I’m sure someone else has already said this, but the “corruption” at the bottom of the genesis display is caused when the Genesis changes palettes. Very common.
The hardware keystone adjustment is way better than a software adjustment in this case. At only 800x480, the software keystone would cause significant artifacts that would destroy what little image quality it has.
I agree, even at higher resolutions I still prefer optical keystone because it prevents having to use interpolation (which introduces interference patterns with vertical lines)
This projector gets the job done pretty well. ua-cam.com/users/postUgkxS9P8zTOcmQg-hH0QeUi3dspOLyYgQ6dH Bear in mind it's a mini projector but all things considered the picture quality is pretty good. The attached photo is of the projector projecting onto my white closet doors. I still have not messed with the settings but I can't wait for our first family movie night on a larger scale. If you have issues with volume not working with your firestick, go into volume settings and you will find your solution there.
I bought a 720p native projector a few years ago for about 120$ , Its been good over the years for fun indoors and out but inspired by this video ....just spent 54$ On a 1440*2560 IPS LCD with Hdmi to MIPI board. And what a surprised "Contact us if you need version without backlight for projector use", thanks Ben. Can't wait to upgrade it to 2k.
As a full-time RVer who spends most of the year off-grid and solar powered, this is tempting. I could run it directly off my 12V battery system without having to turn on the inverter and lose efficiency. I could turn my front privacy curtain into a screen and lay back on my couch to watch a movie. Tempting!
Possibly the screen tearing was because the HDMI was 60p and the frame buffer couldn't keep up with that? Tried running it at lower resolutions and lower refresh rates? The VGA input looks surprisingly sharp.
Mechanical keystone correction is superior to software correction because it retains te 1:1 pixel ratio rather than progressively squishing the image into fewer and fewer physical pixels towards the top or bottom as the physical pixels get wider.
The glob of glue is a "getter" for dust. Knowing filtration and airflow design is suboptimal in a cheap device like this, it catches some and keeps it off the lenses and mirrors.
Saw someone else suggest it's for sound deadening, which could be, but the cases are so cheap on these I don't think they would add a step/process when the rest is garbage anyway.
Ohh I imagine it's like the little magnet you find in the sump of a gearbox, collecting metal filings on it rather than letting them flow back through the gears
I’ve gotcha covered. During assembly they put a dab inside the case and use that like a little mini work bench for applying said goop to the parts needing it. It’s probably actually glue, not grease.
Very interesting Ben. I enjoyed all the inputs as well. [as well as the MST3K reference!] I have an old LG HS201 projector and it's fun to play with, but I can't deal the contrast on these things. Thanks for the entertaining video!!
6:03 "The dots are caused by writing to CRAM while the VDP is reading from it. Most likely a real console uses a single data bus for reading and writing so it will read the value being written instead of the value in CRAM." CRAM = Color RAM, so just the small palette RAM that's on the VDP chip. IIRC, the colour palette is 64 colours (four lots of 16 colours), and are 9-bits wide, so that only needs around 72 Bytes of RAM. The CRAM dots are nostalgic to some people, presumably because their TV overscan wasn't quite adjusted correctly, or they were using a fancy PVM. Or maybe people just started noticing them more when LCD TVs became more popular in the 00s? On the MiSTer FPGA core for the Genesis, the CRAM dots were actually a requested feature. You can turn them on and off. lol
One other interesting thing there, is it looks like the console is using every available line in the Vertical Blanking area to update the VDP regs. So as soon as the image hits the first black line at the bottom of the screen, that's actually in VBlank already, but the VSync pulse hasn't quite happened yet. The VBlank interrupt is then triggered, and the code starts writing to the VDP to update it for the next frame. (things like writing to the scroll registers, writing to VRAM to update tile graphics, and writing to the sprite table to move the player and enemies around.) I'm not 100% sure about the exact Vblank and sync timings, but that's roughly how it works.
I wish all projectors had a physical lens shift rather than digital keystone correction. Digital keystone makes small text and details look terrible, even when we started seeing more XGA/SXGA projectors way back when.
I have some sort of no name mini projector that was given to me a few years ago. Has HDMI, VGA and I think RCA. I have been tempted to hook it up and use it as a huge terminal screen. The leftover glue isn't for catching dust. They purge the tip of the glue gun so they can start gluing up whatever. Sometimes they will glue something down for transport so the next factory or whatever will just break it off and install it in the final location.
I projected onto a ceiling for a couple weeks after hurting my back. Unfortunately, that projector was every bit as janky and low-res as this one. I don't think it even had HDMI, just VGA. It varied from "it'll do in a pinch" to "actually not bad" depending on the application.
Hi Ben. I used to do installs of projectors for an AT&T subcontractor. The keystoning was always done in software in every projector I installed. Now this was back in 2003-2005 but every projector I've seen since is still doing software keystoning. The interesting side effect is when you use the keystoning you lose features. Some projectors could not use their full resolution and others would experience screen tearing as they had to process the signal and were not fast enough. This wasn't a huge issue for conference rooms where PowerPoint was king, but teleconference setups we had to make sure keystoning was off and we hung the projector perfectly.
