A cheaper alternative to a ScanDoubler/FlickerFixer - RGB to S-Video on LCD

[Cammy]

Hi everyone. I've been using this setup on a few of my Amigas for a while and have been meaning to make a better video demonstration showing the difference between the blurry output from the Amiga A1200's internal Composite and the sharp output from a RGB to S-Video adapter. Using one of these cheap adapters with a LCD TV you'll get a crystal-clear, flicker-free Workbench and vibrant games that don't bleed colour as they do through the native output.

Of course if your LCD TV has Scart input, then you only need an even cheaper RGB-Scart cable to enjoy similar results.

First you will see me demonstrate a few things through Composite, where you'll notice significant colour bleed, dot-crawl, interference and strange discolouration artifacts such as the orange tiger in my wallpaper turning green when I drag the screen down to reveal another screen behind it. Half way through the demonstration my cameraman switches us over to S-Video where I go through the demonstration again so you can notice firstly how much sharper and more stable the image is, and then watch as I drag the screens around without any colour distortion.

Unfortunately the cheap camera we used doesn't fully do it justice, it couldn't really focus on the screen enough to show just how sharp the S-Video output is, or how badly warped the colour and ghosting is through Composite. I have included some high definition photos of the same software running through both outputs on the same LCD screen.

[YOUTUBE]4L2279fq258[/YOUTUBE]

Here are some high resolution photos (I apologize to anyone who waited too long for these to load) showing first the Composite then S-Video (my hero). What do you think of the difference?














And here are some screenshots of those screens:

[Cammy]

Oh, and by the way, the demonstration was performed on an A1200 running the standard 14Mhz 68EC020 CPU with a simple DKB 1202 8MB RAM/FPU card added rather than an accelerator. Doom would run a little smoother if I wasn't running two Operating Systems and several applications in each at the same time.

Also, Doom is running in NTSC mode while Workbench and MacOS are both running in PAL, which explains why the display jumps a bit when I flip between screens.

That's right, no accelerator, just a bit of extra RAM in a stock A1200.

[Cammy]

The monitor I use is a Vivid LCD TV from Aldi. They can't be bought in shops normally, Aldi just has these special deals once a year where they have TVs that last for about ten minutes after the doors open. I have to line up for over an hour before the shop opens so I can rush in and buy them. I got these little ones a few years ago and a larger one this year, which I use now on my main A1200.

[Cammy]

Scart is quite common in Europe but not in North America or Australia, which is why many of us must use these RGB-S-Video adapters rather than RGB-Scart. Hopefully AmigaManiac will have new stock online soon if anyone wants one.

[Cammy]

Oh, I've tried all of my LCD TVs through a RGB-VGA adapter (silver Commodore one) and the only modes that worked were Multiscan 640x480. Unfortunately PAL and NTSC didn't work on them. The Indivision does though.