Work is happening on the NTSC version but no ETA yet. Unfortunately c0pperdragon has had to cease sales on all Lumacode products until 2025. RGBtoHDMI alpha firmware with NES Lumacode support can be found here: github.com/c0pperdragon/LumaCode/wiki/PPUdigitizer-(for-NES) Support on the OSSC (including colour emphasis bits) is available as of firmware v1.11.
Once he can get it all Squared maybe make a internal make the parts smaller to internalize the rasberry pie and hat added to it inside and then have a hdmi port that can be added anywhere into the system
The consumer market really should've adopted SDI, the professional standard for delivering digital HD video and audio over a single coaxial cable, just like used for RF or composite video. But it lacks HDCP, so the copyright police absolutely never would've allowed it.
A few years ago I installed a Hi-Def NES along with a NESessity 1.4 board in my NES and not once have I looked back (okay one time; when I saw Hogan's Alley at the vintage game store in my town and wished I could use a Zapper with a modern TV). So happy to see there are new HDMI solutions on the horizon. I just wish something would be done for the SNES!
The “Digitizer” name will lead people to believe that this is digitizing analog when it is actually replicating the PPU’s functions to generate digital video from the data bus… the same way Hi-Def NES, RGB Blaster, and NESRGB generate their digital source. Before anyone assumes it’s somehow less digital than the Hi-Def NES: the “Digitizer” board isn’t digitizing anything. :)
I have a hard time seeing it works completely the same way given the EXT0-3 pins are still grounded. With less data extracted from the PPU, more parts must be emulated, no? Do you know how NESRGB works? It's quite ingenious.
@@mirabilis Yes, because the PPU does not have RGB or digital video externally accessible, the NES RGB replicates the functions of the PPU in FPGA and runs in tandem with the original… so it creates its own digital source. Hi-Def NES also controls the CPU clocks and replicates various audio hardware that neither this kit nor the NESRGB does, so I don’t expect it to need all the same connections. Meanwhile, RGB Blaster is able to do this by sniffing the CPU and PPU data bus through the cartridge port, so perhaps this has more in common with RGB Blaster. :)
It's crazy when you think about it. You put a daughterboard in your console, hundred to thousand times more powerful than the console itself, just to get better video output.
@@iulianispas8634not true, if the mod is done properly. It adds value, instead if you do it wrong, or looking for just an og experience. Guess you cant sell your stock ness for 100$, bet this will sell for that price, no matter the yellowing.
@@ClosestNearUtopia my stock Nes and Famicom have a micro Av mod a transmiter board hiden under the mobo no holes( the mode can be undone easy) and stay proud in a glass display case . I play nes on a Famicom clone with wireless controlers and hdmi 33£ aliexpress . Unfortunetly the clone dont work with everdrive n8 , i have multi cartriges most important games . Im sorry but i find your mode over done.
@@iulianispas8634 Man there's millions of these floating around, I know I can get one for $20-$60. Nothing was lost here, these were literally mass-produced.
When I was about 12, I got put on restriction for skipping school and part of that restriction meant I wasn't allowed to play video games. I dug out an old black and white TV from the back of my closet to try and sneak some nintendo but the TV was so old that it had no connectors built in to it. All it had was 2 screws for a twin lead wire that you could hook up to an antenna. I stripped the ends on a small bit of twin lead and shoved the frayed wires into the back of the Nintendo's AV port. It had a bit of static and you had to keep the wires shoved in there just right but Mario was back in business.
Those screw terminals are for a VHF antenna and the output of the NES is UHF, normally to overcome this you use a 75 to 300 ohm balun/transformer. Cool that it worked anyway though.
@@captainrobots1 no. You need to connect the output from the rf put. You might see a little bit of fuzz resembling a game but it's not wireless, you need to plug it into the TV's antenna port.
Far out mate as another Aussie into this hobby for well over 20 years I cannot believe I have not found your channel before! Oh well I have now and I subscribed. Very well presented video.
I want to get excited about this but the having to mod the console to then have multiple external connections is making it difficult, considering how many existing solutions that arr already available, once audio gets incorporated I will prob pick this up and see how difficult it would be to bypass the rf jack and wire directly to the digitizer and add an hdmi port to make this an internal mod
You don't need any of that stuff. Once audio support is added you'd just use composite video + audio to the appropriate scaler, whether it's the RGB2HDMI or an OSSC, etc. Maybe they'll figure away to internalize the scaler and then you add an HDMI port. In fact, I'm sure someone can already do this.
It's a really neat idea that I know I will never use. I have tried all kinds of things with my Amigas, C64s and vintage consoles. I end up getting tired of things (excluding displays) not powering on and off when I turn the computer or console on and off. But, it's still neat to have ways of getting old consoles hooked up to modern displays.
I've never played NES on PAL systems but I'm very familiar with NTSC. Is it normal for SMB to sound and play that fast? It looks like it's 30-50% faster than "it should be".
Yeah, I believe Nintendo attempted to make it run around the same speed as NTSC. It ends up being slightly faster but I guess it's better than the usual 20% slower most games suffer from when running on PAL
The Immortal uses emphasis bits extensively… and doesn’t work on many TVs including late model CRTs and all digital TVs with analog inputs due to “blacker than black” colors that get misinterpreted as a mid-line sync pulse. It’s a game that could really use proper digitization.
@@mirabilis I’ve always wondered if the Game Boy stages in Kirby’s Adventure use that, but I doubt it since I think the player’s sprite still has color. I think it’s in the final world (IIRC).