Whiteboard: Melamine formaldehyde resin over one or more layers of medium-density fibréboard (MDF), used for collaboration with groups of people to share ideas by freely (no lines) writing or drawing. For other analogous uses, see blackboard.
My brother used to work at Menards and he and his co-workers used to sing the Menards song as " shave big hunnies, we shave big hunnies when we shop Menards." I figured you would get a kick out of that
I have seen in my past a mechanical keystone on a really old projector I don't remember anything else. Usually it's just done in Software however processing time, resolution drop and more expensive chips.
I wonder if the screen tearing is if you feed 720p or higher into it. Does it happen with 640*480? Oh and the dots in some Genesis games are called "CRAM dots", they happen because of the video chip of the Genesis accessing the ram directly via DMA.
Most modern projectors use digital keystoning which is much simpler to implement, but I prefer mechanical because doing it in software means you lose a few pixels and get additional interpolation. As for the blob of sticky stuff inside, my guess is it's to trap any dust that does make it into the optical enclosure.
I think the last side of the standard CLV Jurassic Park Laserdisc release might have been in CAV. Sometimes when there's only like 20 minutes left in a movie, they'd do the third side in CAV and have an amusing picture of a cartoon turtle flipped on its back with a Laserdisc for its belly on the fourth side just to tell you that you're watching the wrong side.
The monitors we use at work are VGA still even though the computers we have use two DisplayPort outputs. we have to use converters to make them work because they don't want to buy new monitors for all of us.
After watching your other video, I bought one of those toy projectors, and for $34 I can't really complain. It was nice to see the tear down on this one, because I bought a 'Vamvo' one from Amazon that seems very similar to this one (except mine is actually 720p - and cost $20 more). I was wondering how they handled the keystone adjustment - now I know.
Back in the day IBM had a programming language called "HANDY" which was used along with one of those RS-232 laserdisc players and a video overlay system to implement interactive video presentations. The language was thoroughly awful in design and buggy in implementation but it was at least an interesting technology demo.
Those 'dots' at the bottom of the screen, which stopped when you paused the game, looks to be overscan revealing the 'Horizontal Ancillary' (aka 'HANC') data area. In any TV signals (PAL or NTSC) this is where the audio is carried. This is another data area, similar to how Closed Captions or teletext is carried in the 'Vertical Ancillary' (aka 'VANC' or also 'VBI' - vertical blanking interval in SD speak), that you've covered in some of your other videos showing the scope pulses. In digital broadcasting the audio, video and 'ANC' data are carried in seperate streams (PIDs), they are decoded from the transport stream at the the receiver/STB and forwarded via your choice of output connection (SCART, composite, HDMI) - as part of the full frame video - to the display.
I may be wrong but I believe in this case it's actually an artifact from the Sega MegaDrive itself, where certain usage of the processors causes these dots on the bottom of the screen, usually hidden by the overscan
@@televisionandcheese Ah fair enough and more than likely that's the answer! I was just thinking out loud really with regards to the audio equivalent of VBI and VITC dots you might see in full frame video :)
With analog broadcast TV the audio is delivered on an FM subcarrier alongside the video signal (would be visible as a tight dot pattern on the entire screen if not filtered out). Closed captions are sent in the area _above_ the main picture.
You definitely need cool air moving past the LCD, they absorb a lot of heat energy from the light source and will quickly die without cooling. That's why the fan on the cheap projector was positioned so some of the air went past the LCD and some through the LED heatsink. A decent quality projector will have air filters to ensure no dust contamination on the LCD and optics.
In my experience most high-end projectors have optical keystone correction. I'm assuming this is done to keep the panel at its native resolution without scaling or skewing.
Great Video and good for the Projector, that you'll keep it . Maybe the result is better if you connect the HDMI devices to the VGA input via an HDMI to VGA adapter
Remains of glue? Just spluge a pile in the middle and scoop it up from there to use during assembly? Or as someone else mentioned, sticky stuff to collect dust that gets inside.
I believe the lines at the bottom of Ghouls 'n Ghosts were an old programmers trick. I remember something about old arcade games offloading additional calculations to video memory and most people wouldn't notice because it was usually hidden in the overscan area.
@12:15 The cougar attack was great, I had to replay that a few times... cats can be very entertaining and also the bane of everything Hahahahha Ben, thank you for all you do!, You're the best!
It's like a double toy -- a video game for you, and a chase toy for the cat. And you can still see to play the game even with the cat running through it.
I'm thinking the frame skips you're seeing may be connected to EUR/US versions of the display protocol (PAL vs NTSC). Sometimes about 20% of frames can be removed that way, and it's generally only visible in fast motion events on the screen. Also, maybe using HDMI at 1080p might be a bottleneck, that will not be there at 720p. Many chips are overclocked to display 1080p video. Stock, they were made to display up to 800 or 900/936p
I bet that the gop of glue in the bottom is to capture any stray dust or crumb that might end up there and keep it away from the screen. Also, forcing the airflow past the LCD screen probably keeps it cold.
