i got my VGA box today - the delivery guy showed up at a very bad time - i was right about to go to work and i was already tight on time - but that wasn't his fault - i mean - who the heck goes to work at 10AM - almost others are already working then - anyhow - as i was back home i couldn't wait to try it out so i took my PS2 and wired everything up - a small documentation was also included in the package (just some basic stuff like what it is and how to use it) - now this part sounded very interesting:
Quote:HD Game Box uses the newest 3D De-interlace Video optimization and smooth chip.
Variable High-tech graphic optimization algorithm and technology are built into the product,
such as edge-preserving pixel interpolation and motion-adaptive 3D de-interlace algorithm
combined with the simlutaneous conversion of the frame rate to get higher definition display
i was like "wow - thats a mouthful - let's see if the actual picture looks as good as this sounds"
so i fired up DOA2 (PAL) wich can run at 50 as well as 60 hz - first i tried the default - 50hz
the OSD of the box said Y-PB-PR input - 576i
the OSD of my monitor said VGA input - 1280x1024 - 60hz
fine - thats exactly how i wanted it to be - the picture was nice and crisp as expected though i noticed the image not being completely stretched - it had small black borders all around the video display being about as thick as my finger - not just the usual "PAL-bars" on top and bottom but also a vertical bar on the right and a slightly bigger one on the left
now i tried 60hz mode (in the OSD of the box it was labeled 480i) and was kinda surprised - even though the input has a lower resolution now the bordering bars are gone and the image really fills the whole screen
what the F... ??? shouldnt it be easier to stretch a bigger image where this "wonderfull" high definition chip has les work with upscaling or is it because the image wich has only 480 pixels in height fits better into the aspect-ratio sheme of computer monitors ? (you know 640x480 and the multiples of that like 1024x768 and 1280x960 aren't that uncommon on computer screens)
anyway i chose the CPU vs CPU option and let two of the beauties beat up each other to see how that chip manages to de-interlace and upscale 3D scenes in motion
now the next surprise
at first there was no sign of de-interlacing artifacts, no shaky screen no nothing and all the edges were kinda smoothed out as if you would have turned on some FSAA or something
not until the battle finally startet and everything on the screen startet moving rapidly - suddenly all the rough edges came back again like you know 'em and the screen startet shaking a little - except for situtation with little to no camera movement (if one of the figters had her back against a wall or was stuck in a corner or something - or flat on the floor because of a hardcore-roundhouse from the opposing fighter ;-)
so thats what this "motion-adaptive" thing seems to be all about - if it detects rapid motions it just turns all the "fake-HD" effects down to avoid artifacts ;-)
then i tried resident evil: code veronica wich has a very annoying screen shaking even on a real TV - with the game box - nothing - and there aren't much scenes with heavy camera movement because it's still one of the old-school resident evil games with fixed camera angles (wich i love so much)
so the box turned on all the nice effects again - and left them on - and now you could clearly see the artifacts - every moving thing in the game (monsters, main character) seemed to be dragging a "ghost image" of itself around after it - not much - but it looked a little like you turned on some "motion blur"
but anyhow - thats not hurting my eyes half as much as the screen always shaking by a line or two ;-)
bottom line:
despite the big-mouthed description in the manual there are some clearly visible artifacts on interlaced games (wich was expected) it looks pretty nice even on my cheap asus TFT - and doesn't stress my eyes half as much as my old CRT-TV wich now can rot in hell for all i care (or collect dust in the bedroom to be correct)
rocks with interlaced content on PS2 and should rock double time with natively progressive content
my bro will be more than happy when he gets his WII and will be able to play twilight princess or metroid 3 @ 480p on his computer screen because if he finally has saved up enough to buy a wii i will recommend him to spend that few bucks extra and get that box too because in our family's living room there's another aging CRT-TV waiting to be replaced
i also recommend that box to anyone who wants to use a game console / dvd player / vcr / cable tuner / whatever home entertainment device you got on a computer monitor
it can upscale everything up to 1920x1200
it has a very flexible selection of inputs - composite video (CVBS) / S-video (Y/C) / component video (Y PB PR)
once wired up you don't need to crawl under your desk everytime and mess around with the plugs and cables - like when you had your PC running and then want to play a console game - it has PC-VGA and PC-audio pass-through when its off and when its on it can either autoselect the input it detects a signal on or you can select your input manually
and for that amazing price (around 30€ on amazon.com) you can't do anything wrong
as i was searching the web for a solution to connect a game console to a PC monitori found converter boxes all over the net but most of them doing less while costing more - for example a euro-av (also known as RGB-SCART) to DVI converter that did cost about twice as much but could only upscale to 720p and the output frequency was also depending on the input frequencie - so 756i / 50hz SDTV IN - 720p / 50hz HDTV OUT - and the same goes for 60hz content - the problem is my monitor can't go as low as 50hz so i needet something that could not only change resolution but change frequency as well - and most of THOSE devices were priced about 200 and up
if i go shopping for games again i might consider preferring games wich are at least "60hz enabled" PAL games to have more games that really go "full screen" on my actual "living-room-setup"
there might even be some "progressive enabled" games around - though the only one i know about is the NTSC version of GT4 - but i remember reading something about PAL games that can go progressive as well
why PAL games ? - because PAL is all my PS2 can read and i'm not going to screw it up by installing a boot-chip
maybe some day i might get a second one pre-owned at game stop and then try it on that one - but not on "my precious" - GOLLUM, GOLLUM !!!!
edit: dunno why but i looked at the thread title again - it reads "PAL or NTFS" - LOL ??? - did something just go wrong or was that on purpose - NTFS is a windows file system :-)