I don't know if this is specific to my tv or Japan but it seems that recent television doesn't seems to like RF signal and shows nothing on it. There is what looks like RF input and usually we connect the antena for the digital signal but for an old famicom, nothing was shown. It I use my av famicom there is no issue.I remember that an old LCD TV had no issue with it though.
It is something common in the state too? I make as the maker of the TV out of curiosity since I would like to use my old famicom instead of the AV one when testing dev carts.
In the US, a number of modern televisions have just dropped the
type F connector altogether, instead being some combination of monitor and treacherous WiFi client.
But if you actually have whatever Japanese TVs use as input (looks like the same pair of type F and 300Ω twinlead that were used in US televisions?) then I suppose it's possible your TV only supports ISDB and not also NTSC...
People will have to buy adapters, if you use a modern TV and a retro console with RF output.
Does anyone remember when Cartman froze himself to not have to wait for a Wii, and woke up in the distant future, and they couldn't connect the Wii to the TV of the future?
Vizio has a line of "tuner-free Displays".
https://www.vizio.com/en-ca/tuner-freeI'm not sure if there's still some law that prohibits them from being called a "TV" in USA, or something like that.
Though, TBH, my current TV technically has a coaxial input / tuner but it's the worst quality I've ever encountered in something like that. Barely reliable, terrible picture. Might as well not even have been included.
lidnariq wrote:
In the US, a number of modern televisions have just dropped the
type F connector altogether, instead being some combination of monitor and treacherous WiFi client.
But if you actually have whatever Japanese TVs use as input (looks like the same pair of type F and
300Ω twin lead that were used in US televisions?) then I suppose it's possible your TV only supports ISDB and not also NTSC...
Yeah I think is more of a North American thing. That said, the output I use here (Canada) works in other countries as well. So I'm kind of confused why it would be any different for TV. Hope you kept the invoice just as a precautionary measure. Pal and NTSC is definitely a thing though and it makes no sense why it's like that.
As long as you are reducing such errors, things should be fine. Why have the same power i / o but different system completely. (Hippie voice) Unify maaaaaaan!
Most new TVs here only do DVB via the tuner input, normal analog stuff is not supported.
I expect support for RF and composite to be dropped very soon.
Dropping RF in is fine as long as you're clearly selling a "monitor". But dropping composite in will generate a lot of tech support calls from customers of cable TV providers that charge a monthly surcharge for high-definition service.
Wow, I'm amazed there's countries whre RF hasn't been dropped yet. Here it has been dropped completely at least 8 years ago.
But then countries in Europe are more likely to levy an annual tax on owners of "TVs", or devices that can receive RF broadcasts, to pay for public broadcasting. (It's as if instead of annual pledge drives, PBS had vans to detect the telltale emissions of demodulating a TV broadcast.) So there's a tax avoidance incentive toward buying a living-room-sized "monitor" that doesn't exist in the United States, where PBS is funded by a mix of private charitable foundations and voluntary contributions to local affiliate stations from viewers like you. (Thank you!)
@lidnariq
I guess that must be the issue I have then. The TV was bought a few years after Japan became all digital in 2011 (there was a delay because of the big earthquake but only for specific regions).
The TV we borrowed at first was pre-2011 and there was no issue with it. For now I rarely use them and the one with RCA jacks are fine but I will need to find a solution someday.
Thank you for confirming my doubts.
I'm sorry for the double post but I thought that creating a new thread just to ask about modulator(?) was not appropriate in that case.
I remember when we were kids, the cheapest way was to use a vhs and just use that as intermediary to convert the signal and it was more than enough, especially with a not so great tv. Now that TV sets became better, if I buy a modulator, I guess I should go for one that goes directly from rf/rca to HDMI instead of a simple one that could convert from rf to rca?
I still need to do research on the subject but the first one I found seemed huge and expensive for something that doesn't do much and the same thing found on amazon us was 3 time the price on Japanese site (I guess they just imported it from the us). In that case, it may be better to look for something sold locally (from io-data, buffalo, elecom etc or similar japanese brands).
What are people experience with modulators? I think that was maybe thread about it (?).
I haven't seen a new TV with analog RF support for like 6-7 years or more around here. I am surprised to hear they still made them.
