darry wrote on 2020-05-21, 18:50:

Master1UP wrote on 2020-05-20, 19:36:

Well lets put that somewhere around 50% satisfied. I finally tested my Gefen with a game and I might have faulty unit or is thi […]
Show full quote

Master1UP wrote on 2020-05-19, 06:46:

You might be right. Actually I happened to bump into Gefen VGA-DVI Scaler Plus without power cable on ebay for reasonable price (about 30€) and the results are literally like night and day. I still have to adjust some settings before I stream but so far I'm 100% satisfied.
I contacted the seller about possible firmware updates for the chinese scaler but so far no reply. They told me they will contact the manufacturer about it but I don't think I will hear from them anymore. But anyways here's the comparison of the two.

Well lets put that somewhere around 50% satisfied. I finally tested my Gefen with a game and I might have faulty unit or is this something to be expected with this device? I tried many settings and adjustments, but I can't seem to do any visible difference.
Especially in the staircase you can see how the darks are brown and muddy and it loses most of the details. In bedroom scene the ceiling is losing most of the detail and stones next to the door are also brown and muddy.
Raising the brightness just brings "crawling ants" more visible on some colors. First I thought it's my cables but that's not the case. I tried many different combinations. Funny thing is that my Chinese scaler works with this game perfectly and it's not blurry like in windows and DOS. At least with this level of detail it doesn't look like it to the eye.
Staircase comparison is with camera because I can't capture yet both with same setup.
If anyone has any advice or can tell if my unit is definitely faulty, please let me know.
Model: EXT-VGA-2-DVISP (Gray)

If having shimmering/movement that isn't there, try phase adjust on the Gefen . Can't speak for other issue .

Thanks, I will try that.

I went scaler shopping and got
1 Crestron HD-SCALER-VGA-E
1 Extron RGB-DVI 300.
I already had 1 Gefen VGA to DVI Scaler Plus .

The Crestron will not do 720x400 or 320x200 (640x400), even with latest firmware . It works fine otherwise .

The Extron does 720x400 and 320x200 , but I get shimmering text and I can't manage to center the image properly without generating ugly scaling artefacts, even on 1600x1200 output . I think it may have hardware issues, but the uneven scaling artefacts are something else . See following post for fix . I can't see firmware version in OSD, will have to wait on serial inteface cable adapter (2.5mm TRS jack, how convenient) for CLI access . I will do more tests later, but it does not look positive .

The Gefen actually works well in 720x400 and 320x200 and has good picture quality . It's only two issues are slow mode changes and flashing a resolution change info logo . It can even handle some oddball modes (Ambience by Tran) but blacks out on the hard parts in Copper .

My aim is not really capturing at this point (I do have a Camlink 4K), but was hoping to drop my dependance on monitor aspect ratio controls and VGA port presence . Gefen is close but not perfect .

P.S. video card for tests is a Voodoo 3 3000 .

I ran some more tests on the Extron RGB-DVI 300 . I only get the shimmering in 720x400 text mode, not matter the output resolution. 320x200 looks OK at first glance when output at 1600x1200 .
640x480-->1600x1200 looks atrocious IMHO, as does 640x480-->640x480, strangely enough (maybe my Dell 2007FPB sucks at upscaling over HDMI). When run directly through the monitor's VGA input, 640x480 looks fine, IMHO .

I tested 720x400 -->1600x1200, 320x200-->1600x1200 and 640x480-->1600x1200 on the Gefen and the looked fine .

Just to be clear, by "fine" I meant without ugly uneven scaling artifacts. I did not particularly pay attention to relative sharpness .

I will try to post photos or actual captures of what I mean by uneven scaling .

The Extron is excellent .

To get good results on my Extron RGB-DVI 300 , I had to
- use 60Hz for VESA modes
- Realize that I have to manually enter the number of total lines for non-VESA resolutions, such as 720x400 (auto-detection will not handle that on my unit at least) . That fixes the scaling and shimmering issues I was having .
I used the values here for 720x400 --> http://martin.hinner.info/vga/timing.html and now both 720x400 70Hz and 320x200 70Hz display fine .
Basically, that mean setting 726x404 active pixels and 900 total pixels and adjusting the rest for proper centering .

Good thing I realized that as my Gefen just died .

My Gefen VGA to DVI Scaler Plus has kicked the bucket . It works briefly when cool, then goes black screen and freezes monitor controls when connected (tested on 2 monitors) . Possibly bad caps, but no apparent leakage and my understanding is that marginal caps work better when warm .

cvgl wrote on 2020-05-19, 15:59:

Will you give me a 100% guarantee that this converter will handle 720x400 from my old 486? And other resolutions?

At least it works fine with common Dos resolutions with any laptop. Not sure if your 486 is very special. I recorded some test review:

https://youtu.be/QLcCcDpjnIk

I contacted Gefen about my scaler and after a lengthy conversation and troubleshooting for a week it's definitely a hardware issue. Maybe someday I take it to my electrician friend who can check it.
Also I have no news about the Chinese scaler's firmware updates so that's out of the picture also.