What you have to do is capture the signal before it is sent out of the ppu so you can get the information which can later be applied to a black and white image which will give you a correct picture. Once the image is sent out of the composite video pin it’s too late, you have to get the signal before. This is the reason rgb kits have been around for so long, getting the signal information before it leaves the ppu and then subtracting the information out to form the colors later is very hard, it’s much easier to make the ppu generate rgb values.
Hopefully not too long before Rgb2Hdmi can take audio input and embed it into the hdmi signal. That was the only down side for the Vic20 for me. I ended up with more cables and adapter boxes piled up behind the computer.
Does this setup expect the Pi to be powered by whatever USB service port the TV might have? I'm looking at the Tindie listing and it seems like a fairly short cable (maybe 12 inches max) for the NES to plug into the RGBtoHDMI and for the Pi to be powered during operation this would make for an awkward, cumbersome cable management situation.
I just tried it with the RGBtoHDMI adapter, used the latest alpha attachen on the github, but I cannot find any settings for the NES, just I can adjust the palette, but there is no setting for either RGB or YUV for the NES.... so I cannot see the "Test_NES" setting. Otherwise I did tests with the VIC-II-Digitizer in my PAL C64 and this one works perfectly. How can I get the settings for nes in this alpha firmware? It simply doesn't show up to be set
Ah ok. I didn't show this in the video as I thought there would be a new RGBtoHDMI firmware with NES Lumacode support by the time these went on sale. You need the alpha firmware from here github.com/c0pperdragon/LumaCode/wiki/PPUdigitizer-(for-NES)#rgbtohdmi-firmware
Is the PAL version really that noticeably faster than NTSC? When he did the open console test it seemed that the music and gameplay was noticeably much too fast to my eye and ear. I understand NTSC is at 60 frames and PAL is 50 but is it really that noticeable?
I just wonder. Why LumaCode was developed as analog signal in the first place and not some sort of digital signal. Because for me it looks wery weird to convert Digital -> analog (LumaCode ) -> and back to digital
In fact the signal is digital in nature, but it uses 4 different "digits" instead of the usual 2 ("low" and "high"). These signal can be losslessly transfered and processed, so no additional noise is introduced.
A lot of digital coding and modulation schemes use multiple steps of amplitude and/or phase to store data in a way that can be carried robustly within limited bandwidth. The idea behind LumaCode is that all the supported consoles and computers have a small and predefined color palette, so there's no need to send explicit RGB or YCbCr color information for each pixel but only its palette index, which is a mere 3 to 6 bits. Embedding that into a monochrome CVBS signal makes it easier for scalers like the OSSC to support it through their existing video interfaces. A capable converter samples the LumaCode signal at the required dot clock, decodes the encoded palette index for each pixel and produces an output pixel with the known color associated with that index. 🙂
@@mirabilis It is quite different from QAM. There are basically 4 different voltage levels that encode 4 different bit-patterns for 2 bits each. The receiver needs to sample the voltage levels at just the right moment reconstruct the data. This is the main difficulty, but the RGBtoHDMI is designed to do exactly that anyway.
@@copperdragon9286 OK, no phase shenanigans, got it. Are there like patterns that indicates start of a new package and such? I have forgotten how synchronization works over a single wire. 😅 The receiver doesn't have any say about the data rate, I assume.
R.F is the original HDMI. I mean a lot of you have forgot for real, I mean I've played video games on home console all throughout the eighties , at least mid 80's.... If you're not playing on pitcher tube you know CRT, you're not taking advantage of any of this point blank. What I'm saying is you forgot all about pitcher tube and R.F you forgotten all about it.You're just minding this stuff for the new stuff.Which isn't as good, I mean, they did sell HD m.I pitcher troops.Yes but that was a short cycle
Surprised you managed to disassemble it without slicing a finger. I swear Nintendo made the edges of the RF shield as sharp as possible to punish anyone who dares to disassemble a NES.
Can this do 240p resolution, or is there a way to get RGB instead of HDMI so we can use something like the Retrotink 5x or 4k for the HDMI + Masks/Profiles?
There is, but it's more of a pseudo stereo mod rather than true stereo. I've tried a couple of different well known methods and ended up preferring the standard mono mix
This is all cool and all, but why not just get a composite to HDMI adapter if you really want to go "no cut"? That's what I did. They even have rf to hdmi now, it seems.
Yeah, a CRT is still the way to go for lightguns, and my go-to for general gaming. This is more for those who don't have or don't want a CRT. Or when getting a clean capture is preferred, like for RUclips videos and streaming
Was there another myth? The capacitor does store a charge for a while after the NES is powered off. I've tested it myself and it has around 12V after powering off. You can easily confirm this just turning the NES off, unplugging the power cable and pushing the power button. The LED at the front will briefly light up as the cap discharges
@@TheRetroChannel And does it really matters if i discharge the capacitor when you only feed the NES with 9 volts? That capacitor can not have more than 25 volts. Totally safe to touch.
@fu1r4 Safe to touch yes. But as that cap is before the power switch, it has no discharge path and will hold a charge for some time. Normally it wouldn't matter but when working inside the RF modulator, it's possible to accidentally short it. Again not a big deal if you're expecting it, but it could be a nasty surprise for beginners
Imagine modding the console without discharging the cap. You have a few wires dangling around, some of them already connected to your RGB mod or whatever and maybe one of them already connected to the GND of the console. Suddenly one of the wires touches the capacitor leg and sends 12V through your expensive mod or other parts of the console. You'd be having a very bad day.
