Component out to 4:3 CRT via 3.5mm jack.
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Bump, why is it so hard to solve this issue?
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@felleg said in Component out to 4:3 CRT via 3.5mm jack.:
Bump, why is it so hard to solve this issue?
wow..
best solution for CRT: https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/49wkr9/240p_rgbs_guide_rgb_composite_sync/
your emulationstation aspect ratio question needs a photo to go along with it. sounds like it is working as designed to me.
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@dankcushions .. I'm not talking about pixel resolution, like your link suggests. I'm talking about the aspect ratio. To help you understand what I mean (maybe I'm using wrong words), I made this picture. I'm sorry I don't have a CRT at hand now, but it should still illustrate my point:
4:3 and 16:9 were from composite. I adjusted the overscan for 16:9 and kept it when changing settings. The HDMI picture has overscan set to off. To switch from 16:9 to 4:3, I adjusted sdtv_aspect in /boot/config.txt according to the instructions given by raspberrypi.org about config.txt:
sdtv_aspect=1 #4:3
sdtv_aspect=2 #14:9
sdtv_aspect=3 #16:9From the picture, you can see:
- The aspect ratio for ES in the 4:3 picture is effectively 16:9 (i.e. fills my 16:9 screen) instead of being 4:3. It's like the sdtv_aspect=1 had no effect.
- The aspect ratio in game (I loaded Action 52) is also the same in the 4:3 and 16:9 pictures. HOWEVER, this aspect ratio, whatever it is, is wrong, because the correct one is shown in the HDMI picture, and you can clearly see the black bars are larger in the HDMI picture (remember, overscan was turned off for HDMI, this can't be the reason). Therefore, the composite signal stretches games in the 4:3 setting and compresses them in the 16:9.
Therefore, you can easily imagine that if I was to plug my pi to a CRT, either the sides of the ES menu would be cutoff and the game would be ok if I kept the same overscan settings as my HD TV, or the menu would be compressed to fit in screen, but the game would also be compressed even more.
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Is it also possible to output a Pal signal on retropie while using a composit cable?
I saw a kick-ass project on youtube from a guy who build his rpi in to an old crt tv.
Problem is that most of the old crt's in europe only work with a Pal signal. -
@felleg i don't really understand your examples. i want to see it with a CRT :)
if I was to plug my pi to a CRT, either the sides of the ES menu would be cutoff and the game would be ok
this is exactly the right behaviour as far as i can tell. eg watch:
emulationstation menu does not show as much horizontal real-estate, because it has less horizontal real-estate. the aspect ratio is still 4:3.
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@dankcushions Interesting video, definitely helps me understand the natural behavior of EmulationStation better... So you're basically saying that if the guy in the video had the default Carbon theme selected in ES, the beginning of the names of the games in the list would be cutoff (because they're to the far left), and that would be normal? Because that's what happened to me when I plugged my Pi to my Commodore CRT monitor (which, as I've said, sadly I don't have around at the moment to take pictures).
If the solution to this "aspect ratio" problem is simply to edit themes and make game titles appear closer to the middle, then I would both be very happy and very surprised.
At the end of the day, though, knowing all this: what's the purpose of the sdtv_aspect variable in config.txt?
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Well I'm back now, and with proper pictures! I managed to get my hands on a 1702 Commodore monitor (best in the biz). This monitor is extra reliable, so if I can't make it work here, I doubt it can work elsewhere.
Here's what the ES menu looks like with all overscan values set to 0. You can see the text at the bottom is getting cut:
Here's the game list. The text is getting cut on the left side:
So the menu looks stretched, which is bad. However, good news, Super Mario Bros. looks great:
Not everything is perfect, though. When I boot up DOSBOX (The Incredible Machine in this case), it seems to be in a 16:9 ratio, so the sides are cut and the top and bottom parts are black bars. What's up with DOSBOX outputting in 16:9, anyway? This ratio didn't even exist back then, as far as I know!