For that money, you can buy a second-hand Laser/hybrid projector such as Casio XJ-A140V with much better resolution, very compact size and better brightness. Most of those sold on eBay have runtime less than 10000 hours of 20000 hours total lamp life.
Having software keystone correction only is usually common in more portable projectors. Larger projectors meant to be permanently mounted will generally have more features to allow you to square up image to the screen. Being able to mount or place the projector 4 or 5 feet off center and still have everything line up is a really handy. Also means getting the mount in the exact right location isn't really a concern. Optical keystone and lens shift are more ideal and don't affect image quality like software keystone
Now I'm curious if the digital video quality would be different if you used one of those HDMI to VGA adapters. It's how I use modern equipment on my Hitachi CP X265, but it also natively seems to support 1920x1080.
You can get a vivibright 4K for about $200, possibly less if you want to wait for shipping.There was a industrial-projector project-off at COP26, it was the wackiest abuse of tech. Nobody seems to appreciate how power intensive and expense bulbs were not too long ago
Re: Can't use SNES. The SNES has a native AV multiout port right below the RF. It uses the same proprietary cable as the N64 did to break out the AV inputs. You can plug those directly into any composite video & stereo sound inputs.
@@MrFungi69 we're not talking about the same thing. -- The SNES has AV out (via the multiout port) and the projector has a way to get AV in (usually that's with a TRRP adapter or with RCA jacks).
9:54 dude.. at the beginning of video he shows the provide cable for av input which is composite male to 3.5 male into projector. now watch again and pay close attention this time.
@@MrFungi69 My TV has the same 3.5mm (TRRP) input and I can tell you that the cable will work fine. you just use a barrel connector to change the gender of the AV connector. what's the problem? (Not to mention Ben can solder in his sleep; and soldering AV connectors is super trivial.)
I've seen similar mechanical keystone adjustments on other cheap projectors before. A mechanical adjustment in theory should be better though I'd agree it's done solely for cost and "marketing" reasons. As far as I'm aware all consumer units on the market use software for correction. I believe larger commercial units do (or did) use mechanical adjustment but it's been quite a while since I've been in that industry to say for sure.
To be honest I like this better, the software one makes the pixel stretching stand out for me, and it will project a not quite blacked out border on the narrow side of the keystone.
The commercial units usually tilt the DLP unit and they can tilt in more than one direction, as well as shift. Tilting the fresnel like this may mess up your focal plane while tilting the imaging unit itself would correct for the focal plane offset you introduce by angling the projector towards the screen.
I remember back in the mid 90s, if someone wanted to play Sega games on a large screen, they'd have to spend $1000s of dollars on a rear projection TV. These TVs were dim and you had to be at the right angle to see it correctly. This $80 device has an image 100 times better. Also the big screen televisions from the 90s always had convergence issues. That Jurassic Park movie looked better on the $80 projector than it did on an old projector TV from the 90s.
Oh Ben... you could've easily tested the "Does the other audio channel work?" by... _just plugging the speaker into the other header!_ lol The coding-in-bed-but-TVs-falling-on-your-head part was great. If you and AvE teamed up, I don't think UA-cam or the Internet, would know what hit it! 🤘 Maybe he'll CNC you a custom case to fit this thing, plus a Game Gear, for you to make a hand-held-wall-projected-retro-...thing....! Get all the motion-sickness of VR, without the face-rash! Also, get all the 1hr of battery life, but from 6x 18650s instead of 6x AAs! 😁 _(for the record, using the Game Gear which is already portable, is exactly the point... the absurdity of a hand-held-projector-based-gaming-device lol)_
I have an RCA projector thats about the same of everything, down to the I/O on the side being in the same layout, same interface, same AV cable, and same screen with terrible distance and brightness. I think this is one of those things where you can choose from a variety of layouts and if enough bulk is purchased, some random overseas manufacturer will pump these out for anyone with some changable parts, like the buttons on top or the remote.
Why everything is in plastic bags; bugs. Roaches love to live on cardboard for whatever reason and they also love tiny cramped spaces like the ones found inside electronics. That's my best guess at least. Had roaches in the kitchen for a bit, then finally opened the boxed Keurig machine I had sitting in the same spot for over a year to discover a roach metropolis. The machine was wrapped up but not airtight; so if someone offers you a brand new never used Keurig without the box for a great price be suspicious 🤫
My favorite bluetooth speaker came from Menards. It's branded as Polaroid I think I paid $10. The 8 hour battery life was more like 40 minutes. I changed the battery and got 12 hours then. The bluetooth range is insane though. I can go about 90 feet from my phone before it loses connection.
I'm guessing the stuttering is because they didn't think about 60hz HDMI inputs (but they really should have). I bet 24-30 does a lot better, like a movie.
Can you try different framerates on the HDMI input? Maybe the juddering only happens on 60hz signals. Eg, try 720i or 1080i, see if the juddering goes away.
