[stella] VCS able of 16:9 display on widescreen TVs ?

[seagtgruff at aol.com]

I haven't read about the signal formats for 16:9 displays the way I have for ye olde 4:3 NTSC, PAL, and SECAM displays, so I don't know what all the differences are. But if a 16:9 display signal has a different number of pixel clocks per line, and a different line rate per second, then I don't see how it would be possible for the 2600 to output a true 16:9 display signal.

First of all, the TIA handles the HSYNC automatically-- it will occur every 228 color clocks, without exception, end of story. You can strobe RSYNC to trick the TIA into outputting the HSYNC sooner than that, but that makes the display narrower, not wider-- that is, if the TV doesn't just freak out and scramble the picture, which is what happened the few times that I tried experimenting with RSYNC. In any case, you can't get the TIA to output a *longer* line.

And second, the NTSC 2600 uses an NTSC crystal that has a color clock rate of 357945.45 Hertz, so it can't draw the lines any faster than that.

You could change the TV's aspect rate so the 4:3 image is stretched wider than normal to fill out a 16:9 screen, and you could even design your graphics with that in mind so they look good stretched wider that way, but I don't think that's what Rastignac was hoping for.

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: Glenn Saunders <mos6507 at yahoo.com>
To: Atari 2600 programming list <stella at atari2600.org>
Sent: Sat, 29 Mar 2008 4:30 pm
Subject: Re: [stella] VCS able of 16:9 display on widescreen TVs ?




Seems like it might be possible.  Not sure what
advantages it would have.  Today's widescreen TVs can
just set the aspect manually to stretch the pixels. 
The VCS won't have any extra resolution one way or the
other.


--- Rastignac <savino.lovergine at fnac.net> wrote:

>       Hello,
> 
>   Do you think we can use WSS with the Atari VCS 2600
> ?
>   Some info here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widescreen_signaling
> 
>   Is it possible to send such a signal, so you can
> control the final 
> aspect ratio of the screen ? So the VCS could
> display 16:9 ratio 
> pictures on widescreen TVs.
> 
>   Thanks.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Stella mailing list
> Stella at atari2600.org
> http://atari2600.org/mailman/listinfo/stella
> 



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