I vaguely remember some TVs having the old two-wire antenna connection. Does that mean you can't hook up a console to those TVs? Were those TVs pre VCR days? When did single line RF and VCRs become normal? Sorry, I tried to look sime of that stuff up but didn't find the answers I was looking for lol. 😅
groovy mister does something like that, but a mister setup isn't cheap. only recommend it if you have a bunch of cash and you want to actually use the mister for its gaming capabilities.
Nah, too much messing about, and the NES works best on a CRT tv anyway For audio you'd be better off adding a 5v amplifier and speaker inside the console with a volume control, that way no matter how you connect the console it will always have sound
the scalar is the device that handles the CRT-like effects. e.g. the OSSC (as mentioned in the video), or one of the retrotink products (which don't yet support this method of digital video out). this isn't a scalar. it's a digital output. it should spit out perfect pixels, since that's the actual data it extracts. also, not every artist was relying on the CRT blending effects. some of them did, but some didn't. so of course gamers choose to incorrectly believe that meant all retro game devs were taking CRT smearing into account. in reality it's up to your preference, and some games will benefit much more than others.
Wishful thinking but it's not possible with Lumacode. There's a limit to how much video information can be encoded this way and the SNES has a lot more colours available
Yeah. I didn't know Australians had started saying "Haitch". It seems to be taking over in the UK. When I was a kid in the south of England everyone said "aitch". The only version in the British English dictionary is "aitch". It is a hyper correction. Although it is standard in Ireland and for Catholic people.
So can your cell phone, or one from 10 years ago, or my PC from 30 years ago, so what's your point? Emulation is not the real thing, if you don't want a console, don't get one. Or just complain that an FPGA renders it obsolete or whatever...
retrotink 4k replicates that CRT experience quite well, and I get to use my 70 inch TV. NESs are cheap and robust, too. this mod is about as easy as a mod gets, and pretty hard to screw up. still, that's up to you and your comfort level. you're correct if you care to play light gun games though. but I always considered them a gimmick and not worth bothering with, myself. other people love them.
man... I just cannot see the appeal of using an HDMI screen to run an NES on. This thing should be run on a CRT, really. Very cool, shoving the signal through that jack, but this thing is just too old for this to be proper.
retrotink 4k means I have a 70 inch QD-OLED experience with very low latency that still replicates nearly all of the CRT look. I do not personally miss playing on a 13 incher.
the lumacode output can go straight to an OSSC instead of using the external converter. it just wasn't ready at the time of this video. this is much cheaper than several other digital output options. it's also dead easy to mod in.
This is an awesome feat, but what subset of people want “perfect” NES video quality on modern TV’s but with native hardware? Running real NES hardware should almost require a CRT- and analog signal is the best that era did so it’s almost blasphemous to digitize that output. If anyone wants to play NES games in all their glory on modern TV’s, we’ve been able to do that and make it look 10x better with upscaling and shaders with emulators since the 90’s.
So I guess I should just throw out my OSSC and limit myself to tubes that could die at any point, and then I'm stuck searching for another tube TV as they get rarer and rarer? Yeah, makes total sense. Some of us own 10+ game systems and would like them on the same screen. I have a 45" HDTV in my bedroom and a 65" in the den, but I HAVE to play retro games only on my 25" CRT according to you? Nah. I have a spare NES for that, just for light gun games. Don't even bring up emulation. The least you could do is shill the MISTer for people who want to play accurately on a modern screen.
many want such things. you clearly don't follow this hobby closely if you don't already know of several other similar products at various price points, and if you haven't seen your opinion debated to death hundreds of times in other forums. just be glad that people like to make new things for old tech. your ire is weird. and so is the ire of the 10+ other people who made darn near identical comments on this video. we get it. you have a CRT. quit complain-bragging.
Not practical. Starting to resemble a MegaDrive with its many add-ons. Trying to reinvent the wheel so to speak. Its aight, I guess, its a money pit at this point. The point of these video mods is to keep the shelf uncluttered, everything to be kept inside the case. What's the point of capture cards and upscalers? Precisely to avoid all of this wiring mess. The amount of time wasted just to set up and the money that will be spent, get a proper upscaler instead. Not very practical, but those who miss the MegaDrive and its add-ons, rejoice. Not worth the effort.
Basic soldering skills but a bunch of spaghetti wires. I mean now you must power the console, two external devices, have 2 HDMI cables, audio cables. They should just have people put the whole assembly inside the nes and have an HDMI slot cut in the back. I've never regretted my HiDef-NES but now ai realize how lucky I am to have one and the NES works like it was just built like that.
Did you watch the whole video? Once they add audio support you'll just feed composite audio and video to a scaler. Also, you can easily fit the RGB2HDMI inside the console or just attach it to the back or side and run a very short composite cable to it.
@@brandogg the RGB2HDMI will still require power though no? Anyway as of now this is feasable and since you don't have to take out both CPU and PPU to leech their datas into an external board it is cool, the whole go inside the RF unit stuff is kinda bad though, unless you just cut out the traces, this isn't too bad. It's nice to see modern solutions for older systems and get pixel perfect gaming. Having installed both a PSDigital and a Hidef-Nes in my retro consoles it's really changing the game. We still need a better light gun solution though.
