The Spam Thread!

[huckleberrypie]

That Lexibook sure looks like a Leapster on meth lol, pardon my French. Might as well do a "Meth, not even once" parody whilst we're at it.

And have you by any chance heard or seen the Lotte from Gadgetville cartoons? They're apparently quite popular in Estonia (Ott Tanak's kids are fans of the show from what I gather) and TV Tropes mentions that it is very much the country's equivalent to Spongebob in terms of popularity.

[cpd2009]

After several months, I finally got around to testing my Dazzle DVC100 capture device with OBS Studio. It can see the video stream and record it, but it doesn't pick up the DVC100 audio input. It's apparently a known issue with no known workaround. It's a shame because OBS was able to record a perfect MKV stream to disk without any hiccups. It's useless with no working audio however.

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/daz...ound.6548/

Magix Movie Edit 2015 can see both the DVC100 video and audio, but the output has a whole bunch of visual garbage at the bottom quarter of the video input window and the top half is compressed into the remaining three quarters of the image.

The only reliable device software that works with the DVC100 is VirtualDub. It records very well, but it's in an uncompressed AVI format. Right now I'm saving the captures to Pearl's internal D: drive which is only 80GB. An inexpensive upgrade to a 512GB disk may be in order if I want to keep the DVC100 capture setup.

There is also the option of acquiring a more recent capture device such as the Roxio Easy VHS to DVD kit. The home shopping channels tend to offer similar devices from time to time as well, and usually come with their own included capture software with the possibility of recording to a compressed format.

[huckleberrypie]

After several months, I finally got around to testing my Dazzle DVC100 capture device with OBS Studio. It can see the video stream and record it, but it doesn't pick up the DVC100 audio input. It's apparently a known issue with no known workaround. It's a shame because OBS was able to record a perfect MKV stream to disk without any hiccups. It's useless with no working audio however.

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/daz...ound.6548/

Magix Movie Edit 2015 can see both the DVC100 video and audio, but the output has a whole bunch of visual garbage at the bottom quarter of the video input window and the top half is compressed into the remaining three quarters of the image.

The only reliable device software that works with the DVC100 is VirtualDub. It records very well, but it's in an uncompressed AVI format. Right now I'm saving the captures to Pearl's internal D: drive which is only 80GB. An inexpensive upgrade to a 512GB disk may be in order if I want to keep the DVC100 capture setup.

There is also the option of acquiring a more recent capture device such as the Roxio Easy VHS to DVD kit. The home shopping channels tend to offer similar devices from time to time as well, and usually come with their own included capture software with the possibility of recording to a compressed format.

Have you considered using other capture hardware? And I presume it's being run over composite video, yes?

Which reminds me... Back when my brothers and I were playing games on a hand-me-down Sega Genesis (the ones sold here locally were Japan-spec Mega Drives, and iirc cartridges for them were sold well into the late 90s, though not as widespread as the run-of-the-mill Famicom bootleg), we had to resort to a crappy RF converter even though the telly was perfectly capable of receiving composite.

[cpd2009]

Yeah. I did mention two alternatives that I can purchase, the Roxio Easy VHS to DVD or the Honestech VHS to DVD. Both are similar USB devices you connect to your PC and both have composite and S-Video inputs like the Dazzle. But, AFAIK, they are compatible with modern Windows systems. I'm currently using my old Dazzle with the Windows Vista 64bit driver.

https://www.roxio.com/en/products/easy-v.../standard/
I seen this at Walmart for around $30. Looks similar to those cheap EasyCap things but it's obvious this may be better quality than those.

Below is the Honestech device:
https://www.hsn.com/products/honestech-1...ested=true

The honestech device is more appealing due to HSN's FlexPay feature, but before I consider either device, I will do my research and see if they work with OBS studio. My preferred recording format is MKV format 720p. 1080p isn't necessary since I'm upscaling composite video output anyway, and the things I plan on recording are programs from my cable box and VHS tapes. What's interesting is the Honestech bundles a "Vidbox" brand capture unit.

