Board scan Great Cheap 240p Line Doubler

[modler2]

Hey guys I wanted to start by saying I'm sorry if this is the wrong spot for this post. I just wanted to post about a retro gaming line doubler that I found on amazon that I have been personally using for months now that I thought might help people with their portables.

It is a 240p line doubler that accepts composite, svideo and component and that outputs 480p without scaling artifacts or adding lag. If you input 480i it de-interlaces it to 480p. You are able to output 240p, 480p clean or 480p with the smoothing filter like the one found on the retrotink 2x series. I personally use it with my rgb modded n64 with hd retrovision cables but also tested it with svideo and it looked great. Also worth noting the smoothing filter looks fantastic and acts more as a form of anti-aliasing rather than just a blur filter that covers the entire screen.

I opened the scaler so you guys could get a good look at the internals and I also included photos with the measurements. It is quite small and is run off 5v micro usb.

I'm planning on mounting one internally in my friends nintendo 64 for him and figured you might be interested.

I bought it here for 80$ Amazon Link, there wasn't any tax when I bought it but I can't promise there won't be for any of you.

I hope this helps and happy new year everyone!

 

[Kyosho]

This is one of a handful of devices that are direct clones of the original RetroTink 2X (now known as the Classic) that have come out of China. There's this one, the ODV (Original Drawing Video), the Retroscaler2X and one or two others. The ODV at least changed their board layout a bit to make it look like less of a direct clone, but it still uses Mike Chi's code and schematic.

I can't remember which chip it is, but on the original 2X there's an IC that gets hot and needs a heatsink. These clones tend to not bother with one. I think they don't bother because - and this is just a personal theory - the clones are based on his first production run, before he added said heatsink. You don't seem to have one there anywhere. You might want to leave it on for a while and then tentatively feel the ICs and see if any are getting too hot. I don't think it was the voltage regulators, but something else. I'm sure with a bit of googling you can find it.

Anyway, I don't want to make you feel bad, but you overpaid a bit for your ODV. Though, I suppose it depends on whether you trust Aliexpress sellers and shipments from China. You can typically get ODVs off Aliexpress for around $50.

 

[modler2]

Thanks for the additional information! I don't feel feel bad, 80$ Canadian to me was a good price considering one day shipping and I could return it for whatever reason just in case! I'm happy to run it for a few hours tomorrow and test how warm it feels. I don't have any equipment to check the specific temperature but I can say whether it gets extremely hot or not. However I have done many several(6 hour plus play sessions) on it at a time without any issues if that helps.

 

[Shank]

If you input 480p it just does a direct passthrough.

Did you test this, or are you only speculating? Mike's 2x circuit could not passthrough 480p. When I asked him about it, he told me the chip he used was incapable of digitizing 480p, only 15khz signals. This is why he used a different chip/circuit for his 2x multiformat. If it can pass through 480p, it is not a 1:1 RT 2X clone, and would make it very interesting for further investigation

 

[modler2]

Did you test this, or are you only speculating? Mike's 2x circuit could not passthrough 480p. When I asked him about it, he told me the chip he used was incapable of digitizing 480p, only 15khz signals. This is why he used a different chip/circuit for his 2x multiformat. If it can pass through 480p, it is not a 1:1 RT 2X clone, and would make it very interesting for further investigation

Sorry I remembered hearing that the 2x was able to passthrough 480p once upon a time. I just checked using 480p on my wii. It was able to display 480p but not properly, so I have updated my original post accordingly. When it was given 480p it displayed the same video twice besides one another, almost like sbs 3d with some video shaking/artifacting.