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Netflix on an NES

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Re: Netflix on an NES

#21

Post by jevinskie »

fuzzix wrote: post #18
jandrese wrote: post #4

I'm guessing their "cart" is really a Raspberry Pi like device that is using the NES only for video out and controller in. There is no way in hell a 1.79Mhz 6502 can play streaming video. It's a fun party trick though.

> There is no way in hell a 1.79Mhz 6502 can play streaming video. It can't decode MPEG 4 real time, of course, but machines of this class are more than capable of streaming video. ZX Spectrum streaming with a network interface (~3.5MHz Z80): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooi9rpx6ECM Commodore 64 with lots of RAM (~1MHz 6510): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXLv7UosQXs

8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1

http://trixter.oldskool.org/2014/06/19/8088-domination-post-...

Re: Netflix on an NES

#22

Post by jamesbrownuhh »

jevinskie wrote: post #21
fuzzix wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no way in hell a 1.79Mhz 6502 can play streaming video. It can't decode MPEG 4 real time, of course, but machines of this class are more than capable of streaming video. ZX Spectrum streaming with a network interface (~3.5MHz Z80): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooi9rpx6ECM Commodore 64 with lots of RAM (~1MHz 6510): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXLv7UosQXs

8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1 http://trixter.oldskool.org/2014/06/19/8088-domination-post-...

I may be a sentimental old fool, but 8088 Domination genuinely brings a tear to my eye. The perfect timing of the "I WAS WRONG" reveal (i.e. "Oh look, this IS graphics mode") and the familiar breakdancer appearing - greatest callback in demo history. I really hope the room erupted into applause at that moment - just perfect.

Re: Netflix on an NES

#23

Post by chongli »

ericfontaine wrote: post #9
jandrese wrote: post #4

I'm guessing their "cart" is really a Raspberry Pi like device that is using the NES only for video out and controller in. There is no way in hell a 1.79Mhz 6502 can play streaming video. It's a fun party trick though.

I was wondering if maybe they preconverted the videos into a sequence of tilemaps and a set of approximate tiles. I notice they are only using the same 5 colors, which is under-utilizing the capabilites of the nes which should be able to display a 13 colors at the same time. (Each individual tile uses one palette of 4 colors, and there can be max of 4 palette used at a time, but one background color is shared by all…

You can get even more than 13 simultaneous colours by writing to the palette mid-scanline. With this method it is possible to display all 410 available colours in one frame.

Re: Netflix on an NES

#24

Post by harryovers »

gcirino42 wrote: post #16
to3m wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is really hard to do on a 256K cart" - so I'm guessing it just plays back a little bit of pre-converted video. At that screen size and frame rate this is something the 6502 is fast enough to do. (I don't know enough about the NES to say whether there's some complications I'm overlooking.)

and I'm Guy, the other guy ;) Forgive me, it was a Monday morning when we reshot this. I think the final cart was the original PRGROM + MMC3 / 32 CHRROM banks, so it was probably more like 270k total. The video playback I was commenting on entirely fit into the 256K. In my cursory understanding of the MMC3, I think that's the limit that still fits into a normal mapper 4 and will run on device - I know you can up the…

did you consider using the hidden expansion port to do your networking (and potentially video decoding)? this would have made the cart free to do a lot more (like subtitle etc)

Re: Netflix on an NES

#28

Post by ericfontaine »

chongli wrote: post #23
ericfontaine wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering if maybe they preconverted the videos into a sequence of tilemaps and a set of approximate tiles. I notice they are only using the same 5 colors, which is under-utilizing the capabilites of the nes which should be able to display a 13 colors at the same time. (Each individual tile uses one palette of 4 colors, and there can be max of 4 palette used at a time, but one background color is shared by all…

You can get even more than 13 simultaneous colours by writing to the palette mid-scanline. With this method it is possible to display all 410 available colours in one frame.

Neat. I was also wondering if maybe it was possible to switch between two colors based on a certain ratio of frames, faster than the CRT phosphors to fully switch colors (or atleast faster than the eye could detect the swapping), such that it looks like a fractional blend between two colors based on that ratio. I remember doing this trick with the TI-85 calculator to give any degree of greyscale even though the LCD was only black and white.

Re: Netflix on an NES

#29

Post by Trixter »

jamesbrownuhh wrote: post #22
jevinskie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1 http://trixter.oldskool.org/2014/06/19/8088-domination-post-...

I may be a sentimental old fool, but 8088 Domination genuinely brings a tear to my eye. The perfect timing of the "I WAS WRONG" reveal (i.e. "Oh look, this IS graphics mode") and the familiar breakdancer appearing - greatest callback in demo history. I really hope the room erupted into applause at that moment - just perfect.

They did :)
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