No big loss anyway, I'm not sure why anyone would want that travesty.
Potentially losing 15khz altogether (via composite, or even worse, RGB) is much worse. But considering how terrible modern TVs are at upscaling those signals already, it's practically already happened when it comes to the goal of playing video games.
tepples wrote:
But then countries in Europe are more likely to levy an annual tax on owners of "TVs", or devices that can receive RF broadcasts, to pay for public broadcasting. (It's as if instead of annual pledge drives, PBS had vans to detect the telltale emissions of demodulating a TV broadcast.) So there's a tax avoidance incentive toward buying a living-room-sized "monitor" that doesn't exist in the United States, where PBS is funded by a mix of private charitable foundations and voluntary contributions to local affiliate stations from viewers like you. (Thank you!)
None of this really applies to the real world. No one is buying monitors to avoid this fee. The TV license fee you're thinking of (which is NOT a tax in any countries I know of, which is another big issue) doesn't apply to being able to receive RF signals anymore, and hasn't since like the 80s. Any way you are able to receive the covered TV channels applies, which of course includes the digital tuners, but also cable services, etc.
Essentially if you own any single devices with the ability to go online (like, say, a phone), you need to pay. Basically, if you breathe, you need to pay.
If the TV license has become a capitation, then why don't governments avoid the additional cost of collecting the TV license and just take it out of income tax? The US does that for its fraction of public media funding, which comes through Corporation for Public Broadcasting as well as subject matter agencies such as National Science Foundation and National Endownment for the Arts.
tepples wrote:
If the TV license has become a capitation, then why don't governments avoid the additional cost of collecting the TV license and just take it out of income tax?
Everyone is asking the same question.
That is what is done here, except it comes from the social tax rather than the income tax.
errr, thread derailed
So even with a modulator (converter, whatever you want to call it), the tv will be an issue during the upscaling? I played the latest famicom with composite and it seemed fine but maybe I didn't look enough. Maybe the tv we have is better than expected.
Modern TVs tend to handle 240p signals very poorly. They usually treat it as 480i, meaning that you you get 30 fps video with 2 game frames interleaved together. This totally messes up with scrolling and flickering.
What are the kind of scrolling/flickering issues that could be encountered? With the tv we have at the moment, when I played Kirby with the kids with a famicom av, I do not remember noticing anything unusual and was able to finish the game without issue. I do not remember anything that looked like lag too.
As for rf to hdmi modulators, I didn't find any particular yet in Japan but the one I found information on the net, it seems that some may introduce lag. So it's not only the tv that cause lag but the modulator too?
I posted a GIF here which shows what 240p intepreted as 480i looks like, in slow motion:
https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?p=158915#p158915The issue isn't a loss of picture or anything, just you get alternating lines, and a framerate reduction to 30fps instead of 60.
I looked at the post and sorry to be thick on the subject since I want to be sure that I'm not interpreting the information improperly, the screen capture shown in the referred post, the left side is the 240p -> 480p and would be what I could expect on a tv that have lag issue?
If this is the case then my current television doesn't show such artefact. It's not an high end tv but a basic model from Panasonic.
edit:
I think it's the opposite, the left side is the signal before being de-interlaced and the result on the right nd showed in slow-motion. maybe the tv set drop frames, I cannot confirm until I would try it again on a normal tv set and this new one.
The picture on the left is 240p 60 incorrectly displayed as 480i 30
The picture on the right is 240p 60
(Also, GIF previews are corrupted on this forum, so please click on it to see the original image.)
Modern televisions I've used for an NES display an NES picture like on the left. (This is not really intended as an illustration of underlying signals it's exactly what it would look like on the TV. The image itself was taken with a capture device, but the result is the same.)
I've yet to seen a TV that actually does 240p from composite. I've seen 480p60 done through component (e.g. from a Wii), but never composite.
I think some TVs might do additional deinterlacing filtering for 480i to reduce the weave effect (
there's a bunch of methods for this), or might even try to do motion interpolation to turn it back into 60fps? I'm not sure. I've always seen modern TVs just treat composite as 480i only, with no extra filtering just alternating rows in weave like depicted in that image.
