Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: XDelusion on November 11, 2011, 08:28:36 PM
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/Amiga-500-600-1200-1000-2000-3000-4000-PAL-60Hz-Scandoubler-Flickerfixer-/280770061858?pt=UK_VintageComputing_RL&hash=item415f332622
Any body try one of these?
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It looks like one of these put in a box with a DB23 cable.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/140521303998?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649
It looks like a fairly nice job. There are several posts on them recently. They are supposed to work fairly well and are 24 bit.
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so he buys @$40 US and sells @$160 US?
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Yeah, the US dollar is really weak in Europe these days! LOL
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I think he's earning his money. He has to buy the rgb board, chassis, db23 connector, switches and whatever else he puts inside the box and I'm sure it takes him a couple of hours to put one together and test it. Not to mention the time he spent figuring out how to do it and make it work. If you buy the raw board, you have to figure out how to make it work with an Amiga in a stable configuration. Then, if one gets damaged in shipping, he has to take it back and either fix or replace it and probably has to swallow the shipping charge.
I've thought about trying one of these Arcade converters but I've got too many projects going on right now. I know I'd spend some time putting it into a chassis if I got one.
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I've used this scan converter before. it's ok, but requires a little setup (thru the built-in menu).
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I have the same board, works OK for $35, not worth $160.
I put mine in Radio Shack box, added 9pin connector for Amiga RGB, and I'm using 25pin-9pin Amiga monitor cable.
Have problems with PAL resolutions.
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I was playing with this board again to see if I can get it to work in PAL and finally success.
The problem was with the H V Position and H V Size settings.
The main issue is that if you set the NTSC side first then the PAL will be screwed up. So I messed with settings in PAL resolution till I got good picture, then modified the settings that will work on NTSC side at the same time.
My setting for future reference:
H POS 56
V POS 16
H Size 48
V Size 59
So, not bad for $35.
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I was playing with this board again to see if I can get it to work in PAL and finally success.
The problem was with the H V Position and H V Size settings.
The main issue is that if you set the NTSC side first then the PAL will be screwed up. So I messed with settings in PAL resolution till I got good picture, then modified the settings that will work on NTSC side at the same time.
My setting for future reference:
H POS 56
V POS 16
H Size 48
V Size 59
So, not bad for $35.
Where can I find one of these?
Tony
wa9yoz@arrl.net
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Where can I find one of these?
Tony
wa9yoz@arrl.net (wa9yoz@arrl.net)
Here and it's $32 with free shipping
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Arcade-Game-RGB-CGA-EGA-YUV-VGA-Video-Converter-HD-/330605923350
Just ask if it's V4.0.
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I think he's earning his money. He has to buy the rgb board, chassis, db23 connector, switches and whatever else he puts inside the box and I'm sure it takes him a couple of hours to put one together and test it. Not to mention the time he spent figuring out how to do it and make it work. If you buy the raw board, you have to figure out how to make it work with an Amiga in a stable configuration. Then, if one gets damaged in shipping, he has to take it back and either fix or replace it and probably has to swallow the shipping charge.
I've thought about trying one of these Arcade converters but I've got too many projects going on right now. I know I'd spend some time putting it into a chassis if I got one.
Agree!
Plus powersupply and cables. Plus time. All YOU have to do is plug it in. Why would people think that price is expensive? That's why each batch he makes sells out in no time.
Previous posts sound like a case of; "I want it all and I want it for zip!" If you want it cheaper get the card and do it yourself. For the same raw materials I bet you find yourself up around the $80us mark add the time you take to build it and,,, yep $150us.
It obviously is worth $160 because it sells for that like hot cakes..
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Most of us tinker with stuff, so it shouldn't be a problem make it work. Those that can't do it, must pay the price.
My original idea and this is how I made it, see pictures:
$32 GBS
$10 Case from Radio Shack
$5 DB9 connector
$5 5v 2A PS from Goodwill
Some cutting tools and sharp knife
Pin 1 - BLACK (GND)
PIN 3 - RED
PIN 3 - GREEN
PIN 5 - BLUE
PIN 7 - GRAY (SYNC)
This is made so that you can use your existing 1084 Amiga monitor cable.
There are some 1084 cables with DIN connector, with those you are out of luck.
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Any idea what happens if one of these is fed a genuine VGA signal, e.g. a productivity 640x480 screenmode? Does it pass it through unaltered? Thanks.
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Any idea what happens if one of these is fed a genuine VGA signal, e.g. a productivity 640x480 screenmode? Does it pass it through unaltered? Thanks.
