Hi-Def NES - a 1080p HDMI mod kit!

[Game-Tech.US]

I just remembered Kevin's first vid was a capture, mostly to show it working in 720p, but it prolly has a better audio track than i'll get with my equipment.

[ProfessorProfessorson]

I know it's not a nintendo forum, but I love this forum, been coming here for 12 plus years, but I did post this in Pcenginefx.com » Non-NEC Console Related Discussion » Console Chat...
Plus it's more of a review of the Hi-Def kit so I didn't see a problem posting about it.

Yep this would be the right area to post, i don't see any issues.

The section of the forum isn't the problem, the product he was promoting is. The way the things launch is being handled is a pity. But then again, you'd not see a problem, being you and all. The last thing Game-Tech and Kevtris needs is a guy like you starting a white knight crusade. It'll just make the situation uglier.

You are the only one with a problem. I know there are lots of people who read this that are very interested in this product and updares on it's developement. It's not like he is just copy pasting stuff from other forums and selling the NES's here for $700. He is providing interesting information and answering everyone's questions. You are not the boice of the forum, you are just being a bully and need to chill out.

Seriously??? Man are you f*cking blind or got tunnel vision directed at only my account postings.... Go back and read. Multiple people are irked or feeling questionable/suspicious about the auction shit, the multiple forum spamming (which is why I mentioned he best not do it on the Neo forums), no extended quality test, and other things. I'm just the only one posting about it this afternoon. You're f*cking quick to post, but dont take the time to figure out wtf is going on. Lol @ you.

I just remembered Kevin's first vid was a capture, mostly to show it working in 720p, but it prolly has a better audio track than i'll get with my equipment.

Thats cool, but you need a better selection then that for audio comparison. Try to put something together and get back with us on it.

I know it's not a nintendo forum, but I love this forum, been coming here for 12 plus years, but I did post this in Pcenginefx.com » Non-NEC Console Related Discussion » Console Chat...
Plus it's more of a review of the Hi-Def kit so I didn't see a problem posting about it.

Yep this would be the right area to post, i don't see any issues.

The section of the forum isn't the problem, the product he was promoting is. The way the things launch is being handled is a pity. But then again, you'd not see a problem, being you and all. The last thing Game-Tech and Kevtris needs is a guy like you starting a white knight crusade. It'll just make the situation uglier.

You are the only one with a problem. I know there are lots of people who read this that are very interested in this product and updares on it's developement. It's not like he is just copy pasting stuff from other forums and selling the NES's here for $700. He is providing interesting information and answering everyone's questions. You are not the boice of the forum, you are just being a bully and need to chill out.

Copy pasting spammage across multiple forums is EXACTLY what he's doing.

http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?28888-NESHD-a-1080p-HDMI-mod-kit!

http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=22&threadid=138177

http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=5626.0

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=52216

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/231812-neshd-a-1080p-hdmi-mod-kit/


But we have several members (like BigAl) who only drop in to cross-spam their sales and misc content. Many of which are advertising high priced items. This thread is no different.

Most people are only here to buy/sell/trade anyway, while the minority of us actually talk about PC Engine and games.

These days it really seems like it. The selling/advertising shits gotten old. Me thinks a small extended vacation from the forum now and then is coming up soon. Less log ins so that maybe there will be new content when I do jump back in.

[Game-Tech.US]

Thats cool, but you need a better selection then that for audio comparison. Try to put something together and get back with us on it.

I'll see if he can do some other game captures. Might even try to get a 1080p capture card.
Did the smb2 vid sound good to you?

[ProfessorProfessorson]

Thats cool, but you need a better selection then that for audio comparison. Try to put something together and get back with us on it.

I'll see if he can do some other game captures. Might even try to get a 1080p capture card.
Did the smb2 vid sound good to you?

Yes actually it did out of my LCD speakers. Id need to listen to a real cart of it though to compare it to and to use better speakers then the Toshiba stock ones. On something like a sound comparison I'd rather use headphones or my Altec Lansings. I don't have a SMB2 cart on hand though. I did not bother to rebuy the game since I have Mario All Stars, so comparing that game is not possible for me. I could actually give you a list of what I have, and make audio recordings of them for you, and you could do ones of said titles on the HDMI side of things to compare to.


Per above prior comment though, you guys need to seriously consider offering a free 6 month service warranty on the ebay systems you're selling. Since you have not done an extended quality test on the newest pcb launch batches and people are having to pay so much to access this product, the current situation is not cool. Don't use your customers as guinea pigs and not provide something like that.

This is new tech you are introducing, and you are rushing the release without proper testing of the final product. You owe your customers some kind of guarantee of service in this case. It doesn't have to be a "100 percent satisfied or your money back" kind of situation, but do some kind of free 6 month service warranty.