With the weird buffering issues on the HDMI that isn't appearing on composite, I wonder if that means if the composite decoder is updating the display directly, which in turn means I wonder if this would work with a NES zapper.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 There are demos that show the ability of the Zapper to move objects around on screen precisely. (I guess it's up to you to find it. My comment keeps getting deleted whenever I mention it 🤷)
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 It's a program by pinobatch The vertical position is fairly accurate, but not so much the horizontal. Since the horizontal resolution is so low, calling it a "hack" might be more appropriate.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 I uploaded a short video running the program in my channel. I'm still not sure why my comments were getting deleted, I wasn't even posting links, just the name of the program... Also, I was definitely getting the Zapper confused with other light guns, like the Sega Light Phaser. I thought I remembered some Zapper games not doing the black screen with white squares thing, but I was wrong. But a lot of light guns definitely do work like light pens.
@@adimifus pinobatch did it as a demonstration of what was possible, but that isn't how any actual NES zapper game actually works. Zapper games don't care about raster-level scan timing, they just care about frame timing.
You are making me miss menards! we just don't have quite the same type of store in the PNW. We also don't have a microcenter! for all the bad things i can say about the midwest, the stores were pretty sweet
I'm already liking this because of the first remark :) I like this because I know nothing about this stuff and I was considering buying a new crappy one.
9:30 Same sort of tearing happened when I used a composite to HDMI converter that actively changed it from 4:3 to 16:9 (for N64). Switching to a composite to HDMI that left it native 4:3 eliminated the tearing.
I wonder if running HDMI at less than 60fps (24/25 maybe, for movies?) would help the buffer cope with the data. I don't really know how any of the stuff works but it would seem senseful that if too high bandwidth is the problem, lowering the refresh rate should cut it down?
Great review! Can you do a small follow up of the Bluetooth capabilities? These projectors are very popular for “digital decorations” for the holidays, but some suffer from noticeable audio lag when used with external speakers.
I’m sure someone else has already said this, but the “corruption” at the bottom of the genesis display is caused when the Genesis changes palettes. Very common.
Love your channel! Happy to see this "crossover" of sorts
Nope! You're the first to've said it on this video.
Whenever im feeling low Ben Heck is always there so i dont drink alone
Love this comment! 🤣🤣
Man that kind of sucks, this dude is so obnoxious lol
You could use it as a second monitor on your pc that projects code onto your face, because that always seems useful in the movies
Could use it to project a letter from the International Monetary Fund letting you know that a Nigerian Prince is looking to transfer funds to you...
With two Menards cheap projectors, Ben has now gone and joined a Menards à Trois. :)
The hardware keystone adjustment is way better than a software adjustment in this case. At only 800x480, the software keystone would cause significant artifacts that would destroy what little image quality it has.
I agree, even at higher resolutions I still prefer optical keystone because it prevents having to use interpolation (which introduces interference patterns with vertical lines)
Also, software keystone correction would add a bit of latency, which would detract from the one thing this projector does best.
This projector gets the job done pretty well. ua-cam.com/users/postUgkxS9P8zTOcmQg-hH0QeUi3dspOLyYgQ6dH Bear in mind it's a mini projector but all things considered the picture quality is pretty good. The attached photo is of the projector projecting onto my white closet doors. I still have not messed with the settings but I can't wait for our first family movie night on a larger scale. If you have issues with volume not working with your firestick, go into volume settings and you will find your solution there.
I bought a 720p native projector a few years ago for about 120$ , Its been good over the years for fun indoors and out but inspired by this video ....just spent 54$ On a 1440*2560 IPS LCD with Hdmi to MIPI board. And what a surprised "Contact us if you need version without backlight for projector use", thanks Ben. Can't wait to upgrade it to 2k.
As a full-time RVer who spends most of the year off-grid and solar powered, this is tempting. I could run it directly off my 12V battery system without having to turn on the inverter and lose efficiency. I could turn my front privacy curtain into a screen and lay back on my couch to watch a movie. Tempting!
This clever keystone adjustment might work better than fancier software way because it will not blur the pixels by compensating the edge angles.
Possibly the screen tearing was because the HDMI was 60p and the frame buffer couldn't keep up with that? Tried running it at lower resolutions and lower refresh rates?
The VGA input looks surprisingly sharp.
Mechanical keystone correction is superior to software correction because it retains te 1:1 pixel ratio rather than progressively squishing the image into fewer and fewer physical pixels towards the top or bottom as the physical pixels get wider.
The glob of glue is a "getter" for dust. Knowing filtration and airflow design is suboptimal in a cheap device like this, it catches some and keeps it off the lenses and mirrors.
Saw someone else suggest it's for sound deadening, which could be, but the cases are so cheap on these I don't think they would add a step/process when the rest is garbage anyway.
Ohh I imagine it's like the little magnet you find in the sump of a gearbox, collecting metal filings on it rather than letting them flow back through the gears
As a Wisconsin expat from 14 years ago, I love the Menards jingle...
Former Minnesotan, here, I concur... Whodathunkit that goddamn MENARDS would make a person feel homesick?! 🤣
Maybe the glop of grease is a cheap dust trap to keep dust from settling on the LCD?
