Loewe CRTs Reborn: Djcalle's VGA Clone Card Story
Hi, welcome to Loving Tech Life. Today we're doing something a little different - diving into the world of retro tech and sitting down for an interview with Ludo, also known as Djcalle, a CRT preservationist, retro gaming enthusiast, and SEGA fanboy extraordinaire. In this interview, we'll dive deep into the world of CRT technology and discover why these displays still hold a special place in the hearts of gaming enthusiasts. Ludo shares his passion for Loewe TVs - premium German CRTs with distinctive qualities that set them apart from Sony and other brands. The highlight of our conversation is Ludo's groundbreaking work developing VGA clone cards that breathe new life into once-discarded Loewe 100Hz TVs, transforming them into perfect displays for 480p content from systems like the Dreamcast. We'll also get an exclusive first look at his newest creation - a VGA card for the older Q23 Loewe chassis, extending his preservation efforts to even more vintage displays.
I've included timestamps for all the different sections of the interview in the description below, so you can easily jump to the parts you're most interested in if you don't want to watch the whole thing. So whether you're a dedicated CRT collector or just curious about retro gaming on original hardware, this interview has something for everyone. With that said, let's get into it. So I'm lucky enough to be here today with a very good friend of mine, you might know him as Ludo or Djcalle, he is a CRT preservationist, retro gaming enthusiast, big Sega fanboy, all around good guy, Ludo, thank you for having us in your house today, really, really appreciate it. We're going to have a good general broad conversation about a lot of
different things, including CRTs and arcades and some other projects that you've run, but I really appreciate Thanks David, and thanks for coming over and having me on your show. Congratulations on the YouTube channel, you've done fantastic so far, so I'm honored, thank you. Yeah, that's all right, that's quite all right. Well we'll pretty much get straight into it so for those that are unfamiliar with CRT technology, why are people like ourselves so passionate, what do you think people like ourselves are so passionate about it today? Right, well there's a mix of nostalgia obviously, but if you look at objective reasons, you could say motion clarity, the way the picture is drawn is completely different, right, you get a big glass tube with phosphors that are being shot by electron guns, which is crazy if you think about it, right, and the way the picture is drawn gives an effect that is completely different to what you see on modern displays. So that is one reason, then it gives a very clear motion, motion clarity is very specific, and it looks very specific on the CRT, and you want to have that even with modern OLEDs. Then you have those signals called 480i and 240p, and those two, they are quite special because 480i is interlaced and is displaying one line like this, so it's going like this and like this, that's broadcast TV, right, and you have some later consoles that use 480i, but if you had 480i content, like back in 10 years ago I rewatched the Fresh Prince on Bel Air, and that was only shot in video, which was 480i, you try to watch this on an OLED, it deinterlaces the picture, it doesn't look quite right, so I put that on a CRT and it looked 10 times better, really, so if you have own video from back then, shot in VHS or Hi8 or even MiniDV, that looks better, not interlaced. And then you have the Mighty 240p, which is a trick where basically they
are using the same bandwidth of 15kHz of the SD signal and they are blanking half of the lines, to have a signal that is not interlaced, and this is what gives your NES, your Sega Master System, your drive, blocky render and rock solid picture. And those pictures, those signals are really special and I think why people love CRTs. Of course you have HD CRTs and there's other reasons, but I think to me those are the core reasons. Yeah, it kind of comes back to retro gaming,
right, you know, if you have a retro console of that era, it's really designed to be plugged into that type of display, you know, so that kind of seways into my next question. When you try and plug these consoles made for these displays that have 15kHz 240p and you try and plug them into LCDs, obviously you get a different result. What are really the high level main advantages of a CRT, you know, if you were going to get one today, you have to go out of your way to get one, what are the main advantages of a CRT over any LCD technology that you've had historically and even today? Right, so obviously there was motion clarity, that's always going to be one, but lag is the big one, that any modern display is going to have some lag. You're going to have to have an upscaler of some sort, you can use external upscalers, but your lag and motion clarity, those are two big ones. And I guess as well that within a certain degree, it's a bit maybe cheaper, not on space or real estate, but it's cheaper to pick up a CRT than it can be to go to all the trouble of like what you need to do to get it working on a modern display, right? If you're driven purely by nostalgia and being original, you'd be happy with just a crappy CRT like most people had, and with composite, or even RF, and some of the CRT enthusiasts, they draw the line, they're online, that's why they're happy with that, because that's what they had as children. A lot of us then go crazy, go RGB, go with the best thing, modify the consoles to get an experience that is unrealistic, that none of us had back then. Yes, but it's nice to have it because
we can have it, everyone wants it because you can, that sort of thing. Cool, all right. Well, getting a bit more into your passion and your work specifically, was there a particular moment or experience you had where it kind of sparked your passion again for CRTs? Because obviously there was a time where CRTs were all that we had and that's whatever, we all move on, jump to different technologies, jump to whatever's current, go from this to I'll have a plasma and I'll have an LCD and whatever you have today. Was there a moment later on where CRTs were already a thing of the past, right? But you obviously must have something triggered at some point in time. Yeah,
and the story is almost the same for everybody. You get one of your retro consoles, you plug it in on an LCD or I had a plasma at the time, it looks horrible and you try and figure out why and then it leads you to a CRT. So my story is at the time it was a summer night and my ex at the time gets a call from my mother and says, "I have this box of old Sh#t shit. I'm getting rid of it. " And turns out it
was Japanese consoles because her brother-in-law was in the 90s bringing back consoles straight from Japan. And so she grew up, not with Nintendo, she grew up with a turbo duo. That's what her family had in New Zealand and then in Australia. And so I jumped on it and said, "No, that doesn't belong in the bin. We need to rescue that for one reason or another. " So I'm ending up with a collection of games and a PC Engine turbo duo, the blue one, the purple one, and Japanese Saturn.