Ok we'll be here following the project's positive progress, you can stick to your 12" CRT and reading glasses. I'll be projecting my NES on a 100" wall.
@@DeAthWaGer I do that with a 150" screen yet the graphics look proper as the should look and not over the top sharp and fake so yeah you carry on with your fake graphics LOL 😂
1 raspberry pie can emulate everything itself. Instead, you'd rather add 5 more cords, a mono splitter, an audio injector adapter, 3 separate power supplies, 2 more pcbs and a raspberry pie!😂
if you think the NES is collectable, you know absolutely nothing about this hobby. there were millions produced, and most of them still work. and if you think this particular mod ruins anything, you know absolutely nothing about console repair or modding. that era of tech was designed around easy and convenient soldering by noobs, so the pins are gigantic, the boards have very few layers, and soldering/resoldering them a bunch of times is going to harm nothing. why are SO many of the comments so full of themselves here. sheesh.
that nes runs a bit fast, doesn't it? seems like you're running the AC-50Hz Version on an AC-60Hz PSU I didn't knew that this even works, i thought this would somehow break the console but apparently it either slows it down or speeds it up depending on Console Frequency and PSU Frequency....
@@TheRetroChannel but i live in Germany, which has the PAL-Standard and my NES doesn't run that fast, despite it being the PAL-Version... I don't know why that's the case but the AC frequency was just my first guess... I mean we both have the exact same Console yet mine doesn't run as fast as yours does, which is kinda odd, not gonna lie
Don't know what to tell you. The PAL version of SMB1 running on a PAL console is faster than NTSC version on an NTSC console. Things become odd when running the opposite region game for the console. You can see my NES PAL to NTSC conversion video for some examples
Work is happening on the NTSC version but no ETA yet. Unfortunately c0pperdragon has had to cease sales on all Lumacode products until 2025.
RGBtoHDMI alpha firmware with NES Lumacode support can be found here: github.com/c0pperdragon/LumaCode/wiki/PPUdigitizer-(for-NES)
Support on the OSSC (including colour emphasis bits) is available as of firmware v1.11.
Once he can get it all
Squared maybe make a internal make the parts smaller to internalize the rasberry pie and hat added to it inside and then have a hdmi port that can be added anywhere into the system
Design and make your own lumicode stickers.. for giveaways
would there be a way to directly output rgb with this?
An OSSC update supporting NES Lumacode seems to be live as of today!
This could be big, for me. I could finally have a way to output my top-loader on a modern display!
The consumer market really should've adopted SDI, the professional standard for delivering digital HD video and audio over a single coaxial cable, just like used for RF or composite video. But it lacks HDCP, so the copyright police absolutely never would've allowed it.
Gotta think of the well-being of those giant media conglomerates! Without HDCP, media executives might not be able to afford that fifth yacht :(
I thought this was a version of SPDIF. Like you said minus HDCP, good riddance.
Current copyright law is a stain on the earth
@@XMguyoptical had a form of copy protection. Always pissed me off when I tried to use my cd recorder back in the day
@@41moose Oh yeah. The “Copy Once” flag on tapes like DCC, and DAT.
This is pretty neat to modify without removing the PPU. Pair it with an external DAC and you’ve got analog RGB output
I can’t wait for NTSC support!!
A few years ago I installed a Hi-Def NES along with a NESessity 1.4 board in my NES and not once have I looked back (okay one time; when I saw Hogan's Alley at the vintage game store in my town and wished I could use a Zapper with a modern TV). So happy to see there are new HDMI solutions on the horizon.
I just wish something would be done for the SNES!
Same. I love SNES, and it has no HDMI mod.
The “Digitizer” name will lead people to believe that this is digitizing analog when it is actually replicating the PPU’s functions to generate digital video from the data bus… the same way Hi-Def NES, RGB Blaster, and NESRGB generate their digital source. Before anyone assumes it’s somehow less digital than the Hi-Def NES: the “Digitizer” board isn’t digitizing anything. :)
I have a hard time seeing it works completely the same way given the EXT0-3 pins are still grounded.
With less data extracted from the PPU, more parts must be emulated, no? Do you know how NESRGB works? It's quite ingenious.
@@mirabilis Yes, because the PPU does not have RGB or digital video externally accessible, the NES RGB replicates the functions of the PPU in FPGA and runs in tandem with the original… so it creates its own digital source. Hi-Def NES also controls the CPU clocks and replicates various audio hardware that neither this kit nor the NESRGB does, so I don’t expect it to need all the same connections. Meanwhile, RGB Blaster is able to do this by sniffing the CPU and PPU data bus through the cartridge port, so perhaps this has more in common with RGB Blaster. :)
It's crazy when you think about it. You put a daughterboard in your console, hundred to thousand times more powerful than the console itself, just to get better video output.
Ruined a old console valueble in original condition only
@@iulianispas8634not true, if the mod is done properly. It adds value, instead if you do it wrong, or looking for just an og experience. Guess you cant sell your stock ness for 100$, bet this will sell for that price, no matter the yellowing.
@@ClosestNearUtopia my stock Nes and Famicom have a micro Av mod a transmiter board hiden under the mobo no holes( the mode can be undone easy) and stay proud in a glass display case . I play nes on a Famicom clone with wireless controlers and hdmi 33£ aliexpress . Unfortunetly the clone dont work with everdrive n8 , i have multi cartriges most important games . Im sorry but i find your mode over done.
@@iulianispas8634lmao no way. This is way more valuable than a stock NES, which is only worth around $50 anyway.
