Indivision V2 and ACA500Plus to be available for Xmas

[turrican9]

Originally Posted by Jope

Please help. I gave up ages ago.

My requirements: Full Amiga overscan visible in PAL progressive/laced modes. 1:1 vertical frequency with no stutters/tearing. The AGA mk1 gave me this with no effort at all, so far I have not been able to figure out how to calculate the timings to achieve this with the mk2.

Well, it will vary from monitor to monitor. I have mine set up with a 17 inch 5:4 Sony LED LCD. Using DVI. custom resolution at 720x566 for both PAL and PAL hi-res laced. Get full overscan as far as I can see. Vertical frequency is at 50.127Hz which on my setup gives the most smooth scrolling. Just a very small stutter now and then. Not really noticeable. I spent ages tweaking to get a result I'm fine with.

To be honest, it's hard to beat a BenQ BL702A or BL 912 connected directly to RGB with finetuned pixel and phase clocks. Only thing missing is scanlines. But they look really good still.

[jdryyz]

When you say noise in the picture, are you referring to RF noise? I wonder if the ribbon cable that is used would be improved if it were shielded.

[turrican9]

Originally Posted by jdryyz

When you say noise in the picture, are you referring to RF noise? I wonder if the ribbon cable that is used would be improved if it were shielded.

In certain resolutions like if you make a custom 720x576 Vsync profile there is quite abit of noise (waves going over the picture). However, on most other resolutions there are no noticeable noise. And in general there is slight ghosting in the picture, just like it was with the ECS V1. I know people tried with shielded cables on the V1 to get rid of ghosting without it helping. But the ghosting is not so bad that it ruins the picture.

[jdryyz]

Unfortunate to hear shielding did not help. I am seeing some ghosting in addition to some faint diagonal lines. I reduced the length of my VGA cables that did help to improve the picture but only in a small way.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by turrican9

Well, it will vary from monitor to monitor. I have mine set up with a 17 inch 5:4 Sony LED LCD. Using DVI. custom resolution at 720x566 for both PAL and PAL hi-res laced. Get full overscan as far as I can see. Vertical frequency is at 50.127Hz which on my setup gives the most smooth scrolling. Just a very small stutter now and then. Not really noticeable. I spent ages tweaking to get a result I'm fine with.

Well the monitor either does the Amiga's vertical refresh rate without stutters or it does not. I have a few which sync to it, but will not give me a stutter free scroll, and some which are butter smooth. (naturally verified with some other scandoubler than the Indi AGA mk2)

Occasional stutters are the best I was able to manage with the Aga mk2 as well. So It will not be a demo watching board for me, I can deal with this discrepancy in workbench use, so that board is in my music Amiga.

To be honest, it's hard to beat a BenQ BL702A or BL 912 connected directly to RGB with finetuned pixel and phase clocks. Only thing missing is scanlines. But they look really good still.

These days I most often just use my OSSC and a 50Hz capable panel. Sometimes also an old LG monitorTV that does 15kHz via VGA.

[Locutus]

Yup, same setup here nowadays.

Indivision AGA MK2 is in the 4k, but when the machine is used for any games or demos the OSSC comes out....

[wiz12]

Would the OSSC be better than the Indivision for demos that have mid-demo resolution switching as there can be a few seconds where the monitor display is black whilst the monitor is switching resolution?

[Locutus]

Yes

[turrican9]

One or two positive things about the Indivision scandoublers that don't get mentioned very often is they can use any type of standard monitor as long as your willing to accept frameskipping at 60Hz. Or 50Hz with the right monitors. And since you put them inside the Amiga it's a very clean solution with no cable clutter.

[Tyball]

Originally Posted by turrican9

Best so far on my BenQ BL 702A is VGA profile at 1472x1060, 50.23xxHz (will check the exact value if needed), Vysnc on. Indivision profile at 736x530 and scanlines at 25%. This switches the resolution to 1920x1080 according to the monitor itself. Don't know how that works as this screen has a native resolution of 1280x1024. So how it can go beyond this I don't understand?

Anyway, the above mentioned setup fills most of the screen but leaves just enough overscan area for most games. The picture is very stable with very little to no noise. Scanlines look good enough at 25% but anything past this will look strange as the scanlines are not perfect at this resolution. However, 25% looks good. Scrolling is perfect and pattern is almost perfect other than some very faint vertical bars which is barely visible.

So, I've finally managed to get more grip on the software (had limited time and no prior experience with the indivision). I get the nice high resolution workbench modes at 60Hz and also the 640x512@50Hz that come predefined with scanlines. Also with the Benq BL702A. I noticed that the 640x512@50Hz was somewhat placed to the right and of course this doesn't show overscan.

I hope that I have some time tonight to get a resolution that shows overscan and will try your 1472x1060/736x530. Provided that I'll figure out how to change the right values.

The benq probably switches to 1920x1080 because 1472 is higher than the standard resolution of 1280 and it's the same ratio as 1280:720? The firmware is probably generic with widescreen monitors.

