Guspaz's pearls of wisdom

Just documenting them here before I lose them forever. More added as they come!

On Sabrent, Anker, and power adapters:

I've been quite happy with my Sabrent SSD, a field in which they've rapidly built themselves a good reputation, but when it comes to power adapters, I normally first look for Anker. If you need a 10-port charger, Anker has a 10-port charger that does 2.4A per port, shared for 12A total: https://us.anker.com/collections/chargers/products/a2133

It has PowerIQ so it should support full speed charging/power on anything you plug into it.

On high-speed HDMI cables and certification:

(NOTE: I'm going to use "HDMI 2.1" in this post, treat it as me saying "Ultra High Speed", meaning specifically 48 Gbps rated cables)

You can't use cat5e anything with HDMI 2.1, and there are no cheap yet effective solutions. The only way to do longer HDMI 2.1 runs is fiber optic, and those cables all cost a fortune.

I've been quite happy with Cable Matters' 15 meter (49.2 feet) HDMI 2.1 cable, which currently sells for $150 CAD.

HDMI 2.1 devices are very picky about cables, there are so many stories out there about people buying HDMI 2.1 cables and then not being able to do 4K120 over them because the cables aren't good enough. It's a major problem, especially for these fiber optic cables, and with HDMI 2.1, pretty much any cable longer than maybe 10-15 feet must be fiber optic to deliver the full 48 Gbps.

There are three things you should do when buying an HDMI 2.1 cable:

1) Only buy a cable that uses the specific wording "Ultra High Speed HDMI". Don't buy a cable that is labeled only as 4K or 8K or HDMI 2.1 or anything like that. If it doesn't specifically advertise "Ultra High Speed HDMI", ignore it.

2) Only buy certified Ultra High Speed cables. Make sure the cable is advertised as being certified. In the case of the Cable Matters ones, they both list "Certified" in the product entry, and advertise their certified status in the the marketing artwork on Amazon, and in the product description.

3) Once you get the cable, there will be an "Ultra High Speed" certification hologram and QR code on the box. Download the official "HDMI Cable Certification" app for your iPhone or Android phone and use it to validate the hologram. If the hologram is absent or does not pass verification, return the cable for a refund due to false advertising.

I think that if you follow these three steps, you can avoid the vast majority of issues with bad cables that fail to deliver actual 48 Gbps performance.

Bringing my Gefen Home Theater Scale out of retirement

So my DVDO Edge went up in smoke. Or rather, my first DVDO Edge went in smoke... and really, it was just the power supply, which I'm reading is a "common" occurrence (link 1, 2). Since I have a TESmart 16:1 HDMI switcher, the Edge was really downgraded to just deinterlacing and making the OSSC play nice with its more exotic modes: the PSP-specific sampling mode, Line 5x, and 480p/576p proc Line2x.

After waiting so long for the zooming/cropping modes of the RetroTINK-5X Pro, I found the OSSC's PSP-specific mode the superior one all along, and that meant an external scaler again. My long boxed-up Gefen Home Theater Scaler was perfect for this, and it did display the PSP-specific sampling mode just fine (will try 5x and 480p 2x later). 

The box-shaped remote was as crappy as I remembered, with buttons barely registering and making me question if I really needed a new battery. I tried programming a secondhand Chunghop remote and I had some success, although my programmed buttons for Up and Right didn't work. I did get a brand new controller for about $10 so I'll try again with programming.

Then for whatever reason I became interested getting a second Gefen HTS, and it was cheap enough, so I did: 

• Gefen Home Theater Scaler HDMI Untested: $41.36 shipped
• Gefen ITE Power Supply, GT-4201D-05, DC 5V 4.0A, Genuine: $20.46 shipped
• GEFEN RMT-SR-IR REMOTE: $21.90 shipped

Okay, so I should've stopped with just the second Gefen HTS itself. And wouldn't you know it: this second scaler came with its own set of problems:

