Composite in, HDMI out?

[helloimrobin]

Hey y'all!

So I've got a tricky question for you. The Pi has got a composite-port. It's got an HDMI-port. Composite is analog, HDMI is digital. There exists super-expensive converters, but now I'm wondering.. Is there ANY way of using a Pi as such? Getting it to take composite-video IN, interpreting the signal it's getting, and outputting it to HDMI? Sadly, there will be no sound, but sound can be fed in other ways. Help?

/Robin

[ShiftPlusOne]

The short answer is no, you cannot do this, since the composite port is output only. However, you may be able to do some GPIO magic with a few filters to read a composite signal, process it on the pi and display it over HDMI, I don't know anything about that though.

[plugwash]

While i'm not positive I strongly suspect the composite port is only capable of acting as an output.

[klricks]

No the composite is out only and it's either composite out OR HDMI out, not both at the same time....
You can get a converter for about the same cost as a RPi.
http://www.amazon.com/Mini-Composite-CV ... +converter

Even if the RPi could do what you are asking...... that's all it could do. Might as well get a dedicated converter and use the RPi for fun stuff.

[helloimrobin]

Ah, I thought it might be possible to reconfigure it to act as an input instead of output. Looks like a no-go then, huh? Dang, I was looking to use it to capture some old console-games. Oh, well.. I'll have to look to another solution. Thanks anyways!

[ShiftPlusOne]

I bought a cheap usb capture card that has composite and s-video input and that works quite well for these thing.

[solar3000]

Ah, I thought it might be possible to reconfigure it to act as an input instead of output. Looks like a no-go then, huh? Dang, I was looking to use it to capture some old console-games. Oh, well.. I'll have to look to another solution. Thanks anyways!

no that would be extremely complicated. the ARM processor is way underpowered for that.
Composite is an analog signal. you would have to digitize the three channels RGB. then rediplay it to the hdmi.

[Jim Manley]

no that would be extremely complicated. the ARM processor is way underpowered for that.
Composite is an analog signal. you would have to digitize the three channels RGB. then rediplay it to the hdmi.

It's worse than that, as composite is a single video signal that doesn't contain discrete values for RGB, it contains luminance (brightness, for backward compatibility with black-and-white TVs) and chrominance (color encoded via a complex phase-correlated scheme). Since there are no absolute values (digital) or reference signals (analog) for the chrominance to be compared with, it's up to the color display device to be calibrated to show the intended colors (hence the "color" and "tint" controls on analog TVs, among other internal adjustments accessible by technicians). As a result, the U.S./Asian composite signal NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) acronym was jokingly referred to as "Never The Same Color".

[Burngate]

... Since there are no absolute values (digital) or reference signals (analog) for the chrominance to be compared with,..

apart from the colo(u)r burst - ~10 cycles of subcarrier of known amplitude, sent during line blanking.

And NTSC had color problems, not due to its design, but rather due to the poor dif-phase characteristics of your average home tv.

PAL (Perfection At Last) got rid of that, at the expense of more complication, and also making editing twice as inaccurate frame-wise.
And of course added an unnecessary "u" to color.

SECAM (Something Essentially Contrary to the American Method) not only made mixing and editing impossible, it totally mis-spelt colour - "couleur"

[simplesi]

I bought a cheap usb capture card that has composite and s-video input and that works quite well for these thing.

Can I asj what card you've got as I'm looking for one that works with the RPi to try to use it as a slingboxtype device

Simon