Recently Micomsoft posted this on their website: Which according to google translate means: My interpretation of this is that production for the main Chip used in the framemeister will soon end production, and that Micomsoft will purchase enough of the chips in the February 2017 to keep production going for another year. Nonetheless they advise that if you want to get one you should order by February 2017. Feb 2017 also seems to be roughly when the Framemeister will be back in stock at solarisjapan, and I presume other places as well. No word on whether they are bringing out a new model.
of course they will be bringing a new model, they're not announcing it so people still buy out all of the older stock.
Seems legit - the main chip used in the FM is the Marvell 88DE2750 (AKA "Kyoto-G2") - and that is showing as being on LTB with a last order date of Feb 28, 2017.
Glad I got mine, but here's to hoping the successor to the Framemeister can handle switching between 480i and 240p seamlessly! Wasn't too fun having to wait 5 seconds between going in and out of menus on my Silent Hill playthroughs :L
Also it'd be very nice if they developed an economy model. You can take a 20 dollar GBS8200 from Ebay and make it perform really well for retro stuff. I don't know why this thing has to cost 400€.
The current stock is already sold out. An article here even mentions they may be done with the xrgb line for good. http://www.4gamer.net/games/999/G999902/20161202002/
Marvell's website - but it's in the product information portal, which you need a login to access. Since I had previously done some designs using their chips, I happened to have one.
I'm not sure how to feel about this. On one hand, it'd be great to see a new model. I would gladly import an expensive newer model if they fixed the few gripes people have with the device. On the other, I'm not sure if XRGB-Mini sales have been high enough to justify the R&D with a new chipset. I am a bit concerned that this could be the end of the line for the XRGBs.
the article I linked to in post 7 says exactly that. "Said that no replacement plans, according to the microcomputer software, it determines the end of production of the major IC is the reason right now, unfortunately, successor to the development plan. Officials have said "might become the last XRGB" I guess google is a bit better 2016 December 1, microcomputer software, up scan converter "F R A M E M E I S T E R N" (frame Meister N. former product name "XRGB-mini") production end of the announced.According to the microcomputer software, it is said that for the reason that production of major ICs is decided to end and there is no prospect of replacement, unfortunately there is no development plan for successor aircraft at the moment. Stakeholders also said that it may be the last XRGB.
I'll be picking one of these up in 2017 then. I was thinking of getting an OSSC but I know I'll regret not buying the framemeister once all is said and done. The fact that if I wait for too long I may not be able to go back and pick one up later down the line makes me think I should just eat the cost and skip right to it.
They have been high enough alright! Even I, an independent seller though this forum has sold in access of 150 units. So I'm sure real importers have sold thousands us the stock that has sold within Japan too.
Micomsoft will be bought out by Microsoft, who will release the Microsoft Upscan Converter 2017 Professional Edition. It will have a tile based interface and come with built in Candy Crush.
I really hope they're smart enough to develop two new products, one basic model with just one RGB input and an HDMI output and the other to be a real XRGB-Mini successor.
That's great to hear. I assume the R&D costs on such a device are pretty high, so it's probably seen as a risk to pump money into niche product like this. ...but we need it, and I hope they continue to support the market with a new product.
We could pool our ressources and make the GBS8200 that replacement. You guys know about the custom firmware, right? I'm a hobbyist and I already tweaked it so it works well with PSX, SNES and MegaDrive. Real 240p, very little lag, great color reproduction. All I'm missing is some smarts so it can deinterlace when needed and adapt to different scan rates better. There's so much potential in these boards! https://github.com/dooklink/gbs-control http://www.ebay.com/itm/Arcade-Game...nverter-Board-HD9800-GBS8200-LS-/162245408211 Oh, and obviously a fitting HDMI solution would be great. Anyone knows a lag-free VGA to HDMI converter? Preferably cheap, simple and able to be board powered
Not too knock you're efforts man, but they're really not even in the same product class capability wise. It's probably more worthwhile to continue work on the OSSC, seeing how it already has digital video out.
OSSC appears to be an awesome device but it's still expensive and hard to obtain right now. From what I saw on the Framemeister, the GBS could beat them, if they had better software. The important thing is that we have access to the entire video processor on the GBS. The Framemeister hasn't been modified yet, as far as I know. It would be simple to fix its color reproduction issues then. But yea, nothing.
I don't know much about what the GBS is running , other than I used one ages ago. I imagine the processor it's using isn't anywhere close to what Micomsoft dropped in the Framemeister, which is a Marvell qdeo. Which was used in blu ray players, and high quality home theater receivers. A replacement would need to be at least as capable, preferably better (4k, less lag, more scaling and save options). I wouldn't really consider a decade old analog VGA budget upscaler to be a good fit for that.
Newer devices integrate more options for newer display devices (HDMI basically) but other than that, the GBS processor (Tiva Trueview 5725) has everything we need. It isn't hard to sample 240p and convert it to VGA. They could do that fine in the 90s. Oddly enough, what's hard is programming these chips to work well with 240p material where no deinterlacing is required or wanted. Half of the chip manuals is about deinterlacing. That's where the technology evolved. Newer chips had even better algorithms. Well, with 240p, we don't need it at all. We only require the digitizer. Here someone has uploaded a video of the bare custom firmware. Mine has the colors fixed and adjusted for perfect black and white levels and also the glitch with the 2nd input showing through is gone here. Basically look at this for the scrolling and pixel definition: Unfortunately I can't capture VGA, otherwise I'd show it off