• The remote didn't work, and without the remote, the second scaler was just a brick. So maybe "untested" really meant broken this time? Well, no. I remembered seeing dip switches under the battery cover, and I also remembered the "Remote" option in the scaler menu. Some searching led me to a PDF of another Gefen Remote, and while the dip switch settings weren't quite the same, I was able to figure it out for my scaler:
1. IR Channel 1: 1: down (off), 2: down (off)
2. IR Channel 2: 1: up (on), 2: down (off)
3. IR Channel 3: 1: down (off), 2: up (on)
4. IR Channel 4: 1: up (on), 2: up (on)
• Turns out this second scaler was stuck looking for Remote 2 and my square remote was set to Remote 1. That meant going through the different combinations of dip switches on the remote until it responded.
• Good news: The firmware of this new scaler was 4.8! Higher than my original one which was 2.2. The menu looked exactly the same (so no new features) except the cursor was highlighted in red.
• Bad news: I saw screen tearing! It went away after I hit Reset on the remote to return to the default settings. I hope that fixed it for good.
• I ordered the 2nd remote (now oval-shaped) before figuring out the whole IR Channel thing, but some good things came out of it:
• The battery was included!
• The buttons are much better; more tactile and responsive.
• The scaler, power supply, and remote complete the set. Or maybe I'll give the old Gefen HTS to my brother so he could enjoy 5x with the SNES or whatever.
• Update: the oval-shaped remote doesn't seem to actually work with the Gefen HTS, and I'm having even worse luck with the brand-new Chunghop remote. What am I doing wrong?
• More IR links for fun and profit:
• Replacing All My Infrared Remotes With Girder 6 and an Android Phone.
• Welcome to the USB-UIRT home page!
• Girder Automation Software
• Configuration of USB IR receiver program (Girder Ver. 3.29b)
• DVDO Documentation

All's well with the Genki Shadowcast... even on Windows

Been seeing a lot of criticism for the Genki Shadowcast, even after the update. All I can say now is, it works great.

The very first time I used it, it seemed to take up all my resources and lag and frame drops were common. Just the other day I tried it and it would crash shortly after launch. All I had to do was navigate to it through the Start Menu > G > Genki Arcade 1.5, right-click, More > App settings, enable all app permissions, scroll down, and click Reset.

Now everything's working as it's supposed to; no lag, no frame drops, and my laptop doesn't slow to a crawl! Honestly, I had no idea Shadowcast had its own capture program (I just backed it on a whim on Kickstarter), but since it captures a respectable 60.xx FPS at 720p, I don't think I'm in the market for a capture card anymore.

Just gotta make sure the source is Full RGB, not limited or automatic. Fine by me as my TESmart prefers Full RGB as well.

Downsides: there certainly is lag (just enough to make rhythm games unplayable if going by visuals alone), and the lag is, of course, worse when actually recording. And the codec doesn't seem to play nice with AviSynth even if the captures do scrub and seek fine in VirtualDub, so I always have to encode in highest XviD settings. Probably for the better; it looks like the frame rate is variable until the re-encode that locks it at a constant 60 FPS.

Endgame Vita & PSTV gaming

My interest in the newest game consoles is still zero, so I'm revisiting the Vita and PSTV. Storage is cheap and plentiful with SD2Vita adapters, but the dream of simply taking your memory card out of your Vita and continuing on the PSTV will have to remain a dream; the bubble trick of keeping similarly placed bubbles across the 10 pages using system icons to preserve icon placement across memory card swaps just never worked for me. That's fine; I didn't want to be greeted with the "rebuilding database" message with every power-on anyhow. 

So I'm just going to get a separate 512 GB SD card for my PSTV and mirror exactly what I have on my Vita. The one fly in the ointment is transferring save data (and I don't plan on keeping PlayStation Plus forever), so thanks to these threads I should be able to copy the save data (located in ux0:/user/00/savedata) directly to/from my hard drive, or between the Vita and PSTV directly through ad hoc transfer, no PC needed!

Which files to transfer over? Just sort by date in VitaShell and the latest updated save dates (i.e. your last played games) will appear right at the top. Don't forget to select multiple folders with Square!

A not inexpensive lesson in buying anime

(TLDR: Skip the Honey and Clover DVDs, but do get the Blu-rays.)

Got nostalgic for the last two fansubs I ever downloaded:

• Welcome to the NHK
• Honey and Clover

The budget DVD rerelease of Welcome to the NHK was cheap enough on Amazon, with the whole package coming in at six episodes per DVD and four DVDs. I have to wonder if the original releases were of better quality, but I'm not gonna do anything more about it.

The DVDs of Honey and Clover, however, were far too expensive on Amazon, so I hopped on eBay to check prices there. I saw the entire set for $30 so I had to get it. Then I felt bad because there were actually Blu-rays available, but naturally more expensive; the first half of the series alone was $40. So I thought I could at least be happy that I got the whole series for less than even that.

The DVDs arrived in great condition, and the "book" style packaging was quite attractive. Video quality was as good as you can expect from pre-HD sources. But the truly awful subtitles crushed any enjoyment I could have gotten from it. As this review and this forum post mention, if you hear can clearly hear the surname, you damn well better have that name in the subtitles instead of the given name! Not only is it confusing hearing one name and reading another, but relationships can change, and if and when characters become closer, they'll drop the surnames and call each other by their given names instead. So what what happens when given names were used all along? As a translator, you're boned. As a viewer, you're more confused than you have to be.

