3 replies to this topic

[unholy]

I've been experimenting with hooking up my 800XL to a VGA monitor via a USB video capture card and the results are less than encouraging, as you can see in the attached pictures. The first one shows the image from a C128. Nothing spectacular (a bit fuzzy, a bit washed out), but about on par with what I've come to expect from the card. The second one is from the Atari and, believe it or not, it actually looks even worse in reality. There's some serious ghosting and noise, with red, green, and blue horizontal lines scrolling through the screen.

Both machines were connected with the same DIN-to-composite cable. The 800XL is still stock, works fine, outputs clear picture to a TV (same cable), and has been tested with two different power supplies (with identical effects). Any ideas? I know that 8-bit Ataris are notorious for their video signal quality, but I don't quite understand why it would work just fine with a TV but not with the capture card. Is this something the Super Video modification could help with?

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[BillC]

unholy, on Sat Jan 8, 2011 3:00 PM, said:

I've been experimenting with hooking up my 800XL to a VGA monitor via a USB video capture card and the results are less than encouraging, as you can see in the attached pictures. The first one shows the image from a C128. Nothing spectacular (a bit fuzzy, a bit washed out), but about on par with what I've come to expect from the card. The second one is from the Atari and, believe it or not, it actually looks even worse in reality. There's some serious ghosting and noise, with red, green, and blue horizontal lines scrolling through the screen.

Both machines were connected with the same DIN-to-composite cable. The 800XL is still stock, works fine, outputs clear picture to a TV (same cable), and has been tested with two different power supplies (with identical effects). Any ideas? I know that 8-bit Ataris are notorious for their video signal quality, but I don't quite understand why it would work just fine with a TV but not with the capture card. Is this something the Super Video modification could help with?

Tiger Direct carries some external TV Tuners with various video inputs, with RGB/VGA monitor outputs.
http://www.tigerdire....asp?CatId=4641

I have the KWorld SA230WP, it has a TV tuner, choice of composite/svideo, component, special WII or Playstion connectors, plus RGB inputs, and outputs to RGB at resolutions from 800x600 to 1920x1080/1200.

It has a severe problem with composite input from my 800 or 800XL, but displays s-video fine.

The following 4 photos show the 800 display on an LG M2363D-PM LCD 1080P LCD TV/monitor.

Composite input converted to RGB, has severe vertical banding issues.

S-video converted to RGB, displays fine.

Connection direct to monitors s-video input, some vertical banding.

Connected directly to monitors composite input, displays fine.


The SA230WP is better at converting the 800s S-Video to RGB than it is at converting composite, but the composite display is superior to the S-Video when using the M2362D-PM monitors own inputs.

[Rybags]

Try it via Luma only instead of Composite and see how it behaves (of course you'll have no colour).

Atari differs from C= 64, Plus/4 and normal TV signals etc in that the VSync pulses are full scanline width rather than half scanline with the brief return to Blanking Level.
In most cases that doesn't matter, but it does cause problems with some TVs and capture devices.

The fact your C= 128 works at least means your device doesn't care that it's not an interlaced signal (which again can be a problem for some devices).

[wood_jl]

I have a video capture device that works with everything EXCEPT for the Atari computers.