I have a Panasonic TV, and my experience is that it actually does 240p quite well, compared to what you are expecting for a HDTV. Definitely no deinterlacing, and RGB signals look completely crisp.
It's a plasma TV though, I'm not sure if yours are. Not too many of those anymore.
Only drawback is the lack of black scanlines, and a small bit of lag. Not something anyone would notice, but if you're, say, playing Tetris on a very high level, it makes a difference.
@rainwarrior
Thank you for clarifying the picture. I'm usually very picky about how thing are shown on the screen and see the difference between 30hz/60hz in game and prefer 60hz so if there would have been such artefact I would have remembered about it. There is a possibility that this tv does a not so bad job at upscaling composite signal even though it's an entry model. I could try to find the manual and see what they say on the subject. I could always someday take a video at 60fps from a phone but I think for now this is not relevant for this thread, since the question was regarding rf on new tv and now how to convert such signal for new tv. We never had issues playing wii game like taiko no tatsujin on this tv, no lag that I can remember.
@sumez
The tv was bought after japan converted all their signal to digital in 2011, my guess around 2012~2013 so most TV (if not all) at that time were LCD. I think they were promoting some new technology for faster panel but it's been such a long time ago that I do not remember the details about it. I think the only way to know more will be to look at the manual or if I ask the manufacturer directly.
Here's a slow-motion simulation of what scrolling looks like on my TV:
Attachment:
felix-480i.gif [ 499.77 KiB | Viewed 2519 times ]
This is completely unacceptable.
@tokumaru
Ouch. I totally agree. I't not acceptable. Another thing that is maybe less common these days on tv (or maybe it is still there?) is ghosting like I have on my old pc monitor. When I test on emulators and there is a contrasting section of colors in a stage, some part will become darker or disappear, which is annoying since when you stop moving, the color goes back to normal. It only appears during fast movement.
That ghosting is motion blur inherent to all LCDs, some do it less than others. On my tabletlaptop's IPS panel transitions from dark to bright are much slower than the other way and small details in dark stuff pretty much disappear when things move, highly annoying indeed.
My parents' Panasonic plasma from roughly 2010 timeframe handles 240p as like Tokumaru's example and all other LCD and plasmas I have seen do the same thing. There certainly are some that do it correctly but they seem to be pretty uncommon.
I did some research on my current television and it is a panasonic th-l32c5 that came out around 2012/02. It contains an ipsα panel with LCD backlight, where ipsα ust seems to be a gimmick name for their Bravia brand. I think it's a common model that came out only in Japan.
There seems that they added something to reduce ghosting so the panel must be fast to some degree. The 32" in only 720p while other where 1080p and from the 37" they could go up to 120fps. I was not even aware of that. It support 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i.
I just bought the tv because we only had a CRT and needed a digital one fast. Now that I check the review, the one we bought was reviewed very well so I guess we were lucky. One person mentioned in the review that he was concerned about speed but was surprised by quality and felt it was acceptable compared to CRT. The only part is no analog anymore but I guess I just need to figure out what to use to convert the signal.
Now I really want to test it again (I didn't use the famicom in ages) to see if my eyes didn't trick me or something.
There is to be a list of TVs tested for 240p compatibility here:
https://www.hdretrovision.com/240p/Seems to be a lot of variation in the results, even between the same brand. I'm a bit surprised how many apparently won't even accept a 240p signal as input in the first place? There are a bunch listed that apparently display 240p quite well, too.
I guess I've been unlucky for not having yet encountered that, but not
too unlucky, since I also haven't seen a TV completely fail to produce a picture from it.
I will look at this site, seems to have a lot of interesting information on the subject. I don't know if they talk about Japanese sets yet.
I have been searching for a converter that could have done rf to hdmi so I could have used one of my famiom near my computer but it seems quite uncommon actually in Japan or I do not search with appropriate words in Japanese.
For connecting to my tv set, I could try the composite mod since I have a few junk famicom lying around but the converter would have saved time and allow to use on a PC monitor, which is a plus (the rest of the family don't really "share" much the tv
)
How hard is the composite mod to do for someone that knows how to solder but is have very little knowledge about electronics?
Banshaku wrote:
How hard is the composite mod to do for someone that knows how to solder but is have very little knowledge about electronics?