But all hope is not lost. I managed to find Atlona AT-HD500 scaler from the US ebay and it arrived this week. I did some testing and it's way better than Gefen functionally and the picture is better in my opinion.
According to the manual it's not the latest firmware but all the functionality is there that I need. Only thing I noticed that is missing is the ability to disable color bars on standby.
I linked some sample pictures from few games, BIOS screen and text mode programs. (Don't pay attention to my C:drive because there's lots of test installs and I install everything fresh soon anyway.)
https://imgur.com/a/EmyMnfz

This is the inside of my Startech VGA2HDMIPRO

Did someone with the Atlona AT-HD500 want to open their and compare? It seems entirely likely that they are in fact the exact same unit, Atlona is probably the OEM.

SquallStrife wrote on 2020-06-16, 01:42:

This is the inside of my Startech VGA2HDMIPRO […]
Show full quote

This is the inside of my Startech VGA2HDMIPRO

Did someone with the Atlona AT-HD500 want to open their and compare? It seems entirely likely that they are in fact the exact same unit, Atlona is probably the OEM.

I just opened my Atlona AT-HD500 and it seems to be the same.

Well then, mystery solved! 😀

Master1UP wrote on 2020-06-16, 09:15:

I just opened my Atlona AT-HD500 and it seems to be the same.

In other words Atlona AT-HD500 is improved version of product for cheaper price. Nice!

MAZter wrote on 2020-06-16, 15:43:

Master1UP wrote on 2020-06-16, 09:15:

I just opened my Atlona AT-HD500 and it seems to be the same.

In other words Atlona AT-HD500 is improved version of product for cheaper price. Nice!

It would be nice to know what's hiding under that big heatsink . I have a feeling that a lot of those scalers have similar hardware and differ mainly in firmware, button layout and connector placement .

MAZter wrote on 2020-06-16, 15:43:

Master1UP wrote on 2020-06-16, 09:15:

I just opened my Atlona AT-HD500 and it seems to be the same.

In other words Atlona AT-HD500 is improved version of product for cheaper price. Nice!

How do you get "improved"? They're identical. Probably even come from the same factory.

Except the 0.04 higher firmware, perhaps? I wonder if we could dump it...

SquallStrife wrote on 2020-06-17, 04:43:

How do you get "improved"? They're identical. Probably even come from the same factory.

At least newer firmware and different (newer) capacitors. Great improvement.

MAZter wrote on 2020-06-17, 15:08:

At least newer firmware and different (newer) capacitors. Great improvement.

lmao

Both of those things would have more to do with when the particular unit was manufactured than what brand label is on it.

The difference would be marginal, if perceptible at all.

Really all depends on what exactly was changed in the firmware revision. Could be trivial, or very much improved.

As mentioned in another thread ( Re: What are the best Vga to hdmi scalers or peripherals for MS-DOS games ? ), I am pretty convinced that the Startech VGA2HDMI Pro (first version) is a rebranded CYP SY-P293 .

By the looks of it, CYP is likely to be an OEM for the likes of Atlona , Hall Research , Startech and likely others .
When the detailed specs, OSD layout and options, and physical size/layout match . It is hard to imagine otherwise .

I bought the ATLONA AT-HD500. However, I am not entirely satisfied. Unfortunately, the converter does not recognize the resolution of my IBM PC 486 correctly.

The image quality is very good, but the DOS resolution (720x400@70Hz) is recognized incorrectly as 640x350. Both in DOS (e.g. Norton Commander) as well as in games working in this resolution the image is cut off at the top and bottom and also slightly on the sides:

This cannot be set because in the converter menu there is no option to change the size, there is only the option to shift the image up or down (H-POSITION, V-POSITON). Any other changes to the settings do nothing. On the monitor and TV with VGA input is OK.

In the case of games that work at a resolution of 640x480@60Hz, this resolution is also incorrectly recognized - as 720x480:

However, in this case the image is no longer cut off because the recognized resolution is not less than the actual 640x480.

All in all, it is only suitable for playing games operating at resolutions other than 720x400@70Hz. I suspected that I would have a problem with resolution recognition and unfortunately this is happening. I think this converter is not worth the price. Maybe half but not so much.

cvgl wrote on 2020-07-07, 19:11:

This cannot be set because in the converter menu there is no option to change the size, there is only the option to shift the image up or down (H-POSITION, V-POSITON). Any other changes to the settings do nothing.

Weird, cause HD500 have much more options to setup, can you make pictures how is yours menu looks?

"Size" and "output" options change picture size.

The menu looks the same with me.

But as I wrote, changing these options does nothing. The image is still cut off. The "SIZE" setting has nothing to do with it, because it is only an adjustment of something like aspect ratio/image aspect ratio. "OUTPUT" is only a digital output image resolution that does not control the input image. Therefore, no matter what is set here, the image is still cut off because 720x400 resolution is not recognized correctly. Unfortunately. Nothing will be done here.

cvgl wrote on 2020-07-07, 20:44:

The menu looks the same with me.

But as I wrote, changing these options does nothing. The image is still cut off. The "SIZE" setting has nothing to do with it, because it is only an adjustment of something like aspect ratio/image aspect ratio. "OUTPUT" is only a digital output image resolution that does not control the input image. Therefore, no matter what is set here, the image is still cut off because 720x400 resolution is not recognized correctly. Unfortunately. Nothing will be done here.

The difference in behaviour of maybe due to different firmware .