You went out of your way to rag on Drakon and expose his poor service and him not guaranteeing his product with free reliable repairs, so I mean its time for you to do the same here. And not behind the scenes either. Put it in your auctions publicly or whatever to build customer confidence in this product. If you are completely confident in the product, you would have no problem doing this.

[BigusSchmuck]

I may be late to the game here, but why spend all this $$$ just to turn your nes into displaying 1080p and digital sound? Kind of scratching my head here on that one..

[esteban]

I may be late to the game here, but why spend all this $$$ just to turn your nes into displaying 1080p and digital sound? Kind of scratching my head here on that one..

I hear you!



NO NEED FOR ANY IF THIS FINNICKY CRAP
I am old-school, so I feel the same way about RGB mods! (on economic and philosophical grounds).



CURIOSITY and/or CONVENIENCE 
Of course, I do understand the desire to simplify your life and use ONE MONITOR for all entertainment needs (in this case, HDTV). Folks are willing to compromise in the name of convenience.


PERSONALLY 
After 10-15 years, I myself and getting close to getting some RGB mods...just because I am damn curious...but clearly, I am happy with my current s-video/component level of quality on CRT.

[cjameslv]

PERSONALLY 
After 10-15 years, I myself and getting close to getting some RGB mods...just because I am damn curious...but clearly, I am happy with my current s-video/component level of quality on CRT.

Since most of the older systems output rbg natively (although or obey needs a slight boost to these signals) it is amazing to see what difference it makes. Nothing beats obeying in rgb!

I personally don't like the idea of nes on a lcd, how retro can the experience be if its in hd? At that point i feel you might as well go emulation (xbox, mame, ect) and play it. I experimented quite a long time with lcds and retro gaming and imo they don't mix. So crt for me!

[ProfessorProfessorson]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb8swKUaGM4&feature=youtu.be

Recorded it this afternoon. You can start with this Game-Tech for making a comparison video.


Per the above statements, CRT's wont be around forever, nor will the repair techs that are still willing to service them. Its at that point now where it is a good idea to invest in alternate methods, whether that be linedoubler/upscaler units, component video mods, or HDMI mods to use on current monitor technology. I have my own crt monitors here, but I am not going to fool myself, having the ability to properly display the stuff on a decent LCD for a back up plan is kind of a must if you plan to game in the relatively long term.

[wildfruit]

I think I would describe the sound as "crisper" trying to go deep back into memories of smb2. Maybe it even sounds "better"?
Still, RGB is they way to go for any pre HDMI console.
If you have a mega drive you MUST try it. So sharp and clean.

[ProfessorProfessorson]

I think I would describe the sound as "crisper" trying to go deep back into memories of smb2. Maybe it even sounds "better"?
Still, RGB is they way to go for any pre HDMI console.
If you have a mega drive you MUST try it. So sharp and clean.

Crisper and better on original hardware, or on the Hi-Def Nes?  And yeah, RGB and even S-video on Genesis/Mega Drive, and Master System also, is pretty damn nice.

[kevtris]

Heya, I decided to join the forum after hearing from game-tech.us about this thread to clear up some things.

We discussed the idea of making an HDMI adapter for the NES the first time we got together.   I then went home that night and sketched up a quickie design and got to work in Altium making some PCBs and in Quartus writing some code. 2 months or so after the initial get together I had some working hardware.

Yes, this board is included in the Analogue nt, but gametech had nothing to do with this,  in fact I couldn't tell him or anyone about it until after it was released.  There's no "conspiracy" of any kind involved.

As to the audio issues,  there were only two ways to handle this-  either analog-capture the audio and put up with noise on the audio, and various expansion chip level problems, or recreate the audio internally digitally.

I chose to simulate the audio hardware internally.  I am very sensitive to the quality of the audio, so this was not a decision I chose lightly.  I put a lot of time and effort into getting good audio, including a 256 tap FIR filter to eliminate aliasing, so stuff like the looped noise sounds right on games such as Solstice.  The existing analog audio coming out of the NES CPU is still there, it didn't go away.

The expansion chips must be manually turned on in the menu for Fami carts and on the flash carts too, but on the Powerpak, I modified the NSF player so that it will properly enable and disable the expansion chips for you automatically.  I was thinking of modding the loader code so when a game that uses expansion audio loads, it automagically turns the proper chips on/off.

There's no way to "autodetect" what game is running to turn the right chips on/off.  (Well nothing I could do on the FPGA easily).  Since there's fairly few games with expansion audio, this should only be a minor inconvenience.  The NSF player on the Powerpak is where I do most of my expansion chip listening and fixing it was easy.

Because the sound chips can be turned on from cartridge space, this means in the future homebrew games could turn on and utilize the expansion chip hardware on the adapter.