[Tyball]

I tried some things tonight, and although I seem to get now how I can create a resolution that allows the overscan to show up, I can't get it to look as nice as the predefined 640x512@50Hz with scanlines enabled. I've set the resolution to 736x530 and even to 720x576 but it looks a bit distorted, although my bl702A stays at 1280x1024.

Btw, how do you adjust the refresh rate? Can that only be done with the Pixel clock slider on top of the VGA mode screen

[turrican9]

Originally Posted by Tyball

I tried some things tonight, and although I seem to get now how I can create a resolution that allows the overscan to show up, I can't get it to look as nice as the predefined 640x512@50Hz with scanlines enabled. I've set the resolution to 736x530 and even to 720x576 but it looks a bit distorted, although my bl702A stays at 1280x1024.

Btw, how do you adjust the refresh rate? Can that only be done with the Pixel clock slider on top of the VGA mode screen

Hello, how strange it stays at 1280x1024. The way this scandoubler works is you first set the VGA resolution then go and set the indivision resolution.

To make this work correctly you need to put the VGA resolution at twice the Indivision resolution. To get a clear picture the Indivision resolution must be able to be exactly half of the VGA resolution. However, the Vertical part of the VGA resolution can be the same value as the Indi vertical resolution. Putting the vertical resolution equal in both VS twice in VGA VS Indi will make the monitor use different resolutions for each case.

So in your case you would want to put 1472 x 1060 for the VGA, Vsync on and start to tweak the pixel clock until the monitor switches to "1920x1080" and then set 736 x 530 in the Indi profile.

I know this is not easy to understand, took me alot of experimenting

[turrican9]

Bad camera but it looks good in real life. Shows the overscan in Pinball dreams correctly. However, there are a few games that will cut off a very small bit of the horizontal overscan. I have made successful 720x576 profiles (monitor switches to 720x576 and with full overscan) but get alot of noise (waves) in the picture on that resolution. So the one I'm using here is the best I've found so far that will also allow enough overscan for almost all games. Also, for pixel clock, you could manually change the number instead of using the slider. Remember to press enter after you change the number. Note: These are the settings I use for the BenQ BL702A monitor which is pictured below.

[Tyball]

Thanks for your explanation! I don't think I understand all of it yet and I will take some time to digest it .

I only created a new resolution based on the 640x512 PAL profile and adjusted the resolution to 720x576. I kept the VGA mode at 1280x1024 50Hz. The refresh rates of this mode are 57.5869 and 54.6366. It doesn't look as nice as your image yet. Probably because of the reasons you describe.
When playing games I don't notice it that much though and scrolling seemed a lot more fluid than at the predefined 1280x1024 60Hz. And a lot more of the screen is shown.

BTW, I don't seem to be able to save my profiles. I get a program failed error (#80000003).

[jdryyz]

Those screenshots look really good! I do not see any ghosting as others reported and the scanlines are very natural looking. Interesting that you are mapping to a 1920x1080 resolution on a 4:3 monitor. You would think your BenQ would not accept that at all when it says your optimal resolution is 1280x1024.

I was curious if you have the latest firmware installed. It was supposed to allow more overscan area.

I was having enough difficulty with mine that I removed it and I'm just using a cheapy SCART to HMDI adapter for now. My monitor is an HP E271i and it doesn't quite know what to do with the default 800x600@72Hz. The image is shifted vertically and my manual adjustments are not saved. I hope that if I can figure out how to customize the screenmodes, I can output something it will accept better. This particular monitor also has an annoying problem that it does not auto-sense a signal input over VGA. I think it is a bug in the monitor firmware as all other inputs do auto-sense.

[scu98rkr]

Does the Indivision ECS V2 have a HDMI output yet ? Or am I missing the point ?

[MartinW]

Originally Posted by jdryyz

You would think your BenQ would not accept that at all when it says your optimal resolution is 1280x1024.

Wait, WHAT??!!

So the BenQ will accept 1920x1080@50Hz and make some sort of sense of it? I am going to have to try a few things on my setup now as that potentially changes everything! (not an Indivision)

Surely that has to just be something strange going on.

[Philyon]

Originally Posted by scu98rkr

Does the Indivision ECS V2 have a HDMI output yet ? Or am I missing the point ?

I don't think so. But you can buy a scart-> hdmi adapter for ~25€, like this :

It works perfectly with my a500 and my hdmi monitor. I'm planning to sell my Indivision v1 now.

[turrican9]

Originally Posted by Philyon

I don't think so. But you can buy a scart-> hdmi adapter for ~25€, like this :

It works perfectly with my a500 and my hdmi monitor. I'm planning to sell my Indivision v1 now.

I have two of these. They have horrible input lag and oversaturrated colours. I do not recommend these for gaming because of the horrible input lag. Other than adventure games or demos where the input lag wouldn't matter that much. They also upscale the picture in a way so you don't get smooth scrolling.

[Philyon]

You're right there is some input lag, but for a casual gamer (like me) this is the most affordable way to use hdmi monitor.