My pointless quest to achieve perfect retro console fidelity
It all started about four years ago when I came into an old Sega Saturn system from the mid-90s. It was an entire console catalog that I completely skipped over back in the day. I hooked it up to my TV and soon I was knee-deep in classic fighting games like Street Fighter vs X-Men, and shoot-em-ups like Thunderforce V. The low-poly art style was gorgeously retro, but I quickly realized that the image was stretched and distorted on my HDTV. I googled “retro console fidelity” and that’s where it all went wrong.
Without getting too deep into the AV nerd wormhole — and I am certainly no expert on this matter — the short of it is that that old video game consoles were designed in very small resolutions specifically for old CRT televisions. You remember those old bulky beasts that took two grown men to lift? They had actual cathode ray guns inside of them that drew the image on the screen with a spray of electrons. Old consoles (we’re talking pre-PlayStation 2) were designed to make use of this specific process: They relied on CRT-specific features like scanlines (this usually refers to the horizontal black lines that noticeably ran through the image), color bleed between the lines, and interlacing.
So when you plug one of these systems into a modern HDTV, the signal has to be treated and interpreted for your big shiny flat panel. The TV must upscale the pixels and deinterlace the signal — not to mention it has no cathode tubes, so there would be no scanlines, which means no color bleed. Plus, there’s a resolution problem. A Super Nintendo, for example, outputs at 256 x 254; a 4KTV is 3,840 x 2,160. That means if you plugged one into a 4K set, the signal would need to be expanded by inserting several million useless pixels into it.
On top of all of this, CRTs are in a square rectangular 4:3 format, while modern TVs have a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, which means your game will also appear stretched and distorted. Taking all of this into account, the image resulting from plugging an old console into a modern TV is a far cry from what the console intended to produce. An old Sega Saturn, or Super Nintendo, or NES, or any console before the HD generation, is going to look pretty ugly on a modern screen.
If you’re like me and you’ve come this far into the retro fidelity wormhole to learn about stuff like “interlacing,” then you’re probably going to do something about it. The most sensible and economical thing to do is buy a scaler — a device that sits between your console and your modern television and handles all of that tricky business of translating the signal. The Framemeister XRGB-mini is probably the most popular.
While a scaler can get the job done for most people, the image it transmits is only an emulation and an approximation of what the signal would look like on a CRT. In other words, the scanlines would not be real, and so a scaler could never deliver the image that the consoles intended. To achieve actual honest-to-God retro fidelity, you’re going to need to get your hands on a genuine cathode-ray tube monitor. My quest was born.
XRGB-mini Framemeister upscaler
JunkerHQ.net
Shopping around, I soon realized that some of the best CRTs ever made — specialist devices once far out of reach price wise — were now readily obtainable. So I set my sights on acquiring a Sony BVM — a high-end RGB monitor that was most frequently used in broadcast stations and editing bays. Getting one of these bad boys would not only satisfy in the myriad output issues associated with older consoles plugged into new TVs, but it would also be an RGB-input monitor, which means it would display the crispest colors from your old consoles. For the purist — which, to my horror, I realized was me — this was a far better option than a scaler.
I put the Sony BVM20F1 in my sights. It’s a 20-inch monitor that clocks in at almost 70 pounds. It originally retailed north of $12,000 (yes, that’s right), but they now run between $120 and $200 — if you can find one. I scoured eBay for weeks, but the few BVMs I could find were pick-up only (shipping a 70-pound hunk of equipment is expensive and onerous). I found many possible compromises. In particular there seemed to be a lot of similar, but smaller Sony RGB monitors going up for auction around me. But they were only 8 or 12 inches and intended for use as medical imaging equipment.
While there’s certainly something charming in the ridiculous notion of playing Super Mario on a 8-inch screen that had 10,000 hours of displaying sonograms under its belt, I decided to hold out for the real deal. After several weeks of fruitless searching, I failed to turn up anything affordable. Obtaining these old monitors was harder than it seemed. Years passed, and this quest went on the backburner.
