MIMO Genius Box for Downscaling

The Genius Box was originally sold in Florence, Italy by MIMO Enterprises. The unit I bought was distributed by the US company East Coast Amusements under the badge Amusement Technologies. Apart from the label, it is a Genius Box through and through. The Genius Box can input and output 15kHz, 24kHz, and 31kHz RGBHV. It’s successor, the Genius 2, was more robust in adding upscaling capabilities to output up to 1080p through HDMI, and input composite video through RCA. I was really excited to see if the original Genius Box suffered the same lag and shimmer as its successor, although fairly bare-bones, this scaler *should* have all the necessary tools to downscale VGA 640×480 to 240p. However…

When I hooked up the scaler to a multi-format CRT, the output was whack!

Even with no input, the OSD was a fuzzy mess. I was blindly navigating the menu until kitty666cats on shmups pointed me to the original manual, which was also rebranded under a generic name ‘CGA to EGA to VGA Converter (Multi) ID#425’. The manual had the recommended factory settings depending on the input to output combination, however no settings could make the Mimo Genius sync. Interestingly, the manual states that some menu items should not be altered without authorisation from the factory, which gives me the impression that the Genius Box is ultra sensitive to even minor adjustments, and possibly why my unit was exhibiting major issues. Raising the ‘Sync Adj’ made the OSD solid, but then it would not display any input, so it was a very small win. The H/V sync voltage output always remained adequate at sub-5v, and the issue seemed to arise within the Genius Box *before* the output left the device. So I focussed my efforts to search for a hardware defect…

Several capacitors were out of spec, and there was a 2.3ohm resistor connected to the 4MHz crystal oscillator which appeared charred but still read ok on the multimeter. I changed the bad capacitors, resistor, and crystal oscillator to no improvement. To gain some insight about the output signal, I connected the Genius Box to the OSSC Pro, and interestingly the H/V frequency values were jittering on the OSSC Pro’s LED display. I tried using the OSSC Pro’s sync reading to guide me when altering the Genius’ OSD values, but the HV frequency always jittered on the OSSC Pro. Fudoh also seemed to have trouble with the Genius Box as written in Hazard City’s MIMO Genius Box 1 + 2 review, where there was no display when running the Genius Box’s output through an Extron RGB Interface. The RGB Interface’s must require a legible signal, as running my Genius Box through an Extron 580xi RGB Interface also produced a black screen.

To identify if a scaler blends or decimates lines, I found the Nintendo Wii’s 240p test suite very helpful. Outputting transcoded 480p into a downscaler and running the grid scroll test, a half opacified black square will be in the lower right corner if the scaler blends lines, and will be either completely solid black or completely missing if the scaler decimates (depending on the field order offset). I tried to run this test pattern through the Genius Box but the picture was such a mess that even step-framing a slow motion capture was not helpful, therefore I have no clue if this scaler decimates or blends lines when downscaling. The most I could ascertain with the Time Sleuth was that it has VERY low lag at essentially ZERO when downscaling 480p to 240p.

We will have to wait for a *functional* Genius Box to fall into the hands of the CRT/Retro Gaming Community to find out if there are any redeeming downscaling qualities beyond its low lag.

Links: MIMO Genius Box Manual (thanks to kitty666cats for digging this up): https://web.archive.org/web/20071014012537/https://www.converters.tv/manuals/cga_to_ega_to_vga_converter_multi_425_143.pdf

Shmups discussion:

https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=44510&sid=59159ab25a03252bea57d0db26b4c315&start=60

MIMO Enterprises official site:

http://www.mimoenterprises.it/genius-box/?lang=en

Hazard City’s review:

http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/mimo.html