フレームマイスター Framemister Xrgb mini/ English firmware/39000 yen shipped

Nope. All modern HD TVs are 1080p but when you run a 720p image in to it the TV will display a 720p image. It won't scale it to 1080p unless you force the TV to do it. For example on either of the two HD TVs and HD monitor in this house I can run the Framemiester in 720p and get a 720p on any of the screens. Even my 360 is set to 720p since most games are that.

 

So a 720p picture on 1080p won't fill the screen vertically? Because of the missing pixels, so you will get black borders top and bottom?

 

Ah, if you use the dot2dot setting then yes. But a 1080p screen will still give you a perfect 720p full screen image. All the pictures in the first post of this thread are taken from a 1080p screen displaying a 720p signal full screen and as you can see the scanlines look perfect. You won't need to worry about a thing. As long as the Framemiester is outputting a 720p signal then your scanlines will look fantastic.

 

Ah ok understood - just wondering, do 1080p TVs usually let you display 720p dot-to-dot?

 

some yes , they have the option but most just fill the screen... really it's not an issue

zoom the following image, it's a 3MP pic from a phone with the framemeister @720p on a 1080p screen (any moire patterns are of the panel and the photograph, you don't see them in reality)



everything is so sharp! I know the pic is not the best but you can really get an idea

 

Alex Kidd never looked so sharp!

 

Personally I haven't seen a single 1080p TV that lets you watch 720p letter/pillarboxed. Which brands offer that? It would be a good option for technical people, but would probably generate a lot of complaints from idiots who accidentally enable it and "want the full picture".

Whenever a 720p image fills a 1080p screen it's no longer pixel perfect, that simple. Even with the best quality resampling the image will be softer than the original because at the very least 44% of the pixels are made from a blend of the others. Since soft pictures look bad some noise and edge enhancement can be added, which looks good, but isn't true to the original data.

 

Both my Sharp and Toshiba will but as mentioned, only if I use the Dot 2 Dot mode. This is pretty stupid since you're left with a small picture surrounded by black. I can take a picture if you'd like to see how odd it looks.

 

Like this?

http://i.imgur.com/pu6ySnz.jpg

One big benefit to 4K TVs is that it can scale 720p losslessly since it's exactly 9 times the resolution.

 

^ yes, like this
the option is also available on one of my LG tv sets and on my LG 1920x1200 pc monitor (vga/dvi/hdmi) , this mode is pretty unusable tbh

 

Yeah. That's what I get if I use the Dot2Dot mode on my TV if using 720p so I always use normal mode which gives a perfect full screen image or perfect enough not to mess anything up from what I can see.

 

Since HDTV's work on pixels rather than beams of light, any image that is not of the native resolution has to be scaled. If it wasn't, as people have pointed out, a 720p image would only occupy a fraction of the screen on a 1080p panel. The good news is most TVs scale 720p to 1080p very well, with only a few exceptions.

If you check the XRGB Mini Wiki here - http://junkerhq.net/xrgb/index.php/XRGB-mini_FRAMEMEISTER#TV_Scaling there are some tips to make sure your TV is set optimally for use with the FM.

Finally, a lot of people seem worried that by feeding in 720p and having the TV convert to 1080p that will add more input lag. In all my tests with Leo's lag tester, this is false, 720p is no more or les laggy than native 1080p.

 

Yep, there is no lag when using a Framemiester. None at all no matter what resolution you uses.

 

That's false, the lag on the Framemeister is around 20ms as confirmed with the Leo Bodnar lag tester. I meant there's no extra lag on any TV I've tested when displaying a 720p image vs displaying a 1080p one.

Before anyone dismisses the Mini as too laggy however, they should note that without an upscaler like the XRGB Mini, all HDTVs will process 240p and 288p content as interlace. Since deinterlacing typically adds 2 or more frames of input lag, using the Mini will actually reduce input lag on most sets when dealing with 240p/288p sources, as well as drastically improve the image quality.

 

20 ms is nothing. People can't even detect that so that's why I say there's no lag. I know there is lag, I haven even mentioned so in this very thread at some point but those not in the know seem to think that the smallest of lag will make their games feel like crap. Lag is a dirty word So this is why I just say there is no lag.

 

0 is nothing, 20ms is 20ms, remember you have to add this onto what your TV does too (usually 15 to 30ms). I don't want to seem rude or seem obnoxious (especially as you are a mod and I am a noob here) but I think it is better to be 100% honest with people all the time and let them make their own minds up. Remember my point above too that on most TVs adding a FM will actually reduce lag on 240p games.

 

@Yakumo: Do you still have those digital connectors so you can connect component to the Framemeister? For that matter, is stock still plentiful? I'm pretty sure I want to get one now, I'm just waiting for goods to arrive from Japan so I can sell them and get more cash (^_^);

 

Do modern tvs have that high delay when they are fed HDMI? I can see this happening for analogue inputs but for digital ones as well?

 

It makes little difference whether the input is analog or digital. Analog video digitization chips synchronize with the signal so there could be as little as 1 pixel latency. What really matters is the latency in the post-processing algorithms such as deinterlacing, scaling or noise reduction which all require buffering large portions of a frame, if not multiple frames. Since the TV cant see the signal into the future it has to wait until it has all the data it needs to start to perform the computations. If the engineers really care about latency then they'll directly synchronize the video output to the panel to a processed pixel's completion, but that would be very obnoxious from an engineering standpoint so I doubt many go to that length.

If you're concerned about lag you definitely want to use "game mode" and only watch video at the TV's native resolution.

For even less lag consider a computer monitor since at their native resolution the only post-processing they perform is color adjustment which doesn't require any buffering. They could have as little as a few pixels of latency from the input to the panel. Assuming it's a LCD though you still have the pixel response time in the order of milliseconds.

 

ah, you mean the component to D-Terminal cables. Yeah, I still stock them. Only 1000 yen when bought with a Framemiester. I have plenty of Framemiester units too all with the latest English firmware.