Happily outbid on eBay

Even though I spent the next few months' entertainment funds and have yet to make up the difference, I've been keeping an eye on eBay for some reason.

First there was a DVDO Edge that I made small bids on, but was then going to try to snipe with a max bid of $80. Then someone who hadn't bid before in that auction sniped it with $148. I could deal with that, especially after realizing that moving the DVDO Edge that I already have to the gaming room wasn't as big of a deal as I thought. (Note to self: write post about the DVDO Edge with the Panasonic Tau and experiments with Duck Hunt and PSP)

Then there was an auction for a VGI to DVI scaler, which this site says I need if i want to use a scanline generator (SLG3000). I made the starting bid at about $50, but I instantly regretted it because it turns out the SLG HD= YUV Edition was probably a better option for me. I saw some guy outbid me in the last few hours (I was awake at 3 a.m. because of work, and I will not go into detail). I let it slide and that guy won by $1. Thanks, guy!

So enough of this foolishness. No more getting sidetracked with NES or Atari eBay pickups. No more "bargain-hunting" on eBay for hardware purchases that would make my gaming life only marginally more convenient. It's time I settled down and seriously* started saving for the installation of the PlayChoice-10 PPU NES RGB mod (I already have the part)... which, despite the existence of the cheaper, more versatile NESRGB mod, I'd still like the original RGB mod so I could see with my own eyes its "flaws." The PlayChoice-10 is still original, official Nintendo hardware that I obtained for my own selfish purposes (the actual PlayChoice-10 arcade machine won't work without it), and this new NESRGB seems to have its own problems. And can I get the expanded Famicom audio with that mod or not? Who knows.

*I still need to get Final Fantasy III and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, which are now/will be on sale, respectively...

Weird-ass dream (2014-01-22)

I dreamed I was hanging out with Kei Hosogai. That in and of itself wasn't too surprising since I saw him make an appearance on NHK World in a segment about bus travel.

Now, the really weird thing is that I was saying I remembered that I watched the NHK segment about bus travel in the dream.... so yeah.

Panasonic Tau, Part 2

Remember that Panasonic Tau (CT-36HL43G) I got a while back? Some new thoughts and discoveries:

I picked up a wood dolly at Home Depot for about $20, so now I can actually use it whenever I want instead of it just being a huge, immovable eyesore in the middle of the room. It took the whole family to put that 250-pound TV on that dolly (which is supposed to be able to support 1,000 pounds). Now that it's on wheels, I have a better viewing angle sitting on the futon couch, and it tucks away neatly. I don't worry about it slipping off the dolly either.

I got my old Gefen Home Theater Scaler back and I'm using it for its underscan function, and that one function makes my PC gaming experience on the Tau that much more enjoyable:

• I can see more of the floor in Mega Man Unlimited. It looked good before with its proper fullscreen aspect ratio, but now it's perfect.
• Street Fighter X Mega Man couldn't fullscreen properly with the laptop directly connected to the TV; Mega Man looked a little fat, even though this is a 4:3 game and the TV is also 4:3. With the scaler underscanning and locking the aspect ratio, all is well.
• Life bars and remaining lives in MAME are now visible.

Incidentally, it's because of MAME and lifebars that I finally ventured into the TV's settings and played around with the tilt. Turns out I need it +6 to eliminate the heavy curve on the upper-left corner. Now both of the top corners are only very slightly and evenly curved and it looks much better. I wouldn't have been able to calibrate it without seeing the life bars in Street Fighter 2. I also turned off "VM" (velocity scan modulation) because (1) the less processing, the better for gaming, and (2) some guys said it's better to turn it off.

Another game I tried was Cho Ren Sha 68K (超連射68K). I had to run it in Windows 95 mode on my Windows 8.1 laptop, and JoyToKey is still acting a little finicky with my MLG joystick, but the thing I was most curious about was the scanline option (F5). The TV and/or the scaler seemed to deinterlace that anyway, so all I got was a (IMO) worse picture than if I had just left it alone. 

Speaking of scanlines, there's an old video on YouTube showing some guy playing Duck Hunt on an HD CRT. He mentions he's using an XRGB-3 for the scaling from 240p to 480p and/or to add scanlines. I'm still not sure what part of that makes Duck Hunt work all of a sudden, but used XRGB-3 units still go for a little under $500 on eBay, I'm not exactly dying to play Duck Hunt (or Time Crisis) on the Tau, and who knows if the TV would just deinterlace those scanlines anyway, so I don't think I'll be getting more equipment for light gun games.

If I really need scanlines, BuckoA51 says if I want to use an SLG3000, I'll have to get yet another scaler, this time VGA to DVI. Those cost $200 to $400 on eBay, and I may or may not need that instead of/in addition to the XRGB-3 because the XRGB-3 can only add scanlines on 240p content. And I'll need to bring my HDFury3 out of retirement and buy the VGA adapter at the highway robbery price of $50 because the SL3000 is VGA only. Too many things to plug in at this point. Sure, there's the LKV351 too, but a little more digging shows that it's locked at 720p, and the Gefen I already have doesn't do 240p, so instead of figuring that all out I'll just stick to the trusty Samsung DynaFlat. 

More on the Gefen scaler: It's the only way I can view my sources on the Tau in 1080i. Unfortunately there's no way to zoom in and cut off the sides (ideal for Hulu); you'll always have a letterboxed picture, and I'm always worried about burn-in. I've tried the options in both the scaler and the TV. When the input is 1080i and I choose "4:3" on the TV, it's just a sort of reverse stretch-o-vision (panorama stretching) in 4:3. Yuck. But on the other hand, thanks to the scaler, I have another way to play those pesky PS3 games that lack a 1080i mode on the Tau. Games nowadays are optimized for HD displays (read: 720p and 1080p), and games with actual 1080i support are rare. If the PS3 can't detect 720p or 1080p, it will just fall back on 480i or 480p. In my case, the Tau lacks 720p and 1080p, so even though I might be able to have the PS3's XMB in 1080i 4:3, once a game is started, the PS3 will default to 480p. But theoretically I could have the PS3 output at 720p as always and have the scaler turn that into 1080i, which should still look loads better than 480p.

Definitely, the more I use the Tau, the more I love it! Now to find those IR codes. More on that (and using my old PSP as a remote) later.