Not unrelated: I was almost going to blow a stupid amount of money for the rare, out-of-print physical English manga of Welcome to the NHK, but it's available digitally at both Comixology and Viz. Of course, had I known that it was on Viz from the beginning, I probably wouldn't have gotten it at Comixology first. While the reading experience is equally good on tablets, you want Viz for browser-based vertical monitor for single-page viewing; Comixology can't seem to do single-page viewing on manga other than the cover page. But if you want to view both pages at the same time on a TV, again with a browser, you do want Comixology because Viz enforces this stupid border at the top and bottom of the screen that you can't get rid of. Viz has the border in browser-based vertical monitor viewing, but that almost perfectly centers the image, making it even better than if you had hit the full screen button.

Welp, more money to splurge on the physical complete Japanese-language manga!

Fun with XStation

Couldn't wait for Voultar to send me my PlayStation back with an XStation so I bought a premodded console on eBay. Of course, having two XStation-modded SCPH-100x PlayStations was always the plan for link-cable goodness.

Things to document before I forget:

Updating a GameShark is possible with the XStation. You want to select the Enhancement Disc with Full Load, and then you'll go back to the GameShark menu where you can update. As an aside, the CD-based GameSharks, or at least the CDX, won't work on SCPH-100X. At least according to this old GameShark thread. (Web Archive threads of interest: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

The preferred SD card brand for the XStation is... up for debate. I've read to stay away from, and go for, Samsung cards. I'm not sure which of my games are streaming audio (does that mean just not Red Book audio?), but right now I'm using a 256 GB SanDisk SD card for the Switch, and everything seems to work well.

Rip your own games with ImgBurn in the BIN/CUE format, and not the ISO or CCD formats. This is for three reasons:

1. You'll run into audio problems if your rips are in a format other than BIN/CUE. In my Tekken 1 test, which I know for sure has Red Book audio, the music wouldn't play from the CCD rip, but the other Tekkens were fine... until I beat Tekken 3 and the end credits theme wouldn't play from the CCD rip either. So once I reripped the games, all the games worked fine, including from Tekken 3's Theater Mode where swapping discs from 3>1>2>3>1>2>3 works. 
2. Redump's rips are also in BIN/CUE. 
3. When converting your own PSN-purchased PS1 classics (this tutorial is great), the final result is also BIN/CUE (...among others, but you want BIN/CUE).

If you decide to rename your BIN/CUE rips after they were initially created (and you kinda have to if you converted a PSN PSone Classic), be sure to also open the CUE in Notepad and edit the name to match. I can't be bothered to explain my own naming logic, so here are some of the file names of my own rips:

• Bust A Move Dance & Rhythm Action [J]
• Bust A Move 2 Dance Tengoku Mix [J]
• Metal Gear Solid Integral (1 of 3) [J]
• Metal Gear Solid Integral (2 of 3) [J]
• Metal Gear Solid Integral (3 of 3) VR Disc [J]
• Resident Evil Director's Cut [U]
• Resident Evil 2 Preview [U]
• WipEout 3 Special Edition [E]

Always make sure the file name extensions of the BIN/CUE rips are in lowercase; otherwise you'll get an ugly ".BIN" after each of your games in the game list. Be sure to edit the CUE to reflect this as well.

Soundtrack-swapping in Ridge Racer works as well as it ever did (i.e. not very well); you get the same problem of songs starting anywhere they feel like it. It was originally done by simply opening the PlayStation lid during gameplay and swapping in any music CD. Now you rip the music CD like you would a PlayStation game and make the music CD the second disc of a multiswap. I'm not familiar enough with Monster Ranch, Vib-Ribbon or Internal Section to see if they perform any differently.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that loading a ripped music CD takes you to the original PlayStation music player, so owners of "audiophile" PlayStations don't lose anything.

Lastly, if you for whatever reason decide to change the video mode to PAL and find yourself unable to see the screen and unable to set it back to NTSC, get another SD card and prepare it for use with the XStation (format it and put the "00xstation" folder with loader.bin and update.bin). Start XStation with that SD card, hit Triangle to go to options, and save. Turn off the PlayStation and connect the SD card to your computer. Drag and drop config.txt to your desktop. Remove that SD card and insert your original XStation SD card (the one with your games) and replace the config.txt there with the new one. 

UPDATE: The new firmware update displays only 47 characters, now simply cutting the file name off;  no more ellipses. 

Superman & Lois

Can I just say how much I love this series?? Brought me back to the superhero shows after I left with the end of Arrow. I binged the first five episodes of S&L on HBO Max and now I'm catching it on TV live. I can't think of a single criticism. 

And can I also say how much I love this Lois?? She looks exactly how I would picture a real-life Lois. She's just as pretty as the animated Lois from Superman: the Animated Series and Justice League. What a beauty!!