As to my investment, I have a huge monetary investment in the project-  about 5 figures of investment.  It's going to take selling a lot of boards to pay back the money I am out of pocket, and then more to pay me even minimum wage for the couple thousand hours of code/design that's in it.   I deliberately chose NOT to kickstarter the project because I wanted to finish it on my own schedule and without being beholden to anyone.   

I put a lot of effort and time into testing this mod as thoroughly as possible.  6 or 7 people were involved directly in beating on the hardware and software to test it;  I have 20 sets of CPUs and PPUs, and I tried it on four different NES main boards, both toploaders and front loaders.   I tested it on 10 different monitors, and spent almost $4000 to buy an HDMI protocol analyzer specifically for this project so I could make sure the signal going out fully conforms to the standard to ensure it was going to work on everybody's TV.  I had two runs of prototypes and built around 12 sets of PCBs by hand using a toaster oven reflow rig I designed and built.

You will be hard pressed to find a more thoroughly tested and better designed "hobbyist level" project than this one I suspect.   There's probably hundreds or thousands of things that can go wrong on the release of a complex project like this, so it's inevitable that one or two things slipped through.

The first is the connector is a bit deep on the toploader.  I tested this here, but it seems different cable makers have different "tongue" lengths on the cable ends, so my cable worked fine but someone else's might not.  I knew it was a bit close but it was a concession to make it fit in the nt as well as the toploader, making it cheaper to do boards since they'd both be the same.

The other is the everdrive issues.   We did a bunch of testing the other day and Jason's ED works fine on my HDMI modded toploader here.  Turns out it's the version of the firmware on the SD card.  Using later firmware than 3 doesn't work.  This is why there were conflicting things like how it was mentioned the ED worked then later on in my videos I said it didn't.

Turns out the ED I have has version 10+ firmware on it.  When I dropped the 3x version from Jason's ED onto this ED, it started working too.   Reset was a bit flaky still but the ED functioned and I proceeded to play mario 3, zelda, and some others.

The main reason the boards aren't for sale right this second is there's no installation guide yet, and I am still rounding up things like headers and the foam and cables so people can do the install.  There's not going to be a shortage of boards-  I will make boards as long as people buy them, barring anything outside my control such as parts availability issues.  That and it'd be nice to have a website set up to make it easier to buy them.   Of course in the future I might just stop selling if volume drops to zero, but I doubt that will happen for a long time.

The money made during the sale of the first batch of units is going to get plowed back in immediately to buy the next round of boards.   

I hope this clears up the issues around it.   Long story short, I took a large financial risk to create this device, and hope some day that I will eventually get paid back what I put in to make it.  If I was doing this to make money I wouldn't be wasting my time making HDMI mods for 20+ year old obsolete videogame consoles.  (not that there is anything wrong with that- I wouldn't have made this mod if I didn't love playing NES games).

[wildfruit]

I think I would describe the sound as "crisper" trying to go deep back into memories of smb2. Maybe it even sounds "better"?
Still, RGB is they way to go for any pre HDMI console.
If you have a mega drive you MUST try it. So sharp and clean.

Crisper and better on original hardware, or on the Hi-Def Nes?  And yeah, RGB and even S-video on Genesis/Mega Drive, and Master System also, is pretty damn nice.

Crisper on the hi def nes. I don't know. I'm not very good and translating what I'm thinking to words and I haven't played smb2 for years since some chump stole my nes, but reaching back, I think it sounds a tiny bit less muffled but in a good way. Doesn't sound distorted or bad pitch to me. Hmmm maybe a good analogy would be listening to a track at 128kb and then listening to same track at 320kb or flac and feeling the difference.
Side note: Sometimes bit rate means naff all but I URGE you to listen to Minecraft alpha in flac. Beautiful.
I'm still not sold on the whole package / method, but sound wise seems decent.

[ProfessorProfessorson]

stuff, giant wall of text

Really cool and all, but right now you did not do what seems to be a proper test run on your launch batch of pcbs. You basically got them, slapped them into consoles and listed them systems up for sale after some basic test. So again, you and Game-Tech need to work out some kind of free 6 month service warranty for your ebay buyers, etc. If you are truely confident in this batch of hardware up on ebay, then this should not be a problem. But I have as of yet to see Game-Tech, or you, actually say "Yes, we will do this to make sure no one gets screwed".

The bit you state about the audio is cool, but a comparison video would be nicer at this point. Please get to work on that. I have already provided you with certain audio tracks, and you can always choose to add more to that also.