I just tried the Multiscan 31KHz 640x480 mode, and looks like it worked, but it was not perfect. The screen was shifter up from NTSC position, so the menu bar was not seen.
You need to play with screen controls to center the picture, also I noticed that the screen was getting brighter every few seconds.
Because Amiga can generate custom screen modes, it's kinda hard to pre-adjust all screen modes to work w/o some adjustments.
That's why I had hard time getting NTSC and PAL to work together. I have adjusted for a perfect picture using NTSC, but then PAL was screw up.
Also DBLPAL and DBLNTSC does not work, but you don't need it.
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I just tried the Multiscan 31KHz 640x480 mode, and looks like it worked, but it was not perfect.
Sounds encouraging though, thanks for testing!
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$5 DB9 connector
$5 5v 2A PS from Goodwill
You got ripped off.
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You got ripped off.
The $5 DB9 is a worst case scenario, if I needed today at Radio Shack, I actually got it for FREE.
The 5V PS is also free from my LAB's IP Phone,the pricing is based on my local Goodwill store, and I dont think that I can find it locally any cheaper then that.:insane:
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All the thrift stores near me charge a dollar or less for loose power bricks and stuff, but I could see paying $5 at a surplus store.
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Has anyone managed to get the board powered from the power provided by Amiga's DB23 video port?
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Has anyone managed to get the board powered from the power provided by Amiga's DB23 video port?
I wouldn't try it as the Amiga port doesn't really supply enough current.
The +5volt from the Amiga video port is meant to be 100ma max, the GBS video converter needs about 400ma minimum.
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The unit draws 400mA and max draw for the video port at 5V is 100mA http://old.pinouts.ru/Video/AmigaVideo_pinout.shtml
So, I would not recommend it.
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There was a guy selling these units on eBay and from memory, it was powered by the DB23 video port.
I wonder how he did it?
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you sure thats how they were powered? I wouldn't be doing it...
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I'm pretty sure he stated it in the auction - a DB23 cable was soldered onto the board and that was the only cable...
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the power figures from the amiga are probably fairly "safe" figures...
if you were to regulate the 12v @ 100ma, you'd probably be able to get 5volts @ 200ma ;)
combine that with the 5volts @ 100ma...
I still wouldn't do it though! lol
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Fair call... a 5V PSU isn't that much trouble to hook up to the board... :)
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I totally agree it's not a bad deal assembled.
I built mine super cheap tho.. (Because I am super cheap..)
GBS-8200 - c. $32
5v2A PSU - c. $2
Black Plastic case - Free (It came with a bunch of CA (Computer Associates) CDs in it, but we get a new pack every year..)
DB23 - Free (Gutted an A520 RF Modulator)
Maybe 2 hours tech time - Free (and overcharged at that, if you saw my solder skills, or lack thereof..)
Ain't the purtiest, but it's working.. ;-)
TBH, I haven't used it all that much yet.. I really like my 1084s monitors.
This is more of a back up, in case of 1084s tragedy at some time in the future..
It's no Indivision, but for the money.... Not too shabby... ;-)
desiv
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I am definitely going to get one of these video converter's but I am still a little confused about inputing the RGB signal and the type of power supply used.
Isn't it possible just to use the external RGB input on the front of the board?
Also, what are the exact specs of the power supply? I see it's 5v and 2A, but what is the tip polarity (+ or -). Thanks.
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Any body try one of these?
For that price I prefer to buy a new Indivision.
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For that price I prefer to buy a new Indivision.
My thoughts exactly!
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I've got the 8220 model and it works pretty well imo - I mounted mine on a piece of perspex with thin rubber feet and installed a power switch so I dont need to keep un/plugging in the damn thing each time.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71121999/Amiga/2013-01-09%2019.28.49.jpg)
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I've just recently found out about these and am getting quite excited!
$32 with free shipping for a flicker fixer? Sounds too good to be true (even if I have to make my own cable).
Can't be that easy? Can it?
There are a ton of threads about using this converter - but no one seems to be stating the obvious - what is the video quality like? Same as RGB quality on a 1084? Poor as composite? More like S-Video quality?
Can someone please describe the video quality? If it's as good as native RGB on a 1084 then I'm buying one of these immediately for my A500!
Thanks.
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Can someone please describe the video quality? If it's as good as native RGB on a 1084 then I'm buying one of these immediately for my A500!
lol
not even close.
