everybody welcome in today here we go we're gonna switch over and actually show our faces now welcome into a special live show everybody we got my friend Lewis was as retro and then of course you know I'm here Steve we're gonna talk about the Sony PVM 14 L2 it's kind of this is cool so we've got this monitor here it's a beautiful PVM 14 inch PVM now as I understand Steve you have already done the servicing on this model is that correct yes very much so it is I did a couple streams about this where I went through the calibration on it and I went through and recapped it with the cap kit which was something I hadn't done yet that that particular cab kit was new so yeah that was done on a couple streams last week and so I thought like this one was already claimed by somebody to pick to pick up this weekend and I want to do one last check on it and as you as you well know our good friend Martin Heinfeldt he has the these wonderful array of custom BKM replacement cards and first send off to this monitor I thought we just check it out one last time and then do some pop-ins of these cards and test those out and then also I thought it'd be a good chance you know anybody shows up can definitely get us with some Q&A stuff today yeah please do let's put in the chat there yeah so the special thing about this monitor it's the 14L2 and this is this naming system there's a there's an 8 or a 9L2 and there's a 20 as well and these ones are special because they take a particular type of input card I have a 50 I have a 14 inches it doesn't take these cards I have a bunch of 9 inches that don't take these input cards but this particular model family or they they all take this input cards and that's what we're working with here oh yeah so yeah there's just this this particular model does have you know the the the input card and then there's the 9-inch version but only that L series is the only PVMs that really have input cards that was a function mostly of the BVM series most of the time so it's are there BVMs that accept these cards though which BVMs do yes so that would be the BK 129X was the original design that this was all based around which is this card right here I'll put it up in the front but it's the one that looks like it's made from Sony right a real yeah piece of hardware right there so this is what everything is designed around for this card set up and this can go into the BVM D series that's the 14 inch and the 9 inch again in those not the bigger D's like the 20 and the bigger than that so yeah do you know any background on particularly on why this L series was is what it was or just you know sometimes you don't know there's so many models of PVMs and BVMs and what drove them to make the L series so yeah but the L series was the last PVM CRT series and I want to say that they probably made the L series and then after that the very last that I can think of is like the A series BVMs so I think that's probably like a send-off where it was like L's were the last ones they were making and then they were going to make the A's after that but after that it was pretty much done so this is the latest line there seems to be a lot in common with that D those D smaller PVMs when you look at them internally and these L series a lot of the parts in there are the same okay the boards are not exactly the same but you can tell it's almost doing the same thing right there's the same functionality like with the card base system and the input array and the way it functions with the same style of almost I mean the BVM has a better menu than this one but if you go in between let's say even the nine and the 14 inch I mean it's not a massive size difference it's basically the same componentry it's just a bigger tube on the right all right P0 17 Surder Matthew Reeves Michael Raz Wadowski thank you all for showing up today for the stream thanks guys Michael talking about he has a PVM 9020 ME so I presume this is composite only is a possible to get an RGB mod I would say I haven't seen many RGB mods for PVMs what's your experience in general Steve so I believe that's close akin to the 8020 maybe for the North American model and yeah the E is probably your euro as well yeah and it might be a slightly different version but the problem is that they'll probably use the same boards but there's gonna be so many boards that are gonna be missing populated it's like a depopulated board you know and there's gonna be too many I think there would be too many parts maybe if you had all the boards you could use I mean you could use the tube from it if you find what you should do is try to find a 904 with RGB that has a bad tube guaranteed and take the tube and fly back and that board you can actually take that combination to the other board you just swap that out and you'll have a good RGB monitor that's really much easier than modding it would be hey don sorry like we've talked about the modding is it's a lot a lot of the modding solutions revolve around consumer TEs and connecting into the quote-unquote jungle chip that exists inside of them certainly other ways to do it but these are component trees that just don't exist it's gonna done completely differently in a professional level monitor well some of it is now some of them are RGB moddable and the way that Martin also taught one of the like the end series and the L series they do have lower-end models that you can use a modification for it's just nobody smart enough to come through and wanted to modify the 9020 because I yeah it would probably be a big project and all right so Don Hawk he's the one who owns the FW900 he's in the chat yeah so he came about this yeah yeah catch the next cafe raid podcast episode which will be out as soon as I can edit a day or two and we talked a bit about the FW900 that Steve's going to be servicing from Don Hawk and this the logistics of not only is an amazing model the thing is frigging huge heavy big big one hey James Boone more own yeah yeah so all right before we get too deep I do have a bit of a story I should tell and it's it's a little bit of a heartbreaker now not a complete heartbreaker so I'm gonna I just have to tell the truth because eventually there will become a day where the heartbreak will be true Lewis and so this was this is really sad so again last week I was lots of stuff going on here but at the end of the week it was Brutus's birthday the my bulldog he turned 15 years old 15 years old for him yeah so yeah he's old and most of time sleeps he stays down here in the basement but yesterday was terrible I was upstairs I came in after picking up the kids from school and I was upstairs walking in the house and I just heard Brutus coming up the stairs from down here and then all of a sudden I heard him fall from the top stair and slide all the way down the stairs and smack and I was like oh my gosh no and I opened the door down there and he was just laid on his side and like out of it and I was like oh no I thought I was oh my gosh and after like I don't know 15 seconds he got up and then he went over to his bed and he was like like stumbling around walking sideways for I want to say an hour and I was so concerned I was like damn I'm gonna have to take him in and it's probably you know hurt him real bad oh and the craziest thing was I looked down and I swear Lewis he knocked one of his teeth out like here there was a tooth on the ground slimy nasty 15 year old dog tooth and I was like oh shit he knocked his tooth out and so I spent the rest of the night kind of monitoring him and unbelievably you know he kind of shook it off and after a while started going back and up down the stairs so I don't know crazy son of a bitch is gonna be okay probably from it on it's just nuts oh god yeah I mean it was it was pretty pretty devastating so I don't know what I'm gonna do about it I probably should move him upstairs for good but he's still gonna try to come up and down the stairs cuz he doesn't know any difference this is his place as well yeah so he's he just got back up and thankfully started moving on again and but he's in there sleeping it off but it was it was not fun so it got me reminded that yeah there's gonna come a day where he's gonna I mean he's 15 he can't live forever unconceivable not I really want him to live like a miserable painful you know exist it's or anything it sounds like me besides okay all people fall this happened I know that's what I started thinking this is just like your granddad it's like oh shit granddad fell it's always what they say granddad fell and then get the mobility chair like the cat lady from gremlins that's what a dumb waiter with like a frickin 20 horsepower motor on it 75 pound butt up the stick doggy door but a dumb waiter so he could take himself and get himself he learns how to press the button so that was a bit of a dramatic one please that would go it's still going okay and Cole is alright he's yeah yeah Cole's just just being an ass most of the time he's just you know a young dog and just hilarious but at the same time he does such gross stuff he's like came by bringing him outside to hang out and I'll play football with my son and I just look over and he's over there like digging up cat turds in the gardens just eating them and it's like what the hell just in there gobbling up these cat turds like they're frickin candy bars I'm good I don't know look have you ever eaten a cat turd you don't know how he also does this funny stuff so this dog's hilarious I don't know how he learned this but he he tries to take his crap with standing on three legs so he literally he does this fake out like a normal dog you know lifts one leg up like he's gonna pee but no pee comes out that he does this