New TV on PP Ft. Wayne IIDX 4th Style

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New TV on PP Ft. Wayne IIDX 4th Style

Post by Ho » Mon Jun 05, 2006 12:40 pm

With regard to this post:
OrangeLounger wrote:And the Sanyo they got hooked up to IIDX is really blurry and laggy. Sucks.
Checked it out and played it last night while I was there... I generally agree with your statement although I think I prefer it to the projector. The projector had really bad burn-in, was too far away (for my preference), and was the wrong aspect ratio.

The main problem with the new TV (it's a consumer TV and not a monitor) is that they're using composite video to connect the game to it. You TV-knowledgeable people will recognize that as the LEAST preferable, lowest quality input. This is what's causing the "blurriness" of the picture and the color bleed. They're also using half of a really cheap audio cable (one side of a stereo set). It's a pretty short run, but that can't be helping the situation any.

Also, that's a progressive scan digital HD monitor. Composite video is an interlaced analog signal. So the TV has to convert the incoming signal before it displays it. This takes a little bit of time and is what's causing the lag. I was able to adjust my timing by hitting notes slightly before they got all the way to the line.

Unfortunately, this particular TV doesn't seem to be all that good at this conversion either. I noticed it would actually occasionally drop frames causing the image to stutter slightly. I would occasionally see notes skip a bit rather than flow smoothly down the columns.

In one case, it seem to deinterlace one half of the screen differently from the other because I saw notes on one side of the screen (I was playing Light 14) that were not inline with notes on the other side suddenly become inline with them about halfway down the scroll. It was rather bizarre. The fact that the signal going into the TV isn't all that great (composite on a cheap cable) probably contributes to some of these problems.

The IIDX system should support S-video. This should produce a cleaner image and eliminate the color bleeding. It probably wouldn't help with the lag though because the TV would still have to deinterlace and upconvert the signal. It might do a better job of this with a higher quality input signal though. There may also be some options in the TV's menu to turn off some of the processing. That might speed it up a little and reduce some of the lag.

Ideally, you'd want to use the RGB output of the IIDX system. This is how the stock monitor would have been connected and will produce the best quality image. However, this being a consumer TV, it doesn't have an RGB input since most consumer-grade video equipment in the US doesn't support it. It does have component inputs--which are arguably just as good as RGB--but those won't be compatible with the IIDX system.

Probably more than most cared to know, but the take away from this is that they could improve it (not perfect, but better) for about $10 for an s-video cable and maybe 5 minutes to hook it up.
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Post by Potter » Mon Jun 05, 2006 2:28 pm

Just a thought, And I know this is doubtful, But i know alto of things I have worked with with component out, in the menu you can set the comp output to
YPbPr (component) or RGB. I know its a video game made to work with the monitor that comes with it so his is unlikely but just a thought
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Post by Ho » Mon Jun 05, 2006 2:40 pm

I haven't confirmed it for myself, but I would say that I am 99.9% sure that no such option exists in the IIDX hardware. YPbPr component is predominantly a US high-end consumer format. I would regard the IIDX hardware as high-end, but it is neither US-based nor a consumer device, so I doubt that it would have support for it.

I do know that the board has an RCA jack for the composite, the mini-DIN for S-video, and a D-sub for the RGB output. I does not have the familiar trio of RCA jacks for component output (though it could realistically do it out of the D-sub).

As an addendum to what I was saying before, after thinking about the fact that the TV in question is a CRT, it's probably 1080i and therefore an interlaced rather than progressive display as I stated earlier. However, it would still have to do an upconversion and is obviously introducing the problems I described above.
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Post by LikeableRodent » Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:28 pm

It's nice to know that they did their research before spending money :roll:

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Post by Ho » Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:55 pm

No offense intended, but their track record seems to follow that of most arcades when it comes to repair and upkeep of equipment. They basically ask the question:

Does it work?