[huckleberrypie]

Yeah. I did mention two alternatives that I can purchase, the Roxio Easy VHS to DVD or the Honestech VHS to DVD. Both are similar USB devices you connect to your PC and both have composite and S-Video inputs like the Dazzle. But, AFAIK, they are compatible with modern Windows systems. I'm currently using my old Dazzle with the Windows Vista 64bit driver.

https://www.roxio.com/en/products/easy-v.../standard/
I seen this at Walmart for around $30. Looks similar to those cheap EasyCap things but it's obvious this may be better quality than those.

Below is the Honestech device:
https://www.hsn.com/products/honestech-1...ested=true

The honestech device is more appealing due to HSN's FlexPay feature, but before I consider either device, I will do my research and see if they work with OBS studio. My preferred recording format is MKV format 720p. 1080p isn't necessary since I'm upscaling composite video output anyway, and the things I plan on recording are programs from my cable box and VHS tapes. What's interesting is the Honestech bundles a "Vidbox" brand capture unit.

And then there's that feeling of having a fancy 4K television at home, yet most of the streams and terrestrial broadcast you receive is at 1080p or worse.

In other news, I sooooo wanted to replace the G4560 configuration on Samantha with a Ryzen, but I have other expenses to do, and there's this rather bad news about Nvidia cards performing a lot worse on AMD Hackintoshes. :/

[cpd2009]

I'm perfectly fine with my current 1080p TV. Big box stores are pushing 4K sets despite lack of actual 4K content as you mentioned. I think I'll be ready for 4K whenever my current set bites the dust in some distant year.

That reminds me... remember the 3D TV fad? 3D was the "thing" in the early 2010s, which is why the Nintendo 3DS came into existence. 3D movies were popular and people predicted that 3D TV would be the next big thing. ESPN even had a dedicated 3D TV channel for a brief time. But then the 3D fad sputtered out, 3D sets are mostly non-existent, and ESPN 3D went off the air a few years after launch.

And the Nintendo 3DS still exists in 2D form.

---

While I'm here, may as well rant about Gigabyte App Center. It's not really necessary, but I do like the "SIV" application for fan control presets. But in recent Windows 10 updates, the App Center doesn't behave nicely. It gives random errors on Windows startup, and when you try to run SIV, it hangs at the "EasyTune Engine Service is restarting" prompt, until you manually terminate the service and then restart SIV.

I do know SIV worked well on earlier builds of Windows 10 and Windows 8.1 for that matter. Gigabyte hasn't released any update for App Center that works on newer Windows 10 builds, yet they released updated drivers.

[cpd2009]

Strange. I got the SIV app running fine. All I did was install App Center, and just the SIV and EasyTune engines. I didn't get the EasyTune app since I don't overclock. Everything is working fine now.

[cpd2009]

My Lexibook Cyber Arcade has arrived, and full review is coming soon. First impressions...

Console itself is lightweight as expected, and quite small. Takes 3x AAA batteries.

Games appear to be from JungleTac, a Chinese developer known for making games that appear on handhelds like this. They also made the games for the infamous Chintendo Vii about a decade ago. Game quality varies. Some are actually decent casual games, while others are slow and confusing. The manual doesn't explain how to play any of the games. Some games are straightforward. Others are a bit more complex and will leave a person confused unless they keep playing and figure things out on their own. The console appears to use a customized NOAC that allows for higher quality sound samples and more colors on screen, sort of like VT03, explained here. http://bootleggames.wikia.com/wiki/VTxx

The power button is strange. There is no switch, only a power/reset button. To get back to the menu you tap the power button. To turn it off, you need to hold the power button for several seconds and the interval seems to vary wildly.

There is no headphone or video out jacks which is odd even for a cheap handheld. At least the internal speaker sounds alright and not too tinny.

[huckleberrypie]

In my case I didn't go for Gigabyte's App Centre as I felt that would be more bloat than I need.

[huckleberrypie]

I am Ott Tänak, and I'm here to ask you a question: Is an Estonian not entitled to win the World Rally Championship?

"No", says the man in France, "I need to continue my winning streak,"
"No", says the man in Belgium, "It belongs to me,"
"No", says the man in Finland, "You forgot everyone else,"

I, rejected those answers.
Instead, I chose something different.
I chose the IMPOSSIBLE.
I chose... FLAT OUT!

*Sorry, I couldn't resist making a rather hammy Bioshock joke. I JUST really want this lad to win.