like weird mr. Miyagi crouched it just starts taking a shit there's a dog do it like that so one leg one back leg is up in the air and he's doing some yeah and one time Lewis he was doing it from both back legs of the air I don't know how the hell is little dog pulled it off but he was so front heavy he balanced it out with both legs were there and he just squeezed it out living his best life if you could if you could poop in that position I think you might without social consequence there you go there you go fun fun discussion here at the beginning of the show it's like everybody's have a good time with it get some laughs get some laughs so people online thank you very much cool yeah well so we're gonna test some cards sure right see how they go in this this monitor first thing it's just running right now is the straight RGB from the main card so there's not any or not even like the card there's no card in it our all inputs oh yeah so it's not card based right so I'm just cooking I'll click the console often hopefully I can roll it around sure yeah let's see easily on the back so okay yep okay so we can see that down below we've got the RGB inputs right right so this is pretty standard you know normal nothing nothing fancy or special the interesting so the only really interesting thing is is there are it's gonna be hard to see from the shadowing and stuff maybe but up here there's like a one and a two one and a two and it says audio input option so that's where if you use the option this called the option slot use that slot and that's how you input the audio like see this card has no audio inputs on at the original so that 129x only does component and RGB as ins and outs but there is no audio on the card that's still kept within CRT so just start off okay and none of the cards have audio it's just sort of like if you're using the car now audio well that's not so much the case if you look at some of Martin's cards yeah okay you've got handle audio yeah yeah you've got other things going on there too possible so you can route the sound through the card and it comes out the monitor also so there's that I think we should start off with like a reference point which is the main normal card and then we could see how it registers in there yeah that's very interesting let's look at the menu so this is the original Sony card you right yes this is the one that most people originally picked up or would have been looking at the 129x is the moniker BKM 129x what are they going for approximately these days it's a good question let's take a look let's do a quick well I don't want to do that and pull you out of the picture really so let me put it over here no it's fine I just needed to resize it so it's been a long time since I've actually seen one of those sell one of one of the interesting things is we're starting to get to the time where it is difficult to find the right cards for some of these anymore like I was talking to Bob recently and he's looking for a Sony BKM like 24n because it's the only true NTSC composite input card for the like most BVMs it's the only way to really get composite and s video into them is through that or this other one that's called a tri sync but it's even more desirable because it does pal and secam so that one's like super difficult to get but those are not those are the full-size cards the ones that I'm talking about here so we full-size auto not well it's not these are like I guess we call them many cards right there for the 14 inch and below not the 20 inch monitors the other ones right the other ones will go in the big one so if I'm looking here I mean I find an original one for almost 250 to yep there's two of them online for $250 on eBay right now for sale so they're not cheap anymore at all like last time I bought them there about 150 but that was like two or three years ago so it doesn't surprise me there's not a lot of them and they're easy to ship right there's something like this you're not gonna mess it up by shipping it most likely anyway so the the interesting thing here on this monitor is there are two slots right look a wide slot that you saw had two plates over it so you'd think there'd be two different inputs hey Dell thanks for coming in Citrus LUL Kio salty manos thank you all for showing up and so unfortunately this only has a single input bay like you can see how it's got the connection part here there's only one connection point it's just wide because there's some SDI cards HD SDI cards that are twice as fat like they have an extra space here right so they're not that's the only difference it's just only one card yeah so a lot of people get the idea that you can buy these any of these L series monitors and you'll have two slots they're all one single slot like not double-slotted now the BVM those are multi-slotted but just that so that's the difference between the two okay yep that makes sense why you would have the professional BVM instead of that yeah so that's gonna slide in there just slides in there like that and then you just push it in you can secure it with these a little bit but that way you just don't yank it out but that's really it and then you know if you wanted to come in with your other guy you know close that back off afterwards because you need to be able to get to that side that's another reason the bat the bay is bigger so you could pull it out you know without damaging it so much get it in and out it's a little wider for convenience okay so that is a RGB and component input card in and out yeah and we're gonna try this an interesting thing is I don't believe I think this car is one of the only BVM cards that since it's on PVM and BVM it will self-terminate you know normally a BVM you have to add terminators but I didn't believe that you do not with this card if you're using it in BVM I know you don't when you use it in the PVM like we're doing now so what I'll do first is I'll hook up our RGB back to it and we'll turn it on and I'll show you how it looks in the menu and set it up he's mad about allergies this week it's allergy time here it is everywhere I've heard allergies get worse as you get older probably worse your immune system breaking down old people okay so you're well you're putting it back yeah I got that's just being stupid there for a minute yeah you're right okay we're gonna use the same same but in the input card now problems gonna be let's see blue red and sink you can't use component video in this manner to you want to instead and then these guys can still fit over here oh the audio over there to the card spot that's where the audio is routed to and it's doesn't put too much pressure on the adapter that seems okay yeah that's so thank that all right so let's see about making sure I got that in close enough spot to stay in focus turn it back on because this is actually something I've like not tested yet on the monitor is this okay RGB no sync but that's from the original right so I'm gonna put option a which is component mode which I don't want a component right so if we look here now this would have when it if I take the card out which I should have probably turned it on and shown this and it's a little flickery but this says BKM 129 X do you see that right there where my finger is under option it's because the cards there now and it's set for component so we just need to go down to config okay RGB we're using on and then we also of course want to make sure we press external sync after you get out it's a press menu to get out of that external sync hopefully kick on oh there we go there we go so right there yeah that's now let me just make sure that the audio too will we'll run through there let's let's see a good geometry look at that stays fixed it up good oh yeah this should be good this should pretty good let's see oh yeah the ding ding oh yeah it's working good so so that's pretty standard I mean pretty easy and that's the standard card so the cool thing is is obviously there's no there's no fiddling in the firmware you know or not firmware but much menu settings it's not hard to set up a new card right it's just play any efficiencies with this original card I think it's I think a different card but I know Bob's talked about the a series ones are really tricky on sync and their compatibility with sync is that an issue with the 129 X it's well it can be with the like HD 9 the D9 CRT with these PVMs it seems to be pretty stable not not as as bad it seems to sync much easier but when you get into the BVMs you're definitely running into that problem all right we'll see it so there we go that's just the old one again you can kind of see that a little better on the RGB at that maybe stable well so I will say that this this monitor is a little strange so there's a point in and I showed this in the last stream let me get into the like let's get into the how we just go into the 240p test suite and talk about it for a second and oh by the way did I is it on this one did you get to did you get to see the secret version of the 240p test suite oh no secrets yeah I think it's on this card I think it's on this SD card let me see okay so the underground you've obtained such secret oh yeah it's on here it says secret yeah the dark version this is it now Lewis all right did you see that oh yeah yeah so are there any other versions any other changes of the secret I don't know I mean we looked through it a while back on one of the streams I used it not much I mean I like the version that I kind of have saved because it has a couple the old met old patterns still built into it that they caught I think they deleted for this version one being the oval pattern or circle pattern for linearity I like that pattern but it's not