Progressive Scan from a PAL Gamecube - What's going on?

[groundy]

Ok guys, someone is claiming he is getting Progressive Scan (480P) out of the PAL Cube using Freeloader and US games. View the ongoing debate here:

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=76335

Now, he seems to be telling the truth (he has no reason not to) but I have tested this myself using Component and VGA and every single time the Cube/Games crashed. Many of you guys on here and other people on various boards reported the same issues.

So what is going on here? If any of you have the capability to try this, please do so and report your findings here or on Av Forums. We need to get to the bottom of this.

[bash]

I saw that thread from the beginning, and I agree that he seems real. I have a PAL cube and a 36ZD tosh but no component cable

Maybe I can borrow one off of Saurian, if he has one spare

[zeroboo]

so how come there isnt a GC to VGA output cable for the PAL machines?

I just realised the other day that PAL gc do have component output socket.

would the ones selling at goblin work with a pal GC??
i want to play metroid on my monitor!

[groundy]

The VGA cable works fine on the PAL Cube - always has done but you won't get a picture on a standard PC monitor with PAL games. This is because the monitor won't sync to a 15khz (interlaced) signal. The VGA cable is only of any use for Progressive capable games or for display devices that have more flexibilty in their sync rates such as some Projectors/Plasmas.

[groundy]

Another guy has confirmed that Progressive Scan via the Pal Cube is working in the thread above???

[Papercut]

As I reported in my original Freeloader overview on its release, I found that prog scan mode crashed NTSC games on a PAL GameCube.

Only NTSC games that support prog scan give you the option (by holding B down on boot), and then only when a prog scan cable is plugged in.

I've tried the v1.04 and v1.06b versions of the Freeloader, and a mix of about 12 US and JPN games.

I hypothesised that this is because prog scan depends on bios system calls that don't exist on the PAL cube. The Freeloader seems to patch various system calls in order to run NTSC games on PAL cubes and vice versa, which is why you get funky memory card usage.

I think the underlying hardware probably supports prog scan though. It could be that newer revisions of PAL cubes do support prog scan, most likely with a different revision bios, or perhaps with different video hardware. Maybe Nintendo have unified the video chipset to cut costs, assuming there was any difference in the first place?

I doubt the display device would make any difference - my PAL cube crashes while still interlaced, it never gets as far as changing the video signal.

Another possibilty is that this guy is using a newer version of the Freeloader that correctly patches in prog scan support.

You should find out which version of the Freeloader he his using, and its date stamp (written around the center of the disk itself), and then perhaps try it out with as new a PAL cube as possible...

[vertigo]

This is very interesting and sounds like what you say, a hardware revision or bios change in order to support PS calls. So are they going to start supporting PS in PAL software then or what? This sounds really interesting and weird.

[yashiro]

Just read the latest posts from the AV forum.
It seems like an NTSC 480P signal from a PAL cube is go!

Any NTSC-uk'ers able to confirm this?