N64 HDMI converter thread

[8bitDNA]

An anecdotal observation = if any of you have one of those translucent "funtastic" consoles, the Ultra HDMI chip is visible underneath after the install is complete. It looks really neat. For the effect to be maximized the shell would need to be clean on both the outside and inside. I own a green one and it looks fantastic!

Marshall - - I know that you're using the blinking red light for troubleshooting, but it would be awesome if you created a menu option to let the user either leave the light on continuously or have it pulse. I accidentally turned on my N64 before starting my amp/receiver and since the N64 didn't sense an HDMI connection it pulsated slowly. I left it like that for a little bit and thought how cool it could be to let the user customize how that red light behaves once their unit is up and operational. Not sure if it would decrease the board's life by having that light on continuously and whatnot, but thought I would throw a suggestion your way - thanks!

[3l3tric]

Finished my installation today, it went very well, loving the end product! I was slightly disappointed in the lack of audio related options, since the audio is still a tad scratchy, but I'm sure this is something that may change with future updates.

[wellsm89]

I have been reading through the posts and have yet to find information of anyone in the United Kingdom doing this mod? Can anyone point me in the direction of anyone installing this mod apart from sending to badassconsoles as at the moment this is my only option.

[inspectah]

I have been reading through the posts and have yet to find information of anyone in the United Kingdom doing this mod? Can anyone point me in the direction of anyone installing this mod apart from sending to badassconsoles as at the moment this is my only option.

Installerslist will be published when the main site will go live.
Main site will go up, once the installers have received their units.
Source:
http://retroactive.be/forum/viewtopic.p ... t=250#p462

[RdCrestdBreegull]

Hello all, I've been following this project for a long time now and I've been following this thread for the past year. I've read every post over time and I don't think these questions have been specifically addressed, so please forgive me if they have:

1) For games like Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Tooie with anamorphic widescreen, will we be able to make this work perfectly on our HDTVs? So if I select widescreen on DK64, I know that immediately the widescreen image will be squeezed inside the usual 4:3 image... will I be able to put my TV on a certain setting that will stretch the squeezed 4:3 image to fill my 16:9 TV screen perfectly? I'm asking because when I play DK64 on the Wii U virtual console and I select widescreen from the in-game options, I cannot simply stretch the screen because I believe the Wii U is sending the signal of the game as a 16:9 image that we see as being pillarboxed rather than sending it as a true 4:3 image (and of course an image that my TV already considers 16:9 cannot be stretched further) so I actually have to use some kind of weird zoom function on my TV to make it 95% fill the screen and have the proper ratio. So I guess what I'm really asking, is does the UltraHDMI output the video signal to the connected display as a 16:9 signal or a 4:3 signal?

2) For games with a surround sound option like Bad Fur Day (Dolby Pro Logic of course), will we be able to make this work properly? With the Wii U, certain games (Mario Kart 8) are in stereo but the audio signal is output via HDMI as a 5.1 signal with only two channels (strange, really) so I would not be able to use the Pro Logic feature on my receiver for Mario Kart 8 (not that I would want to). As long as the UltraHDMI is sending the audio signal as a true 2.0 signal everything should be fine.

3) How is the HDMI audio compared to the audio from the N64 multi-out via stereo RCA cables? I am wondering if I should connect the N64 directly to my amplifier with the RCA cables and have the HDMI going to my display, or if I should have everything going through HDMI to my amplifier (and then to my display). And if I use RCA for audio to my amp and HDMI for video to my display, will the audio and video sync up properly?..or are there any settings on the UltraHDMI to delay any signals for proper syncing? If I decide to use my Rogue Sphinx analog amplifier for the RCA audio, I will definitely not have any syncing options on the amplifier end of things.

Thank you marshall for all of your countless hours. I have dreamed of something like this for a long time and I never thought it would happen. It sounds so amazing!

[tuner240]

I have been reading through the posts and have yet to find information of anyone in the United Kingdom doing this mod? Can anyone point me in the direction of anyone installing this mod apart from sending to badassconsoles as at the moment this is my only option.

Installerslist will be published when the main site will go live.
Main site will go up, once the installers have received their units.
Source:
http://retroactive.be/forum/viewtopic.p ... t=250#p462

Thank you for this. Does this hold true for all installers, not just the installers for the UK?

[inspectah]

@tuner240: Yes

[3l3tric]

1) For games like Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Tooie with anamorphic widescreen, will we be able to make this work perfectly on our HDTVs? So if I select widescreen on DK64, I know that immediately the widescreen image will be squeezed inside the usual 4:3 image... will I be able to put my TV on a certain setting that will stretch the squeezed 4:3 image to fill my 16:9 TV screen perfectly? I'm asking because when I play DK64 on the Wii U virtual console and I select widescreen from the in-game options, I cannot simply stretch the screen because I believe the Wii U is sending the signal of the game as a 16:9 image that we see as being pillarboxed rather than sending it as a true 4:3 image (and of course an image that my TV already considers 16:9 cannot be stretched further) so I actually have to use some kind of weird zoom function on my TV to make it 95% fill the screen and have the proper ratio. So I guess what I'm really asking, is does the UltraHDMI output the video signal to the connected display as a 16:9 signal or a 4:3 signal?