really I think it's going interesting why did you remove right it is see it's not on here anymore yeah what purpose does that serve to me I think it's got something to do with like spacing and trying to use the monoscope or like I don't know the size of the ROM I'm not really sure oh yeah figured he was had just I saw he had to do a driveway big work today yeah so this is the secret version where he blinks how wonderful and I can't remember exactly let's see what we're gonna pull up here yeah it's a little bit different of a monoscope pattern it's got some different sides they're like there's they're just slightly different you notice like these are empty so there's a little bit alteration of this this pattern but it it's great it looks pretty good so but that's the secret version where did you get the secret version oh from Keith rainy he hooked me up with it so I was I forgot what I was talking about for a second I remembered we were I was gonna show you something weird in the service menu okay so you get in here and get in the service menu yep all right now we're gonna go down to our deflection the raster horizontal and horizontal position okay now if I move this look at that way it's hard to see now let me show let me show yeah let me show let me go to a screen that's like the all black so you can see what happens to the lettering okay cuz that's what's important so okay watch watch our where it says deflection up here okay thanks Dell have fun on your new video anyway Dell was saying hey so we're deflection I'm gonna I'm gonna move it okay look at how it gets weird and funky yeah and if I keep going it just disappears all together shit okay lose the menu right so now the problem isn't that that happens the problem is when it's like no normally you get to it it it doesn't take as long I've adjusted this so it takes a long time for that to happen sometimes that will start to happen as it's originally set up so if you want to go back and watch the calibration episode I did with this monitor anybody in the chat you're interested more I could show you how I originally adjusted it but there's a potentiometer one on this board and it's a middle horizontal frequency and you could tune that into line so that it makes it like I said not disappear cuz yeah you'll lose the menu and then you'll be like what the heck where did the menu go and you'll think something's wrong and if you don't know then then it'll be very difficult to get back in there if you saved it in the position I say that Christ that was terrible to know that you've lost the the menu yeah not get it back without turning some potentiometers off right so let's make sure that it didn't go too far if I just hit menu yeah it goes back to what originally was so that's just weird a weird little fault in this this like for example this setting that you were playing with horizontal is that does the menu store the does the monitor store that per card with that reset if you change the card or the input or something I think Keith Rainey said that it is like you can fine tune it like per input right you can get into the menu here and go in and you just turn on each input and you can with some of these I don't know if this one can I didn't actually test I just forgot about that but I know that there are others that do that where you put it on the L5 for example will have a different setting for each input and that's why Keith's like specialty is calibrating that specific PVM to look its best because he knows every single one of those settings yeah this one you got you do got to be careful with the frequency because you can overload the tube if you go the wrong way so it's like a touchy thing so if you do over overdo it on that frequency potentiometer you can damage stuff so you don't want to go too far you're just right just right on the edge almost where you you can see that that's really the only way I figured out to correct it it's very common on this CRT so that's but that's the OG card we'll flip it around looking good that's the original card 250 bucks worth yeah really not important of a device to get the original of right it's like not not vital to have that original kind of card alright turn it off back to the back so the next one is really it's one of the earliest renditions I got of the card let's see kind of date on it okay so now we're coming back to Martin Heinfeld from straight out at Denmark yes has been designing these replacement cards so now you don't need to pay 250 for the original you can order from a bunch different sources and they come in about a hundred bucks or something yeah one to 150 I want to say is about the range on the price of them now check this we're getting this one is a super old one it's from 2020 actually got a date on there yeah so this was right around when these things were released I love that on the silk screen there and it actually like lists out all the parts up here oh yeah so he's got he's still got the Arduino on that I see oh look at that it's like it's like the old what's that USB input that's not even mini USB oh yeah and yeah and he had to put a resistor there yeah like modded this was so early this early like 3d print casing on it has two screws and it only has inputs no out on this card so that is something but that's all been changed since then you could get one without puts easily and I think it's all from I don't even know what they're using now but yeah this is an old one in it all right let's focus now Martin Martin open source that so he's not actually producing to himself so it is also open if people want to produce input output models right we're gonna see soon there's versions with if not just being see there's ones with D sub and scott directly built in so okay we're gonna have to put this new card in right so it's this was something that was set to me you know as an earlier model so it may even have like an issue with it that was corrected I'm sure later on down the road because I remember he was like oh don't do this with it and I was like okay whatever yeah 300 bucks for a JVC input card I agree 17 oh my god this some of this stuff so it's nice that these are being developed what I think is an interesting discussion that I'm not quite sure of the answer is that what does the introduction of a high quality reproduction due to the price of the original item and we could say there's something like the BKM 129 card the old classic of the Gamecube component cables we've had quality you know but the price hasn't really come down on those it seems to be that when a high quality replacement device is released from the community it stabilizes the price of the original thing but it doesn't necessarily bring it down in price like we're not getting cheap Gamecube component cables just because insurrection industry has made his version of them and yeah there's still a finite amount you know still people that want an original even if something as weird as a CRT right so yeah very small market so not that many people looking for one two nine cards so that cannot yeah market forces may not necessarily be a play at such a small sample size I still do see people ask it about buying the 68X which is the one for the a series that are right yeah and what people say when you say yo there's a quality aftermarket replacement what it's gonna be like a new original gotta go the originals bad it's not even that's the one exactly so this one's kind of not going all the way in and I can't remember whether it's just because that is kind of the prototype print for it or if it's actually needs to so reply to a not one iota in the chat there is no difference in lag with these devices these cards do not affect the lag situation there's no buffering or or anything like this involved so all these cards exactly the same latency i.e. zero that the original card would be exactly all right so let's see if this is in there this is in there good enough get it in yeah waiting well I guess it's just clicked right on because it's turned up now if I now I do notice look how much it looks like it's a ton brighter and the right it's hard to see from this camera but I will say it looks brighter yeah it's a much brighter much this is the original so yeah the contrast and brightness are way higher on this version just straight I didn't do anything different between that and this and we know it's not a termination issue for that card because there's no way to terminate it it's already self-terminated so I see later on yeah let's see how the later versions right let's see what the next we'll see what the next one looks like so but I just let's before we move on let's also take a look at the service menu does it report BKM 129 yeah that's what I was about to check out let's see let me get this on the hey Matt Matt's in the chat hey Matt D here let's see see and it's what the brightness turned out because I turned it down there but yes it does register as BKM 129x and again that that card can be switched over to like we said RGB or component even in its form right there so that's literally the earliest one let me see between these two next to I have here if there's a later version on here man this one's from 2020 also but this is definitely a little bit different of a version right okay next one this is a fun one it's got a scarred input here and so here's what I remember about this one if you push this button there's a little blue button here so you actually have to route these two cords into like the slot where it says remember why I was sticking the audio oh okay so this goes out right because normally your scar it's going to be built into here yeah and since it's bvm or pvm the audio will be then taken from the start