Deinterlacing Xbox 360 480i.. woes with Extron 109xi..

[Asure]

So, after seeing some YouTube vids and grabbing two of these from evilbay, it seemed to me this would be easy to get going.

The Extron 109's have a DSUB15 cable instead of the input in the front of the other models.
I made a clean SCART -> DSUB15 adapter, and put a LM1881 in between the composite video pin to convert that into clean CSYNC. (Basically a SYNC STRIKE but self built.)
I connected R/G/B and CSYNC output from the LM1881 to a female DSUB15 VGA plug, and put that into the cable sticking out of the Extron 109xi.
(I power the LM1881 from the +5V/GND at the jamma edge at this point.)

So far so good, but a few things bother me at this stage. I did not build a BNC to SCART cable yet before this test

- Powering up the xbox 360 seems to work fine with the unit attached, and the Extron shows 15Khz /60Hz on the info display.
- After about 30 seconds, the Extron's info display goes back to 0.0Khz / 0.0Hz display as if no device is attached, and no signal is coming into it.

So, i built a quick cable with Red/Sync BNC connectors to SCART and feed that into jamma with VileTim, using the S BNC terminal, but no stable picture. I can make out the Xbox 360's signal, but the sync is wrong.

- When this cable is connected something wierd happens!
- The Extron will no longer 'see' a 15K/50Hz signal when powering up the Xbox 360!
- Removing the BNC terminals and power cycling the Xbox 360, it briefly shows a 15k/60Hz signal on the Extron's LCD display

Anybody else using a Extron 109xi to go to pure 240P, would you be so kind to comment on possible errors i have made?

- Yes, i connected all ground wires
- Verified the BNC to SCART sync wire is on pin 20 (and its GND on 18)
- Verified the SCART to DSUB15 / LM1881 wiring, i have Composite Sync output connected to vga pin 13 HSYNC only (and its GND to 10, Sync GND)
- Should i hook up VSYNC as well?
- Or should i connect composite out from LM1881 to both H and V sync pin 13+14 on the DSUB15/VGA input?

[yosai]

What exactly are you trying to achieve?

An xbox360 -> 15k monitor/cab does not require anything other than the LM1881 circuit hacked on to an RGB SCART cable.

[Asure]

Xbox 360 outputs Scart RGB at 480i, and the extron is supposed to change that into a pseudo-240P signal. It has some sort of DSP inside which can take 480i and pump out 240P.

I have a VileTim which already allows me to connect the Xbox to my MS9 / Cabinet via Jamma which works, but the flickering annoys me. I'm a bit an*l about video quality

So, in short, i want to get rid of the interlace flicker
(Back in 2011 this stuff was all the rage on the shmups forums.)

[Asure]

Hrm. Still no progress from me, but I triple checked wiring, and hooked up VSync out from the LM1881 to the extron's vga in port.

I could not be arsed with the crappy BNC solder connectors i got, so i dremeled out one of the vent holes on the side and soldered internally to the R/G/B/S directly into a proper Scart cable.
I have sync wire from the Extron going to pin 20 on the scart, and GND to pin 18.

So i guess there is a problem with the input stage. After all, i checked the output and am 100% sure i soldered the right wires. (Scart pin 20 is sync input on the VileTim as well, right?)
But, there is no sync signal on pin 20 at all. No voltage between GND and 20. It seems the Extron never outputs sync for some reason.

Back to the input stage, i have a LM1881 powered by the Jamma +5V/GND terminals, which feeds Csync into the Hsync pin on the VGA connector.
I have no scope, but measuring the voltage on the LM1881 output sits somewhere near 2.5-3.0VDC.
Something must be wrong with this signal i guess.

Even if i do not feed the Extron any sync, it shows a 15K/60Hz input on the display for around 30 seconds whilst the Xbox is booting. (Gone by the time it reaches the dash)

Q: Anybody know if the 360 has a sync signal mixed into r/g/b that the Extron seems to pick up?

Q: Also, do i need to connect all grounds everywhere, and possible ID0 to GND? (As Shown here)
(right now i have RGB+3x GND and S+Gnd going into VGA)

[Asure]

Mweh. I got it working after checking my handywork another ten times. I missed a ground link on the LM1881.

So, i finally got my Extron setup working.
Xbox 360 to RGB 480i -> LM1881 and such DSUB15 -> Extron 109xi -> modded output to RGB Scart + composite sync, to a VileTim to Jamma, MS-9 on my Astro.

