ATI 8500DV Component Converter

D

Deamos

Guest
Does anyone know where this can be bought in Europe? as Shop@ATI will only ship stateside.
 
Do a search and you will see this was asked a while back and no where has been found outside of US to get one !
 
but I have not yet verified....

Someone posted the possibility to use a standard VGA-5 BNC cable. Easily found and a maximum of £30.
You then use three BNC plug converters, about £1.10 each. And just connect the three colour channels, leave the h-sync and v-sync just loose and this should work.

I haven't tried it myself yet, but hopefully will soon. I am just a bit busy at the moment...

Cheers,

JP
 
Don't think the VGA to 5 BNC will work (for component out).

VGA out is RGBHV rather than YUV component ... therefore the ATI device will be converting RGBHV to YUV.

I think it's so annoying ATI don't expect European customer's to want component connections ... to not even offer it for sale outside the US is really bad form.

I love my Remote Wonder though!!!
 
I've got one on order now. So will be able to see if it works ok over here.

Relatives do have thier uses :)
 
Deamos - Thought about a power buy for members of the forum? Good be quite popular. Especially thoses with the new Toshiba TVs who want to experiance Prog Scan HTPC.

Paul
 
Hmm.. I wonder if it is actually possible to make your own adapter. All the component dongle consists of is electrical routing, the physical headers and an I2C configuration chip which sends back false DDC information to the ASIC and essentially tricks it into outputting YPrPb.

I'll make few calls... erm, e-mails. :D

MuFu.
 
Originally posted by MuFu
Hmm.. I wonder if it is actually possible to make your own adapter. All the component dongle consists of is electrical routing, the physical headers and an I2C configuration chip which sends back false DDC information to the ASIC and essentially tricks it into outputting YPrPb.

MuFu.
:confused:

Paul
 
LOL, sorry. Got a bit carried away. :D

DDC is the "display data channel", which carries information about what kind of display is connected to a graphics card through a bus protocol called "I2C" - invented by Phillips and used by pretty much everybody for low-bandwidth communication between integrated electronic components. It's the feedback technology that allows computers to be used correctly with "Plug & Play" monitors without damaging them, even if no monitor driver is installed.

I had a friend at ATi over the summer. He worked on the Radeon 9x00 cards - specifically their AV capture/DVI-I daughtercard combos (which have yet to be released - watch out!). He explained to me a while back about how their component dongle works - it contains a I2C coniguration chip that sends back information to the graphics card that indicates the presence of HDTV hardware (e.g. a television with component input). All that happens then is that once booted into Windows the software allows you to select component output and away you go.

I e-mailed him about it because you said the dongle is impossible to get here and to be honest I thought I might be able to get some schematics/I2C register information off him, rig up an equvalent device and make a few quid by selling it to UK folks. :D

Unfortunately he is no longer at ATi and doesn't have access to such information so couldn't help. He did say that you don't even need the configuration chip though - someone with enough programming expertise could write a program to force the card into outputting YPrPb without the need for any hardware feedback. That person isn't me (yet). Maybe in a few years... :)

Regards,

MuFu

P.S. R300 (Radeon 9700), unlike the R200, supports component output natively, i.e. you can boot your PC with it only connected to an HDTV.
 
Originally posted by MarkHudds
Don't think the VGA to 5 BNC will work (for component out).

VGA out is RGBHV rather than YUV component ... therefore the ATI device will be converting RGBHV to YUV.

I think it's so annoying ATI don't expect European customer's to want component connections ... to not even offer it for sale outside the US is really bad form.

I love my Remote Wonder though!!!

Where did you get the remote wonder from, and how much was it?
 
MuFu,

You stated that the R300 supports component output natively. Does that mean that with that card a VGA-RGBHV (BNC) cable will work when you disgard the H & V leads....

Cheers,

Jean-Paul
 
Originally posted by dejongj
MuFu,

You stated that the R300 supports component output natively. Does that mean that with that card a VGA-RGBHV (BNC) cable will work when you disgard the H & V leads....

Cheers,

Jean-Paul

Well I'm with MarkHudds on this one - how would that work? Removing the HV would leave sync-less components and some form of crude processing would be necessary to extrapolate Y, Pr and Pb from RGB. Y is full bandwidth 0.30/0.59/0.11 (RGB) and Pr and Pb are half bandwidth.

Y = luminance, Pr = R-Y and Pb = B-Y.

So to get from one to the other you to transcode (in effect, "dematrix" - is that a word?!) and generate sync on Y - the R200 does that on-chip; all the dongle does is generate feedback so that the device can switch output modes when told to by software. The difference with the R300 is that it can cold-boot outputting YPrPb (upon detection of an HDTV device) and doesn't need I2C feedback like the R200 to allow software switching within Windows. I have no idea how ATi are going to implement this; I don't see any reason why they can't use the existing dongle though.

MuFu.
 
Originally posted by MonkeyDonkey


Where did you get the remote wonder from, and how much was it?

Hi, I got the remote wonder packaged with the 8500DV, in the retail pack (Hercules version). £202 at the time from Dabs. I'm sure they've come down a lot by now.

Mark.
 

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