First post, by SirNickity
Y'know when you think of something and go, hey.. this seems like it would be a good idea. Usually either 1) it's already been done, or 2) it's a terrible idea, and that's why nobody is doing that. I need help categorizing this idea into camp 1 or 2. 😀
OK, so the OSSC is pretty great at bringing RGB sources into an HDMI port. Not perfect -- sometimes it fails to sync, or outputs a signal my TV doesn't understand, and maybe just switching inputs to something else and back again will get it to behave. But my one real complaint is the lack of auto-adjust, so you always have to line up the sample rate and H/V size and offsets. At least you get lots of presets, which is nice, but it would take some degree of product development to sync those presets up with a source selector. So instead of that...
Well, first, here's my application goals:
I have four old PCs that I need to up-convert from VGA, then another couple I need to convert from DVI + audio to HDMI, and one more that is already HDMI. The solution I have at the moment is to use a VGA KVM and a 3.5mm audio cable (that I have to swap manually) going into an OSSC for the VGA sources; a DVI KVM with audio switching into a DVI-to-HDMI cable (which I need to replace with a DVI+audio to HDMI muxer); and finally an HDMI switch box.
What I'm wondering -- since the OSSC is open source and all -- has anyone modularized just the necessary components to turn it into a programmable VGA to HDMI converter? I'm wondering if it could be stripped down to just a handful of parts, probably requiring an EEPROM with the mode timings you would want to use, and adapted to a smart cable on a per-source basis. Would it be affordable enough to make sense w/o the SCART and LCD and etc. etc.?
I haven't done any research myself on this yet. I'm planning to dig in when I have some down time and explore whether this would be feasible. I'm not asking someone to do my research for me, just wondering if this is well-covered territory and I'm either wasting my time or some guy in Balugaslavikstan already sells them on Ebay.