I’ve gotcha covered. During assembly they put a dab inside the case and use that like a little mini work bench for applying said goop to the parts needing it. It’s probably actually glue, not grease.
I love how you casually play a notoriously difficult game while dropping technicaly verbose dialogue without missing a beat. Absolute legend.
I like watching you take things apart and explainy messages
The glue is for airborne dust to attempt to stick toi
right now my wife is watching one of the tv shopping channels, and they are selling this exact projector for $169.99
helluva markup...
Very interesting Ben. I enjoyed all the inputs as well. [as well as the MST3K reference!] I have an old LG HS201 projector and it's fun to play with, but I can't deal the contrast on these things. Thanks for the entertaining video!!
6:03
"The dots are caused by writing to CRAM while the VDP is reading from it. Most likely a real console uses a single data bus for reading and writing so it will read the value being written instead of the value in CRAM."
CRAM = Color RAM, so just the small palette RAM that's on the VDP chip.
IIRC, the colour palette is 64 colours (four lots of 16 colours), and are 9-bits wide, so that only needs around 72 Bytes of RAM.
The CRAM dots are nostalgic to some people, presumably because their TV overscan wasn't quite adjusted correctly, or they were using a fancy PVM. Or maybe people just started noticing them more when LCD TVs became more popular in the 00s?
On the MiSTer FPGA core for the Genesis, the CRAM dots were actually a requested feature. You can turn them on and off. lol
One other interesting thing there, is it looks like the console is using every available line in the Vertical Blanking area to update the VDP regs.
So as soon as the image hits the first black line at the bottom of the screen, that's actually in VBlank already, but the VSync pulse hasn't quite happened yet.
The VBlank interrupt is then triggered, and the code starts writing to the VDP to update it for the next frame. (things like writing to the scroll registers, writing to VRAM to update tile graphics, and writing to the sprite table to move the player and enemies around.)
I'm not 100% sure about the exact Vblank and sync timings, but that's roughly how it works.
I wish all projectors had a physical lens shift rather than digital keystone correction.
Digital keystone makes small text and details look terrible, even when we started seeing more XGA/SXGA projectors way back when.
I just love listening to your ramblings, it's so relaxing and entertaining XD
100 million subs is right around the corner now. Can’t wait for the $100,000 projector.
Ben Heck is my only UA-cam connection to the Midwest and I'm happy Menards is still selling random junk. Always a treat to watch haha
I have some sort of no name mini projector that was given to me a few years ago. Has HDMI, VGA and I think RCA. I have been tempted to hook it up and use it as a huge terminal screen.
The leftover glue isn't for catching dust. They purge the tip of the glue gun so they can start gluing up whatever. Sometimes they will glue something down for transport so the next factory or whatever will just break it off and install it in the final location.
Thank you again for that video, after a long day always a joy.
Best regards from Germany.
Stay healthy.
I have actually thought of a ceiling projection. I totally agree, it seems to be a great retro video device. Cool!
I projected onto a ceiling for a couple weeks after hurting my back. Unfortunately, that projector was every bit as janky and low-res as this one. I don't think it even had HDMI, just VGA. It varied from "it'll do in a pinch" to "actually not bad" depending on the application.
Hi Ben. I used to do installs of projectors for an AT&T subcontractor. The keystoning was always done in software in every projector I installed. Now this was back in 2003-2005 but every projector I've seen since is still doing software keystoning. The interesting side effect is when you use the keystoning you lose features. Some projectors could not use their full resolution and others would experience screen tearing as they had to process the signal and were not fast enough. This wasn't a huge issue for conference rooms where PowerPoint was king, but teleconference setups we had to make sure keystoning was off and we hung the projector perfectly.
ViewSonic had a few with mechanical keystone and I liked them for the reason that it maintained full res.
Whiteboard: Melamine formaldehyde resin over one or more layers of medium-density fibréboard (MDF), used for collaboration with groups of people to share ideas by freely (no lines) writing or drawing. For other analogous uses, see blackboard.
My brother used to work at Menards and he and his co-workers used to sing the Menards song as " shave big hunnies, we shave big hunnies when we shop Menards." I figured you would get a kick out of that
mechanical keystone is actually pretty cool because doing it digitally sacrifices pixel resolution on the part of the image that becomes narrower.
It may also eliminate some input lag due to extra image processing. I'd be curious what the total delay is on this beastie.
I have seen in my past a mechanical keystone on a really old projector I don't remember anything else. Usually it's just done in Software however processing time, resolution drop and more expensive chips.
Love that the cheap projectors have the same osd as my LCD TV that isnt branded as anything but does have a touchscreen
Ben, I hope you didn't forget the furnace filters this time on your trip to Menards.
The Digital Foundry reference had me laughing way more than I should have!
I wonder if the screen tearing is if you feed 720p or higher into it. Does it happen with 640*480?
Oh and the dots in some Genesis games are called "CRAM dots", they happen because of the video chip of the Genesis accessing the ram directly via DMA.
