Tivo in PAL-N

[Marianok]

Dear All,
For those that have not been taking a look to the Hardware section, I'm MarianoK, I'm from argentina, and I'm trying to domesticate my Sony 2000 (USA) Tivo and teach him to speak PAL-N.
A few months ago I found a great match for the tunner, same model TDMH, but in a PAL-N cable box, I was hoping to do a tipical tuner-mod and i got a tech to take a look at the steps (I can not do it myself).

The tech was willing to do it, but is unavailable for while, so I had plenty of time to work on my Argentinean version of PALMOD that I knew i was going to need.
I used the latest source i found (3.2) and started playing arround in preparation for when the tuner get's swap.

The tech mantioned to me a few times that he really did not see the point in swapping the units as PAL-N and NTSC are pretty close to each other (when the transform a TV or VCR from PAL-N to NTSC, they only change the circuity sligtly do the tunner uses a diferent set of crystals).

I was playing arround, trying to get the best configuration, when i found (in the SAA7114 datasheet) that subaddress 0x0e, bits 6 to 4 would allow me to specify the TV standard



D[6:4] color standard selection CSTD[2:0]
000...50 Hz/625 lines: PAL BGDHI (4.43 MHz)
........60 Hz/525 lines: NTSC M (3.58 MHz)
001...50 Hz/625 lines: NTSC 4.43 (50 Hz)
........60 Hz/525 lines: PAL 4.43 (60 Hz)
010...50 Hz/625 lines: combination-PAL N (3.58 MHz)
........60 Hz/525 lines: NTSC 4.43 (60 Hz)
011...50 Hz/625 lines: NTSC N (3.58 MHz)
........60 Hz/525 lines: PAL M (3.58 MHz)
100...50 Hz/625 lines: reserved
........60 Hz/525 lines: NTSC-Japan (3.58 MHz)
101...50 Hz/625 lines: SECAM
........60 Hz/525 lines: reserved
110...reserved; do not use
111...reserved; do not use


"This can not work !!!!, o can it ???" I figured that worst case scenario, this would kill the tuner ... and I was planning to change it anyway, so I did the change, compile the version, uploaded to the Tivo and reboot it ... playing that iw was not going to kill it.
I added

iicw1(VIDEO_DECODER, CHROMINANCE_CONTROL_1 , 0x22); // set PAL N
right before writing to the TUNER_INPUT

Guess what ???? IT WORKS !!!!!!! :D I have a beautifull color image !!!!!

I still have a long way to go ... I can only get 1/3 of my local channels (I need to find the correct frecuency range for VHF-L/H and UHF for this NTSC tuner), I have no audio at all, and the PAL-N composite output from the Tivo Looks bad (B&W) in some of my TVs).
Still, I'm a happy camper.

I will continue to experiment this path and see if I can avoid going the hardware route.

Best Regards to all, Marianok.

P.S.: I hope no one minds that I x-posted part this from the Hardware area, but I'm sure someone here will be interested in my findings, and you can probably help me with the few issues I still have.

[Marianok]

Dear all,
Just a Follow up on my previous, I finally manage to have my Sony SRV-2000 (with original NTSC tuner) fully working in PAL-N.


I can only get 1/3 of my local channels (I need to find the correct frecuency range for VHF-L/H and UHF for this NTSC tuner),

This was actually due to 2 issues, the frequncies boundaries (143000 and 380000, instead of 170000 and 450000 of the PALBG Samsung), and that I was missing some channels in my lineup :o (easily solved with the add-whole-channel.tlc)



I have no audio at all,
This took me longer, until I learned what I needed to send to the mps3430G.


#define BTSC_Stereo 0x0020 // NTSC and PAL-N standard
#define BTSC_Mono 0x0021 // NTSC and PAL-N standard


I also needed to change the slave mode of the chip to detect PAL-n sound:


iicw4(MSP_CHIP, WRITE_DEMOD, MODE | 0x2018); // set device to slave mode 100000






and the PAL-N composite output from the Tivo Looks bad (B&W) in some of my TVs).
This one drove me crazy !!!! I've a DELL monitor with video input and it was corectly showing the color image, the info screen stated PAL@50hz.

But my TV was showing a B&W image with red and blue bars. The TV is NTSC/PAL-N/PAL-M capable.

After a while of playing with the SAA7120/1 datasheet (and monking with diferent settings and addresses), I realized that the key was in addresses 63/64/65/66. But the examples are for NTSC and PAL-BG ... no PAL-N.
Thanks to the wikipedia i was able to understand what this was about, and This outdated datasheet (http://www.ortodoxism.ro/datasheets/zarlinksemiconductor/zarlink_VP5511C_APR_01.pdf) gave me the last piece of the puzle.



iicw1(VIDEO_ENCODER, 0x63, 0x1e);
iicw1(VIDEO_ENCODER, 0x64, 0x94);
iicw1(VIDEO_ENCODER, 0x65, 0xf6);
iicw1(VIDEO_ENCODER, 0x66, 0x21);


this worked right away !!!! :cool:

So, now my NTSC tuner can tune to ARGentinean frecuencies in PAL-N, has corect color and audio, and same for the output.
Thanks a LOT to everyone that work on the palmod and the rest of the Hack that allowed me to do this !!!!!