I had one before and thought the video quality was garbage to be honest. I tested it with both a LCD and CRT monitor. Keep in mind everything inputted into it is automatically upscaled to 60Hz NTSC. If you play a PAL game or Demo (virtually all of them), then you will have jerky scrolling that isn't smooth at all. Plus there are graphical glitches that pop up all the time. And I saw issues with workbench cursor having glitches around it.
All in all, I think it's a lousy solution. It might be ok if you are inputting nothing but NTSC stuff like a SNES or Genesis to scale up to a VGA monitor. But as soon as you input something can run at multiple resolutions and different refresh rates, this thing falls down. Hard.
I personally think a good Svideo adapter like the one Nathan (amigamaniac) use to build give you far better quality (while maintaining proper 50/60Hz screen refresh) than this POS.
IMHO
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lol
not even close.
IMHO
That's wierd. I've seen other posts where people are saying it's quite good. I wish I could see a high quality screen grab so I can judge better.
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The output is OK....
if your only choice is the GBS, or composite, then the GBS is fantastic....
It'll never be as good as RBG/scart, it does weird things to the video.
I'll try to take some good pics later, comparing scart to the GBS, on the same monitor!
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GBS set to 1024 x 786, which is this LCDs native resolution...
It will often create weird banding in solid colours, or patterns, whereas the scart displays it as a proper, solid colour...
Keep in mind this monitor is rubbish, and doesn't display any image properly centred :whack:
GBS
(http://imageshack.us/a/img843/296/imgp2370e.jpg)
SCART
(http://imageshack.us/a/img51/5449/imgp2371u.jpg)
The GBS also creates these weird patterns around the mouse pointer... I didn't even bother photographing them.
There's also often a weird ghosting around text, as mentioned before, this screen isn't great, so the scart image looks a bit odd too :whack: you can also see in the following pic, that along the row of "D" in HD0, HD1, HD2, etc, its blurry.... the GBS doesn't do a very good job of upscaling... grey also seems to be displayed slightly blue, although you can probably adjust this ;)
GBS
(http://imageshack.us/a/img585/301/imgp2377.jpg)
SCART
(http://imageshack.us/a/img266/4642/imgp2376j.jpg)
SO! if you're needing a way to connect your Amiga to an LCD TV for playing games, then I'm sure you'll be more than happy with the GBS.
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I found anything moving looks weird. The mouse pointer is a good example, a couple of games I tried through it didn't display right either.
To be honest look around for an s-video/scart solution or by a flickerfixer/scandoubler.
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Kipper2k has a new S-Video/Composite adapter for $35cad.
http://kipper2k.com/amigaforsale/
(http://kipper2k.com/amigaforsale/svid01.jpg)
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I would take a solid svideo connection over this POS anyday.
The jerky scrolling for PAL games and demos completely makes this device un-recommendable in my opinion.
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AmmoJammo,
Thanks a lot for those pictures. They were EXTREMELY informative. I agree that if you have nothing, or mostly do gaming, having one of these Chinese boards may be better than nothing. But the banding on the solid colours is just unuseable for my purposes (DPaint painting - where solid colours would come up a lot).
I'm assuming the second photo in each pair is SCART?
You guys are lucky to have SCART in Europe. We didn't get anything decent like that until S-Video came around.
As for the S-Video adapter, thanks Djos. I actually have a few Amiga CRT monitors handy at the moment, but was just considering the Chinese flicker fixer because it would give me some backup and an option to move onto commonly available LCDs when these CRTs died. Hopefully when they do there will be a better solution. I can't really use one of Jens' Indvisions right now, because I've got a few other things inside my A500 that would make if very difficult to fit another internal device.
So the Commodore CRTs will have to do for now.
Thanks very much.
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Yes, each second photo is scart.
I sent the workbench backdrop to a very fine checker board pattern... I think? :p
This is the GBS attempt...
(http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/4140/imgp2382m.jpg)
VS the SCART.
(http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/4310/imgp2384w.jpg)
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Thanks a lot for those pictures. They were EXTREMELY informative. I agree that if you have nothing, or mostly do gaming, having one of these Chinese boards may be better than nothing. But the banding on the solid colours is just unuseable for my purposes (DPaint painting - where solid colours would come up a lot).
If anyone wants a good flickerfixer they can always buy a used DCE Scan Magic from someone. I have one since forever and it is awesome. It displays all 16.7 million Amiga 1200 colors and it does NOT promote PAL into 60 hz so all PAL games look great! I mostly only play PAL games.
DCE ScanMagic works in 1280x512 mode, you can bet the GBS does not.