Most modern projectors use digital keystoning which is much simpler to implement, but I prefer mechanical because doing it in software means you lose a few pixels and get additional interpolation. As for the blob of sticky stuff inside, my guess is it's to trap any dust that does make it into the optical enclosure.
I think the last side of the standard CLV Jurassic Park Laserdisc release might have been in CAV. Sometimes when there's only like 20 minutes left in a movie, they'd do the third side in CAV and have an amusing picture of a cartoon turtle flipped on its back with a Laserdisc for its belly on the fourth side just to tell you that you're watching the wrong side.
Going from a $32 to a $82 projector in only 4 days? Ben is really moving up in the world!
The monitors we use at work are VGA still even though the computers we have use two DisplayPort outputs. we have to use converters to make them work because they don't want to buy new monitors for all of us.
Your cat is one of the highlights of the videos.
That's a freaking sweet PC Engine setup.
After watching your other video, I bought one of those toy projectors, and for $34 I can't really complain. It was nice to see the tear down on this one, because I bought a 'Vamvo' one from Amazon that seems very similar to this one (except mine is actually 720p - and cost $20 more). I was wondering how they handled the keystone adjustment - now I know.
Back in the day IBM had a programming language called "HANDY" which was used along with one of those RS-232 laserdisc players and a video overlay system to implement interactive video presentations. The language was thoroughly awful in design and buggy in implementation but it was at least an interesting technology demo.
Those 'dots' at the bottom of the screen, which stopped when you paused the game, looks to be overscan revealing the 'Horizontal Ancillary' (aka 'HANC') data area.
In any TV signals (PAL or NTSC) this is where the audio is carried. This is another data area, similar to how Closed Captions or teletext is carried in the 'Vertical Ancillary' (aka 'VANC' or also 'VBI' - vertical blanking interval in SD speak), that you've covered in some of your other videos showing the scope pulses.
In digital broadcasting the audio, video and 'ANC' data are carried in seperate streams (PIDs), they are decoded from the transport stream at the the receiver/STB and forwarded via your choice of output connection (SCART, composite, HDMI) - as part of the full frame video - to the display.
I may be wrong but I believe in this case it's actually an artifact from the Sega MegaDrive itself, where certain usage of the processors causes these dots on the bottom of the screen, usually hidden by the overscan
@@televisionandcheese Ah fair enough and more than likely that's the answer! I was just thinking out loud really with regards to the audio equivalent of VBI and VITC dots you might see in full frame video :)
With analog broadcast TV the audio is delivered on an FM subcarrier alongside the video signal (would be visible as a tight dot pattern on the entire screen if not filtered out). Closed captions are sent in the area _above_ the main picture.
You definitely need cool air moving past the LCD, they absorb a lot of heat energy from the light source and will quickly die without cooling. That's why the fan on the cheap projector was positioned so some of the air went past the LCD and some through the LED heatsink.
A decent quality projector will have air filters to ensure no dust contamination on the LCD and optics.
Great point!
A decent quality projector will have _replaceable_ air filters.
In my experience most high-end projectors have optical keystone correction. I'm assuming this is done to keep the panel at its native resolution without scaling or skewing.
Great Video and good for the Projector, that you'll keep it .
Maybe the result is better if you connect the HDMI devices to the VGA input via an HDMI to VGA adapter
Since it's gonna downsample to 480p anyhow, you could also go HDMI to composite since it seems to do that quite well.
Remains of glue? Just spluge a pile in the middle and scoop it up from there to use during assembly? Or as someone else mentioned, sticky stuff to collect dust that gets inside.
That's actually not terrible. :) Obviously wouldn't replace a $7,500 home theater projector...
I believe the lines at the bottom of Ghouls 'n Ghosts were an old programmers trick. I remember something about old arcade games offloading additional calculations to video memory and most people wouldn't notice because it was usually hidden in the overscan area.
Curious if setting the resolution on HDMI to 480P would stop the stuttering.
I was thinking the same thing
it would
I started to choke on my spit from you stating are you tired of having large heavy monitors crushing you in your sleep. Great video as always
This is waaaay better than the $60 projector I got from China!!!
@12:15 The cougar attack was great, I had to replay that a few times... cats can be very entertaining and also the bane of everything Hahahahha Ben, thank you for all you do!, You're the best!
It's like a double toy -- a video game for you, and a chase toy for the cat. And you can still see to play the game even with the cat running through it.
It's finally dark out because it's 5pm. That made laugh. You should have more bud the cat be in more of the videos.
I'm thinking the frame skips you're seeing may be connected to EUR/US versions of the display protocol (PAL vs NTSC).
Sometimes about 20% of frames can be removed that way, and it's generally only visible in fast motion events on the screen.
Also, maybe using HDMI at 1080p might be a bottleneck, that will not be there at 720p.
Many chips are overclocked to display 1080p video. Stock, they were made to display up to 800 or 900/936p
I bet that the gop of glue in the bottom is to capture any stray dust or crumb that might end up there and keep it away from the screen. Also, forcing the airflow past the LCD screen probably keeps it cold.
