ask to Stedy. Look at this thread: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=47281

And this is from his first post:
"Before creating this cable I undertook a number of measurements on the Amiga video outputs. The first issue I noticed was the voltage on the SYNC signal, it was 4.8V peak to peak.

Modern TVs have video decoder devices, their job is to decode the analogue video waveform into a digital video format, for SDTV this is usually a BT.656 video stream with a YCrCb colur space. Point aside, these devices take the composite video input or sync on green and process the signal to extract sync timing. They expect a 1V peak to peak signal, connecting the CSYNC signal from the Amiga could harm the device, especially as most parts run from 3.3/1.8V supplies."

[vimfuego]

Finally got an acceptable solution to this issue.
I ordered a S-Video board from DJBase, after fitting it and connecting to the plasma via S-video, the picture is much better (I can read the icon names now).
The PCB from DJBase was very nice and pretty simple to fit, highly recommended for anyone who has a TV with no SCART connection.

Cheers,
Ross

[Sune Salminen]

15KHz RGB to component converter:

http://www.jrok.com/hardware/RGB.html

JROK's converter is built for use with arcade boards but there's no reason why it couldn't work with a standard Amiga....the fact that it's NTSC only might be a problem though.

[Supamax]

Originally Posted by Sune Salminen

15KHz RGB to component converter:

http://www.jrok.com/hardware/RGB.html

JROK's converter is built for use with arcade boards but there's no reason why it couldn't work with a standard Amiga....the fact that it's NTSC only might be a problem though.

VERY nice!!!!
It would indeed be interesting if it could be available in PAL versions too
Perhaps from some other seller?

Originally Posted by vimfuego

Finally got an acceptable solution to this issue.
I ordered a S-Video board from DJBase

Have you a link to DJBase product?

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Sune Salminen

JROK's converter is built for use with arcade boards but there's no reason why it couldn't work with a standard Amiga....the fact that it's NTSC only might be a problem though.

You'd be using it as YPbPr anyway, so the NTSC part doesn't matter.. Unless it's 60Hz vertical only.

Or would you use s-video/composite? Please. ;-)

[vimfuego]

Originally Posted by Supamax

Have you a link to DJBase product?

DJBase referring to a member on this forum. Here's the LINK to the adaptor board.
The JROK converter looks nice too, but fitting it in the A1200 might be an issue. To fit the S-Video board from DJBase I removed the RF modulator and put the s-video socket and PCB where the RF modulator was, it all fitted very well.

[Loedown]

Greetings,
My old A200 looked much like those pictures, when I was running it into a PVR card in the PC, composite video is just horrible.

Paul

[vimfuego]

I'm not so sure about that Paul, composite video on an old CRT TV looks acceptable, nothing as bad as what it was on the Plasma. I am convinced the composite decoder in my Plasma is rubbish, which is to be expected as most (if not all) DVD's, BluRay, current gen games consoles are either component or HDMI.

Cheers,
Ross

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by vimfuego

I'm not so sure about that Paul, composite video on an old CRT TV looks acceptable, nothing as bad as what it was on the Plasma. I am convinced the composite decoder in my Plasma is rubbish, which is to be expected as most (if not all) DVD's, BluRay, current gen games consoles are either component or HDMI.

Cheers,
Ross

I was running it purely out of an old A520, I can promise you, it looked awful