@@iulianispas8634 Man there's millions of these floating around, I know I can get one for $20-$60. Nothing was lost here, these were literally mass-produced.
When I was about 12, I got put on restriction for skipping school and part of that restriction meant I wasn't allowed to play video games. I dug out an old black and white TV from the back of my closet to try and sneak some nintendo but the TV was so old that it had no connectors built in to it. All it had was 2 screws for a twin lead wire that you could hook up to an antenna. I stripped the ends on a small bit of twin lead and shoved the frayed wires into the back of the Nintendo's AV port. It had a bit of static and you had to keep the wires shoved in there just right but Mario was back in business.
Those screw terminals are for a VHF antenna and the output of the NES is UHF, normally to overcome this you use a 75 to 300 ohm balun/transformer. Cool that it worked anyway though.
@Nukle0n pretty sure a nes can work over the air like a tv station.
But needs to be next to the tv so it can pick up the signal.
@@captainrobots1 no. You need to connect the output from the rf put. You might see a little bit of fuzz resembling a game but it's not wireless, you need to plug it into the TV's antenna port.
Far out mate as another Aussie into this hobby for well over 20 years I cannot believe I have not found your channel before! Oh well I have now and I subscribed. Very well presented video.
This is awesome! Very exciting development I'll be closely following.
I want to get excited about this but the having to mod the console to then have multiple external connections is making it difficult, considering how many existing solutions that arr already available, once audio gets incorporated I will prob pick this up and see how difficult it would be to bypass the rf jack and wire directly to the digitizer and add an hdmi port to make this an internal mod
16:44 Unfortunately I am immediately put off by the sheer number of external devices and the rats nest of cables required. RCA will do just fine.
You don't need any of that stuff. Once audio support is added you'd just use composite video + audio to the appropriate scaler, whether it's the RGB2HDMI or an OSSC, etc. Maybe they'll figure away to internalize the scaler and then you add an HDMI port. In fact, I'm sure someone can already do this.
It's a really neat idea that I know I will never use. I have tried all kinds of things with my Amigas, C64s and vintage consoles. I end up getting tired of things (excluding displays) not powering on and off when I turn the computer or console on and off. But, it's still neat to have ways of getting old consoles hooked up to modern displays.
I’ve been using the Super Nintendo component cable on my NES for quite some time. Looks great.
Neat modification. Thanks for showcasing it.
Kudos to the genius that came up with this idea and theretrochannel for showing had to do the mod but Im just gonna stick to the old fashioned way.
I have an early 2000's lcd tv with no hdmi for my old game systems 😆 they all display full screen it also has component hook ups
This is borderline Sega Genesis fully decked out with all the cables X)
why can't the raspberry pi embedd the audio via a cheap audio-in solution into the hdmi?
I've never played NES on PAL systems but I'm very familiar with NTSC. Is it normal for SMB to sound and play that fast? It looks like it's 30-50% faster than "it should be".
Yeah, I believe Nintendo attempted to make it run around the same speed as NTSC. It ends up being slightly faster but I guess it's better than the usual 20% slower most games suffer from when running on PAL
The Immortal uses emphasis bits extensively… and doesn’t work on many TVs including late model CRTs and all digital TVs with analog inputs due to “blacker than black” colors that get misinterpreted as a mid-line sync pulse. It’s a game that could really use proper digitization.
What about the b&w bit?
@@mirabilis I’ve always wondered if the Game Boy stages in Kirby’s Adventure use that, but I doubt it since I think the player’s sprite still has color. I think it’s in the final world (IIRC).
@@emmettturner9452 THAT game Noah's Ark (PAL?) use it as a not-so-convincing water effect.
@@mirabilis I believe I saw that one listed in the errata page for NESRGB so perhaps that is one of the PPU effects it does not fully replicate.
What you have to do is capture the signal before it is sent out of the ppu so you can get the information which can later be applied to a black and white image which will give you a correct picture. Once the image is sent out of the composite video pin it’s too late, you have to get the signal before. This is the reason rgb kits have been around for so long, getting the signal information before it leaves the ppu and then subtracting the information out to form the colors later is very hard, it’s much easier to make the ppu generate rgb values.
I’m surprised it doesn’t pull power from the NES for the Pi. I’m sure 5V is available or a step down/up converter would work.
I wish you showed what you connected to the RCA jack, and how it worked.
Hopefully not too long before Rgb2Hdmi can take audio input and embed it into the hdmi signal. That was the only down side for the Vic20 for me. I ended up with more cables and adapter boxes piled up behind the computer.
Excellent video. I was really hoping that they would make a digitizer for NES. Can't wait. I also look forward to a follow-up video
If u weren't so far away, I'd ship you one of my ntsc models so you can send to copper dragon. Maybe it'll be available eventually. Cheers bud
No NES here but this this looks amazing :D
Ah the Mattel version. Not seen one of them in a while
Nice to see a clean job.
I care bout composite because I have a CRT tv for my vintage consoles. 🤣🤣🤣
WhyDontWeHaveBoth.gif
@@TheRetroChannel You could do that, but it's not right. 🤣🤣🤣
So the RF wires are just for sync pulse timing, right?
16:48 why does it seem like the game is running twice fast as it should?
PAL version is borked.
GND is connected in the modulator. Only 1 wire needed. 😊
Does this setup expect the Pi to be powered by whatever USB service port the TV might have? I'm looking at the Tindie listing and it seems like a fairly short cable (maybe 12 inches max) for the NES to plug into the RGBtoHDMI and for the Pi to be powered during operation this would make for an awkward, cumbersome cable management situation.