This is a black or white inquiry. They only care that it works, not that it works well.
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Post by Amp Divorax » Mon Jun 05, 2006 8:59 pm

For the Arcade IIDX monitors I can confirm that the newest arcade versions usually use 36" widescreen Non-Hi Def TVs and that 9th and newer machines apparently can use component cables along with the afforementioned hookups. The only way they could eliminate most of the lag is if the TV in question had a game mode or if they import an acceptable quality upscan converter. I was debating going up to Ft. Wayne with a towel to check out the machine in question, but now I most likely won't after hearing this horror story.
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Post by MonMotha » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:14 pm

It's a CRT. It is entirely possible to make multisync CRT setups that will run everything "native" at whatever you feed it within a range (your computer monitor does this if it is a CRT). However, the wider you make this range, the higher the cost. Traditional TVs support only one mode (525 line, 2nd order interlace, 60Hz refresh, with 59.94Hz being close enough that it works fine).

Some HDTVs also only support one mode (usually 1080i or 720p), but there's no reason you can't make a multisync TV (if it's CRT based, and even other technologies can handle refresh differences with some work). In these cases, every input signal has to be digitally scaled to the native mode and timings. There are good ways to do this, and there are cheap ways to do this, but they all involve a certain amount of latency: at least one field, usually a full progressive frame, for anything but a straight interlace/progressive swap, which can be done with one scanline of latency.

However, there certainly exist CRT TVs that are multisync monitors and can sync to various input signals natively. In these cases, the upconversion/scaling is not needed and the latency can be eliminated. Many TVs that support this operation will still upconvert by default, though, under the guise of outputting a "better picture" by doing a bunch of filtering. While the picture quality merits of this process are somewhat dubious in and of themselves, it certainly adds latency. If you can turn off the upconversion (sometimes apparently called "game mode"), the latency should disappear, as should the wonky deinterlacing and scaling artifacts.

As far as the signal quality of composite goes, we all know it sucks (or if you didn't, now you do). If you want a technical explaination of why, I can provide it. S-Video works around it reasonably well, and component video (YPbPr or RGB) keeps everything at baseband. You can theoretically convert between the two losslessly and without latency, however most methods are digital and introduce at least quantization and roundoff error as well as a small amount (usually unnoticable) of latency. For some reason, most US TVs don't offer RGB inputs, while many in Japan and especially Europe do. Austrailia and the USA seem to have settled on YPbPr for component video. There are valid reasons for going with either, in reality, but adding both mostly involves the cost of the connector and some video amps: about $5-10, but this does add up over thousands of units.

The only major system I am aware of which supports switching its component output between the two formats is the PS2. Unfortunately, due to the stupid-ass design of the PS2, the RGB output is nearly unusable in progressive mode.

On that note, IIDX also runs progressive (rather than interlaced) normally. This will get you a much less flickery and "cleaner" picture with all that quick motion. Composite video simply cannot run progressive due to its design, and s-video only can in a non-standard way (though it ends up looking better than s-video run interlaced), again due to some design choices. If a TV with an RGB input were available, you could use that. Actually, if you can find a widescreen CRT computer monitor, it should support the mode that IIDX runs in, which is basically computer timed 640x480. That might work better than the TV. An LCD monitor would work, as well, but beware of scaler latency and visual quality since mode LCDs run a higher native resolution. Plasmas work, as well, but all seem laggy, though not as bad as that poorly-chosen TV that is being used currently.

Basically, this particular TV is just ill-suited for the task it's being given. There's nothing wrong with the technologies being employed, they're just being applied badly here.
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Post by Ho » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:17 pm

I can believe that 9th Style and above may have support for component video since they're running on newer hardware that, being PC-based, is going to be somewhat more consumer-like. I agree that non-HD is the best choice if that's the signal the system is producing. Displaying the signal in its native format with no conversion is going to produce the best quality with the least latency (lag).

That being said, the Ft. Wayne machine is playable. Casual observers may not notice anything at all. More discerning players or videophiles will note the points I've mentioned. As for gameplay, I think Hidden mode would be more useful for timing purposes than a towel.
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Post by Potter » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:46 pm

all dem videophles bee playin iidx
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Post by Amp Divorax » Tue Jun 06, 2006 2:38 am

Well, hidden is good sometimes, but then there are songs like 250 BPM!

Also, MonMotha nailed quite a bit dead on when it came to the TV issue. I know quite a bit of this to be true as I use a 30" Widescreen Sony CRT and while it does have lag, it's only a few milliseconds compared to the psycho lag I've seen on my 32" Toshiba CRT which is only 4:3.

