I've been working on getting a product together. It's basically a plug in and go ADV7842 evaluation board. It has all the performance of the evaluation board without all the extra development platform.

I need some feedback on how to package it. I don't want to go too elaborate to keep costs down. Thinking of making it as small as possible (6inx6in)and having a 3d printed enclosure. On the other hand I have been considering doing an aluminum enclosure for a more premium feel.

I have also considered letting the buyer decide and just ship a raw board. (by doing this would lower the cost considerably and leave the option open to integrate inside the player)

I have designed it to be updatable/configurable over USB since it essentially has an arduino controlling everything. Luma/Chroma Gain and Coring can be adjusted in the sketch and uploaded. Deinterlacing can be enabled.

Ideally was aiming for a viable replacement for the cheap AV2HDMI crapdapters everyone buys on Amazon.

Design also capable of having a component video input for Hi-vision decoder input. I haven't decided how to implement the switch, and I haven't programmed for component input.... Yet

I've tried to keep the design sort of modular with headers for future upgrades or tinkering.

Target price is around $100

Whats your opinion on packaging it?

Hi-
What is the intended market for this device? It seems as if it would be used by people whose flat-panel displays have inferior NTSC (or PAL) internal conversion, am I correct? (I am certainly happy with my Sony XR-77A80J's A/D performance.)

Since there are plenty of low-priced converters on Amazon, Ebay, and other sites, I think the all-metal case would be the best plan for your "premium" product. Metal versus plastic also reduces the likelihood of interference in the picture coming in on the analog side from external RF sources (of which there are many in modern homes).

Do you intend let the end user set stuff via an Arduino sketch, or perhaps consider a settings file like YAML/JSON, or even use an ESP8266 for web GUI/remote?

That AD chip can slice out CC - which would be nice to overlay on a scaled output to get rid of the jaggies, a TBC, and tons of other goodies to tinker with.

Metal box of course! Us tinkerers can probably come up with a 3D-printed enclosure or use a laser cut plexiglas sandwich if we need to access the pin headers.

Absolutely will be providing a commented sketch for the arduino where the important functions are noted and their default values.


Yes, the ADV will slice out CC but there is currently no hardware implementation to conveniently read and overlay the sliced data. FPGA IP is available for text overlay and scaling, but the cost is pretty outrageous.

One way I have considered is reading the data and sending it out as ASCII on RS232 to a Lumagen. I might actually give this a try just to see if its even a workable solution.

I do have some ambition to get a LCD display going and IR remote to adjust the 3D Comb filter settings, TBC enable, and interlaced to progressive conversion.

I had initially started out with an STM8 microcontroller but failed to get it working. The development environment(s) for STM8 is not geared toward tinkerers. I couldn't get i²c code to compile without any errors, arduino just worked. After using the arduino environment it became very clear that it was a decent solution to use because of the simplicity of downloading the program, loading/editing the sketch and uploading, and COST!

Web GUI has been on the list of things to include in a more fully featured box that handles component video, digital audio and possibly AC-3 RF demodulation.

Right now the goal is to get a 3 RCA to HDMI converter ready that allows users of the cheap adapters to experience what owners of the Lumagen 2124/44 rave about in a similarly sized package.

Sure, the Kramer VP-77x processors are available but they have some very strange quirks with audio muting and video motion detection. They also only do 480p. 480i is available as an output resolution but it is a reinterlaced output.

Cool beans! I would look at STM32 as an Arduino alternative if you need one. New Arduinos have way more capability than the old Arduino Mega too. Another source of inspiration is the GBSControl using the ESP8266. In that project they have a web GUI - I think you can use Node MCU for the ESP - and Chinese sellers have added extra hardware and an OLED.

Too bad the ADV is RS output only for the CC. If only it had a character generator with overlay. If you can live with blocky/jaggy text and don’t want to involve a microcontroller for CC decode there’s always the old Zilog Z86129-12 and that family of CC decoder ICs. Some of those can also output RS232, and they have a character generator/overlay for analog video too. The expensive option would be to tinker with something like a NeTV2 which costs. A LOT.

Looking forward to see what you come up with and getting one!

If you could find the VHDL for that NeTV device routing the i2c CC decoded data from the ADV and overlaying it wouldn't be too difficult. They say it's open source, I wonder if you need a device to access their dev tools. Hmmmm.

Take a look here: https://github.com/AlphamaxMedia for NeTV2 sources, including VHDL.

Raw

How will you handle the $20k/yr HDMI royalties?

As you will notice there was no mention of HDMI which is protected. It is a video digitizer. The HDMI connector itself is not protected. Take that with what you will. And it's $5k to be an adopter, which I was in 2021.

Better rat out Sony, they're not listed as a current adopter.

how far along are you with your converter?

any new info you'd like to share?

Prototype has been working. Polishing up a few details on the design. I have been in the process of a career change since January so my focus has been shifted away from the project. Hope to pickup again very soon.

Hope to get one myself. was not too impressed with the Kramer version