Could you try hdmi at 480p to see if it's not the downscaling that's messing it up ?
For that money, you can buy a second-hand Laser/hybrid projector such as Casio XJ-A140V with much better resolution, very compact size and better brightness. Most of those sold on eBay have runtime less than 10000 hours of 20000 hours total lamp life.
Yeah but Menards
Looking forward to seeing more about that Laserdisc project!
Just now Menards has it for $39.99. If there was a Menard close by, I would grab one.
That would be something I'd look into. Cheap and cheerful.
Oh. I got an idea. Homebrew a Space Invaders' cabinet.
Having software keystone correction only is usually common in more portable projectors. Larger projectors meant to be permanently mounted will generally have more features to allow you to square up image to the screen. Being able to mount or place the projector 4 or 5 feet off center and still have everything line up is a really handy. Also means getting the mount in the exact right location isn't really a concern. Optical keystone and lens shift are more ideal and don't affect image quality like software keystone
It would be interesting to watch you pimp out one of these cheap projectors. Just to see if you can improve them in any way?
Now I'm curious if the digital video quality would be different if you used one of those HDMI to VGA adapters. It's how I use modern equipment on my Hitachi CP X265, but it also natively seems to support 1920x1080.
FYI the goop is more dust mitigation. It’s there to catch any fine particles that make their way in.
You can get a vivibright 4K for about $200, possibly less if you want to wait for shipping.There was a industrial-projector project-off at COP26, it was the wackiest abuse of tech. Nobody seems to appreciate how power intensive and expense bulbs were not too long ago
Re: Can't use SNES.
The SNES has a native AV multiout port right below the RF. It uses the same proprietary cable as the N64 did to break out the AV inputs.
You can plug those directly into any composite video & stereo sound inputs.
but it doesn't break out to a 3.5 plug tho. watch it again
@@MrFungi69 we're not talking about the same thing. -- The SNES has AV out (via the multiout port) and the projector has a way to get AV in (usually that's with a TRRP adapter or with RCA jacks).
9:54 dude..
at the beginning of video he shows the provide cable for av input which is composite male to 3.5 male into projector. now watch again and pay close attention this time.
@@MrFungi69 My TV has the same 3.5mm (TRRP) input and I can tell you that the cable will work fine. you just use a barrel connector to change the gender of the AV connector. what's the problem? (Not to mention Ben can solder in his sleep; and soldering AV connectors is super trivial.)
@@BrainSlugs83 obviously he doesn't have one there.. you are thick my man.. real thick.
I've seen similar mechanical keystone adjustments on other cheap projectors before. A mechanical adjustment in theory should be better though I'd agree it's done solely for cost and "marketing" reasons. As far as I'm aware all consumer units on the market use software for correction. I believe larger commercial units do (or did) use mechanical adjustment but it's been quite a while since I've been in that industry to say for sure.
To be honest I like this better, the software one makes the pixel stretching stand out for me, and it will project a not quite blacked out border on the narrow side of the keystone.
The commercial units usually tilt the DLP unit and they can tilt in more than one direction, as well as shift.
Tilting the fresnel like this may mess up your focal plane while tilting the imaging unit itself would correct for the focal plane offset you introduce by angling the projector towards the screen.
@@Stoney3K That may be, but I have these old Hitachi lcd mirror projectors, and they keystone by software scaling, and it's not pretty.
I have seen a mechanical keystone projector at least once and not the cheap kind.
I remember back in the mid 90s, if someone wanted to play Sega games on a large screen, they'd have to spend $1000s of dollars on a rear projection TV. These TVs were dim and you had to be at the right angle to see it correctly. This $80 device has an image 100 times better. Also the big screen televisions from the 90s always had convergence issues. That Jurassic Park movie looked better on the $80 projector than it did on an old projector TV from the 90s.
I like how Ben really struggled to think of any uses for a cheap projector that didn't involve Halloween or video games.
Thanks for the teardown, shame the HDMI is so weird but otherwise not bad i guess. You didn't tell us how it smells though :(
Oh Ben... you could've easily tested the "Does the other audio channel work?" by... _just plugging the speaker into the other header!_ lol
The coding-in-bed-but-TVs-falling-on-your-head part was great.
If you and AvE teamed up, I don't think UA-cam or the Internet, would know what hit it! 🤘
Maybe he'll CNC you a custom case to fit this thing, plus a Game Gear, for you to make a hand-held-wall-projected-retro-...thing....! Get all the motion-sickness of VR, without the face-rash! Also, get all the 1hr of battery life, but from 6x 18650s instead of 6x AAs! 😁
_(for the record, using the Game Gear which is already portable, is exactly the point... the absurdity of a hand-held-projector-based-gaming-device lol)_
I have an RCA projector thats about the same of everything, down to the I/O on the side being in the same layout, same interface, same AV cable, and same screen with terrible distance and brightness. I think this is one of those things where you can choose from a variety of layouts and if enough bulk is purchased, some random overseas manufacturer will pump these out for anyone with some changable parts, like the buttons on top or the remote.
