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Old 26th Dec 2006, 5:17 am   #7
tubesrule
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Michigan USA
Posts: 325
Default Re: Request for a 32 (and if possible a 30) line standards converter.

Hi Steve,
I had a suspicion this issue would come up I have followed your progress with 32 line color and the great results you have achieved. I am adding mechanical color support right now as a modification to a Multi-Standard unit for a project Steve McVoy is working on for his museum. He obtained a 60 line mirror screw assembly, and wants to run it in color. You can follow the progress on his web site.
That being said, I was able to do this because the Multi-Standard unit has an auxiliary port on it that I was able to add a daughter card with a multi-channel serial DAC. Even though these parts are not particularly fast, this one runs up to 30MHz which is fast enough for mechanical color. Unfortunately the existing low cost converter has no such provision and only contains a single DAC channel. A low cost unit could be designed with three DAC channels, but it would be a new design.

What I would propose for this device is the existing low cost converter with the audio and RF sections removed. This would leave the PAL/NTSC video input, the converted line level output, and the power jack. It would support both Baird 30 and NBTV 32 in the same unit. Since the NBTV standard provides full syncs, and the Baird standard provides black spaces between each line, no dedicated sync output would be needed.

Jeff is correct that an existing low cost unit could be reprogrammed to support this proposed new 30/32 firmware. I don't think it would be possible to support 30/32 and a regular standard like 405 in one firmware set do to limitations of resources in the fpga. This could be solved with a larger fpga part, but that would add cost.

Darryl
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