av tool ps2 only upscan review!!

[mr. newbie]

av tool hg310

what it does:plugs into av port of ps2 and upscans into vga 640x480. also has convient vga pass-through.

cost:$20

grade:B+

pros:cheap, great quality, includes all cables, simple to set up and go.

cons: a little to dark (not 100% as this may be my monitor), doesn't support p-scan

https://secure11.nexternal.com/shared/Store...ount2=186607003

in box is a vga cable, power adaptor (oodly enough only the ps2 version uses one),  vga cable, manual, and headphone to headphone cable (the kind pc speakers use).

i dont really know waht to say overall so i'll just go by game.

contra shattered soldier: everything looks great in the intro and menu. when i start a game the opening fmv looks great. when i get into the game things are a little to dark. i can still clearly discern whats going on though. i saw no jaggies on the 1st boss at all. i was really taken back by how great this part looked. i only played through the first stage.

action replay: i just loaded this up to see how readable tex was. everything looked fine. text was easily readable but again just a tad dark.

my brother has most of my games so i cant test much more than that until saturday.. if anybody has any questions or things they'd like me to test i'd be happy to .

[NFG]

There's really no doubt this upscan box uses composite video (or maybe Svideo) for the conversion, not RGB (or component).  I'd be surprised if it was any better or worse than other similarly priced upscan units.

Screenshots would be nice.  =)

Thanks for the review.

[Endymion]

cons: a little to dark (not 100% as this may be my monitor), doesn't support p-scan

I have no doubt you're satisfied with your unit, but the darkness as well as the fact that it doesn't support progressive scan games in that mode tells us that it absolutely not using RGB--that means it is a less than ideal image at best, and what we video enthusiasts like to call . . . utter crap. If it were upscanning RGB like a quality unit, it would not look "a little too dark," and it WOULD support progressive scan games, because those would require no upscan at all. Progressive images can be sent over RGB--we call that VGA. But progressive scan can not be sent over composite or s-video, and that is exactly what this is doing.

[Guest]

if i had the schematics or something could i make it use rgb?

[mr. newbie]

ok well all of a sudden i'm unsatisfied . i know nothing about electronics (i think thats obvious now) but i took it apart anyway. inside the unit ps2 the cable seperates into red,black,green,yellow,brown,green,red,2 black.the 2 blacks at the end seem to be the cables for power. those thin wires plug into a little pice of plastic that simply plugs into the mobo.i doubt it would work but couldn't i just try figuring what signal those wires are and hack an rgb into it?

if any of you have taken apart an xbox, the cable plugs into trhe mobo the same way as the xbox power/eject buttons.

i dont have a digicam so if this isn't descriptive enough i can try it again.

well the red cable (wire #6) must be carrying the video. when i unplug red the unit doesn't know its plugged into the ps2. (it has an led that lights up when plugged into a ps2.)  

[Darklegion]

What I don't understand is why they don't use RGB in cases like this.Its not like converting composite to VGA is simpler than RGB to VGA.Perhaps all of these companies have a source on cheap composite to VGA converters I.Cs.

BTW considering how many wires there are there its quite possible it is using RGB.The red wire could be power or ground (most likely power).

[NFG]

Darklegion: Your last guess is the case.  There are off-the-shelf single-chip solutions to convert video to VGA, where RGB->VGA, because of its relative unpopularity, requires a more involved solution.

Another reason is that upscanning video involves only one signal to upscan, so it uses 1/3 the RAM and logic until the final (separation) stage.

[mr. newbie]

its gotta be composite or s because it has a total of 8 wires. is there way to put rgb into this?  

[Endymion]

If you bothered to probe what went where, and what it spits out, you would find that there isn't a way to do it. If you had a data sheet on the chip it would be simpler, you would instantly know it can't upscan RGB.

In other words there's a reason cheap VGA boxes are cheap.

[Guest_Martin]

And even if it did support 60fps profressive it would only do it on games that actually support it.
Interlaced video can only be interpolated to progressive at half frame rate since each field has to be intertwined into it's complimentary frame (effectivly cutting the frame number in half) or you can display each field as a frame (however this halfs the resolution). So it really is a no win situation.
I personally, prefer to watch the original interlaced footage however I have converted some of my 50fps-i footage to 25fps-p for editing in the past to give it a more "cinema" look to it.  

[mr. newbie]

If you bothered to probe what went where, and what it spits out, you would find that there isn't a way to do it. If you had a data sheet on the chip it would be simpler, you would instantly know it can't upscan RGB.

In other words there's a reason cheap VGA boxes are cheap.

tht sucks. i still use it though because my monitor is larger than my tv. speaking of tv's my brothers mitsubishi has rgbhv inputs. can i just make make an rgb cable and seperate the sync with the lm1881 and use that?

[Endymion]

I have no experience with sync splitter circuits, but provided you do the work right and are getting a proper H+V sync from your C-sync, and if the TV supports 15KHz RGB, then yes it should work. Splitting the sync does not equal upscanning, so if the TV can only take 31KHz then it won't work. You could just try connecting C-sync to the H line and see what happens before you go through all kinds of work.

[Guest]

i had my bro plug in the ps2 with component cables with the ps2 set to rgb (it works with my monitor) and he said he coud see a picture but it was going up and down. i imagine this is a somewhat good sign but i'm not sure what to do next.

[mr. newbie]

and it WOULD support progressive scan games, because those would require no upscan at all.

i'm guessing this means that new hori unit isn't rgb? i ask because i think i saw a screenshot of someone using it in system configuration and they could pick rgb. but it doesn't support prog scan.