I just tried it with the RGBtoHDMI adapter, used the latest alpha attachen on the github, but I cannot find any settings for the NES, just I can adjust the palette, but there is no setting for either RGB or YUV for the NES.... so I cannot see the "Test_NES" setting. Otherwise I did tests with the VIC-II-Digitizer in my PAL C64 and this one works perfectly. How can I get the settings for nes in this alpha firmware? It simply doesn't show up to be set
Ah ok. I didn't show this in the video as I thought there would be a new RGBtoHDMI firmware with NES Lumacode support by the time these went on sale.
You need the alpha firmware from here github.com/c0pperdragon/LumaCode/wiki/PPUdigitizer-(for-NES)#rgbtohdmi-firmware
Is the PAL version really that noticeably faster than NTSC? When he did the open console test it seemed that the music and gameplay was noticeably much too fast to my eye and ear. I understand NTSC is at 60 frames and PAL is 50 but is it really that noticeable?
Strangely Zelda sounded perfectly normal and played at what looks like normal speed to me
The music and sound effects are pretty messed up. Nothing is timed right.
PAL
@@TheRetroChannel I know, I'm just being an arse.
If you have the video over RGB2HDMI it can make the audio out of sync if the audio going by another input.
I just wonder. Why LumaCode was developed as analog signal in the first place and not some sort of digital signal. Because for me it looks wery weird to convert Digital -> analog (LumaCode ) -> and back to digital
In fact the signal is digital in nature, but it uses 4 different "digits" instead of the usual 2 ("low" and "high"). These signal can be losslessly transfered and processed, so no additional noise is introduced.
A lot of digital coding and modulation schemes use multiple steps of amplitude and/or phase to store data in a way that can be carried robustly within limited bandwidth.
The idea behind LumaCode is that all the supported consoles and computers have a small and predefined color palette, so there's no need to send explicit RGB or YCbCr color information for each pixel but only its palette index, which is a mere 3 to 6 bits.
Embedding that into a monochrome CVBS signal makes it easier for scalers like the OSSC to support it through their existing video interfaces.
A capable converter samples the LumaCode signal at the required dot clock, decodes the encoded palette index for each pixel and produces an output pixel with the known color associated with that index. 🙂
@@copperdragon9286Like a minimal version of QAM encoding?
@@mirabilis It is quite different from QAM. There are basically 4 different voltage levels that encode 4 different bit-patterns for 2 bits each. The receiver needs to sample the voltage levels at just the right moment reconstruct the data. This is the main difficulty, but the RGBtoHDMI is designed to do exactly that anyway.
@@copperdragon9286 OK, no phase shenanigans, got it. Are there like patterns that indicates start of a new package and such? I have forgotten how synchronization works over a single wire. 😅 The receiver doesn't have any say about the data rate, I assume.
Why is the game sped up tho?
Jesus HDMI Christ this is brilliant.
does this in some way add "lag" (sorry not beeing bright nuff) :D
Yes, 25ms
R.F is the original HDMI. I mean a lot of you have forgot for real, I mean I've played video games on home console all throughout the eighties , at least mid 80's.... If you're not playing on pitcher tube you know CRT, you're not taking advantage of any of this point blank. What I'm saying is you forgot all about pitcher tube and R.F you forgotten all about it.You're just minding this stuff for the new stuff.Which isn't as good, I mean, they did sell HD m.I pitcher troops.Yes but that was a short cycle
how does the quality compare to a normal upscaler?
Surprised you managed to disassemble it without slicing a finger. I swear Nintendo made the edges of the RF shield as sharp as possible to punish anyone who dares to disassemble a NES.
Can this do 240p resolution, or is there a way to get RGB instead of HDMI so we can use something like the Retrotink 5x or 4k for the HDMI + Masks/Profiles?
Isn't there a stereo mod for this thing?
There is, but it's more of a pseudo stereo mod rather than true stereo. I've tried a couple of different well known methods and ended up preferring the standard mono mix
@@TheRetroChannel Figured. Why write game cartridges with stereo audio if nobody can ever hear it? Makes sense.
I guess when Sega came along with their stereo sound, they did, what Nintendon't. I'll see myself out.
Pretty cool !!
This is all cool and all, but why not just get a composite to HDMI adapter if you really want to go "no cut"? That's what I did.
They even have rf to hdmi now, it seems.
Not to mention this is misleading (specially the thumbnail).
Can I hook up vga or scart to that?
The real question: is there any input lag?
What reslolution is the Pi HDMI outputting?
1920x1080 but I believe other resolutions are possible depending on the pi being used
@@TheRetroChannel Oh! that's amazing, thank you.
Hi, will you please let us know when this is available for ntsc? Or at least updates?
Hello again. Just wondering if you have any updates from copper dragon about the NTSC version of the ppu digitizer?
This looks like it might introduce some lag.. I wonder what this feels like to play. Awesome idea!
Not enough lag for me to notice, but I'll do some proper tests soon
@@TheRetroChannelobviously things like the zapper wouldn’t work but if you’re doing this mod then you probably don’t have a compatible TV anyway.
Yeah, a CRT is still the way to go for lightguns, and my go-to for general gaming. This is more for those who don't have or don't want a CRT. Or when getting a clean capture is preferred, like for RUclips videos and streaming
does this lag the video?
