Review:Kanaan HD solution for 16bit retro consoles and amiga

Snoozy

Only Amiga makes it possible
AmiBayer
Joined
Sep 23, 2011
Posts
1,329
Country
UK
Region
Norfolk
Well, some of you will be aware that i (like many others) have been searching for the holy grail of bringing 16 bit consoles display capabilities to align with modern HD LCD or LED tv's. This search took me to maplin and beyond without success.

I was fed up of using scart/composite for my tv as the picture quality was poor (especially for the megadrive). The amiga was partially sorted through the use of the gbs 8220. The super nintendo had a reasonable picture via standard scart.

However, a few months ago i took a chance and purchased the Kanaan HD upscaler and this has been one of my most successful purchases. For the cost of errrrm a significantly unfortunate round at the pub (say 10 or 12 people) you have a decent piece of equipment. I got mine from amazon. I use it in conjunction with a 3 way scart selector box, both MD and SNES have RGB scart leads and my amiga 1200 is on a composite scart lead.

The picture quality for all is good to very good (especially megadrive and amiga) I think it rivals my gbs 8220 for picture quality in terms of the 1200. No doubt not up to the standard of the indi II which I'm still waiting on the software release to bring compatability with my tv - well that's another story.

I'll put the pics below and let them do the talking.

(TV in use: Samsung 8 series 40" LED tv)

Advantages:

Reasonable price
Versatility
Significant improvement in picture quality

Disadvantages

Needs to be connected to power source
Picture quality still not optimised

Conclusion: Cancel the meal out and switch to kfc for the evening. Use the money saved to purchase one of these. :)
 

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Last edited by a moderator:
I have seen the same device with different names on eBay too... how is a pal-50hz conversion? does it output a 50hz hdmi signal?
 
I would avoid the cheap chinese ebay copies. I tried a chinese upscaler from maplin that gave the most horrific goldfish bowl picture that could induce sickness if looked at for too long - distorted and swaying on the MD and flickering and unstable on the SNES.

This Kanaan upscaler i had imported from germany, it outputs at

CVBS
720P
1080P all at 60Hz on my tv

(Not sure about 50hz)

It tends to auto select the best output for the console.

I'll put the link here but if a mod thinks it necessary to remove then others can find it fairly easily:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kanaan-Conv...K7R2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1341174255&sr=8-2
 
how is scrolling on this then? if you feed it a PAL sonic1 (50hz game) and it outputs at 60hz then you don't have smooth scrolling... (much like with the indivision @60hz)
Are you sure it does not display 720p/1080p@50hz?
 
well my tv tells me it is outputting at 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz and sonic is scrolling 100% normally.

Now i've played sonic 1 + 2, castle of illusion, ghouls and ghosts, golden axe since the age of 12 so i remember decent scrolling.

I see no difference when using the Kanaan and hd tv for scrolling:)
 
Do you think this would work with a NTSC Amiga if I connect a RGB to Scart and then use a us Power supply ? HDMI US and Europe should be the same or not ? :unsure:

Do you know how many V and A this device needs ?
 
Do you think this would work with a NTSC Amiga if I connect a RGB to Scart and then use a us Power supply ? HDMI US and Europe should be the same or not ? :unsure:

Yes, the NTSC/PAL/Whatever issues are thankfully over with HDMI. A HDMI signal is the same all over.

Do you know how many V and A this device needs ?

That should be easy enough to tell from the power adapter :)
 
Do you think this would work with a NTSC Amiga if I connect a RGB to Scart and then use a us Power supply ? HDMI US and Europe should be the same or not ? :unsure:

Do you know how many V and A this device needs ?

I think it should work ok with ntsc, looking at the power supply (which is supplied with it) its 5v 2a
 
Thanks for the info! Similar to the gbbs then. Do you know where i could get scart amiga rgb cables?
 
On here i think oge sells them, or on the other bay or pref amigakit (which is where i bought mine)
 
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