But then I moved to Los Angeles. I suddenly realized that I was in the broadcasting monitor capital of America. A quick look on Craigslist took me to a storage unit in Studio City, where an aging video editor hauled out two RGB behemoths for me to check out. I hoisted them out of their travel cases to discover two Sony PVM20s. Not the BVM holy grail I had been searching for, but these were a close second (the main differences between the PVM and BVM are in the types of formats the monitors support natively). I bought both PVMs for $100 together — a steal — thinking that I could sell the second to another foolish person like myself and maybe even cover my costs and somehow justify this whole mad endeavor.
So, finally, after several years with the goal of perfect retro fidelity hanging over my head, I had myself a glorious RGB box complete with scanlines. Imagine my dismay, then, when I got home and realized I needed a set of custom cables to rig my old consoles up with RGB output that would connect to the weird specialist BNC connections on the back of the monitor. So another six weeks passed as I hunted down the RGB cables that had to be custom-built for the Saturn and the SNES and shipped from the United Kingdom. And yet, they still needed BNC adapters. These were shipped in from Hong Kong. So about two months after I burdened my home with a 70-pound monitor that every guest asked befuddled questions about, I could finally — finally — experience the glorious RGB scanline-infused signal that I had longed for all these many years.
I hooked up my Sega Saturn and basked in the glory. The monitor turned on with a satisfying hum as the cathode ray guns warmed up. The screen glowed with a buzz of static electricity that was fuzzy to touch. I played an hour or so of old fighting games and shoot-em-ups. The Darkstalkers sprites were gorgeous; their animations popped. Radiant Silvergun was, um, radiant. The colors, carried over RGB signals that separated the reds, greens and blues, were vibrant and alive. These games looked magnificent, better than I could have ever experienced them back in the day because I would never have had access to such an expensive monitor. They were simply the best they were ever going to look.
But the glow faded fast. After a couple of weeks of dabbling with the equipment and various games and consoles, my attention drifted. I sold one of the monitors to an artist who was making an installation. The other got boxed up and put in the basement. I had seen Sonic the Hedgehog in its most pixel-perfect incarnation, and yet I felt empty inside.
Searching for retro fidelity, I realized, was not merely about making old games achieve an objectively “perfect” gold standard of visuals. At the end of the day, even on the best hardware you can obtain, it all becomes subjective anyway. Dive deep into retro gaming forums like Shmups and you’ll find that at a certain level, it is just a matter of preference.
No, this quest was always about something more personal. Old video game consoles — and old CRT televisions, for that matter — exert an emotional pull on many of us. These devices created the images that we grew up with. They were charmingly imperfect, and elegant in their solution to technical problems. These images are attached to memories; to our sense of identity. Recreating them as we think we remember them has become a time-consuming, burdensome endeavor — and as the tech ages and disappears, it will become increasingly difficult and also more expensive. It’s not that the games themselves will go away. There will always be plenty of ways to play them, but what we will be playing will always be a mere emulation. It will be, like our memory, simulations of images that were once magical — beautiful in their imperfections — but are now gone forever.
‘Mass Effect Andromeda’ novels tie into the full video game saga
Literary pop culture powerhouse Titan Books will publish four new novels in the Mass Effect universe between August 2016 and March 2018, as outlined in its 2016 Fiction Rights Guide. The books line up with the release of Mass Effect Andromeda in March 2017, but they’ll tie into the entire Mass Effect series, serving as prequels and sequels to some events in the games.
“They will focus on key characters and answer the many questions fans have been asking,” Titan writes.
The first novel, Mass Effect: Andromeda Initiative, is written by The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms author and three-time Hugo Award nominee NK Jemisin. The final novel will be penned by Mac Walters, creative director of the Mass Effect franchise.
Titan is also publishing a trilogy of novels based on the Dishonored series between July 2016 and June 2017. All three books are written by sci-fi author Adam Christopher and the first installment is called The Corroded Man. Dishonored 2, the sequel to 2012’s Dishonored, will hit PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on November 11th.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is also getting a tie-in novel from Titan and developer Eidos Montreal, dubbed Deus Ex: Black Light. The book bridges the events of the previous game, Human Revolution, with Mankind Divided. The game is set to land on August 23rd and Black Light will hit bookshelves that same month. It’s written by New York Times bestseller (and previous Deus Ex novelization star) James Swallow, who’s also authored books in the Doctor Who, Star Trek and Warhammer 40,000 universes.
