Hey guys, I thought it may be helpful to some of you either waiting on this item, or perhaps interested, if I offered some of my initial impressions. My AVS arrived today (I am in Florida, and placed my order the day preorders went up), and I've had a few minutes to sit down with it and check out some games now that the kids are in bed. I preordered the standard edition unit without any games

A little bit about me, I've been a long time collector of many systems, not just NES. I'm pretty close to finishing the licensed NTSC NES library so I'm pretty serious about the system. I also happen to own 2 Analogue Nts and I love both of them. One is an HDMI model and the other is an RGB model. So, clearly I'm probably not like most people. My HDMI NES gaming is going on a 65" Sony LCD screen, selected by me last year because it was the model with the least input lag in game mode.

So here we go. The box was kinda heavy! The pictures and videos I watched on the AVS made me think it was lighter than it was. It has a good heft to it. One thing that doesn't come across well in the pictures is that grey plastic feels VERY much like the grey plastic on an original NES, kind of rough to the touch. Very cool. The unit has nice rubber feet which are a godsend if you have a glass media center like me, keeps it in place quite nicely when inserting and removing carts. Box and packaging is very simple - you get a USB cord, USB power adapter, the AVS, and an HDMI cable. The USB power is actually a very, very convenient option if you're like me and have a million wall wart power supplies. My AVS is actually being powered via the USB port on my wireless router! Pretty darn cool. The controller ports seem slightly less tight than those on the Nt and the cart slots seem a little bit tighter, both for NES and Famicom. Getting the games in and out either way is a snap and I actually quite like the look of the system overall. The lid being up with famicom carts inserted doesn't bother me in the slightest.

So, upon powering up the unit, we get the AVS menu prior to a game loading. I was a little apprehensive about this first as one of the beautiful things about retro games is none of the software front end stuff we see today. Fortunately this menu is very unobtrusive, no startup logo or sound, you basically just push start to start the game if you don't want to mess with the options. Once you've done that, if you reset the game that's in there, it just resets the game but does NOT bring back up the original menu. That's a very thoughtful touch I thought. The AVS defaults at a resolution that leaves space on the top and bottom and sides of the screen, that appeared to me to be slightly larger overall than the frame I had ultimately settled on with my HDMI Nt. No scanlines initialized. But, at default settings, it looks and plays fantastic. Turned on some scanlines and it looked even better. Just like my Nt, but UNLIKE the Retron 5 / Raspberry Pi and other emu boxes, I was not able to really detect any input lag, notwithstanding the fact that my TV is upscaling the 720p output to 1080p. That was nice. Played Mega Man 2, Batman Return of the Joker, Crisis Force, and Little Samson, and all appeared to me to be perfect in terms of graphics, gameplay and sound. Very impressive, soon I will try a game or two that uses expansion audio and see how that goes.

The graphics and sound options are not as deep or detailed as the Nt, but the critical stuff is there. Screen height and width adjustments and darkness of the scanlines can be adjusted. I didn't see an option for palette swaps, and unforunately the adjustments are all represented by simple sliders without corresponding "number" values, which makes it hard to remember old settings or share your settings. But overall, I think 90% of people will be fully satisfied with how this thing looks and plays right out of the box. 

I guess my overall impression of the unit can best be summarized as follows. The AVS appears very focused in what it is and what it does. When your box arrives, you are playing games basically immediately and they look and sound great. That is very cool and admirable, and I think what you get for the price is really something. The aesthetic of the console itself is better in person than what comes across in pictures IMHO. I think the overwhelming majority of people will be highly satisfied with this unit, and personally it exceeded my somewhat modest expectations. For 95% of all retro gamers, one of these and an everdrive will keep you happy forever. Great job retroUSB!

Which model is your 65" Sony?

KDL65W850A

I think there is an auto-play option so that you don't have to see the menu when you power on the AVS.

I ordered the Limited Edition console but my brother received his regular edition Saturday. I was impressed just by how good quality the build seems to be. Definately not cheap looking like a lot of the Nes ripoffs out there. As for playing, I haven't but he has. He loves the fact he can now play his Pal Exclusives like Mr Gimmick and Asterix without any problem. That was actually the selling point for him anyway. He had always hoped a console would be built to play the PAL games, so he ordered solely for that reason.

Is there an option to disable the menu entirely (boot straight to the game) in case you wanted the full monty NES-replacement experience?

Update: oh shit you guys already attacked that subject lol That's what I get for not reading every post.  

Yeah, you can set it so the menu doesn't come up, and then press A+B+Select to bring it up.

I just got mine. Does the job perfect so far but does anyone else notice a weird smell coming from the system? Almost like there was a little turd in there?

Seems to have some trouble with Everdrive games. Had a couple random freezes too.

I'm glad I can say my AVS does not smell turd-y at all.

Reformat the sd-card and restore the OS and ROMs from an original source. DO NOT just copy the files from your sd-card to your computer and then back again.

Download a new copy of the latest OS from Krikzz's website and reload/reextract the roms from wherever you store them on your pc. Then, test functionality. You need to eliminate the possibility that the freezing is from structure or file corruption on your sd-card. This is the most likely scenario, despite how recently you may have loaded your ROMs, or reformatted.