================================ Now I set up overscan values for my monitor (using this home made script): =====================
The ES menu now looks OK. The text is kind of squished laterally, but nothing is cut this time. We should see the Atari logo in the middle of the screen, but my camera had issues with the contrast of brightness:
Now look what happens with Super Mario Bros. after having set up these overscan values: it is squished laterally, not filling the left and right sides of the screen! It's like if the overscan values, instead of changing the ratio of 16:9 to 4:3, just squished the screen. As a result, when i boot up a 4:3 game, it gets squished laterally even more. If only I could have the ES menu in 4:3 resolution, this would solve ALL my problems:
Here's DOSBOX with the overscan. It's very clearly in 16:9, it even added the black bars at the top and bottom. I really don't understand what's up with that, and would be delighted if anyone knew what to do to get a true 4:3 ratio:
Just a side note: during all these tests, in /boot/config.txt I had sdtv_aspect=1, which should give me NTSC 4:3 through composite (according to Raspberry Pi documentation).
I hope this post clearly highlights this issue, I would love to learn how to fix this. Thanks in advance.
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better! :) please could you post your entire /boot/config.txt here?
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@dankcushions Here it is, exactly as it was when I did the test. :) Thanks for taking the time to solve this
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i assume that's your 'no overscan' config? can you show your overscan config?
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@dankcushions Sorry for the late reply, I was away for the holidays. Here is the pastebin of the config when I had my overscan activated (the only change is in the overscan top, left, right and bottom values): http://pastebin.com/3gsibiJd
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@dankcushions THAT DID IT! Thanks so much for your patience.
The reason I had that set up is because I have been using RetroPie on an HD TV and did not want the black borders. I completely forgot to remove that option when I use a CRT TV.It's kind of unclear to me what the disable_overscan option truly does, since I was able to apply overscan values even when it was enable (look at the pictures I posted above). Still, whatever it does, disabling it on a CRT is the solution. Now, my games are in the same resolution as the ES menu.
Cheers!
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I've been trying to get my Raspberry Pi3 running Retropie to output to RCA through the 3.5mm jack for some time now.
Without making any changed to the config.txt file, I would get sound no problems but no video whatsoever.
So I made the changes in the config file so the sdtv mode was 0 for NTSC (since I'm in North America) and I uncommented the line about forcing HDMI video if it just goes to composite.
That resulted in finally getting video output but it was all blurry and the picture was going crazy. There was colour however.
There was also only very faint sound and a whole lot of buzzing and hissing coming out of the speakers.
All 3 of the A/V plugs seem to be carrying some video now. The jack I'm using has been used by others for a R Pi3 via the reviews for it on Amazon. You have to use the red jack for video which I did.
What am I doing wrong? Please use simple words as I know nothing about Linux or programming or anything lol.
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@mmmfloorpie RPi is tricky in matter of RCA and jack connection. It's fact that yellow and red are switched but there is another tricky thing. You also need to switch signal and ground on the red cable so it's totally different cable from those you can buy as standard.
You can try to buy a cable with a proper jack adapter for RPi. I bought mine and it doesn't work plugging in directly to TV but with this adapter use it works as it should (more/less).
It look like this one:
http://g02.a.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1_b01LXXXXXa1apXXq6xXFXXXk/1PC-3-5mm-Jack-to-3-RCA-Male-Plug-Adapter-for-Cable-DVD-Audio-for-Cable.jpg
You can also made some soldering youself with this instructions:
http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Model-B-Plus-Audio-Video-Jack-Diagram.png
I thought also about making some script that will enable or disable overscan depending on active output so when RPi is connected via HDMI it will disable it but when you boot up with RCA it will enable overscan. Maybe you have something like this one?
I also wanted to ask you what happens when you had your Pi connected with HDMI and you shutdown system and run it once more on RCA. Mine doesn't display anything and has to be rebooted :/ is this normal? -
@Melvin.FoX Thanks for the reply. Where did you buy that adapter?
I haven't tried to boot with RCA while the HDMI was still plugged in.
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@mmmfloorpie It's not possible to boot RPi with both HDMI and RCA but that's not the case. I have option to use both HDMI and RCA but not in the same time. When I would like to play retro way I will use CRT with RCA connection but when connecting to LCD I will use HDMI. The thing is that I would like to have it configured so when I use CRT I don't need to get to any option menu or change anything in bash. I want to make it just plug'n'play type of console.
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@dankcushions is there a possibility to make this option enabled or disabled depending on used video output?
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@Melvin.FoX if you buy a composite cable for an xbox 360 e slim it is 100% correct. You dont have to swap anything.
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@mmmfloorpie This is the cable I'm using. https://www.amazon.ca/Zune-A-V-Output-Cable/dp/B000IXLHOM
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