sent out these two rca's that you could plug this into the option slot on the pvm or since it's a bvm card there's no audio on those so you would put this to its own you know so the blue the blue button change that the blue button I cannot remember oh the blue button is you either have mono or stereo okay so vision of the card you can only you can't pass audio straight into a pvm it's gotta come out those yeah I don't believe so I mean we'll try it right we'll see hey right here you go buddy yeah so let's let's try this one next because I'm not really sure I have a great way to try this one this last one these are all from 2020 I must have just grabbed a box of 2020 stuff swore I had some more like with a sdi card somewhere in the shop so it's great that Martin has produced one of the designs he's come up with his scott version he's my pal brother up here over here in Europe so we're always thinking scott scott's around all the place look I get I do get in America I get why you would be like why the freak do we need this scott stuff understand if it's not around but for us it's everywhere every TV every device from that era has a scott port so I understand why Martin has designed one version of the card with that well not to mention that especially during 2020 everybody was using scott not really would be we're using much anything else you know for for your rgb cabling there's still it is still mostly rgb uh through scott all right so that one does kind of hang out a little bit say a little bit there yep set see yeah because if I look at just the difference in this whoops there's a screws falling out of it like the the side see yeah see how much thicker that is than the next one this one should be more flush I think and this one is a good one I've been using this in my 9L2 mostly I had to actually pull it out of there for this but again we're just sliding it right in and let's see it's gonna go this way now yeah it's gonna go this way to audio up top and there's been much better perfected versions of this that like you say are for sale actually now well let's like smash it there we go yeah that's nice that's nice much more flush is it a bit indented I can't see it is a tiny bit not so much I just was a bad angle yeah so you can see the arduino light up of course that's it we just got straight on the back of that monitor yeah I mean you could just do that and then they keep the other input that's cool you could keep the other input component right keep the main primary input component and oh I didn't even turn the darn thing off let's hope I didn't screw it up I didn't realize because I couldn't hear it I probably messed the card up by doing that watch out hey good ol' Roger's here oh it's fine because it's on the black screen look okay yep yep okay there we go so we Roger how you doing mate we were Roger Roger's like I don't know what he did he went but did you see how pretty his new shots are of himself yeah he's got some nice camera for sure he's got himself all upgraded and high high res now jump like eight levels noise hey Roger I I got something for you Famicom I made this the other day this is a daemon bite Famicom adapter so Famicom there and it's just a arduino out to USB daemon bite one second so I didn't have a way to play by Famicom controllers besides the original system so I knocked one of those up the other day I would say besides the arduino six seven bucks worth of parts and it's come out real nice yep it's good one hey Master Safer hey it's nice so many people are hanging out in the chat with us it's good yeah it is so yeah this one it's it's just like where let me get that screen up again it's just like the others all these um aftermarket custom cards should if they're working properly should show up as the um 129x right they should show up on the menu as the 129x now this one's going to be RGB there's really no I think you could still you could still set it to component but who the hell has ever run component through our skirt I don't know unless you're using an adapter let's try to route you've got a particular scott switch or something you need to run through that thing but yeah it's a weird so um there are a couple of other and that's the thing I couldn't locate and uh was a couple of other primary cards made by sony the sdi cards uh the thick and then there's a small one so there's the hd sdi and the regular sdi from the era but it's weird because I don't think that I don't know what it would do with hd sdi unless it's down converting it to 480i for this particular version um so that one's probably not really good in this I think it was more of a thing like not design in two different designs right you're trying to keep the l series looking the same so that's maybe why this has the wide enough wider bay right um but there's a there's an s video and a it's an s video slash rca um composite card for these looks just like this one and it's 120 something x I can't think of it off the top of my head I have one and I couldn't find it like I said um and then I had the sdi cards I actually have all of them somewhere in a box and uh so there the the problem with the I've never seen a working one of the s video one they always say b stock on them and I've never seen them actually work which is strange um they are very rare I've never seen one in person any pal ntsc version I've not seen them you really only need that card for the bvm's that don't have any inputs on them normally like the d 14 has no inputs in it so if you want s video and composite you have to have that specific card so yeah let's uh all right let's get out of that for a second or get back to the so we're still this is still the scott one plugged in there this is still the scott one and um I have man I have the brightness nearly all the way turned down like a hundred percent so this one is bright as well uh yes uh not it doesn't seem to be as bad as the last one which would make sense since that was a very early version I bet that's what it is Martin was probably like you need to add a resistor you know or something I'll to bring down the brightness a little bit and I just didn't do it so um just let that run make sure I like to just you know let them run and make sure they perform normally don't look odd or anything there's no there's really not much to it like we've kind of said it just plug and play even though the inputs are different now let's do the looks good let's check the sound out right this see we get no volume if I turn up the volume but I'll go plug in I'll plug in a rca cable run that rca back into the monitor so it has to come out of the card back into the monitor with this solution so it is one of the nice things about the pvm line that they do have it's a small little mono speaker it's not much but it's something all right okay what do you guys recommend from the chat what do you recommend for running the 240 test speed on vga monitors uh ideally probably the mister right dang exactly I think take your mr core then do uh the line double god I forget the exact wait is it anyway you can take the the 240p from super nintendo line double that to 480p take that out of the mister and into vga and that would be the way to do that that would probably be the best of course if you had some setup where you're using I'm sure you could run like a retro pc with an emulator probably right of some sort yeah I've always been I was trying that before when I was testing my my weird though right it's a bit weird to sort of go through emulation and I always wonder is it right yes you could use it if you had to to dial something in but yeah we we's one of the preferred ones eventually um and this is going to be the best one uh I just can't I ordered it I don't know how to burn stupid dreamcast discs but the dreamcast is a great one to run through if you just have a vga cable for your dreamcast then you can run that straight into your pc uh crt and do 480 a p adp you know into it okay so uh wolf cube so you're just taking the 240p test suite firing it up in 480p mode and wolf could have you had problems is it being fine to you acting as you would expect let's see so I was asking if I got the weebvm card I haven't I haven't seen shank since last year but if I did I was like I'm gonna borrow it from him said I could make one and he'd send me the parts but I forgot to ask him to send him to me I tried it with retro pi it doesn't seem perfectly accurate yeah I can imagine that again yeah you're using emulation some things can come in squirrely that's kind of the one of the reasons I always have uh a couple consoles with it just to be ready right so uh cheap solution multi-cade or jamma I got a neo geo mv1 b so there actually is I don't know if you have a rom cart for your neo geo but there is a I believe mvs um version of it now uh for a rom that will play on neo geo hardware a rum caught yep yeah so if you have that that would be possible um hey demo Kirby yeah so the the but the the wee one I know is a good one also I don't actually have it on we or I don't really have I don't really use the weeds for calibration and testing and stuff it's probably more handy but I don't actually do it probably yeah the the wee is really flexible because it can still output 240p which makes it and it's easy to homebrew so it makes it a pretty flexible thing if someone wanted to uh make some sort of easy to make sort of a testing solution from you could yeah would you guys hang out on the live stream setting up the mr show roger we'll make fun of you will there be alcohol there is probably if I have to hang out with roger I have to have alcohol I said uh I was feeling it's funny yesterday and I set Roger these in my my squirrelly