The Everdrive N8 seems to be VERY temperamental with sd-cards and their files/structure.

This has helped to resolve freezes for myself and for several others, including a couple of AVS users complaining of the same thing you're describing in the Krikzz forums.

 

Anyone else having scanline problems with the AVS and an older Samsung LCD (have a 40")? Every other line is off center and too bold, none of the settings in my TV or the AVS seem to change it. Everything is even when I use the framemeister with other consoles. This is a dealbreaker for me so wondering if it will be updated in a future firmware fix?

My AVS arrives on Monday. Holy hell, I'm freaking excited!

The pixels produced on the NES are not perfect squares, you need to play with the aspect ratio/border settings to get them to straighten out.
 

The settings don't seem to change the problem at all, but I will mess around with it again later thanks.

 

I don't know if this is asking too much, but any chance we could get a "Minimize to Tray" option for the Scoreboard app?  I'm starting it with Windows and would like for it to just run "silently" in my system tray without seeing it on my Taskbar.

Very thoughtful review. For regards to pallet options, it is coming in the next firmware. Still waiting for mine due to the bundled "launch" games not being available yet...  

 

The new 1.20 Firmware is available in beta3 from retrousb at this very moment. It has the options available for several color pallets in Video Options. I've been playing all afternoon on my AVS and it's been fully stable for famicom/nes/expansion audio/everdrive/homebrew games. There hasn't been anything I've thrown at it that glitched or had any audio issues.

To find the beta firmware (and the 1.10 release without pallet options) go to http://retrousb.com/downloads/... and locate it from the list. It's a very small download. Use the scoreboard software to flash the new firmware and you're off and running.

So my AVS arrived today. I was super-excited to fire it up. I hooked everything up, messed with the menu settings, clicked "start cart" and I got nothing, just a black screen... so I started the unit over, chose start cart and nothing... black screen. Thinking maybe it was the game, I tried several others and got the same thing. I originally had the system plugged into my AV receiver, which is a very high end unit and has never had a problem with any device, so I decided to go straight into my TV, a 60" high-end Sony LCD, that's only a few years old and accepts every resolution under the sun, that I've ever tried and still, nothing... So I brought the console into my bedroom and hooked it up to a bargain-bin RCA LCD that was dirt cheap from several years ago and what do you know, suddenly, it worked... so wtf... I played on it for a few minutes and then brought it back out into the living room and tried it on my good TV again and all of a sudden, it worked...

Now, I'm a little concerned that something is wrong with my unit. These systems feel like they're decent quality and I'm sure they are, but lets be honest, they were all made in a Chinese sweatshop with, God only knows, what quality of parts. I don't know if I should contact RetroUSB and ask to exchange it or what. However, I don't think it's normal that it wouldn't work, the first dozen times that I tried it, then all of a sudden decide to start working. This thing is pretty spendy to hang onto and cross my fingers that something isn't, genuinely, wonky with it. On a side note to that, while I was playing a game, I realized I hadn't closed the little door on the system, so I went over and gently shut it, the tiny vibration from shutting the door froze up my game and made it go all pixelated and I had to restart the system. I don't know how normal that seems either... It's disappointing because everyone has been giving this thing such praise.

I don't even know if this thing has any kind of warranty on it. There's nothing on RetroUSB's site that addresses anything like that. It leaves me a little worried...

Contact them at [email protected] and see what they have to say.

Dude bunnyboy will fix it if you have a problem. Dont worry about it.

Make sure your carts are clean. For real. Give them a once-over with some isopropyl and a q-tip.

Update your firmware. Make sure the HDMI cable is plugged all the way in and is getting a good handshake with your tv.

No issues to report on my end, though I updated the firmware first thing out of the box.
 

Oh, believe me, my cart contacts all get polished, once a year. I'm obsessive about it. The first few games I tried were all cleaned a couple of weeks ago and were just played in my regular NES about a week ago. I haven't updated the firmware yet, which I was planning on doing and I'm sure RetroUSB is totally on the up and up, so I'm certainly not crapping on them or the product. It was just a little concerning.

Edit: Imgur link broke. http://imgur.com/a/69C62... relinked

It could also be cartridge fit. I have an issue that I just documented with my Dragon Warrior game. I think some carts may prevent the NES slot from getting a good enough fit to read the pins. Not sure if its something that can just be fixed by filing down some plastic or its a larger problem with how the connector is made. 

So I got mine in yesterday, and its absolutely wonderful. However, I'm facing an odd issue regarding expansion audio.

When I test any games from my Powerpak with the extra audio channels, some work and some don't. For example, Doki Doki Panic and Metroid for DDS work perfectly fine. However, Gimmick and Akumajou Dracula won't give the extra audio channels no matter how high the setting is. I've tried several times, with several ROMs, to no avail. It's worth noting I'm using all the latest Power mappers and such. Any help would be appreciated, I was really excited to play Gimmick in 720 but it doesn't feel right with audio missing.

EDIT: also, I did in fact update the systems firmware to the latest 1.10