Indivision MK III: Which LCD monitor?

Quote from Tobias

I have studied C64 image generation and reproduction long enough, and on enough monitors, to say with confidence: Yes, there is some horizontal blur. Always. Inevitable. No matter what monitor, no matter what type of connection. For Y/C in PAL on the C64 it is about one pixel for Y and around 3 pixels for C. It is exactly the reason for why RGB/Scart was introduced - it significantly reduces this blur.

But we have to be careful with the terminology here - ghosting isnt horizontal blur. Horizontal blur isnt the problem here, ghosting is.

This is with 1280x1024 at 50Hz (with vic sync). For some reason the colors look really different on this image than they do when i look at the monitor (most notable the dark blue). The smearing on the vertical "bars" on the bridge seems much more apparent on the picture than when i look at the monitor too. No idea why this would be the case, perhaps because everything appears much brighter on the Picture than it does when looking at the monitor.

Here is another with different camera settings, this looks better (but still not accurate):

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Even if it's hard to show stuff like this in pictures, these pictures clearly shows the shadows/ghosting on the right side of the characters. In real life this shows very clearly. They are clearly visible. It's like 2, 3 or even 4 ghost trails on the right side of the characters.

I cannot dispute your studies about C64 image generation. Because I don't have the knowledge.

Also, could you take pictures from the same game with the TC64 V1?

We are using these monitors at work, they are very good. Love the eco function and the smoothing settings.

They are all connected with windows pc’s and working at 60Hz. Didn’t know they could work at 50 Hz or did you a special update of the firmware?

I would try one with the Amiga but it’s not allowed to bring my Amiga at work.

Quote from Phil

Didn’t know they could work at 50 Hz or did you a special update of the firmware?

We're just making sure they have "this" firmware - I don't know if there are others available, but with such high-volume products, you never know. The follow-up model S1934 was also offered to us, but that has a different firmware that refuses to work at 50Hz.

Further, we provide all cables, so those are out of the equation in case of a "bad picture" complaint.

Thanks for the quick answer Jens 👍

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Even if it's hard to show stuff like this in pictures, these pictures clearly shows the shadows/ghosting on the right side of the characters. In real life this shows very clearly. They are clearly visible. It's like 2, 3 or even 4 ghost trails on the right side of the characters.

Sorry, are we looking at the same pictures? I have a hard time seeing anything like that, let alone clearly. There are no ghost images of the characters visible even when extremely cranking up contrast in my image processor.

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could you take pictures from the same game with the TC64 V1?

Thats with the same settings on v1 - looks pretty much the same to me.

Quote from Tobias

Sorry, are we looking at the same pictures? I have a hard time seeing anything like that, let alone clearly. There are no ghost images of the characters visible even when extremely cranking up contrast in my image processor.

Thats with the same settings on v1 - looks pretty much the same to me.

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Your TC64 V2 pictures clearly shows the ghosting. Amiga core and all other cores for the TC64 V2 also shows it very clearly. This shows more in real life. But I have no problems seeing it in your pictures.

Your TC64 V1 picture does not show any ghosting.

Your TC64 V2 pictures:

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Your TC64 V2 pictures clearly shows the ghosting.

Whatever you are seeing there, its anything but "clearly"

Quote from Tobias

Whatever you are seeing there, its anything but "clearly"

It's very clear in real life. And even in your images. It's a ghost trail. Several shadow copies of the character. This is visible in many games or scenarios with certain background colours. Even the default theme colours in the Chamelon menu shows the ghosting trails on the right side of letters.

The only thing that "clear" is that we're chasing ghosts. I'm done discussing this - any more posts are just wasting my time and push the date when I can finally get to a patch-PCB further into the future. Remember that I'm reading everything here (have to!), and if you continue writing nothing but "I don't like it"-posts that merely express your taste rather than facts, you are clearly wasting my time.

You might as well send me an eMail, so we can discuss returning the Indivision ECS V2 and/or Chameleon V2 for a refund. I truly don't want dissatisfied customers, and I'm more than happy returning the money to have a "-1" on the dissatisfied-customers account.

Quote from Jens

The only thing that "clear" is that we're chasing ghosts. I'm done discussing this - any more posts are just wasting my time and push the date when I can finally get to a patch-PCB further into the future. Remember that I'm reading everything here (have to!), and if you continue writing nothing but "I don't like it"-posts that merely express your taste rather than facts, you are clearly wasting my time.

You might as well send me an eMail, so we can discuss returning the Indivision ECS V2 and/or Chameleon V2 for a refund. I truly don't want dissatisfied customers, and I'm more than happy returning the money to have a "-1" on the dissatisfied-customers account.

I am not stressing about the patch boards at all.

No need to get emotional. I am merely trying to show the ghost/smearing problem that alot of other people are reporting. Not only me.