With DDSP OFF (this enables the DSP and allows me to shift the picture) there is still flickering and the picture information seems halved, and shifted.
With DDSP ON i have a 480i picture.

I'm pretty anal about video quality, but this does not look like a proper 240P picture to me at all. Am i just that anal? Where's the big fat scanlines?
I might be spoiled, i have an original Espgaluda 2 240P game PCB to compare to

Pictures because people love them and then the mods should hopefully approve my post

DDSP Disabled, 480i


DDSP Enabled, Pseudo 240P

(Clickable for big pics..)

Pictures do not really do justice, they are just showing 1 frame at most
The pseudo 240P flickers, and i can see that from 5 meters away. The 480i also flickers, but at 5 meters, it looks fine.
It's almost as if there is 15Khz flicker/movement in the pixels for some reason.
When i disable the DDSP after watching the pseudo for a while.. the 480i is almost pleasing to my eyes!
Something seems wrong to me Any protips, or is this just an incompatible monitor (MS9)?

[Catzoo]

Simple question : why do you use Scart when Xbox 360 has a native VGA support ?

I mean, you have to deal with 480i, where you can use extron or other devices (like UVC) to go from 480P to 240P, having a great not flickering picture ?

[emphatic]

Simple question : why do you use Scart when Xbox 360 has a native VGA support ?

My guess is he wants to use his viletim scart->JAMMA adapter? Also, if he's already tracked down and bought a proper 360 scart cable (these are getting hard to find on the cheap) that might be an incentive to get this working.

[Asure]

My goal is to simply duplicate what others seem to have done before me. And do it cheap

I have a 15K monitor in my Astro (24K as well), with a rock solid picture in 15K and any of my pcb's.
Problem is, i do not have unlimited funds, so buying €1400 matsuri stuff is out of the question for me. Still, i want to play stuff like Futari, Espgaluda II and others
These all have great ports on the Xbox 360 platform.

Using a RGB Scart cable (only 4 euros if you need one, from here) i get a great 480i picture on my crt's (tv, and astro, using the Viletim). Not sure if they ship outside NL but i can forward a box of these if you want them Empathic

Anyway, i am a bit anal about video. I used to have an arcadevga setup before this, for the same reason. I prefer a rock solid 15K/240P image with scanlines.

So, using the extron, the idea is to have the on-board DSP in the extron create a 'almost as good as' 240P output from the 480i output. With nice scanlines.

According to others, this was the way to go, the image should not flicker as rough as it does on my setup. Basically, it seems something is incompatible, and i don't know why.
The output from the Extron has scanlines on my monitor, and the picture itself does not flicker.
The two fields projected 'trough' the scanlines seem to flicker and have what appears to be a wrong offset.

I made a short video illustrating the effect. The flicker itself is not captured by the camera, but by tilting/moving the camera a bit, you can see the secondary image in a few moving lines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IOqkg8IEfg"
Hover the mouse over the white are around 00:20 to see the effect in the 'how to play box' of Espgaluda 2.

I would expect the extron to blend the two fields from the 480i signal into one, and not offset it by 2/3 pixels.
I already contacted Extron to see if i'm doing something wrong, or should be expecting different results.

And no, i do not have an UVC, or a VGA monitor in my cab

[emphatic]

Using a RGB Scart cable (only 4 euros if you need one, from here) i get a great 480i picture on my crt's (tv, and astro, using the Viletim). Not sure if they ship outside NL but i can forward a box of these if you want them Empathic

Is that the cable you're using? I would ask fagin (it's fagin who found out the side-effect of this extron unit with a 480i input, right?) if he's using a 3rd party cable (like you've linked to) or a true Microsoft product, the Advanced Scart Cable (what I'm using myself) as there's apparently a big difference in PQ between these scart cables.

But, as Fudoh's pointed out in your thread @ the shmups forums, you'll never get rid as good results with the high res ports as the low res ones (ESPGALUDA II or DeathSmiles) using this method.

Xbox 360 Advanced AV Cable: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listin ... dition=all"

[Asure]

To quote myself, this is not with HD versions of games:

"I did all the checking with the arcade (pixel doubled) version of Galuda 2, and i shifted one pixel to get the best result that is in the picture."

I will be testing tonight, at a friends' place with the official RGB scart cable, and a different monitor, to rule those out though.

[Asure]

Tested with the original Scart Cable made no difference at a friends place.
We ended up finally using the VGA function on his monitor, together with the Extron to stabilize the vga and get a razor sharp picture.