It force the air to pass through the LCD to cool it down. The LCD overheat and degradation is a very common failure of these cheap projectors
Why everything is in plastic bags; bugs. Roaches love to live on cardboard for whatever reason and they also love tiny cramped spaces like the ones found inside electronics. That's my best guess at least.
Had roaches in the kitchen for a bit, then finally opened the boxed Keurig machine I had sitting in the same spot for over a year to discover a roach metropolis. The machine was wrapped up but not airtight; so if someone offers you a brand new never used Keurig without the box for a great price be suspicious 🤫
Water.
Haha...when Bud approached Trevor, I first thought it was the in-game mountain lion.
That sticky goo on the bottom MAY be to trap dust/dirt that gets near the lens or mirror assembly.
The cat was the best performance of that projector.
Ben: "The focus wheel is harder to use compared to the first printer..."
Me: "uhh...Printer?"
My favorite bluetooth speaker came from Menards. It's branded as Polaroid I think I paid $10. The 8 hour battery life was more like 40 minutes. I changed the battery and got 12 hours then. The bluetooth range is insane though. I can go about 90 feet from my phone before it loses connection.
Sounds like the battery went flat on the boat from China, and then it sat on a shelf that way for a year.
@@mal2ksc It was just a tiny battery. Like 100 mAh.
@@joneilkimball Glad it worked out for you, but that's a hell of a corner to cut. More like fraud.
Thank god it's not about the Analogue Pocket
haha yeah the marketing push was insane, they lift the nda and flood started
I wonder if you could somehow extract the FW from this one and burn it onto the cheaper one, enabling the AV-IN
I'm guessing the stuttering is because they didn't think about 60hz HDMI inputs (but they really should have). I bet 24-30 does a lot better, like a movie.
Love the vids! Custom HDMI to Analog module upgrade would be interesting to see!
Can you try different framerates on the HDMI input? Maybe the juddering only happens on 60hz signals. Eg, try 720i or 1080i, see if the juddering goes away.
Maybe it would do better with 720p over hdmi? Maybe down scaling the higher resolution is too much for it. Thanks for the vids Ben.
The RetroUSB AVS that he was playing Super Mario Bros. on outputs 720p
With the weird buffering issues on the HDMI that isn't appearing on composite, I wonder if that means if the composite decoder is updating the display directly, which in turn means I wonder if this would work with a NES zapper.
+1
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 There are demos that show the ability of the Zapper to move objects around on screen precisely.
(I guess it's up to you to find it. My comment keeps getting deleted whenever I mention it 🤷)
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 It's a program by pinobatch
The vertical position is fairly accurate, but not so much the horizontal. Since the horizontal resolution is so low, calling it a "hack" might be more appropriate.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 I uploaded a short video running the program in my channel. I'm still not sure why my comments were getting deleted, I wasn't even posting links, just the name of the program...
Also, I was definitely getting the Zapper confused with other light guns, like the Sega Light Phaser. I thought I remembered some Zapper games not doing the black screen with white squares thing, but I was wrong. But a lot of light guns definitely do work like light pens.
@@adimifus pinobatch did it as a demonstration of what was possible, but that isn't how any actual NES zapper game actually works. Zapper games don't care about raster-level scan timing, they just care about frame timing.
I think model 1 Genesis only outputs mono over the av connection. You would need to connect to the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Indeed or use an model 2 but I don't want to get in debate of which system has the better audio.
You are making me miss menards! we just don't have quite the same type of store in the PNW. We also don't have a microcenter! for all the bad things i can say about the midwest, the stores were pretty sweet
I'm already liking this because of the first remark :)
I like this because I know nothing about this stuff and I was considering buying a new crappy one.
9:30 Same sort of tearing happened when I used a composite to HDMI converter that actively changed it from 4:3 to 16:9 (for N64). Switching to a composite to HDMI that left it native 4:3 eliminated the tearing.
This looks like my BlitzWolf projector bought from aliexpress for 80€. Although the blitzwolf has presumably a 1080p display.
now this is your top quality stuff!
The cat mugging the gta guy was too funny.
Yet another great video from Ben's, "A December to Remember," series.
I wonder if running HDMI at less than 60fps (24/25 maybe, for movies?) would help the buffer cope with the data. I don't really know how any of the stuff works but it would seem senseful that if too high bandwidth is the problem, lowering the refresh rate should cut it down?
Or maybe even just set the device that's plugged in to 720p, maybe that would help
@@donotatme the RetroUSB AVS he was playing Super Mario Bros. on outputs at 720p, it was having as the same issues the Xbox One at 1080p
@@adimifus whoops, I missed that detail!
Maybe an external HDMI to VGA adapter could solve the HDMI issue.
Would have liked to see if running the the HDMI at 30 Hz solves the jerked frames.
Great review! Can you do a small follow up of the Bluetooth capabilities? These projectors are very popular for “digital decorations” for the holidays, but some suffer from noticeable audio lag when used with external speakers.
Camera Obscura is a pretty chill band.