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dbGrafx Booster - Red, Green, Blue, Chroma, Luma - Oh My!

posted Jul 10, 2015, 5:21 AM by René Richard   [ updated Jul 10, 2015, 5:48 AM ]
In October last year I had prematurely announced that the dbGrafx Booster was a done deal. Sadly further testing after the announcement revealed several major bugs which rendered that board un-sellable. Furthermore, after a friend of mine asked: "Where's the S-Video?" I just knew the current dbGrafx Booster design was obsolete.

Last night I assembled and tested two variants of the new design: one CXA1645 based, and one THS7314 based. The major difference between these two video chips is that the CXA1645 can transcode S-Video while the THS7314 is a simple video amplifier. I chose to make compatible with two video chips in case the CXA1645 didn't pan out since it's an older chip.

After a few minutes of testing and comparisons, it was clear that the CXA1645 design was superior. Not only is the addition of S-Video a huge bonus for gamers where SCART was not standard, but the quality of the RGB signal was much better in my opinion. I don't really have the video capture equipment to make a good comparison so I guess you'll all have to trust me on that. That being said, the dbGrafx Booster will be built and sold with the Sony CXA1645.

Stay tuned for updates to availability of the dbGrafx Booster.