It's a pretty simple construction.
I used this schematic by kyuusaku, and it worked very well for me:
Here's the original thread where I found that:
http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=4713
Does this mod also work for the top loader or are things different somehow?
It's the same 2C02.
The only possible variability is the amount of impedance-induced hue rotation, where higher gain (i.e. multiple voltage buffers) might (maybe) reduce the amount of differential phase distortion (i.e. where colors $3x aren't the exact same hue as colors $0x)
I browsed the thread very fast and it seems that you need to cut the trace for that pin to avoid jailbars in some case. I may have said that it was some junk famicom but what I meant is that I found them in the junk section, which in Japan means "things we didn't even bother to test"
. They seems to be working well it just that cutting trace and maybe breaking things along the way scare me a little bit ^^;;
The diagram with the pin seems to be about the video so I guess there must be something else to be done for the audio. I will continue to read the thread on the subject.
You don't need to cut any traces or lift any pins to do that mod. (I didn't.) Everybody seems to report different amounts of jailbars, but I was maybe lucky that they weren't significant for me.
The audio signal just comes straight from the audio return pin on the cartridge connector. Only a wire is needed. (I think some people use a small capacitor in line here, though.)
As for the jailbars, I wouldn't pay any attention to all the weird suggestions people have for that unless you first do the simple mod and determine that it's a problem for you. A lot of the things people suggest for that seem really complicated (desoldering PPU, etc.) or dubious/superstitious.
If you're worried about damaging things by cutting a trace, you can instead just desolder the original transistor amplifier or its pull-up resistor (Q1 and R12 on Electronics Junker's schematic) instead.
That's far more reversible.
...also, I can't seem to find that image I linked in the thread anymore, which is kind of weird? There is a very similar alternative linked
here but it switches the resistor/capacitor components slightly. I'm not sure if this works better/worse, I only tried kyuusaku's diagram.
lidnariq wrote:
If you're worried about damaging things by cutting a trace, you can instead just desolder the original transistor amplifier or its pull-up resistor (Q1 and R12 on Electronics Junker's schematic) instead.
I think some people actually suggest desoldering the original amplifier to use for the transistor in the mod circuit. (I just used a new one, and left everything intact.)
So that mod works just by soldering the new circuit in? No need to cut/desolder anything? Every guide I ever saw said you had to cut/remove stuff, which I too am not very fond of.
Given Kyuusaku's original schematic, I think you could even just leave the original 2SA937 in place (because it's the same type of transistor and hooked up the same way), and just remove R12. Then add the two new resistors and capacitor.
If you want an even less visible modification, you might be able to bypass the RF modulator altogether and repurpose the RF output jack to emit baseband video instead. Still need a place for the baseband audio output jack, though.
While searching about what is a 2SA937 (like I mentioned, I don't know much about electronic yet) I ended up on some Japanese website that one seems to update the mod to improve the jailbar by adding some caps(?) :
http://68000.web.fc2.com/nes_composite/ ... osite.htmlAnd other site which modify the famicom for hdmi instead (maybe this is something already known, I'm quite late in nes news these days):
http://vaot.mydns.jp/fc/hi-def-RWFamicom.htm the hdmi link came from the author site:
http://vaot.mydns.jp/fc/Maybe I ended up on something interesting or it is something that everybody knows and I'm just shaming myself by posting obvious things ^^;; If those things were unknown, I can translate some of the content, if necessary. But I guess someone that knows electronic can guess just by looking at some of the hardware used.
edit:
And this page seems to talk about a solution for jailbars on famicom:
http://vaot.mydns.jp/fc/noise5.htmI'm too illiterate in electronic to confirms the content ^^;; I think I found an interesting site. I would love to know more about electronics first though.
rainwarrior wrote:
As for the jailbars, I wouldn't pay any attention to all the weird suggestions people have for that unless you first do the simple mod and determine that it's a problem for you. A lot of the things people suggest for that seem really complicated (desoldering PPU, etc.) or dubious/superstitious.
For what it's worth, my simple composite mod on my top loader gives me a better composite image than any regular front loader NES I have seen, free of jailbars. I did the thing where I desolder reuse a transistor used for the RF output.