Via: Polygon
Source: Titan Books
Microsoft sued for $10,000 after unwanted Windows 10 upgrade
Microsoft’s pushy and occasionally misleading Windows 10 update process has had some tangible backlash. According to the Seattle Times, a small business owner from California has successfully sued Microsoft for $10,000 in “compensation for lost wages and the cost of a new computer” after an unwanted and unauthorized update allegedly left her primary work PC slow, crash-prone and unusable.
“I had never heard of Windows 10,” Sausalito-based travel agent Teri Goldstein told the Seattle Times. “Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to update.”
While Goldstein appears to be the first user to get an actual monetary award, Windows 7/8 users have been complaining about the update process for nearly as long as the new version has been available. Earlier this year, Microsoft changed the update from “optional” to “recommended” and, perhaps most egregiously, the company also switched the behavior of the ubiquitous red X button so that it actually accepted the upgrade rather than canceling it. For their part, Redmond denied any wrongdoing in the Goldstein case and has offered a new tutorial for disabling the update notifications, although there’s still a chance that doing nothing at all will result in an unwanted update that has already been scheduled without the user opting in.
For others who might be looking for a handout from Microsoft, or just some compensation for their upgrade headaches, it is unclear if the case could lead to more lawsuits. The Seattle Times also reports that Microsoft was planning to appeal the Goldstein ruling, but dropped the case to avoid even more court costs. So, it seems unlikely that the company would continue to put itself at risk of more litigation, even if it does have an ambitious goal of 1 billion Windows 10 users to reach. On the other hand, a lawsuit involving a similarly “optional” operating system update for PlayStation 3 consoles recently ended in a class action settlement and potentially millions of dollars in damages on Sony’s part. So, if anything, tech savvy lawyers could have a field day with this one.
Google brings higher-resolution imagery to Earth and Maps
Every few months or so, Google improves the satellite imagery on services like Earth and Maps. Now, as part of its efforts to keep making the experience better for users, the search giant is going to offer higher-resolution virtual views going forward. You’ll now notice sharper imagery of areas around the world, thanks to the latest data from the Landsat 8 satellite and “new processing techniques” that Google’s implementing.
Based on one of the examples from the company (pictured below), you’re able to tell the difference right away. Everything is less blurry from afar. You can see more places for yourself on Google Earth, or by checking out the satellite option on Google Maps.
A satellite image of New York City on Google Earth. Before (above) and after (below) the update.
Source: Google
Save on the Gear VR and its compatible phones right now!
DailySteals is running a promotion that not only saves you some cash on Samsung’s Gear VR, but also all of the compatible phones. That’s right, you can save $20 on the VR headset and you can also save some money on the Galaxy S6, S6 edge, S7, S7 edge, and Note 5.
Pricing for all the deals include:
- Gear VR – $79
- Galaxy S6 – As low as $299
- Galaxy S6 edge – As low as $349
- Galaxy S7 – $539
- Galaxy S7 edge – $639
- Galax Note 5 – As low as $329
You’ll get the lowest price on an unlocked Verizon branded phone, with the unbranded ones coming in a bit more expensive. The offer is only valid for a couple of days, so if you are interested you’ll want to act quickly on this. Be sure to let us know if you picked up the headset or a phone in the comments!
See at DailySteals
Project Bloks is Google’s platform for helping kids learn to code while they play
Google has announced Project Bloks, a new platform for building physical coding experiences for kids. As a platform, Project Bloks is meant to help kids learn to code by making the experience physical, allowing them to learn to think about how to solve computational problems while they play.
Project Bloks is also meant to help lower the barriers for researchers, developers and designers looking to create this hands-on experiences. From Google:
However, designing kits for tangible programming is challenging—requiring the resources and time to develop both the software and the hardware. Our goal is to remove those barriers. By creating an open platform, Project Bloks will allow designers, developers and researchers to focus on innovating, experimenting and creating new ways to help kids develop computational thinking. Our vision is that, one day, the Project Bloks platform becomes for tangible programming what Blockly is for on-screen programming.