3) How is the HDMI audio compared to the audio from the N64 multi-out via stereo RCA cables? I am wondering if I should connect the N64 directly to my amplifier with the RCA cables and have the HDMI going to my display, or if I should have everything going through HDMI to my amplifier (and then to my display). And if I use RCA for audio to my amp and HDMI for video to my display, will the audio and video sync up properly?..or are there any settings on the UltraHDMI to delay any signals for proper syncing? If I decide to use my Rogue Sphinx analog amplifier for the RCA audio, I will definitely not have any syncing options on the amplifier end of things.

In my time with the installed mod, I can answer these two.

1) You will be able to display these properly through a menu setting. The UltraHDMI has an included feature that allows you to stretch the 4:3 output to a widescreen display properly that the mod itself performs. I've used this on Wave Race 64 and F-Zero X, and both times I was able to get both to fill the screen. I think by default, it may send everything in 16:9, but I have no proof for this. You can for sure get the desired effect with the "Stretch" output option.

3) I would use RCA for now. The audio from the HDMI output is a bit scratchy, possibly overloaded, or the low bitrate of N64 audio may be decoded improperly. I believe this can likely be fixed in an update. There are no delay options. If you have an issue with delay, you may be able to use Direct Mode to help slightly, but this will disable all filtering and upscaling.

[meneerbeer]

3) I would use RCA for now. The audio from the HDMI output is a bit scratchy, possibly overloaded, or the low bitrate of N64 audio may be decoded improperly. I believe this can likely be fixed in an update. There are no delay options. If you have an issue with delay, you may be able to use Direct Mode to help slightly, but this will disable all filtering and upscaling.

I can not really say much about the audio quality as I am using my internal TV speakers. It sounds good to me though. I think a lot of audio from the N64 is low bitrare anyways due to the limited storage space on cartridges.

Do you think the audio is noticeably better when you use RCA? In that case you might have a point. I believe the hard part of the audio processing to send it over HDMI is that the N64 uses weird sample rates. Therefore, it needs to be resampled by a DSP to something common for HDMI such as 48 KHz. You will introduce some noise when doing that and it depends on your algorithm how much. As far as I know it is fairly hard to do this kind of stuff on an FPGA. I can almost only find papers when I search for stuff on it.

[3l3tric]

I can not really say much about the audio quality as I am using my internal TV speakers. It sounds good to me though. I think a lot of audio from the N64 is low bitrare anyways due to the limited storage space on cartridges.

Do you think the audio is noticeably better when you use RCA? In that case you might have a point. I believe the hard part of the audio processing to send it over HDMI is that the N64 uses weird sample rates. Therefore, it needs to be resampled by a DSP to something common for HDMI such as 48 KHz. You will introduce some noise when doing that and it depends on your algorithm how much. As far as I know it is fairly hard to do this kind of stuff on an FPGA. I can almost only find papers when I search for stuff on it.

I haven't done a direct comparison of any kind on the topic, just FYI. Everything I'm saying is based on my memory of using RCA. The most obvious difference that I've seen is that there's a tiny bit of distortion present at some points with UltraHDMI that I don't remember being there when I was using RCA audio before. Not low bitrate distortion (like watery cymbals and things like that), but clipping type distortion. This could just be my implementation, as I have the UltraHDMI connected to a Yamaha Audio Receiver which outputs the audio. You may see no difference with internal speakers.

I think the biggest example I could give would be the introduction to Paper Mario. I'm sure it's low bitrate audio, but it doesn't have the characteristic sound of really low-end compression. However, with UltraHDMI, there's an added crackle/scratching sound at some high points in the intro.

Now, onto implementation. I have no clue how difficult it would be to implement the necessary audio conversions. IIRC, HDMI has a few different audio implementations you can use, but I highly doubt that the digital audio stream from the N64 fits any of those protocols. So we can only imagine the hassle of taking that signal and converting it to something that HDMI can actually use. I feel, though, that the clipping issue is due to the code used to implement the conversion from N64 digital audio to whatever HDMI audio standard Marshall chose to use, and as such can be fixed in a firmware update. It may just be that the resulting signal needs to be attenuated before it's sent to the end device. Because of this, I wouldn't be too concerned with the issue. Just test for yourself the difference between HDMI and RCA audio, and if HDMI is worse, be sure to follow firmware updates and retest once an update is released that seeks to improve fidelity.