Or you can wait until the new superduper ScanJuggler XAGA comes out.
No external flickerfixer can ever be as good as an internal one. It simply is not possible. Once the signal has left the Amiga it is no longer digital. It is analog at that point. It must then be realtime digitized back into digital, fiddled with, then reoutput as analog again. Ugh. Its hopeless.
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If anyone wants a good flickerfixer they can always buy a used DCE Scan Magic from someone. I have one since forever and it is awesome. It displays all 16.7 million Amiga 1200 colors and it does NOT promote PAL into 60 hz so all PAL games look great! I mostly only play PAL games.
DCE ScanMagic works in 1280x512 mode, you can bet the GBS does not.
I had a DCE scan magic external and I couldnt get PAL modes to work on my dell monitor.. ntsc looked great though. Perfect picture. I have an mk2 now operating in all modes on my vizio hdmi tv but the scaling and positioning are all off. I wonder if we will ever see the new core and tool :( I have a dual monitor setup with the mk2 on the 22" HDMI vizio tv and a sony 20" RGB pro studio monitor off rgb output. Ill tell you this for any gaming or demo watching 100% better on the RGB monitor. But for productivity mk2 in highgfx is sweet.
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Must say that I was quite surprised too see the output quality of the GBS, I really thought that it would be better than scart. I was considering to buy a GBS just for checking it out, but now I think I will just save my money.
Thanks for the pictures AmmoJammo.
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you can improve the quality of the GBS by adding these simple mods from Ian Stedman:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71121999/Amiga/SCART_cable_with_LCD_Fix_v2.png)
here's what mine looks like:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71121999/Amiga/2013-02-01%2010.30.43.jpg)
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71121999/Amiga/2013-02-01%2010.34.28.jpg)
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71121999/Amiga/2013-02-01%2010.39.18.jpg)
It's not perfect as the GBS still has trouble dealing with very fine patterns but this does remove the worst of the banding.
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You guys are lucky to have SCART in Europe. We didn't get anything decent like that until S-Video came around.
Yes but why was it so? I can certainly understand why scart wasn't an option in America, because it was also called an euro connector, and in America only american standards will do :)
But why didn't you have a similar alternative standard? Am I right in assuming that it was the movie industry that was afraid of the possibility for people to copy video tapes with decent quality?
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SCART was a pretty expensive connectivity option to implement and this had a lot to do with OEM's in countries outside of Europe ignoring the standard.
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Yes but why was it so? I can certainly understand why scart wasn't an option in America, because it was also called an euro connector, and in America only american standards will do :)
But why didn't you have a similar alternative standard? Am I right in assuming that it was the movie industry that was afraid of the possibility for people to copy video tapes with decent quality?
Well, I'm not in America, I'm in Canada, but we shared the NTSC standard.
Not only did we not have something as good as SCART - we didn't even get separate composite / audio connectors until the early to mid 1990s on our televisions. We had to use the 75-Ohm RF "cable tv" connector.
You might have got the audio/video composite connectors on expensive TV's slightly earlier, but in the average price range it was 75-Ohm connector, or even worse, 75-ohm connector adapter going to the two TV aerial bolts on the back of the TV.
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Well, I'm not in America, I'm in Canada, but we shared the NTSC standard.
Not only did we not have something as good as SCART - we didn't even get separate composite / audio connectors until the early to mid 1990s on our televisions. We had to use the 75-Ohm RF "cable tv" connector.
You might have got the audio/video composite connectors on expensive TV's slightly earlier, but in the average price range it was 75-Ohm connector, or even worse, 75-ohm connector adapter going to the two TV aerial bolts on the back of the TV.
Yeah same deal here in Australia (PAL), even when Composh!te became standard it wasnt even stereo on most tv's until Component inputs became standard with the advent of DVD players.
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Yeah same deal here in Australia (PAL), even when Composh!te became standard it wasnt even stereo on most tv's until Component inputs became standard with the advent of DVD players.
Yup, it was a mono audio input and you had to buy a Y-adapter to turn your stereo VCR into mono to view on the TV.
Then around 1997 S-Video started showing up slowly with the advent of DVD players (it was around a few years earlier for videophiles, but didn't trickle down to the general consumer until DVD players came out).
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you can improve the quality of the GBS by adding these simple mods from Ian Stedman:
OK, so using the SCART mods does help with the quality then.
SCART was a pretty expensive connectivity option to implement and this had a lot to do with OEM's in countries outside of Europe ignoring the standard.