The system itself is made up of three components: the Brain Board, Base Boards, and Pucks. The Pucks are the part of the system that can be programmed with different instructions, and can be switches, dials or buttons. Pucks then attach to Base Boards, which can be connected to one another in any order and orientation. Finally, the Base Boards are connected to the Brain Board, which receives and processes the instructions before sending them to a connected device.
At the moment, Google says that it is taking signups for those interested in participating in a Project Bloks research study to take place later this year. If you’re interested in learning much more about Project Bloks, you can check out Google’s full blog post, along with its detailed position paper.
More detailed satellite images headed to Google Maps and Earth
Google will begin using the Landsat 8 satellite and new processing techniques to get even better shots of the earth than before. With Landsat 8, Google will be able to capture around two times as many images as it could with Landsat 7. Back in 2003, Landsat 7 experienced a hardware failure which resulted in a loss of image quality and diagonal gaps of missing data.
From Google’s announcement post:
Today we’re rolling out an even more beautiful and seamless version, with fresh imagery from Landsat 8 satellite and new processing techniques for sharper images than ever before. Satellite images are often cloudy, but not always over the same place, so we looked at millions of images and took the clearest pixels to stitch together this cloud-free and seamless image.
The images that are being captured are quite awesome, and you should check the rest out at over on Google’s post.
HP’s new touch-enabled Chromebook 11 G5 is ready for Android apps
HP has announced the latest addition to its Chromebook lineup, the Chromebook 11 G5. Set at the budget-friendly price of $189, the G5 packs an 11.6-inch screen and promises 12.5 hours of battery life.
The Chromebook 11 G5 also comes in at 2.51 lbs, and is powered by an Intel Celeron N3060 processor. Most interesting, however, is that the Chromebook 11 G5 is available with an optional touchscreen, making it more than ready to take on Android apps on Chrome OS later this year.
HP says that it designed the Chromebook 11 G5 based off of feedback from students and teachers in order to make the laptop durable and portable. Thus, the company says, the G5 has a slim profile for fitting into backpacks, and there’s the option for an IPS touchscreen display covered by Gorilla Glass for added durability.
As for availability, HP says the Chromebook 11 G5 will be “available through channel partners starting in July and set to hit retailers’ store shelves in October.”
The Honor 5C and MoDaCo show that responsible modding doesn’t have to be a fight
A safe and secure phone often means one that makes things hard on the folks who like to tinker with their toys. But it’s not always a cat-and-mouse sort of game.
Our Android phones are more secure than ever. We’ve got things like SELinux and Samsung’s KNOX and all sorts of behind-the-scenes things that keep our data safe and sound, out of the hands of, well, anyone who’s not us.
But that sort of safety net doesn’t always jibe with the modding community, without whom smartphones may well still be stuck in the Stone Age. The other side of making our phones more secure is that it’s not always easy to crack them open in the first place. A scant few offer unlockable bootloaders. And even kernel sources aren’t released as we’d expect them to be.
There are manufacturers that don’t completely lock things down, of course. And I was a little intrigued to see the recently announced Honor 5C immediately see support from longtime modding community MoDaCo, just as soon as the phone went official.
MoDaCo (and its founder, serial modder Paul O’Brien, for sure) are longtime names in the modding circles. And Honor has certainly upped its game in the mid-range market of late, and we’re only going to hear more from the Huawei offshoot. We caught up with Paul via email to see how this not-quite-partnership came about.
It certainly appears as though Honor is embracing modding like few others, going beyond “By the way, the bootloader is unlockable.” … Can you talk about if/how you’re actively working with Honor on this one?
Paul O’Brien
“I’ve been an Honor fan for a while now, not just the devices, but the approach that they take to engage with their users. A strong social presence, face-to-face events, a big presence at DroidCon, that sort of thing. Honor have been very supportive of MoDaCo too, which is nice! As you know, when I start using a device it’s inevitable that I wind up hacking about on it and traditionally Honor/Huawei has had a bit of a bad rep in this regard. It’s assumed that if you buy one of these devices, it’ll be hard to mod it. That’s like a red rag to me, particularly as I have a few family and friends using Honor devices, and I’m using a Huawei P9 Plus as my daily driver now.