Did pal NESs run at a higher speed than NTSC?
lower. PAL/50Hz while NTSC/60Hz (Hz = FPS for analog)
the music on the game sounded fast like how it sounds when your running out of time
3:02 Have you actual tested that the capacitor will discharge when you press the power button or is it again a myth?
Was there another myth? The capacitor does store a charge for a while after the NES is powered off. I've tested it myself and it has around 12V after powering off. You can easily confirm this just turning the NES off, unplugging the power cable and pushing the power button. The LED at the front will briefly light up as the cap discharges
@@TheRetroChannel And does it really matters if i discharge the capacitor when you only feed the NES with 9 volts? That capacitor can not have more than 25 volts. Totally safe to touch.
@fu1r4 Safe to touch yes. But as that cap is before the power switch, it has no discharge path and will hold a charge for some time. Normally it wouldn't matter but when working inside the RF modulator, it's possible to accidentally short it. Again not a big deal if you're expecting it, but it could be a nasty surprise for beginners
Imagine modding the console without discharging the cap. You have a few wires dangling around, some of them already connected to your RGB mod or whatever and maybe one of them already connected to the GND of the console. Suddenly one of the wires touches the capacitor leg and sends 12V through your expensive mod or other parts of the console. You'd be having a very bad day.
Is it running faster than stock? Looks like it.
That's the normal speed for PAL
Cool but wish they could make it where you used less wires to hook it all up!
i just use hdmi adapter its good enough for me i cant stand black bars I like full screen
How is that better than Retrotink2x?
this directly generates a digital signal. it's not doing an analogue to digital conversion.
I use those very tweezers to keep my fingers clean when eating crisps.
Pal region issues
Cool. Actually you can rout only one conductor, the ground is all over the place.
In this case the ground wire is used as a shield ground, minimises unwanted interference
@@TheRetroChannel if you want the ground to act like a shield, you have to use a shielded cable for that.
Does it add much latency?
Less than a frame from what I've measured
So it require one ppu board, one rgb to hdmi board, AND a raspberry pie? Lololo
I’d love to see a reverse of this so that I can game on my 80’s console TV
I vaguely remember some TVs having the old two-wire antenna connection. Does that mean you can't hook up a console to those TVs? Were those TVs pre VCR days? When did single line RF and VCRs become normal?
Sorry, I tried to look sime of that stuff up but didn't find the answers I was looking for lol. 😅
groovy mister does something like that, but a mister setup isn't cheap. only recommend it if you have a bunch of cash and you want to actually use the mister for its gaming capabilities.
Nah, too much messing about, and the NES works best on a CRT tv anyway
For audio you'd be better off adding a 5v amplifier and speaker inside the console with a volume control, that way no matter how you connect the console it will always have sound
Great work. But why?
because it's significantly cheaper than other NES hdmi mods, and people like using their big modern TVs, and their fully original console hardware.
Electrical tape will leave a sludgy mess after some time.
Capton tape is the way to go.
@@jikkme Yeah polyimide tape is fine, just make sure to not get fingerprints on it
Why pixel perfect? Old pixel artist relied in the blend effects of the CRT, AND PAL/NTSC ENCODING.
the scalar is the device that handles the CRT-like effects. e.g. the OSSC (as mentioned in the video), or one of the retrotink products (which don't yet support this method of digital video out).
this isn't a scalar. it's a digital output. it should spit out perfect pixels, since that's the actual data it extracts.
also, not every artist was relying on the CRT blending effects. some of them did, but some didn't. so of course gamers choose to incorrectly believe that meant all retro game devs were taking CRT smearing into account. in reality it's up to your preference, and some games will benefit much more than others.
This would be awesome if they brought it to the SNES
They will
Wishful thinking but it's not possible with Lumacode. There's a limit to how much video information can be encoded this way and the SNES has a lot more colours available
ther is a a/v to hdmi cable but you need 2 audio and 1 video plug.
Heysh-dmi
Yeah. I didn't know Australians had started saying "Haitch".
It seems to be taking over in the UK.
When I was a kid in the south of England everyone said "aitch".
The only version in the British English dictionary is "aitch".
It is a hyper correction.
Although it is standard in Ireland and for Catholic people.
Why do so many people pronounce the letter H, Hate-ch. It’s pronounced Ate-ch.
Heych dee em eye
That Raspberry Pi can emulate the entire NES by itself, no soldering required.
You're fun
So can your cell phone, or one from 10 years ago, or my PC from 30 years ago, so what's your point?
Emulation is not the real thing, if you don't want a console, don't get one. Or just complain that an FPGA renders it obsolete or whatever...
🍪
🪒🔪👾
Too many fond memories of my nes don't think I'd risk it besides these consoles work best on CRT TVs. Use the NES classic for modern playing.
retrotink 4k replicates that CRT experience quite well, and I get to use my 70 inch TV.
NESs are cheap and robust, too. this mod is about as easy as a mod gets, and pretty hard to screw up. still, that's up to you and your comfort level.
you're correct if you care to play light gun games though. but I always considered them a gimmick and not worth bothering with, myself. other people love them.
man... I just cannot see the appeal of using an HDMI screen to run an NES on. This thing should be run on a CRT, really. Very cool, shoving the signal through that jack, but this thing is just too old for this to be proper.
retrotink 4k means I have a 70 inch QD-OLED experience with very low latency that still replicates nearly all of the CRT look.
I do not personally miss playing on a 13 incher.