character development uh ideas and I was trying to come up with this character who's like this pissed off grungy general called general ray cathode and he he viciously hates anything that doesn't have a crt in it and uh he like believes that crt's are are supreme because people nowadays pay extra money for things like a retro tink to make their new TVs look like a crt and all this stupid stuff that's probably hitting the bog and just sitting in winter messages at the evening this is a character what you want for your yeah I was like well I started to think I started to think you know I don't want to abandon that but what I want to do is just take and and sprinkle it in every now and then and I think I'm just going to actually write scripts and that will be the only thing I'll actually write the script for and I'll even do like multiple takes of the you know I'll have general ray cathode yelling at the new recruits that would be you know like me as the other people and uh that's cool do that do that I don't know so I was thinking that would be kind of silly so the monitor's going well it's been right in the super metroid demo there oh good doesn't yeah it doesn't doesn't have any issues so the other card that I have here oh the audio oh yeah yeah we're testing that you can hear you can hear it kind of probably I don't know if you can it's not here yeah there's a microphone filter so it's I don't even know let me see if I get the noise gate on so right and I don't the minute I turn that off it'll sound terrible but yeah it's it's going but it's working we it's all right yeah we we believe you it's okay but you have to route that out now the interesting thing is on this card they're actually and the other one there is no again no uh no need that that scart um it's weird right because it's you're routing audio in through the scart you need a way to get it out of it so it's the only one that's really like that because the other ones you just plug your video source into here and then you do like the normal um way of processing it that way now this one is weird because it can do or hv sync or c sync which is not relevant to this monitor because it's not it's not 480p compatible hv so it won't do yeah rgb hv which is vga standard 30 yeah so you can send that into the premium monitors that will do higher resolutions but not this one okay so it's not a magic fix to make your monitor all of a sudden except 240p well it's kind of a pass through so what it'll only work for what your monitor works with makes sense yeah so there's not but yeah like i said there's just not really much it's it's not gonna it's not messing up at all so it's looking good these these cards are fun i don't know um let's see there's gotta be somebody i know there's other places that sell them now right like um martin's design these replacement yeah like let's see if we can if i can find it real quick castle mania oh yeah castle mania probably does now castle mania also sells the other ones i wonder if he still has i want to see what he has available on his website which was a little a little googling while well let's see i mean everybody could see that and then oh gosh what about everybody's new favorite hate product uh and i'll put it over your face for just a second please the newest product everybody wants to hate right here oh it's not gonna let me come on let me let me x station not the x station of course the why won't you go over there hang on thank god thank god thank god thank god this one i'll just open it up put it over louis's head you see that yeah uh yeah yeah the eon the hdx bucks adapter uh i've i've not i've just seen people taking dumps on this thing all dunks on it on twitter the last couple days since it was announced so i understand the criticisms are one that the it's very expensive it's almost 200 bucks for shipping and the video quality is not as high as you would expect do you know anything more about that state i have that's what i'm saying i have no idea it says losslessly translates the component video to hd lagless input to i mean here's the weird thing oh two video outports for simultaneous video streaming or maybe look i'm not maybe someone in the chat was listening because i also understood part of some people had a concern that for 200 it's not doing any scaling it's just sending 480p out the hdmi and you're not even getting a scaling solution for 200 in there but i don't know if beyond that people had a issue with the with the audio quality maybe someone in the chat wants to fill us in what's up with that yeah i'm not really sure yet i trust people of course with their opinion like this like boltar would no way more and it's mostly based on their last products where they had from i think it was a game cube right or something that really poor kind of quality builds almost but it's i mean that's a that's an expensive plugin for that's more than you would normally pay i believe for a xbox console bundle unless you're buying it from uh uh dk oldies right i mean you probably you probably pay four hundred dollars for a xbox og xbox but so i was uh i was having a look around online i see castle mania's got the bkm out of stock uh retro upgrades from the that's the one that's the other one yeah yeah see i mean you could get you could get a console and everything at 80 bucks 100 i mean less than that chip to you from ebay all right let's so yeah bkm 129x retro upgrades going for 80 pounds see that's a great deal that's uh about a hundred bucks i don't know i mean just guessing off it's pretty close to 100 bucks from the uk you support a small business owner as opposed to just and a new product as opposed to just buying the old thing again these are better they scam now does it does retro upgrades have any listings available for the 68x on there yes they do and that is more that's like 300 bucks right yeah that's 284 pounds so yeah close to three but this is a totally new one though right that's that's the that's got a completely that has a completely different fpga that it's spaced around it's a lot more complex right well even the fact that it needs an ftga your you showed us on the screen here it's just using an arduino these other one pretty basic stuff with this the 68x is some serious work leave said he bought one from retro upgrades and it works perfectly yeah i've i've had you know retro upgrades actually built my uh my gbsc all in one for me uh as kind of a thanks so that was really cool so i'd yeah great stuff always a good experience with everything they make there so yeah it's uh you know this this i really the the good thing about this crt is if it works it looks great this this l2 i have seen l2s with washed out tubes and i believe i can't tell i've got one actually funny enough in this box right under it with a washed out tube and um i'm wondering if it's not a solder issue possibly uh because this one has kind of some weird solder on it i noticed in the restoration okay like it's this post it's this mid 2000 era where they're almost trying to get lead out of solder it feels like and a lot of applications like this and it ends up now 20 years almost 20 years later we do have issues with quality on that so so i don't know um let's try that well i don't have uh i'm trying to think of a way to actually uh test it uh okay you don't have a no my vis misters the only mister i have is in the mr kade okay we got the one yep and i'm trying to think if there's anything else that just outputs um vga but i don't think i have anything something on the d sub right yeah yeah that's a thing yeah that's a d sub card but i mean it it definitely works i've tested it before but this is better fit this one's better fit for something that does for adp i believe that is what kind of yeah in c sink out hv sink really should get a multi format like that version that's a sale for retro upgrades sorry the only one he's got in stock is the uh scott and vga version so this is a another model again that we're not seeing which is pretty good bnc's out of stock but scott and vga version well for least for a euro person or someone coming directly from a mister would be a nice a nice solution very good point yeah the mister hookup directly into that is great and then i think that the other one's good too like we said if you're using a setup where you have scart cables you can run that scart system in even if you use like a gscart switch or some kind of switch going in then you just plug that final scart cable how about my pc i'll just hook it up and crash the whole system here yeah we're talking about this monitor even though the cod can accept greater resolutions the monitors right the crt can't actually accept the 30 killer hurt bracket you know it's uh it's still limited so it won't sink up it'll just show it you know how 480p looks on these monitors and just show it weird so does that so while we're hanging out here we can you guys get ready for some questions i'm gonna try to rack my brain to think of where that box is with the other cards in it i'm like looking around here and i'm wondering where it's one of those things where you you move things around a thousand times and you forget what you've done with it but such is life that's all right what's around we if you want to go look it's okay yeah okay i'm gonna go check around if Steve will go look around i'll i'll work with the questions here uh uh what would scart to b and c cables how easy or hard would it be to get one that's half decent uh sorry 17 what do you use okay scart isn't ify scarts only ify i think i have a suspicion people think scart is ify because maybe there's not that much scart available in america and i don't know what you've seen has