Thankfully, although the Honor UK team haven’t provided specific technical support for my efforts, they have ensured that I have a line of communication open, which obviously pays dividends in getting a head start when devices like the 5C come to market. More than anything else though it’s been a voyage of discovery for me — once I started learning about the internals of how the Honor/Huawei devices work, it kinda snowballed.
Often times just having the kernel source isn’t really enough, right? There’s still … plenty of work to be done. (But that’s sort of the point, maybe?) What does having all these pieces at the same time — stock ROM, kernel, unlock, etc., and at launch — mean for folks looking to mod the 5C?
Sure, and as I mentioned, there’s a perception (quite legitimately in the past) that getting working kernel source for Honor/Huawei devices (including Honor, of course) is hard work. The key word here is “working” — lots of manufacturers are guilty of posting up kernel source that doesn’t compile, has bits missing, isn’t right for the actual shipping device, isn’t updated, etc. Most OEMs can improve in this area. And if I can help make that a reality, then I will. It’s always worth remembering that under the terms of the GPL (General Public License), this is something that’s not optional — companies are legally obliged to be in compliance.
It’s been a voyage of discovery for me — once I started learning about the internals of how the Honor/Huawei devices work, it kinda snowballed.
The kernel source is just a small part of the puzzle. One of the biggest challenges is that the kernel source doesn’t really let you do anything on its own. You need to be able to build the kernel (which means having the kernel config), pack that into a boot image and flash it on your device at the very least — that means being able to unlock the bootloader and having a stock boot image to pull the ramdisk from (which sits alongside the kernel). It’s also important that when you start messing with your device, you can flash back to a stock ROM to fix your device if it all goes a bit wrong.
The 5C is pretty unique in having all these things in place and easily accessible from the off, which should mean that for 5C owners who want to have a play around, they won’t get stuck. Obviously this is good news for Honor too — people won’t be making warranty claims when the inevitably start getting into tricky situations because they want to mod their phone!
The Honor 5C project in Github.
Is there anything about the 5C (or Honor phones in general) that make them more or less easy to work on than, say, Huawei proper, or other similar manufacturers?
Honor phones from a technical perspective are Huawei phones, so they are no more easy or hard to work on than devices from their parent company. Building up custom ROMs based on CyanogenMod, Omni etc. is definitely challenging right now, particularly on the Kirin-based devices. But over the coming months I have a feeling that is going to start to improve a lot. This is important because of Emotion UI — which, although often criticized excessively in my opinion — definitely isn’t for everyone. One thing that is nice about the Huawei phones from a modding perspective is that they are pretty hard to break. They have a quite unique way of managing their recovery partitions (yes, there are two!) and have a pretty good fallback for a worst case scenario where you need to completely re-flash back to stock. That’s not to say they’re unbrickable … they’re just less fragile than some devices I’ve worked with!
A lot of folks are curious about modding their phones, but many of the more mainstream devices make that difficult these days. Is this a good one for someone to learn on? (The price, obviously, but what else?)
Aside from the fact that the tools are already out there to start messing around with the 5C, it makes a good device to start playing with because the Huawei modding community is still in its infancy, particularly outside China. So there’s an opportunity to really engage with people looking to do something different with their devices. It almost feels like the ‘scene’ did for other manufacturers a few years ago. As you say, the price is a big factor too — it’s a lot less scary to hack about on a £150 phone than a £500 one. It’s priced competitively enough, and more than capable enough, to be a second phone that’s actually enjoyable to use.
Is this sort of cooperation from a manufacturer a sort of sea change? Or just a company doing right by its fans?
