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Video Converters

27 08 09 - 22:40 ... or how to get a C64 onto a 22" monitor.



I bought this video to VGA converter from DealExtreme for usage with the C64. In short, it works quite well - there's not much visible flickering, everything looks alright. No rolling picture or other horrible problems caused by the C64's video output rate. Only issue is there is some interlacing on the image - but I haven't found this to be a problem in gameplay, it's only slightly evident in text mode.

There is a bit of colour fringing though - quite bad in the blue area - but I'm not incredibly sure to what extent it is just the C64's video output hardware making a messy signal - as there is some similar fringing on a TV. As I said before - many corners were cut in the C64's video hardware.



Compare that to the iREZ ReelEyes video capture card image, which seems to have a little less, but still some fringing...



I'd say that this thing's worth the money though.

Edit: Probably should clarify about the colour fringing: it only happens when dark colours and bright colours are right next to each other. In the blue texture there's alternating blue and black lines for dithering and that sets it off badly - this is a worst case scenario. Normally you don't see it (look at the light tile area) - but this sets it off badly. I'll take more pictures later.