been clanging around and have been for too long or something uh no i just as a well-built component cable will give you a good quality solution a well-built scart cable will also give you a quality solution right eight dollar scart cable for genesis well yeah it works it works can the 360 output for atp yes it can and i think it was the channel uh uh bark msx electric underground who covers the schmupps i've talked to him on the podcast and mark did has a video out where he does research showing that dodon patchy resurrection on the 360 runs faster at 480p than it does at 720p or higher resolutions and that's because we presume because the console's only running at 480p so it can run the game faster but because this is a schmupp this has implications for the game and how you're playing and all of that and i think mark did some tests where he ran dodon patchy resurrection like a full game run through or a full demo like he replayed a demo and it was seconds faster noticeably faster over the length of a whole run on a significant amount on 480p so it does make a difference yeah those early models of the 360 didn't have a hdmi out yes you can find still can't find it did find something though um dude 17 i would say dude scart cables are walk into any thrift store here there's a bin and they're all good like they're all nice thick scart cables and not some crappy little amazon thing so here's the um the actual this is the big boy this is the 68x clone card the like 350 dollar one right here that's coming out now that's the one yeah see it's built around an fpga down here and uh a lot more you could tell this is a lot more hardware than just the other one that basically the final one or was that also abated uh do not believe this is the final one so yeah i've because i've had this for a while so there's a piece here to put on um it's like the other one but you can uh he does have individual switches on here and that is for termination because you can so you can turn termination on without having to add terminators oh that's cute that's nice right so you can turn that over you can turn it off and do pass through but it's not original it's definitely not do you know how much the original is i should just i mean i know where my um i know where my a series is you want me to go get that one yeah bring it out while we okay let's look at and let's play this again all right i'll i'll take this elsewhere the way nuance talk to have their wolf cube about if i replace bits and pieces of my system is this original who i mean is it like okay i don't know like look if you've got the money to drop on the original so you can say you've got the original card with all power to such people out there i don't i don't have the money to spend 300 on a card but alone what the original cost wait what did you buy for 3k brain the monitor or the card don't fill us in with that so what point does it become something different i think if you're a replacement card all good is it changing the game is it changing anything is it changing what we see i wish i'd waited lol so okay you bought at the wrong time brian unfortunately yeah if it if it replicates that function i mean why maybe even to step back and ask ourselves what's with this it's got to be original this thing well why it develops a sense of nostalgia in us it we feel nostalgic because we are using the original thing like might have been done there later so if you can get that feeling on something else and that all it all credit that might even extend to getting a raspberry pi and doing retro pi and doing emulation if that gives you the feel of nostalgia and fires that off in you then right on oh okay so brian got a full a 20 with a thousand hours on it not bad and it's got the card in it as well did you uh notice any of the sync problems brian have you with the original card noticed that was part of the issues also the martin was trying to address in the 68x when he redid it steve's off ferreting around here i have uh in my collection i've got the 9l2 the pvm 9l2 which is the 9 inch version should which in theory should take the same cards i guess i've just never bothered to get one of these cards because i have a bunch of other 14 and 19 inch monitors that accept it so i didn't have to spend 100 just to get that input on that card here we go what's he got oh heavy heavy weightlifting oh my gosh i don't know which kind of fool i am i thought you know top shelf monitor so it's on the top shelf and talk about a hard thing to move around to get to there's like four bvm 14s on the top shelf above my head at least if you're if your heart collapses on stream at least we can call 911 all right so yeah this is a back of it sorry which bvm is this it's an a 14 f5 uh f5 u oh my gosh i never even realized this though martin put on this card his alternative it's the uh 69 skm 69x the skm for scum this is moniker the scum 69x the bk of 68x alternative hilarious all right so this one is like the nicest monitor i have technically i guess an i own that i'm just keeping it's a multi format yes it's from 2008 april of 2008 so by far by far the youngest crt this is an a so read just was asking in the chat the difference between bvm d and bvm a well a is the newer one right and they redesigned like the input cards so they aren't compatible with each other so um yeah this is this is like you have to do you have to put like the bk of cards in a certain order even on this particular bvm to make it work right which is the order it's in but this card right here is the first card is uh s video and composite card this it's the bkm 61d next to that is the 62 hs which only does sdi or hd sdi again and that's the most common card like 90 of the monitors at this time period we're using this last era of bvm because they were used in production environments where the sdi sorry the sdi was was common and i actually save on pat has said that there's only probably three or three to 500 of this last card which is the actual 68x in existence because it was a format that was not used primarily at the time by most production houses they weren't producing stuff in that analog uh rgb mode or using it or worried about pull this yeah definitely in 2007 we're deep into flat panel technology this is the rarest used to be the rarest side of my owned it's the elusive again 68x original card and uh if you look on here there's a manufacturer number i'll try to get close in there hopefully some people can see that uh well no that's going to lose my light so let's see here so if we look at it here is zero zero two five five right so right so that's two this is number 255 out of i think the the highest we've seen is like 300 supposedly maybe up to 500 i don't know um but it's very complex i'll take the shield off but this there was a time when this card would sell for almost three thousand dollars before there was ever any hopes that martin could crack it open and actually i can't get that oh there might be screws holding that in i actually found this in the junk pile at the return or the um yeah i remember that the uh place but uh analog it says analog component input adapter sony hardware made in japan um normal warning and then the serial number so the issues with this card is it's it's sink is terrible with a lot of things and the d series also has sink issues but it has a vcr mode which happens to um help with sink you can engage this vcr mode and a lot of times it will fix the sink so uh that's that card and does that monitor work yeah we'll turn it on here a second okay so we're going back to the original card so you're gonna show us oh yeah i was just gonna put that in first yeah so this one um it's nice it does have like two composite inputs and then this is broken out and actually a third composite input i believe and then it's got like y and c you know right even though they're b and c right you know the b and c you could get an adapter to go s video from that uh so this one is see even in 2008 this is like 2000 or yeah 2009 52 so first thousand of these probably made so uh when i hook rgp up to this i will have to use terminators uh for the rg card right that's interesting that'll be interesting steve just for examination purposes let's see the picture without the termination okay just so we know like you know you got to terminate but what difference does it make good idea cool cool cool cool we get the terminator ready oh it's been a long time so i've turned this on with the main power all right red flashing at the front yeah it's so heavy it's like there we go okay we got a solid green there that's good oh it was on let's see oops it's standby mode now there we go yeah sorry uh regis i know we missed your question uh price estimation for a bvm a 24 a kidney yeah a kidney i don't know i mean it's got to be working right but it's you're looking at as high as like as high as the seller wants to sell it for almost unless you need somebody who's really ready to get rid of it or doesn't know what it is it's going to be expensive right i mean be lucky to get it for under like three thousand dollars honestly yeah i was thinking five but yeah if you you know you can find somebody probably willing to take that sometimes all right so the first input which is shows us over here which input we're on is ypu pr um so that's not going to be what we're using we're going to be using rgb so it's okay going here down to component i believe rgb slot option three this should be right i think oh my god are you in three or does the first one count as are you in four one channel one right let me put cards sorry don't worry okay i have never i always do something like this i didn't uh i didn't plug in this why doesn't it