Right now we see a couple of OEMs starting to appreciate that this sort of thing is important. Nextbit is a good example, and over the past few days we’ve seen OnePlus step up with device trees etc. too. I have been approached by a number of Chinese manufacturers about this sort of thing, so it’s certainly on the radar of the smaller players. It’s hard to know if there’s motivation for the bigger companies in the Android ecosystem to engage with the enthusiast market in this way, but even if they don’t go for a full on approach, there are things they all can do better. As Android fans, we should encourage them to do so and applaud them when they do.
Google Project Bloks: Here’s how a toy system can teach kids to code
Coding isn’t a very kid-friendly subject.
It’s painstaking, requires tonnes of memorisation, and usually results in a lot of time spent sitting in front of a computer. But it doesn’t have to be that way – or at least that’s what Google believes.
The Mountain View-based company is taking a page from Apple’s playbook. Apple recently announced a Swift Playgrounds app that teaches kids how to code in a fun and easy way through the iPad. When you first open the app, you will see several basic coding lessons and challenges. It’s all very reminiscent to Codecademy, but it’s much more visual with loads of graphics and games and other playful features.
Not to be outdone by Apple, Google is launching an initiative called Project Bloks. Instead of using an app, it’s a system of toy blocks. Kids can connect these blocks to not only learn the fundamentals of coding but ultimately control other toys. They can arrange Bloks toys into a specific pattern in order to, for instance, make a connected robot draw lines on paper. This simple task teaches basic coding.
Google Project Bloks: What is it?
Project Bloks is basic coding put in to a playful, physical form. It’s a toy system can take on different form factors and be made out of different materials, but the entire purpose is to help kids develop computational thinking and learn basic coding skills.
Google has published two videos – available above and below – to explain Project Bloks and how it works. In the videos, Google gives a number of examples for what kind of toys can be made with Bloks. We saw a pencil-holding robot that kids can command to draw on paper. We also saw a Bluetooth speaker that can be programmed to play music. Keep in mind Project Bloks isn’t the first initiative to use toys for coding.
Fisher-Price has developed toys with the same goal – and they’re already on sale. But Google said it hopes Project Bloks can go much further. It wants Project Bloks to make coding toys cheaper and easier to make, thus making the ability to learn coding at a young age much more accessible/widely available.
Google Project Bloks: How does it work?
Project Bloks is made up of three components: Puck, Base Board, and Brain Board. When connected, they instruct connected devices – whether that be toys, speakers, or tablets – over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
Puck
Pucks can be programmed with different instructions (turn on or off, move left, jump, etc), and they can take the shape of many different interactive forms (switches, dials, buttons, etc). They don’t feature any active electronic components, meaning they’re cheap and easy to make, and, in fact, all you’d need to make a puck is a piece of paper and some conductive ink.
Base Board
Base Boards are able to read a Puck’s instruction through a capacitive sensor. They act as a conduit for a Puck’s command to the Brain Board. They are modular and can be connected in a variety of sequences to create different programming flows. Each Base Board features a haptic motor and LEDs that can provide real-time feedback. They can also trigger audio feedback from the Brain Board’s built-in speaker.
Brain Board
The Brain Board is a processing unit, built on a Raspberry Pi Zero. It provides the Base Boards with power. It also features an application program interface (API), enabling it to receive and send data to the Base Boards. It even delivers the Base Boards’ instructions to any device with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connectivity and an API.
Google Project Bloks: When will it be available?
Project Bloks isn’t available yet. The project is still in development, as a collaboration between Research at Google, Google Creative Lab, the design firm Ideo, and researchers from Stanford and Chiang Mai University. Google first began developing Project Bloks in 2013. It has unveiled the project now in order to generate interest, find partners, and, perhaps, show how it can contend with Apple’s Swift Playgrounds app.
Google doesn’t want to become a toymaker. It’s introducing Project Bloks as an open-source platform. Google has created most of the technology and coding behind the toys, but it’s going to let interested partners – like toymakers – actually develop the toys that’ll use its Bloks coding technology. Think of it like Android. Google makes Android, and then it lets phone makers build phones that use the mobile OS.
Toymakers have the experience and resources to create a wide variety of Bloks toys that can be put into the market. We don’t know when the first Bloks toys will go on sale, but we’ll update this piece over time.
Want to know more?
Check out Google’s blog post for more details.
