AKURA Dreamcast HDMI Box

I've got one of these and it's well built. But if only it had at least 720p/1080p upscale. Would make it that much better.

 

Have you come across any problems with the image being correctly centred on your displays?

Ted.

 

From Beharbros' Facebook post:



Power cycling the TV (or Receiver, if it's first in-line from the DC like me) after the game loads has the same effect.

 

I have no issues as I can adjust the screen to fit on my new TV without stretching the picture.

 

He's not referring to stretching, but the whole image getting shifted left or right--with picture information lost off-screen.

 

Nope haven't had that issue. Then again, I've stopped using mine as I'd rather much use the VGA cable with my 4k upscaler. I will test out more games when I can. I'm running a GDEMU, so should be able to test a few.

 

I am curious: are you using a 4k upscaler integrated into your TV, or a separate box? If it is the latter, which box?

 

Does anyone know if theres a way to get the non VGA games working on the Akura

 

Seriously do TV's even upscale. I've never had a TV that does...

I bought this generic box off ebay. Wasn't cheap. Works well. This is off eBay Australia. Only posts to Australia. I'm sure you can find something similar.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/152473842620?redirect=mobile

For audio I have a small cable that converts the red and white to 3.5mm. As the box has 3.5mm audio input next to the vga connection.

You may find one cheaper if you just want to upscale to 1080p.

I have to say, I find this to be the best setup for my gdemu running gdmenu software.

 

From the pdf file on the beharbros website:

"RGB mode can be set by the help of RGB/VGA Switch (6). Switch position 1 is for the 15khz RGB
mode, or 480i. If you change it to position 2, it will display 31khz VGA video or 480p. Currently Akura
only supports VGA compatible games.Some games are not compatible with the VGA mode, and the
console checks the type of cable plugged while booting, so it refuses to boot if the game doesn't
support the VGA mode. To eliminate this problem you can trick the console while booting(after the
beep sound) by switching to position 2 (VGA mode). This can work on most of the games, however
some games still may not support it, please check the incompatibility list on the web.

 

All screens with a physically fixed resolution (e.g. plasma/LCD/led/OLED) have to scale content, otherwise you'd see a zoom in/out of the original image. They don't all do it properly though...

 

Yep. They do. My Samsung KS8000 series TV has a good one actually. It's the only reason I'm still using my 4th gen Apple TV to stream videos, and haven't upgraded to something that can actually handle 2160p.

Have you experienced any perceptible input lag? I play only shmups and fighters on my gdemu'd DC, and had a similar box that upscaled to 1080p that was laggy as a mofo.

 

there is a way to enable vga in non vga games. 1 the @japanese_cake custom bios, it skips the vga flags and force non vga games to play on vga.(requires to solder a reflashable bios chip) 2 hack the ip.bin of the game. please note that not all non vga games play correct in vga with ether method.

 

That's the bios posted in @japanese_cake blog?

 

yes and a new updated one will released sortly

 

A new one to the Dreamcast Custom BIOS v1.032 you mean? If so, do you know what will be updated? I hope it will be working with the GD Menu app now..

 

it will propably called BIOS v1.033 only @japanese_cake knows when it will released. and what the changes will be

 

Will be released some day but ar the moment I am kinda busy. I also have other sofware releases pending for the dreamcast. I need sometime to fi nalize everything. On thing I can say for sure about the next bios: it will be compatible with bleemcast and won't be using any 'special' boostrap, meaning that the compatibility will be similar to retail ones. Also more system options

 

As AG is back and I could not do it before, I would like to thank @beharius for replacing a defective vga cable. It's always a pleasure to see businesses taking care of their customers like that. Thanks!

 

Very impatient to see your next release