So that explains it then :)
But I must say that SCART wasn't that great in the 80's because many of the TV's and video players sold didn't use all pins of the connector. I doubt that the RGB to SCART cable would work on the stuff I owned back then for example.
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OK, so using the SCART mods does help with the quality then.
It does, it's not perfect but still an improvement.
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It works, but some distortion around pointer..
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Yes but why was it so? I can certainly understand why scart wasn't an option in America, because it was also called an euro connector, and in America only american standards will do :)
But why didn't you have a similar alternative standard? Am I right in assuming that it was the movie industry that was afraid of the possibility for people to copy video tapes with decent quality?
I doubt it, even though they have SCART I have never seen a VHS deck that could output or record in anything other than composite video.
SCART became popular in Europe because of France using it for their online services back in the late 70's and early 80's. There was not enough consumer demand for it in America & without government enforcing it (like France did) it was never going to happen. The last time I was in America the TV's in the hotel were hooked up to a set top box by RF.
I don't remember SCART being that common on TV's in the UK until the late 80's.
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There was not enough consumer demand for it in America
There was plenty of consumer demand.
But since nobody sold SCART devices in USA, nobody could buy them.
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Well, I'm not in America, I'm in Canada...
Last time I checked, both Canada and Mexico were part of North America.
Did you guys move recently?
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Last time I checked, both Canada and Mexico were part of North America.
Did you guys move recently?
Yeah, I know we're part of "the Americas" literally speaking. But in Canada we all call the USA "America" and its citizens "Americans". We would never call ourselves "Americans" and if you called a Canadian that he/she would probably correct you or may even take slight offense. Nothing against the USA, it is a great country.
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Well, I'm not in America, I'm in Canada, but we shared the NTSC standard.
Not only did we not have something as good as SCART - we didn't even get separate composite / audio connectors until the early to mid 1990s on our televisions. We had to use the 75-Ohm RF "cable tv" connector.
You might have got the audio/video composite connectors on expensive TV's slightly earlier, but in the average price range it was 75-Ohm connector, or even worse, 75-ohm connector adapter going to the two TV aerial bolts on the back of the TV.
HeHe... so it was that bad then! But with these limitations in mind, it suddenly makes it more clear to me why most C64 and Amiga users in America and Canada had real monitors instead of TV's connected to their computers. In Europe it was quite common to use a TV as display, especially for gaming.
I doubt it, even though they have SCART I have never seen a VHS deck that could output or record in anything other than composite video.
SCART became popular in Europe because of France using it for their online services back in the late 70's and early 80's. There was not enough consumer demand for it in America & without government enforcing it (like France did) it was never going to happen. The last time I was in America the TV's in the hotel were hooked up to a set top box by RF.
I don't remember SCART being that common on TV's in the UK until the late 80's.
Yes it was like this here in Norway as well. But it might be possible that some of the later VHS players made full use of the SCART connector though. Anyway, I can't remember ever seeing one that didn't have seperate video and audio connectors in addition to RF. Before SCART came along, there was a few of them which had some very odd connector types as well.
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Yeah, I know we're part of "the Americas" literally speaking. But in Canada we all call the USA "America" and its citizens "Americans". We would never call ourselves "Americans" and if you called a Canadian that he/she would probably correct you or may even take slight offense. Nothing against the USA, it is a great country.
Maybe it's like calling people from Ireland and Scotland for English :)
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Arent Canadians just Americans that cant pronounce "about" properly?
;)
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Arent Canadians just Americans that cant pronounce "about" properly?
;)
Aren't Australians just New Zealanders who can't pronounce "fish n' chips" correctly! I mean, it's SUPPOSED to sound like "Fashion shops", after all. ;-)
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I had scart in australia ;) you could buy nice tv's, I had a loewe, it was awesome. 2 scart input. the dreamcast with scart LOVED it :)
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We got the lousy video connections and inconsistent colour of NTSC, while our euro PALs just had to live with a pitiful refresh rate.
It's one of those 'grass is greener' situations, except that in the case of NTSC, the grass wasn't always green.
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Aren't Australians just New Zealanders who can't pronounce "fish n' chips" correctly! I mean, it's SUPPOSED to sound like "Fashion shops", after all. ;-)
:D
Ah our beloved sheep loving cousins, I think more of them live in Australia than NZ now! :D
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:D
Ah our beloved sheep loving cousins, I think more of them live in Australia than NZ now! :D
That's okay. I think by now Hollywood, California is run by Canadians (secretly, of course). We must export at least 75% of our talent there!