Optimal Flatscreen monitors for QL and Q68

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SinclairSociety
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Re: Optimal Flatscreen monitors for QL and Q68

Post by SinclairSociety »

lcww1 wrote:Well, to my (admittedly rather imperfect) eyes, the BL912 looks good with the Q68 in all modes - I certainly struggle to perceive any significant blurring at all, in normal use. Perhaps my EM15A backlight is defective - it's certainly somewhat annoying, and to that extent I prefer to use the BL912. I'm interested to see that your EM15A backlight seems much less intrusive.

Regarding SCART to HDMI converters - the cheap Chinese units seem to me to be a lottery - there's no guarantee that any particular unit will work well a QL, at least so far as I can see. I'm pretty sure that my Chinese unit will look identical to yours on the outside, yet mine has been of no use to me at all with my QLs, though it works really well with a BBC Micro. The advantage of the Hoglet project perhaps isn't cost - rather, it's an open source project, that isn't going to suddenly vanish or change spec, or otherwise become suddenly unavailable. The amount of work needed to get it working with the QL is, I think, most unlikely to be large, given the amount of work already done for other relatively similar systems.
Is the QL RGB to SCART cable the same as the one used for the Spectrum 128 +3 models? If so... I may be able to test mine this way once I get my QL.

I have one of the chinese VCANDO SCART to HDMI and works great for connecting my +3 to the nice 32" HDMI monitor I have.

Or is the RGB out on QL different?

TJ


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Dave
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Re: Optimal Flatscreen monitors for QL and Q68

Post by Dave »

Eyoyo is using panels from multiple suppliers, bought on the commodity panel market. You just have different panels


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Cristian
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Re: Optimal Flatscreen monitors for QL and Q68

Post by Cristian »

SinclairSociety wrote: Is the QL RGB to SCART cable the same as the one used for the Spectrum 128 +3 models?
No, it's different
viewtopic.php?t=2278#p21322


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Artificer
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Re: Optimal Flatscreen monitors for QL and Q68

Post by Artificer »

Here at QLheaven there is no recent experience with original QLs and monitors as the black box QL here is in bits as part of a project to embed a Rpi and SMSQmulator in it. But there is a Q68 and it displays perfectly on a cheap AOC monitor from amazon: - AOC E227OSw.

BTW the original QL was more widescreen 512x256 than "square" 4:3 even if that's what TVs did back then, so it looks OK on a widescreen TFT monitor.

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Peter
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Re: Optimal Flatscreen monitors for QL and Q68

Post by Peter »

lcww1 wrote:Regarding SCART to HDMI converters - the cheap Chinese units seem to me to be a lottery - there's no guarantee that any particular unit will work well a QL, at least so far as I can see.
Agreed. But there is also no guarantee that a self-tinkered SCART to HDMI solution would serve all monitors well. As you wrote, not even the OSSC works everywhere - and that is quite a dedicated and large project.

Everything getting it's input from the original QL video signal is difficult - only a completely new controller like inside the Q68 can overcome that. And as I wrote earlier, the development workload for such a device would come close to a complete SGC successor for me.

Not even Stuart Honeyball came up with his announced QL video card... that has a reason: It's not easy!


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Peter
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Re: Optimal Flatscreen monitors for QL and Q68

Post by Peter »

Artificer wrote:BTW the original QL was more widescreen 512x256 than "square" 4:3 even if that's what TVs did back then, so it looks OK on a widescreen TFT monitor.
Still all QL "artwork" from Psion Chess to Quill was designed for 4:3 and all our memories are 4:3 monitors. I find that important for an optimal QL solution.


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Re: Optimal Flatscreen monitors for QL and Q68

Post by RalfR »

Peter wrote:
Artificer wrote:BTW the original QL was more widescreen 512x256 than "square" 4:3 even if that's what TVs did back then, so it looks OK on a widescreen TFT monitor.
Still all QL "artwork" from Psion Chess to Quill was designed for 4:3 and all our memories are 4:3 monitors. I find that important for an optimal QL solution.
Quite not all. PROGS made a "Painter" work on the Extended Emulator for Atari to give correct circles under 768x280.


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Re: Optimal Flatscreen monitors for QL and Q68

Post by janbredenbeek »

Peter wrote:
Artificer wrote:BTW the original QL was more widescreen 512x256 than "square" 4:3 even if that's what TVs did back then, so it looks OK on a widescreen TFT monitor.
Still all QL "artwork" from Psion Chess to Quill was designed for 4:3 and all our memories are 4:3 monitors. I find that important for an optimal QL solution.
The pixels of the original QL are not square. If the aspect ratio was indeed 4:3, the resolution would be 512x384, not 512x256. In practice, the aspect ratio was wider than 4:3 because of the horizontal overscan, so the real width/height ratio was about 1.48, not 1.33.

When using the Q68 on a 4:3 screen in QL-style MODE 4, the picture looks vertically stretched because the pixels are square while the width/height resolution ratio is 2:1. In the 512x384 and 1024x768 modes the picture looks more natural because the resolution ratio is also 4:3, the same as the aspect ratio.

On widescreen (16:9 or 16:10) monitors, the 512x256 and 1024x512 modes will look more natural because their aspect ratio comes closer to the original 1.48 ratio than on a 4:3 screen. (I have a 16:10 monitor which I find more suitable for everyday's computer work than 16:9).

Note that SMSQ/E v3.x has a variable in the CON driver's linkage block to set the pixel aspect ratio used by the graphics coordinate system.

Jan.


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Re: Optimal Flatscreen monitors for QL and Q68

Post by Derek_Stewart »

Hi,

DISP_MODE 6 in SMSQ/E

Which gives 512x384 with Mode 33 colours.


Regards,

Derek
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Re: Optimal Flatscreen monitors for QL and Q68

Post by Dave »

In the future we'll have a graphics chipset that can do any arbitrary resolution we like. Sadly, it won't support a lot of traditional bit formats, but it overlaps a couple of Aurora and Q68 modes. It will, however, be possible to define a mode that fits any arbitrary resolution within reason, so for example a 16:9 1920x1080 monitor could be fed a 960x540 resolution image.

So we do have options.


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