The Goal
This device takes YPbPr (component) video and converts it to HDMI. It is a simple signal digitizer, with no deinterlacing or upscaling applied; it passes the resolution and refresh rate given to it directly to your TV or monitor leaving the display to do whatever upscaling or deinterlacing required. The upside of this approach is that it adds very little lag (I measured at most 0.3ms of extra lag using the PiLagTesterPRO). Think of it as an ultra-budget alternative to the OSSC, especially if your display does a good job of upscaling and/or deinterlacing. Many computer monitors in particular use BOB deinterlacing, so a device like this might be a good way to get YPbPr into your computer monitor, displaying your retro consoles with very low lag, nearly as fast as those long-out-of-production CRTs.
How it performs
Unfortunately, this particular device has some significant limitations that means I can't really recommend it for retro gaming.
First, it doesn't support 480i inputs. Thus consoles like the PS2 are not going to work well with it. 1080i is supported, so it's just bad luck that they didn't include 480i, I guess.
So it's not a good choice for the PS2. What about the original Xbox, which supported 480p for almost every game released? Unfortunately, there's something about the Xbox video output that cause the signal to intermittently drop out when displayed via this device. It doesn't happen at all during the first 10 or so minutes that it's being used but eventually the screen will briefly go blank. With time the frequency of this starts to go up significantly; once it has been on 20 minutes it happens every couple minutes, making the device useless.
I suspected that it was overheating (the device does get warm) so I strapped a heatsink to the case (no improvement) and also tried taking the cover off (also no improvement).
What's inside
Since I had the cover off I decided to snap some photos so I could identify the chipset and board revision.
The HDMI output is done by a chip for which I can find no documentation: it's the 8786-EX (also marked HP5981.03 1830).
There's also a nuvoTon microcontroller, which combines eight 400khz ADCs, a 16mhz CPU, and built in flash ROM too. I'd guess the 8786-EX does all the heavy lifting, and it does look like the YPbPr traces go to that chip, but the 8 high speed ADCs in the micro controller seem like overkill unless they somehow process the input signal as well.
It would be very interesting to see if you could hack this to make it work better. The signal digitization is excellent, with low noise and the right amount of crispness and softness. If it could work with 480i or the xbox's 480p it would be a pretty nice converter. It also outputs in the proper color space for a computer monitor, with no black crush.
All this is so close to being an excellent solution to my needs that I was tempted to buy some other similar looking ones to see if a later revision worked better but sadly they did not. I'll post reviews and teardowns of them separately.
How to recognize it in the stores
These kinds of devices get packaged in all kinds of generic boxes so it's going to be hard to tell what you are getting from the box alone. So pay attention to the device itself and some of it's odd features. First, the inputs are not RCA jacks but RCA plugs. So you'll need a gender changer to get your console to plug into it. It uses a USB plug for power (although it can also get power over HDMI). And while the version I purchased has a built in (but very short) HDMI cord, if you disassemble the case you'll find that the cord just plugs into the PC board.
On the board itself is the model number: OZSC-3 and the product name sometimes used to advertise it: YPBPR+RL TO HDMI. After the product name is the number 1.8 which might seem like a version number but on the board itself it also reports YPBPR2HDMI REV1 which is clearly a version number. But notice the text is in a different font, so who knows which one is valid.
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