work hey steve why didn't this bvm work all right whoo so look at that that's that's with no terminators installed so you really wouldn't know a lot of times what do you think it's doing extra brightness yeah generally it's supposed to be like brightening it out too much let me uh let me install the terminators and see if that you could tell on the screen if it looks any different while i'm doing it so let's see so on the outputs the card has bnc inputs and on bnc outputs uh on the bvm ones you've got to put one of those little terminators on the end i got a bunch of them when i got my bvm out of the back of a broadcast truck i also took a bunch of well-made professional terminators because otherwise they cost a few bucks each which can start to add up um talking to caesar here caesar's asking how much for a good bvm dude it's very hard to sort of lay it down as he said they range 1500 to 4000 uh i wanted to buy one for 1500 a lot of that a lot of your buying is also going to come down to caesar about how are you getting that thing and shipping is such a nightmare unless you're using someone who's really got shipping down like steve does with uship uh so i i would i think for you caesar one of the preferences would be is anything able for you to go and get it yourself go there inspect it take it home yourself you know i i get if you're thinking like well it's a eight-hour pay the petrol well you're gonna pay 300 to get it shipped anyway well the problem with bvms too is um there's a lot of times the tube could be busted and you don't again want to ever spend a lot of money for something without really uh looking at the tube in person most of the time it's getting the tests a little bit it stinks but like i feel like with bvms especially um you have to watch them for a while like if you're going to buy for example i had plenty of bvm d 24s that would show issues but it wasn't till they were warmed up for 20 to 30 minutes and it was actually tube issues where the tube was just only good for a little bit of time and then starts to have an issues where it gets the cathode gets so hot and um shows the short and uh so yeah it's it's a big risk um and so i don't know well yeah okay so here's one look at this this is 6500 hours okay on the tube um it has ip address it'd be fun to hook it up to the internet right and uh or the network i don't know what network so the operation time and crt turn on time now crt is less than operation right so this would track the hours when it's in standby mode and not turned on it would actually so sometimes you could get this monitor will have like a hundred thousand hours there and then it will have just a couple thousand hours on the turn on time for the tube yeah okay because it's been on standby this is yeah that's these are the chat 1500 is low cool so okay he could uh well that's a good price if it's in good shape i mean that's what you'd expect to pay because if you if you turn around and sold it i did install those terminators it definitely made the brightness go down a lot okay um right but which wait so but ceasar's saying that for for 1500 you doesn't get the remote okay that's the 20 which which model because there's a bunch of remotes now so you if you have another pvm or bvm there's a way to use it as a remote sometimes that's true there's that but didn't martin has got a couple of replicas somewhere in this office yeah so ceasar i would also go and check out the retro castle sorry no retro castle retro upgrades castle mania games but martin hainfeldt he's the original guy who's been designing all this stuff and i know he has created some replacement bvm remotes as well this only works on this a series oh let's test it the a series one right didn't he i thought he made one i've got it right here it's this yeah yeah is it just one i got a double check where the martin's made it what's other so this is a solution for the a series because martin had an a series that he couldn't get into right a necessity thing for him so yeah this is his you know alternative um and this can actually work over wi-fi says i've never tested it let's see this came with a cord you know how you supposed to plug it in there's something bob mailed me after looking at and let's see came with this cable i just don't know would it need would it need to be plugged in with usb song to work i mean is it not going to pull power from the is it capable to pull power is there any power running through these cables ethernet cables ever i don't know i don't know typically not typically yeah that's what i thought so i might have to have a power cable which i get one i've got a brick here and then was that the ic guide it's the it's the bkm controller but it's the 15 r this is the one for the a series monitors now this has the built-in controllers on the side we should still be able to plug this end of the crt and function at the same i believe um you know it would just be like it has two controllers they would be doing the same thing i think the same thing i don't think it's complicated enough martin's latest 68x bkm 15 r that's what you're using yeah it looks really nice all right let me see if i find a power got one here he's working on a bkm 10 r that's that's the uh earlier model controller that that person probably needs it's with the monitor you can still find those for like 200 bucks all right right what's hold on what have i got here let me see okay so i've got the bkm 10 r sitting up here on my 20 e1e or whatever it is 10 r right so okay he martin has a replacement for that as well but i already have the the original remote so i haven't needed it so okay he's moving around so get there cables now um well darn it i wasn't ready to use that so i don't think i have that old usb style cable here let me it's got the uh whatever that is priest usb c then i got to power it with oh it takes power from micro usb micro usb right yeah the old school phone old let me keep looking around for it he's looking around so yeah there are alternate remotes that are mostly by martin and the designs are out there uh for some of the monitors like this one you can see the controls are built in dude it's so funny there's a bunch of Aussies in this chat here it's just a bunch of Aussie cunts hanging out there's me and a bunch of guys from New South Wales here that's funny that we're all congregating you guys are up at someone godly hour in australia god i must god this crap must be so expensive in australia everything is so expensive in australia these days and then with limited stock of the oh my god retro hard to be a retro gamer in australia if there's stores it's all just like they're you're all a bunch of cached up bogans and the retro sellers know it so yeah when i go back to australia i look around for a few things but i know i'm not finding anything super great there this is america maricville there's a jvc repair guy now i'm Aussie but i live in estonia not the uk no no way mate right it's found it found it finally 330 wolf cubs yeah i live in estonia over here so it's evening for me morning for steve well it's more like uh 115 here afternoon now okay all right let's just see 10 years ago this does anything we don't screw up my favorite cot okay what cable is that running sorry is that a that's an ethnic cable i think i have to like yeah it's got power going through it i think i have to somehow maybe set that up in here to run off of oh to read from that yeah we should i just want to double check that maybe oh yeah on this as well yeah i'm not sure because i don't it's already i'm sure there's a setting in here maybe i'm just trying to look up the specs right now and i'm like did sonny do something where it's not even a standard ethnic cable or something well i think bobs made it work but again these are the ones that didn't have any controller already built into them and you have to do some probably some kind of protocol okay actually reading from bobs bob confirmed my suspicion to connect to the same ethnic jack in the back of your monitor uh it's ethnic in terms because it's that but however you must use the crossover cable and not a standard ethnic cable oh that's also why it's not working okay what's a crossover cable proprietary cable is the same thing as an ethnic cable but it's wired differently so you can plug like two computers directly into each other without needing the router in the middle it's not very it's only good for two computers okay um it's not hard to recreate that cable but also not standard right so that's but that's this monitor is just like beautiful because it only has 6 000 hours on it you know like yeah it's looking good okay same but no audio it's so heavy these bbs are just oh so heavy now okay it's looking good yeah well um louis it's been a long session hadn't it we have you did the podcast that now this live session hey this has been fun i like this hang out and chatting and yeah i got some other things um i was going to say definitely look for our next cathode ray podcast episode right yep everybody i'm going to drop that as soon as i can and as we were discussing steve so if mason's on holidays then it looks my own thumbnail for this week that's true what out there take one from yeah that's that's what we're gonna have to do is uh in between the pvm a and d i mean it's really dependent if you get i don't know people are people are torn between the two of course you get a newer one with a series and if you have martin's card um there's you know no reason to not go for the a series kind of it used to be but as far as you understand you're offering out of 300 to get martin's card right it's more expensive but both of those are expensive the d's and a's 24 those