Hey everyone and welcome back to the Sawickipedia. This week we're just going to
look at some quick and easy ways to improve the video output of your
Commodore 64. Now this has been around for a while, this is the lumafix board,
basically the VIC-II which is the video chip mounts to the lumafix board
which then mounts to the socket in the Commodore 64. This one is quite simple
because the VIC-II is almost always socketed - I haven't seen a soldered one
yet. So it's pretty easy just to pull the VIC-II from the socket, stick it into
this board, and then stick that into the existing socket. It does have three
potentiometers that you just need to adjust to get the the best possible
video output. So that's one of the things, the other one is disabling the RF
circuit in the RF modulator and that usually just involves snipping a
resistor, or a jumper wire at a certain point depending on what RF modulator
you've got. The one I have in the testbed which is what I used for this had a
jumper wire, the schematics were available online but they weren't quite
perfect so it took a little bit of time to work out where exactly to cut it, but
I did figure it out in the end. In my case the RF modulator is an MD6UE3605
55IT, and the little jumper wire is this little black guy here next to the
channel select switch, but yeah a lot of these differ - like there's so many
different variants of these modulators, and this is on a PAL 250425
board. Yeah like I said they all vary so you should be able to hopefully
some find the schematics for your particular modulator online. The other
thing I want to mention for this test I did try and eliminate as many variables
as possible, so the camera used was on the same settings the whole time, the
same lighting in the room, the TV was a 42 inch Panasonic Plasma - which was handy
because it's got s-video input and also composite input natively,
so there's no further processing apart from what the TV internally does. And
yeah I didn't want to use a video capture device because it doesn't really
give us a real-world idea of what's going on. So I took the photos of the
actual TV. So first up we have the unmodified composite video output, the
color seems slightly washed out and if you look in the bottom left corner you
can see there's sort of a sawtooth pattern in between some of the color
bars. There isn't any noticeable jail bars, there is sort of a moire effect but
that's just from the camera. Next up we have the composite with the RF modulator
disabled. The colors do seem a little bit more bold - not quite as washed out
anymore, but there is still that sawtooth effect in the color bars at the bottom
corner of the screen. Next we'll do the composite with Lumafix, and the RF
modulator is re-enabled. So the colors again have sort of washed out a little
bit, but the sawtooth effect in the color bars down the bottom left corner is
almost gone. And finally we've got the composite with Lumafix and the RF
modulator disabled. This offers the best of both worlds - the colors are definitely
more bold, and yeah those sawtooth patterns almost invisible, so definitely
with the composite video output I would recommend trying out the Lumafix board
and disabling the RF modulator. Let's have a look at the S-video. So first up
again we have the unmodified s-video output, colors are a lot more solid here
especially in the color bars but that's to be expected with s-video. There is
some jail bars, there is a moire effect as well, but there is some jail bars
showing through there. So let's disable the RF modulator and again not really
much has changed - the color bar still looks solid, and there is some slight jail
bars but they're sort of tricky to see. Next we have the s-video with lumafix
installed, and the RF modulator is re-enabled. The colors actually seem... it seems a
little bit more red which is what it's supposed to be, in general there's not
too much difference in the color or the color bars, but there is less noticeable
jail bars - still slightly showing through but it's definitely toned them
down a little bit. And finally the s-video with Lumafix installed and
the RF modulator disabled. Doesn't really make that much difference -
so the RF modulator doesn't seem to affect the s-video signal as much as it
does the composite video signal. So generally I'd recommend if you have
problems with jail bars in the s-video output
I'd recommend trying out the lumafix, but in terms of disabling the RF
modulator, in my case anyway, it didn't seem to make that much of a difference.
So as I said in terms of composite video the lumafix with the RF modulator
disabled yielded the best results and the most noticeable results, each one
sort of had an improvement. In terms of the s-video, the luma fix does
sort of reduce those jail bars, it doesn't get rid of them completely. But in terms
of interference from the RF modulator circuit, it doesn't really seem to make that
much difference in my case - obviously it could differ depending on your display,
and Commodore 64. That's why I tried to eliminate as many variables as
possible. That's it for this one, yeah like I said it was pretty simple and I
hope you join us for the next one. Until then thanks for watching this weeks video,
as always leave me a comment down below let me know what you think, you can leave
me a thumbs up, thumbs down, subscribe, share it around, do all those kind of
things if you haven't already, and yeah until next time. Cheers!