This...looks like it has the worst of both worlds between internal video-out mods and external upscalers, with none of the unique upsides of either.
the lumacode output can go straight to an OSSC instead of using the external converter. it just wasn't ready at the time of this video.
this is much cheaper than several other digital output options. it's also dead easy to mod in.
HDMI displays add LAG. I'd prefer to keep it unmodded and use devices from the future: CRTs
Good gawd, this is just messy!
This is an awesome feat, but what subset of people want “perfect” NES video quality on modern TV’s but with native hardware?
Running real NES hardware should almost require a CRT- and analog signal is the best that era did so it’s almost blasphemous to digitize that output.
If anyone wants to play NES games in all their glory on modern TV’s, we’ve been able to do that and make it look 10x better with upscaling and shaders with emulators since the 90’s.
So I guess I should just throw out my OSSC and limit myself to tubes that could die at any point, and then I'm stuck searching for another tube TV as they get rarer and rarer?
Yeah, makes total sense.
Some of us own 10+ game systems and would like them on the same screen.
I have a 45" HDTV in my bedroom and a 65" in the den, but I HAVE to play retro games only on my 25" CRT according to you?
Nah. I have a spare NES for that, just for light gun games.
Don't even bring up emulation. The least you could do is shill the MISTer for people who want to play accurately on a modern screen.
many want such things. you clearly don't follow this hobby closely if you don't already know of several other similar products at various price points, and if you haven't seen your opinion debated to death hundreds of times in other forums. just be glad that people like to make new things for old tech.
your ire is weird. and so is the ire of the 10+ other people who made darn near identical comments on this video.
we get it. you have a CRT. quit complain-bragging.
Not practical. Starting to resemble a MegaDrive with its many add-ons. Trying to reinvent the wheel so to speak. Its aight, I guess, its a money pit at this point. The point of these video mods is to keep the shelf uncluttered, everything to be kept inside the case. What's the point of capture cards and upscalers? Precisely to avoid all of this wiring mess.
The amount of time wasted just to set up and the money that will be spent, get a proper upscaler instead. Not very practical, but those who miss the MegaDrive and its add-ons, rejoice. Not worth the effort.
Basic soldering skills but a bunch of spaghetti wires.
I mean now you must power the console, two external devices, have 2 HDMI cables, audio cables.
They should just have people put the whole assembly inside the nes and have an HDMI slot cut in the back.
I've never regretted my HiDef-NES but now ai realize how lucky I am to have one and the NES works like it was just built like that.
Did you watch the whole video? Once they add audio support you'll just feed composite audio and video to a scaler. Also, you can easily fit the RGB2HDMI inside the console or just attach it to the back or side and run a very short composite cable to it.
@@brandogg the RGB2HDMI will still require power though no? Anyway as of now this is feasable and since you don't have to take out both CPU and PPU to leech their datas into an external board it is cool, the whole go inside the RF unit stuff is kinda bad though, unless you just cut out the traces, this isn't too bad.
It's nice to see modern solutions for older systems and get pixel perfect gaming.
Having installed both a PSDigital and a Hidef-Nes in my retro consoles it's really changing the game. We still need a better light gun solution though.
its not supposed to look like that, if I wanted my nes games to look like that I would just use an emulator.
Ok we'll be here following the project's positive progress, you can stick to your 12" CRT and reading glasses.
I'll be projecting my NES on a 100" wall.
@@DeAthWaGer I do that with a 150" screen yet the graphics look proper as the should look and not over the top sharp and fake so yeah you carry on with your fake graphics LOL 😂
there's a dozen comments just like yours. get bent
Nice. Let's hope for an NTSC version soon.
1 raspberry pie can emulate everything itself. Instead, you'd rather add 5 more cords, a mono splitter, an audio injector adapter, 3 separate power supplies, 2 more pcbs and a raspberry pie!😂
Yes.
#EmulationIsForQuitters
I hope you understand that micro pie can emulate in HD up to Ps2 games . Just ruined a collectable console valuble in original condition only.
Lmao
if you think the NES is collectable, you know absolutely nothing about this hobby. there were millions produced, and most of them still work.
and if you think this particular mod ruins anything, you know absolutely nothing about console repair or modding. that era of tech was designed around easy and convenient soldering by noobs, so the pins are gigantic, the boards have very few layers, and soldering/resoldering them a bunch of times is going to harm nothing.
why are SO many of the comments so full of themselves here. sheesh.
Funny how he is talking about NES will he is wearing a PLAYSTATION shirt LMFAO to bad NES zipper gun will not work on smart TV
that nes runs a bit fast, doesn't it? seems like you're running the AC-50Hz Version on an AC-60Hz PSU
I didn't knew that this even works, i thought this would somehow break the console but apparently it either slows it down or speeds it up depending on Console Frequency and PSU Frequency....
That's the normal speed for a PAL console. The AC frequency has nothing to do with it as it gets converted to DC anyway
@@TheRetroChannel but i live in Germany, which has the PAL-Standard and my NES doesn't run that fast, despite it being the PAL-Version... I don't know why that's the case but the AC frequency was just my first guess...
I mean we both have the exact same Console yet mine doesn't run as fast as yours does, which is kinda odd, not gonna lie
Don't know what to tell you. The PAL version of SMB1 running on a PAL console is faster than NTSC version on an NTSC console. Things become odd when running the opposite region game for the console. You can see my NES PAL to NTSC conversion video for some examples
Very nice!!