are two the rarest widescreen monitors there are you know so multi-format stuff widescreen as a wrap up this seiza was asking uh if you've got a you know how does it to move from a pvm to a bvm there's a difference but i think it all just comes down to how much work do you want how much you want to pay if you've got a pvm that's doing well you're having a great great experience already or really any uh other people talking about jvcs any really crt you know there's a lot of different looks of them and people really like that the only the thing you're going to get with a good crt like this this has an 800 line tube and it's super sharp i mean and the thing is with these you have really the best controllability from menu to adjust things out of any of them that's the big difference it's just simplicity on the hardware end as the lower model you go but if we're at the end of the day just watching movies playing games on these things there's nothing wrong with um having a little imperfection in the screen i feel like and so um you know louis and i try to tell people uh make sure you get in a crt that works and one that you want right don't the worst thing is to make a decision kind of quickly that you end up regretting right kind of out of hastiness or fomo or anything oh i lost your audio louis your mic broke okay so back on that yeah it's good to have anything um um yeah oh my god it's a good discussion here yeah so we're gonna wrap it up soon did you yeah yeah let's go ahead and wrap it up we've been on here for an hour and a half anybody hey thanks everybody joining us today uh for this impromptu stream uh look for another stream later on this week of the channel definitely be on the lookout for the next episode of the catheter a podcast i will put a notice here and everywhere else i share it and go over to zezz retro and subscribe up because louis will have uh something to say about his adapters more i'm sure something yeah we got that we working on that and the podcast will be coming out soon so lots of content all right good thank you very much thank you everybody yes thank you everybody have a great rest of your day we'll see you next time bye


Hello, and welcome back to Enter the Combat League, a video series where we take you, the player, through the different ranks of Combat League, and offer our tips for how to progress through those ranks to go from a new combatant all the way up to the godly ranks of the top. It's time for our final episode of the series, and we've saved the most difficult for the end. This time, we're covering what to expect in the absolute highest ranks, Demigod, and Eldergod. Demigod is, by itself, an impressive accomplishment. It is where many players will aim for, as it's where you'll earn all of the season's rank-related skins, making it a common target rank for online players. The main thing about Demigod is that this is where the gloves come off, as you'll be finding players of all ranks, including Eldergod, meaning that by the time you reach Demigod, you should prepare yourself for absolutely anything, as here, there are no more rank restrictions in your matchmaking, meaning that you're likely to be faced off against the highest ranked players that Combat League has to offer. Demigod will be full of players that have a firm grasp on the game itself, and is where the grind will really begin to ramp up. At this point and above, you'll want to be playing consistently and often, as the distance between rank-ups will increase here and beyond. You'll want to stay on top of your game to make sure that you're not falling behind. It's also important to keep your playstyle fluid. At this point of matchmaking, your usual strategies might prove ineffective versus certain kinds of opponents. For example, if you typically aim towards playing at close or sweep distance, but are being bested by superior close-range options, try putting some distance between you and the opponent to see how they handle navigating through long-range buttons and projectiles. Players with a great rush-down game might put themselves in unfavorable situations once you force a range where they can't do it, such as jumping at poor times, eating projectiles and so on. Around here is where you'll typically find a lot of online players sticking to the characters who are considered the strongest in the game. You can usually scan the leaderboards and, as there are usually much less players in these higher ranks, you can look through them to see what characters are the most popular and prepare yourself accordingly. Now, God Rank is where you have to really start concentrating. This is where many high-level online players and, quite often, competitive players will actually dwell. You're guaranteed serious matches from the majority of who you will play in this rank. The big thing for a new player achieving these ranks is to go back to what we covered in the very first episode. It's common for less experienced players to get nervous knowing that they're against very strong opponents. It's important to remember that you managed to achieve this rank too and you had to earn your place here and, thus, are capable of continuing through it. Fundamentally, you absolutely have to keep your mistakes to a minimum to climb to God Rank. As you really don't have much higher to climb, you'll be in the most likely area to lose more points than you'll generally win. This is typically due to there being considerably more players in Demigod and Under as opposed to God and above, so your mistakes will be punished harder here during your climb than anywhere else. This is where understanding the meta of the game is the most important. You will absolutely need to have good matchup knowledge of the stronger characters and will need to be absolutely confident with your own. Additionally, this is where it helps to be adept with practice mode. If you lose to specific situations online and you find it's hindering your ability to earn combat league points, you should be able to recreate those situations in training and explore what your options are. Get friendly with the record or playback features as, trust me, you're going to need it. This one's not exclusive to God, but it definitely applies at the later stages of combat league. Be prepared for the art of counterpicking. This doesn't always happen, but if you just so happen to play a character with an unfavorable matchup, there's always a chance that the opponent knows how to play that matchup and may go to that character after losing their first game to give themselves an advantage. Unless you play a side character to cover the matchups that your main character may struggle in, the only thing you can really do is the best you can to make sure you're as clued up in difficult matchups as possible. A difficult character matchup isn't a guaranteed loss by any means, but it just means the opponent's pick may have some particularly troublesome tools that you'd better be ready for. Typically, the players you see achieving God every season have one thing in common, tenacity. Not being put off by individual losses, not getting hung up on mistakes and making sure to learn from them. It's important to maintain proper composure while aiming for the final hurdle to avoid making mistakes which can result in serious point loss. Elder God is the final challenge for every player online in MK11 and a rank that only a tiny percentage of the overall player base actually achieve in each combat league season. Only the most dedicated or hardcore players will regularly achieve Elder God rank and it demands that you have an absolute hold on the online world and thorough mastery of your character. Achieving Elder God is a challenge enough, but maintaining it while you're already there is challenging still as there is nowhere to go but down. You'll constantly be in a point deficit with every match you play with the exception being if you're fighting other Elder Gods. An impressive accolade seeing as we stated earlier such a few amount of players overall actually achieve it and you'll be rewarded with every rank based reward for achieving the rank as well as unique cosmetics for your player profile that you can forever equip to show your achievement to the rest of the world. Achieving Elder God rank is largely due to making sure that you are winning far more than you're losing. Due to the fact that along the way you'll be losing large chunks of points for losses and only gaining a considerable amount if you take out other Elder Gods along the climb. This means that going on win streaks is a great way of getting the points needed without facing too many hiccups which is easier said than done. Elder God is a tough road but a great achievement for anybody who is able to reach it. The three kinds of God rank are definitely the hardest to achieve, but it's certainly not impossible. Those of you looking for something to seriously aim for and play regularly can absolutely go for them. Even if you don't achieve the rank that you're aiming for, always remember progression is important and a part of every player's ranked journey. Just because you didn't achieve a certain rank this season doesn't mean that you won't in the next. Take things at your own pace and the progress will speak for itself with every Combat League season that rolls out. And that's it! Hopefully this series has helped those of you out there new to Combat League or looking to get a bit more serious with it. You can now have a better understanding of what this mode involves and roughly what to expect as you climb through the online world. Thank you for watching and good luck as you continue to enter the Combat League. Noob Cybert wins.