I should also note that from what I've seen all of the PC based versions of IIDX run exactly at 59.94 fps. Trying to use a PC monitor connection in that game will backfire as the monitors will go at 60 fps due to VSYNC and as a result the notecharts will go noticibly offsync. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hGoOv7- ... ei%20remix shows what happens when the game runs under 59.94 fps.
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Post by MonMotha » Tue Jun 06, 2006 6:40 am

I refuse to use flash, but that must be one hell of a shitty PC monitor... There's a reason the NTSC standard could get by with changing the vertical sync rate (they changed from 60 to 59.94 when they added color) - It's so close that anything not built like a giant steaming pile of doody will still work just fine. Heck, it was probably within the tolerance of the original NTSC spec (which was fairly loose in some regards). There's no reason at all for the monitor to assume a 60Hz refresh if it's being fed 59.94 unless it's a crappy fixed mode monitor (which haven't been made in years in PC land). Of course, if you're feeding it INTERLACED 59.94 (or 60, for that matter) 480/525 line video, most PC monitors can't sync to that and, if they don't lock out the display with an error message, will do undesirable (and generally useless) things.

Also, aspect ratio doesn't matter wrt scaling unless you make it matter. In fact, you can't even tell what the horizontal resolution is given an analog raster scan video signal without doing a simple form of clock recovery on the (hopefully not particularly low-passed) edges of the video signal itself. Often, TV systems use non-square pixels (4:3 DVDs, for example, are still encoded at 720x480 or 704x480).

Believe it or not, you can scale things with nearly unnoticable latency if you want to. It's just not cheap because you can't used a frame pipelined scaler. Instead, you digitize the whole field (or frame, if it's progressive or you also want to deinterlace) then scale the entire thing during the vertical blanking period (which isn't nearly as long on PC video systems as it is on TV systems) and then output that field/frame right as the next one starts. One progressive frame of latency at 59.94Hz = 17msec, not normally noticable (and pretty easy to adjust to even in a game like IIDX). This just requires a lot of computational power since you have to scale the whole frame in a few hundred microseconds. Most architectures up this to at least two frames so that they can scale one while capturing the other and get an entire frame period to do the scaling. Even cheaper is to keep pipelining it out further, but read up on the hypothetical "infinitely pipelined processor" (hint: it gets nothing done despite the fact that it can be clocked infinitely fast). This is why "professional" video equipment is often expensive (when it's not just rebranded consumer crap). It really is expensive to make.

That said, if you don't use high speed (ZOMG!), hidden can still be quite readable on 250BPM. Too bad I don't believe that 4th style will let you change options once you're in the game.
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Post by Amp Divorax » Tue Jun 06, 2006 2:38 pm

Well, I completely understand your dislike for flash as I use Linux on all of my computers except for one which I dualboot with and Macromedia has their head completely up their ass when it comes to giving proper support for the Linux platform. The main thing that was messed up in that video was that the person who did that recording had FRAPS set at 30 fps instead of 59.94 fps. The end result is that fraps slows the game down to get that intended framerate. As for the game itself, I have to believe that Konami did that as it was intended as a interlaced feed for TVs and not actual PC monitors, as normally WindowsXP will not give the option to be that precise on a refresh rate without extra software to mod it. Currently I'm looking into the possibility of seeing if a DirectX based game can be set to run at a certain framerate without having to use VSYNC and also stretched to certain resolutions. I have to think though that this may be a useless search for the latter.

As for the aspect ratio of my TVs, I mainly mentioned it cause I prefer playing IIDX in widescreen.

In terms of digitizing the whole field, if I am not mistaken that is the method that the XRGB and Hori upscan converters use to convert the signal. I've been debating on whether or not i should get one of those products for my TV, but I doubt if it would really make much of a difference in my scores overall and as you have mentioned is expensive as hell.

As for 4th style, it is true that the mods used cannot be changed. As for tackling 250 BPM, each person will have different results with that song as I've noticed that on L7 I do better with hidden on, but on 7K I do better with High Speed and a towel.
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