Banshaku wrote:
improve the jailbar by adding some caps(?) :
The 2A03 and 2C02 are so-called "mixed signal" devices. "mixed" because they are have both digital and analog portions inside.
Modern "mixed signal" devices have separate power supply pins for the two types of signals, allowing a very clean (without any voltage variation) power supply for analog and a much rougher supply for digital.
But the 2C02 doesn't. Internally, the same 5V are used for both.
A major source of noise is this variation on the 5V line; especially for the 2C02 which has no feedback (and so no power supply "rejection") internally. The video stage is nothing more than a long chain of resistors, and a multiplexer to choose between one of the those voltages.
Adding the capacitors makes the 5V supply "firmer", so that it changes voltage less in response to other devices needing more or less power. This, in turn, means less noise should be visible inside the video output.
Quote:
And other site which modify the famicom for hdmi instead (maybe this is something already known, I'm quite late in nes news these days)
That's kevtris's project.
Oh, that's why it looked familiar but didn't know why. Thank you for clarifying that part and the caps one. I always enjoy reading the explanations even though my knowledge is limited on the subject but I'm always grateful about such information.
So the site was nothing new after all. I was just getting exited for nothing but it was fun while it lasted
As for the Kevtris mod, that is something I would have loved to add to one unit since it could be connected later to a pc monitor and with the limited space in Japan, that would have been very useful. But.... After seeing the images on how it was installed... I don't think I can do that.
My old monitor for some odd reason support components cables (not the japanese d-terminal type, the RCA based one) so maybe figuring out a way to convert the signal that way would make more sense even though the quality was not so great when I tried a PS2 long time ago. I will check if there is information about that on the web.
The two japanese sites linked seem to advocate very similar solutions.
1. A large, 330uF capacitor on the power rail. The sites differ on whether solid polymer or standard electrolytic is best.
2. Replace .1uF capacitors with 1.5uF capacitors (GPM revisions) or add 2.2uF capacitors (HVC revisions), multilayer ceramic.
3. Cut Pin 21 or eliminate the trace to the base pin on the video amplifier transistor or remove the video signal wire from the board
4. Add a 1nF capacitor across the video and ground lines (optional).
I have read that it is best to add a 220uF capacitor at the audio output pin, to eliminate DC offset perhaps.
The solution are similar since the first site used the second one as a reference for removing the noise (that what it mentions beside the link). I should have mentioned how those 2 links are related from the beginning. For this, I apologize.
I found the first link when searching about the 2SA937. Then from that site, I checked the links then ended up on the second site (the first link doesn't work anymore).
lidnariq wrote:
In the US, a number of modern televisions have just dropped the
type F connector altogether, instead being some combination of monitor and treacherous WiFi client.
Haven't heard about that, digital OTA TV uses the same antennas as analog so it's surprising to see (every TV I've seen with a digital tuner also scans the analog frequencies during the "auto scan" function). Anyway, the simplest solution is probably to hook up the Famicom's RF out to a VCR and then plug the VCR's composite out into your TV.
I'm probably off-topic a bit (I read the first page or so), but:
I talked
some time ago (see thread details) about using an original Famicom (RF-based) on my 13" Sony KV-13FS100 (Trinitron / Wega) CRT television in the United States. I had no problems getting it to work, assuming I used a NES RF adapter instead of the Famicom RF adapter. I believe it was determined that my TV actually seemed to handle things correctly, while not all North American TVs would do this. I guess I "got lucky" with the Sony I have.
I posted a follow-up story
in this post/thread, where I was able to get the same setup working fine on my neighbour's TV, which was an actual Japanese TV (they previously lived in Japan and relocated to the US). It also worked, though I had to use a different channel (something like channel 10 or C31) compared to US TVs (and that makes sense).
There is
a Youtube video from a fellow talking about how to do it, and how to adjust the Famicom trimmer pot to get a signal properly. Be sure to read the video description for technical details. I myself didn't have to adjust such things on any of my equipment. lidnariq et al might enjoy that video more than myself (a bit over my head).
I have used my Famicom on four of my TVs and a VCR and never had a problem. I live in the US and believe that so long as the channels went up to 95-96, you are unlikely to have an issue.