What I find a little bit frustrating is that Tobias claims he sees no difference between TC64 V1 and V2 pictures when you have actually stated this in the forums:

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What I find a little bit frustrating is that Tobias claims he sees no difference between TC64 V1 and V2 pictures

As said before, i had to crank up the contrast to silly extreme levels, and still what i see can be more attributed to screen reflections, dust on the monitor or even jpeg artefacts than anything. Its almost non existant on the regular non altered image. Repeating the claim that its super clear over and over again doesnt change this. I know very well how actual ghosting looks like. Its *not* clear, nor extremely visible in those pictures. If that'd be the case, you'd actually see -usually several- faint "copies" of the shapes of the characters side by side - just like in that example picture you posted.

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Even the default theme colours in the Chamelon menu shows the ghosting trails on the right side of letters.

It - again - appears to me that you are mixing up terminology. There is hardly any visible ghosting on the letters - what you see there is blur. (To my own surprise, its more visible on v1 than on v2). The faint dark(er) vertical bars on the left side of the screen, now *that* is actual ghosting (and to me, more visible on the picture than when looking at the monitor).

Quote from turrican9

What I find a little bit frustrating is that Tobias claims he sees no difference between TC64 V1 and V2 pictures when you have actually stated this in the forums:

I confirmed that the frequencies beyond 1GHz are dampened on the new designs. THis is nothing that you can see on a proper monitor. I am aware that the AD converters of Samsung monitors do weird stuff, but you inventing ghosting at positions way beyond any technical explanation (that far right? Do you know how low frequencies we'd be talking??) just shows that you see things that we don't see, and you try to explain them with facts that don't have the slightest technical correlation.

Once again, stop it. The whole reason why I'm getting angry is because I told you you're wasting my time. You did it again.

Slight smearing to the right of text and elsewhere is perfectly typical. My C64s and Amigas exhibit this phenomenon, directly from their video ports, with 1084s', or using Sony PVM monitors. IMHO this is just analog signal stuff. Quality cabling with individually shielded signals of the shortest length necessary might help a little.

Analog signals outputting to an LCD: obviously that's its own can of worms. The analog signal simply will not translate as well to an LCD. To my eyes, some of the "ghosting" is just the usual non-native resolution being mapped to to a fixed-pixel panel (the picture "bunches up" in areas causing noticeable bands). Often, this can be adjusted to satisfaction in the monitor settings--as if anyone here didn't already know that, heh!

Indi MK2 and MK3 are complete anomalies in this regard. I recently resurrected my old Eizo and Iiyama CRTs, these are 31 kHz+ "PC" monitors with Diamondtron tubes. To put it mildly, the result is jaw-dropping: the picture quality is absolutely FLAWLESS! No smudging of anything, anywhere, simply a razor sharp and perfect picture. I have never observed better analog signal quality from any Amiga scandoubler (many are quite bad), and I've seen most of them. The PIV scandoubler is one of the good ones too, comparatively lacking some features of course, but pretty cool for its time.

Finally, an Indi MK2 or MK3 connected to a Samsung OLED, now that's a new level of unreal! The size can make using them a bit awkward, but in terms of contrast, colors, and motion clarity, it's stunning.

Some interesting findings. First of all the left monitor (BenQ BL 912) shows substantial less ghosting VS the BL 702A (The one on the right). Not only that, but the TC64 V2 on the left (the one in cartridge mode) shows a tad less ghosting/smearing than the one on the right (the one in the docking station).

If that was not enough, using it in the docking station makes it even worse. I can only guess it has to do with a cheap Chinese power supply or less groundplane when using it in the docking station VS using it in cartridge mode? I've tried all combinations here. Swapping TC64 V2s around, monitors and cables. That's how I know this.

The setup on the left mostly shows a few ghost/smearing shadows for the white character. There are almost no visible ghosting/smearing trails for the blue and red character. However, the setup on the right has many ghosting/smearing trails for the white Karate dude but also very visible trails for the blue and red character. Monitors makes the biggest difference here, but docking station and the specific TC64 V2 also shows. Oh, and the TC64V2 on the right was an early one. Bought right after they were released. Not that I think something was changed component wise between the two TC64V2s. It's only a small difference.

Certain games with certain colour combinations shows this more than others. This game (IK+) is one of those games that shows it clearly.

I don't know why I haven't noticed this before, but there is a substantial difference between these two setups. I'm quite satisfied with the results I get from the BL912 setup here. Using 768x576@50Hz and VICII sync enabled. Which gives the best results for me. 640x480@50Hz is also good but will not show the whole vertical area in all games.

It seems the TC64V2s are very picky with regards to monitors. will do more testing. The Lenovo q24i-10 monitor looks promising from pictures and information I saw over in the TC64 facebook group. Anyway, I'm quite surprised the BL912 shows noticeable less ghosting/smearing VS BL702A when used with the TC64V2s as I thought they were essentially the same based on how they behave on my Amigas, appart from 17 VS 19 inch sizes of course.