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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter
PostPosted: 25 Oct 2024, 00:49 
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Well, it looks like the SingMai website and his personal website are both down with 403 errors. Thus marks the end of a saga (or, maybe, the beginning of a rebirth with an actual visible example of the hardware in practice)?
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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter
PostPosted: 25 Oct 2024, 00:58 
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Thanks for checking!
Glad I did not wait for this device…

Cheers,
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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter
PostPosted: 21 Jan 2025, 04:49 
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reelyinteresting wrote:
Well, it looks like the SingMai website and his personal website are both down with 403 errors.


I added "Vaporware" "discontinued" to the title for new visitors finding the topic randomly.

Archived links for reference:

https://www.singmai.com/Modules/sm03.html
https://www.singmai.com/Documents/SM03 User Manual Rev 0.1.pdf
https://www.singmai.com/Documents/SM03 User Manual.pdf
https://myemail.constantcontact.com/SingMai-Vision-No-42-The-SM03-Video-Enhancer-is-here-.html?soid=1128071622275&aid=D21bnGmdvpk

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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (Vaporware)
PostPosted: 22 Jan 2025, 19:57 
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not Vaporware, I do have both the old and new unit.
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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (Vaporware)
PostPosted: 22 Jan 2025, 20:48 
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nidi wrote:
not Vaporware, I do have both the old and new unit.

Oh okay.
Any chance you could find the time to do a little review / comparison etc.?
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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (Vaporware)
PostPosted: 22 Jan 2025, 21:38 
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mth1986 wrote:
nidi wrote:
not Vaporware, I do have both the old and new unit.

Oh okay.
Any chance you could find the time to do a little review / comparison etc.?



what would you like to gave reported in the review?
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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (Vaporware)
PostPosted: 22 Jan 2025, 22:30 
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Oh I am just curious about the differences to other scalers and your overall impression! 8-)

If this however is your first scaler than this is obsolute for the most part, of course.

I would be very interested in how it compares to other pricier scalers like the RT4K in NTSC/PAL or a Lumagen?
How annoying is the setup and adjusting the correct aspect ratio for example or did you just plug it in and the picture was already to your liking?
Where do you come from? LD -> AVR -> TV? LD comb filter only?
Are you using it for LD only or VHS / DVD / Video Games as well?

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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (Vaporware)
PostPosted: 23 Jan 2025, 07:45 
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nidi wrote:
mth1986 wrote:
nidi wrote:
not Vaporware, I do have both the old and new unit.

Oh okay.
Any chance you could find the time to do a little review / comparison etc.?



what would you like to gave reported in the review?


How did you get the "new" unit? He took preorders and then promptly disappeared and stopped responding?

I'd like pictures of the units. These should be considered vaporware until a single picture of them is shown. They were apparently shown at tradeshows but, again, there were no photographs/videos taken of the active hardware that I could find. There is discussion based on YouTube uploads that demonstrations were, at best, ADV Eval boards behind the curtain based on common pixel shift and shared artifacts.

All known "pictures" of these units provided by SingMai were Photoshops.

Pictures of the menus and general features would be ideal. One mode that I'd love pictures of is the proposed color-coded "decoding mode display" which would modify the input video with a color overlay showing the active comb filter by region (The manual can't be downloaded anymore but it was something like blue for notch, green for 2D, purple for 3D). The manual that was posted to the SingMai website only had simulations of these functions/menus and no real screenshots.

I believe there was also a mode that showed the total delay? Or maybe that was just an idea that wasn't implemented.

There is a lot of unique functionality that was proposed with this hardware. When I spoke to him asking for some sort of tangible evidence of anything or a 3rd party device that licensed the IP core that I could reference, he refused or dodged me. Again, a photographic (or video) dive into the menus and output, focusing on the unique functionality, would be appreciated since you may be the only one who can prove that he actually pulled it off.
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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (Vaporware)
PostPosted: 23 Jan 2025, 08:06 
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nidi wrote:
what would you like to gave reported in the review?


Photos (outside case and inside FPGA) or it doesn't exist :-)

Posts on the FB page also wondering if anyone ever saw the final product.

Last post was May 2024.

Attachment:
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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (discontinued)
PostPosted: 24 Jan 2025, 22:32 
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Daniel had health problems. He wrote me having to go to a hospital and after that I haven't heard from him. he sent me a prototype unit shortly before that.

will take some pictures over the weekend.
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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (discontinued)
PostPosted: 24 Jan 2025, 22:43 
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front & back

https://mega.nz/folder/Ah5hxIrb#axRjy0XZPlXY2p_AOlM_Ng

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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (discontinued)
PostPosted: 25 Jan 2025, 07:01 
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nidi wrote:
front & back


Thanks!

But what's INSIDE?

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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (discontinued)
PostPosted: 25 Jan 2025, 08:00 
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the newer unit has torque skews need to get bit at work to open it, give me till next Monday to get the part to open it.

remember he told me he had to change the FPGA manufacturer for the new unit back then. the altera FPGA where very hard to come by which he used in the older blue unit
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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (discontinued)
PostPosted: 25 Jan 2025, 08:15 
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inside blue (older blue unit) Altera FPGA

https://mega.nz/folder/Ah5hxIrb#axRjy0XZPlXY2p_AOlM_Ng

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video about the settings just uploaded
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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (discontinued)
PostPosted: 25 Jan 2025, 10:34 
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Thank you for the pictures/videos.

It's very frustrating to see this since had he provided anything similar showing tangible hardware or a workbench or a blog regarding developments...or anything really, I would have purchased one. How someone can ask for so much while being willing to share so little to potential investors (particularly when the R&D was evidently done) is hard for me to understand. Perhaps a better engineer than salesman...or perhaps a perfectionist who didn't think showing something 98% complete was good enough? (Cue Richard Williams)

A health scare followed by silence is not good. I hope that he is recovering. Regardless of performance, it would be a serious shame if that's the end of the story after all that time. He couldn't have made very many.

(Yes, FPGAs were very hard to get during the pandemic... Where I work, we had to shift a whole bunch of designs away from constrained FPGAs (like the Spartan 6) to other less-in-demand product lines or entirely different manufacturers. It affected a bunch of other active devices too (MCUs, SoCs, ASICs, you name it). It was a very hard time to be a hardware designer; lead times were literally changing by the day and we never really knew if a chosen replacement part would be delayed or EoL'd in a month or a year....or if the a sudden spike in marketplace demand due to other part shortages would significantly increase the cost of a part.)


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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (discontinued)
PostPosted: 25 Jan 2025, 10:40 
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I don't think he's alive.

web site gone , no e-mails answered
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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (discontinued)
PostPosted: 25 Jan 2025, 11:35 
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nidi wrote:
I don't think he's alive.


He's sadly not with us anymore, as announced end of November last year on DigitalFAQ:

https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-capture/14798-dan-singmai-passed.html



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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (discontinued)
PostPosted: 25 Jan 2025, 12:32 
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Oh okay that are sad news.
Thanks for the research Julien.

So in the end it is "Vaporware", but for all the wrong reasons. :|
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 Post subject: Re: SingMai FPGA external 3D comb filter (discontinued)
PostPosted: 26 Jan 2025, 05:42 
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That is sad to hear. Agreed, thank you for the detective work, Julien.
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