This is going to be great for all who like to play the NES on a modern TV. Good work guys. Thank you.

Is there any thought about doing this for the SNES as well?

I def want more hdmi kits, but it's up to Kevin really.

Latest news from Kevtris:

I have finished the FPGA side pretty much of this project now. In the last few days I have added:

* scanline generators (two kinds- NES locked and free run)

* menu! menu now lets you set up all of the video parameters from the controller.

* MMC5 audio (totally new core)
* VRC6 audio (heavily rewrote)
* FDS audio (totally new core)
* N106 audio (some rewriting)
* sunsoft5B audio (some rewriting)
* VRC7 (some rewriting)

* Audio FIR filter (2 stage)

The audio stuff is ported from the FPGA NES project and have been gone over again to fix bugs, update old code and all that. Some of it was early verilog I had written and it was ugly so it got rewritten.

The FPGA resources are now totally used up:

* logic elements: 98%
* pins: 100%
* PLLs: 100%
* multipliers: 2 left
* blockrams: 100%

This means that the scanline generators are going to have to stay as they are but I think it should be fairly usable. I tried a bunch of "NES locked" scanline generator ideas people mentioned in here and on the IRC channel but they all looked pretty bad and noticeable, unfortunately.

Setting the 1080p mode to 3x scanlines (a "scanline" every 3 HDMI lines) which is higher resolution than the NES and then using one of the scalers looks fairly passable. If you want "real" scanlines, then 720p or 480p modes will need to be used. PAL systems will have to use the free run mode most likely since the scaling on them is non-integer due to hardware restrictions between the PPU frame and the HDMI frame.

All expansion audio is implemented and works now. The VRC7 needs some slight tweaking but seems to be pretty close. At the time I implemented this I didn't know about the ADSR control bit so I will add that.

I have each source separate, and relative volumes of all channels are adjustable against each other. I still need to write a boatload of menu code to allow you to adjust all the parameters though (relative volumes) but the hardware side is all done at least.

Each chip and in some cases sub channels are all individually pannable. This includes the original NES channels (all are pannable individually), VRC6 (individually pannable), MMC5 (same), and the others are pannable as a unit. VRC7 has 2 outputs that can be panned individually left/right, each being a set of 3 channels.

There's a FIR filter to cut out most of the aliasing from the audio and works quite decent. Looped noise sounds pretty decent. There's still a tiny bit of aliasing on very very very high frequency squares but this is unavoidable. The only time I could hear it was when I used a program that let me manually poke the sound registers.

I will release another update video soon outlining some of the new features I added in the last week.

Oops, sorry, I missed that; I saw all these posts about toploaders here, and the poster that assumed the same thing I did, saying he wished he had a toploader...sorry for being a bit of a numbskull and glad to know it'll work with the toaster.  A huge thank you to all involved in this project; can't wait!

So I have a couple of questions.

1) Say I send in my front loader which has a worn out 72-pin connector, will that affect the operation of this mod? When you insert a game into my toaster, you have to shift the cartridge left and right until the game loads properly. This is a replacement 72-pin and it has gotten worse over time

2) Will you be selling pre-modded top loaders as a package once you guys are ready? It's a bit hard to find top loaders around my area.

Thanks

A bad 72 pin will affect the operation the same as an unmodded console.
Yes I will most likely sell some premodded consoles.

Video of Kevin putting together the 1st prototype board using stencil and solder paste, his vacuum tool, and his reflow oven.

News from Kevtris:

I have put up a video outlining all of the features of the Hi Def NES adapter's video functionality.
I show off the scanlines, stretching, interpolation and scalers.

Appreciate the updates Jason. I can't wait for what you (and Kevtris) have in store in the future.

I'll 2nd that I'd love to see this for an snes and genesis if possible. I know bunnyboy has his AVS coming, which I'm getting no matter what, but having something that looks pixel perfect for snes and genesis would be amazing.

Would not N64 be the next for an HD upgrade. That console needs any help it can get. You can get RGB out of the box for SNES and Genesis and a few steps to upscale that to something decent.

More info from Kevin:
The hdmi mod does not stop people using the analog audio from the NES- it still is there coming out of the CPU and is unaffected. If people want to keep using it (and even powerpak expansion audio or cart audio on famicoms) this will still work as normal.

I just recreate (rather than digitizing) the audio so I have it in digital form. Someone also asked the sample rate. It's 16 bit, 48KHz since this seems to be the "standard" on HDMI. I could emit 96KHz 24 bit but then no one could hear the audio.

Someone else is already doing the n64 hdmi kit.

Definitely interested in getting one premodded from you. I assume you'll only be selling top loaders? 

Will you two be looking at anything in regards to the SNES?

Thanks. I think I found it. Won't be as good as a Kevtris job I fear.

Are these going to be available to purchase and if so, when?
I must know so I don't miss out on something this awesome!

The original video basically said once it's done they're going to do some pretty extensive testing and then Jason is going to install some amount of them (he mentioned 100) on some NES units he has and some customer units prior to offering the kit for sale. That way they hope to avoid some of the launch/software issues like the NESRGB had.

News from Kevtris:

Well the audio update video has been posted showing off all of the expansion audio capabilities, along with cropping.






Enjoy! (yeah the sunsoft 5B was a lot quieter than it should'a been. that's why there is a gain control!)

Going to work on palettes next and flesh out the rest of the menu next.

This is amazing. I've been following this on YouTube since your first post about it. Really looking forward to this whenever it's ready. I echo the other member who mentioned desire for versions for other consoles. The HQ4X filters really excite me; it's sacrilege to some but I really enjoy the cartoony look.

Kevtris and I check out the Hi-Def NES on my 19" lcd tv.
We also test the zapper out and talk about what's going on with the project.

This is my first real attempt at putting the pcbs of the Hi-Def NES HDMI kit in to a Nintendo Top Loader.

It's a shame about the fitment issues. Shame those CPU and PPU interposers can't be soldered to the pins of the CPU/PPU from the underside in a similar fashion to your NES-101 reset circuit and the TG16 region mod. There's a bunch of space under the board and those CPU/PPU pins are straight. It'd help with your clearance issues and also yield a faster installation. Just an idea which I don't know how feasible it would be to implement since I don't know if those interposers just T off the pins or if they interrupt any of them. The ribbon cables could be run from under the board to the top using the shielding hole near the power switch (not sure of the ribon cables dimensions or length).

Also, I've been toying with ideas and implementation for a NES-101 rear panel design for this using those HDMI extensions mentioned in this thread previously

As far as HDMI template and routing go; the cheap way to do it might be to kluge together a hole making tool like what they use for refilling toner cartridges (it's kind of a mating of a metal hole template and a soldering iron) ://www.ebay.com/itm/like/19093470...
If you could put the metal part of an HDMI port on that tool you'd have something you could use with your template to make a much cleaner hole, quickly, and then clean it up a bit with your files if needed.

I don't like the idea of melting the plastic, that has always looked worse than a good mill cut in my experience.

What about putting the HDMI connector on a separate PCB and using another flex cable like on the CPU/PPU? Or would the flex cable not support the bandwidth of the HDMI signal?

why not have the connector housed inside the system, drill a hole out that back where the light gray top and dark grey bottom meet and have a dedicated hdmi connector coming out the system?? I was thinking of that for my system. Thoughts?