The internal financial mess with you both and Analogue is your own business, even if it sounds completely ridiculous. But frankly you should not be surprised at all by the disappointment of some of us in how this launch was handled. You basically forced anyone who had a system already who wanted this mod right now to partake in high dollar auctions, forcing them to invest in another system they otherwise wouldn't need, or to go buy a Analogue NT. In addition to this, its an untested launch batch, and no warranty was stated as included or implied in the auction details. The 14 day return on ebay is just too limited for this kind of thing.


EDIT: And I think the other thing that kind of makes it salt on a open wound is the whole auction thing with the bid amounts that were set kind of implies that you're of the thinking that something like a Hi-Def Nes is worth more dollar wise then something like a RGB region modded Duo-R or modded AES system, on this forum of all places.

Only that special breed of irresponsible Nes collectards would spend that kind of cash (I feel sorry for these kinda guys, they usually just cant help their-selves or don't know any better). And these are the types that you basically handed the dictation of the going price over to on the open market, instead of just setting your own set asking price to begin with. When ever these guys go to flip their systems after they get buyers remorse, they are going to go off and list them for exactly what they paid you, if not more, thinking its totally worth $500-700.


Everyone else is going to be like, umm, no, for that kind of cash I can buy a Nec system, a Neo Geo, or a RGB/Svideo modded Nes and a XRGB or Iscan upscaler and a few games.

[kevtris]

But frankly you should not be surprised at all by the disappointment of some of us in how this launch was handled. You basically forced anyone who had a system already who wanted this mod right now to partake in high dollar auctions, forcing them to invest in another system they otherwise wouldn't need, or to go buy a Analogue NT.

ooooor, you could just not buy either and wait until the boards are available for sale and install one yourself, or pay someone to install it into your system.   Like anything else of this magnitude, it takes awhile to ramp up production and all the back end things like install guides.  Unless you are paying me directly to advance the project, then I do not bend to your will.

So far, you're the only "disappointed" person I know of on all the forums I inhabit regarding this adapter.  Everyone else has been very supporting of it and me.  I am doing this for "fun" and to breathe new life into the system so it can be enjoyed on the latest and newest TVs as well as the old CRT standby.   

As for testing, apparently you didn't watch my video of me programming/testing the adapters, or read what I wrote about the time I spent testing things during development and the equipment I purchased.

[ProfessorProfessorson]

stuff...

You're right, I don't watch your videos. Frankly from what I saw of you the past couple of days, you're awkward on camera and not very enjoyable to watch, even from a techie point of view. As is, Game_Tech has been your spin guy/forum spammer, thankfully so it seems. So most of what is known has been coming from him on here, not you. So if anyone is at fault for that, its more on you then me or anyone else here. When I think of Hi-Def Nes, I think of Game-Tech, his forum spamming, and the current auctions, not Kevtris.

As for testing, again, what you did not do was put weeks into testing this final launch batch of boards and systems. You put weeks and months into testing the prior stuff. Launch stuff still should spend some time being tested too. Keep trying to avoid the subject, but it really is rather disturbing that you and Game-Tech are skipping a reasonable time frame for testing this launch batch, and avoiding the thing about backing your ebay systems up with an extended service warranty. Why is that such a problem for you both to do?

Hell, most modders here that offer systems for sale do this in some form or another. What makes you feel your situation is so different that you don't have to guarantee the systems being auctioned off? Again, if you were really that confident in the current batches being sold, you'd stand by them with a 6 month service warranty.

Also, again, waiting for some audio comparison videos. Seeing and hearing is believing. Forgive me if I don't take kinda sorta awkward Anton LaVey's word for it.

And you can get upset and pissy all you want, but you have no attachment to this forum other then some spin guy doing your dirty work. So yeah, I get concerned when this kind of shit starts to play out on the forum I currently frequent the most. Others may not be as verbal about it, but I don't mind doing that, calling out bullshit.

I may be crass or harsh about it at times, but I don't owe you anything, and I don't care to brown nose this or sugar coat it. You have what seems to be a fairly impressive product in the making, but your ebay launch completely sucks ass. Yeah, I dont expect Nintendo collector/forum people to complain, because honestly, they are not that great or known for their sound decision making skills.

Thats all there is to it. Don't like hearing that? Then go f*ck yourself. Its a free world, and people have a right to express their opinion on the matter. You can always go back to slinking about behind the scenes and using Game-Tech for your voice if you cant handle it. Otherwise, man up, start offering them warranties, and get to posting that sound caparison already Kev, or is it Anton, I forget which...

EDIT, as for you thinking no one is wondering wtf is going on, or having issues with it, just because they dont post here doesnt mean they dont converse about it behind the scenes. I have 4 others from here that I have been talking to about this as is, and one of them worded their concerns quite well this evening to me:



Granted, I dont talk to everyone on this forum on a casual or friendly basis often, but I would be damn naive to think that others here are not having similar conversations...