this in plasma and it looks horrible. Like RCA. Yeah, completely horrible. And that summer night, I saw hard rubbish downstairs. Did you think at the time you're like, "Oh, the graphics must have been really bad. Way worse than I remember, but something's not quite right here. " I'm
ready enough to know that it was... Something's not right. I knew that it was something about composite. I kind of knew that it was... And I instantly thought about CRTs. But what was cool is that it was a summer night with hard rubbish of third floor apartment without lifts.
And I had seen a CRT downstairs. So for those that don't live in Melbourne or maybe in Australia in generally, hard rubbish means that people leave stuff they don't want out on the street, right? Because it doesn't happen all over the world. And Council comes soon and picks it up. Yeah, right. It's perfectly legal. But in certain councils, it happens during a strict, defined period of time
being a week. So you imagine the streets are littered with furniture and electronics. And so I saw that thing and I connected the dots. Old console, composite cable, shit quality on the LCD, CRT downstairs, hold my beer. I've been bringing back a Sanyo 29 inch through the stairs and it looked a million times better than the... Straight after that. They're like, "Alright,
we're onto something. " And then I've got a Sony and then I've got a Sony, a Wagos from the tube and a component, all the journey, the RGB, rabbit hole. But it started like that. So do you remember the first CRT or arcade cabinet that really made an impression on you? Right. Well, so there's this two... I remember seeing Asterix. That was not the first. So that's later. And that's why I got this PCB here. Asterix was just such a slap in the face in a good way. We're like, "What is this? It looks better than... " Whatever you plan on. The gap between what you had at home,
the video games at home and the video games at the arcade felt like a decade. And so for me, it was... I would have been eight years old. We were on a trip in France and I can't forget the town, but it was a carnival. So we're all dressed up with clown costumes and stuff like that. A bit
like Venice Carnival. And after the fact, we went to a pub and they had one outrun cabinet. And I remember even the adults, my dad and his friends, they were like, they didn't care about technology and video games. They were like, "That's pretty cool. " The music. And also in Europe, I'm assuming that's the same thing in Ireland, but in Australia as well, we didn't have a lot of dedicated cabinets. What we had is importers that would get the guts, the PCBs, and they would build a cabinet for cheap locally rather than get a sega made fully assembled. But in America,
they had dedicated cabinets that looked amazing. Every cabinet has a different shape, different artwork, and it just appeals. It's just cool. There's some really cool shapes in the 80s and 90s that they were doing. And with the artwork, you can really bring something visually stunning before you even know what the game is. It's kind of designed in that era where you have cab after cab after game after whatever next to each other and they all compete. So you're like, "I want to be in that one with the big red car and I get to drive. " And that's where you are. So
maybe that's why it made such an impact. It's first obviously, OutRun, the music, the controls. It was probably not the first driving game that I had seen, but with these high frame rate graphics and the visually stunning, but also the fact that it was all dedicated probably with the side art, the out on side art. I was eight years old. I remember everything. So I think that's why it made such an impression. It was a dedicated end in the magic of OutRun. Yes, and of course Sega. When did you start working on hardware modifications? And what was the first big project that you actually think you tackled? I would say the first project that I finished, because I have ambitions to think about an interest for as long as I can remember. I never really did anything. It would be there, just like open a broken thing and then go, "Ah, it's broken. I can't fix
it. " That interest was always there, but to have the means to actually do something with it and to see it through and to finish product, as we know, starting things is easy, but finishing is hard. The first big, big thing is the Super Hang-On cabinet that's off camera here. I spent a year renovating it. But before that, you were doing some mods. You do mods and things like that. You
were budging things together and making things work better. You've got cabs here that are not straight, brand new. So you would have worked on those as well. In retro gaming? And so when did you start working on projects like that? So it started, okay, so back to that story with that Saturn and the PC Engine. Before I was able to plug it in CRT. I think I know where you're going. I plugged shamelessly into the power. Yeah, into 240 volts. The Japanese, yeah. The Saturn, right?
Smoking. I can see it's a Verista and a fuse. I ordered the parts. The parts come three weeks later. They're on the side and then one day my ex is saying, "Where are you going to fix my console that you broke?" And that was the night, the hot summer night where I got the CRT. Right. So you broke it first. I broke it first. I was like, "We got power. We can go. " Yeah, okay. Yeah,
you're looking at everything. You started... At that time the YouTube game was different, but My Life in Gaming was just starting and it was so exciting. Those first few years watching Retro RGB and My Life in Gaming, you learn so much in every video that you watch. And then I did some modding of SNES consoles, switching, installing the switches. Yeah, for 50, 60 Hertz type stuff. I did the Mega Drive as well. Then what I proceeded is getting all the consoles that I remembered, at least one or two, and fixing up some repairing. So I'm going through all the consoles and then
after that, a few years after that, I started looking at arcades. Once you have what you're happy with console-wise and consumer CRT-wise and looking at the cabs. All the cabs that I have have some kind of modification or repair work. So just shifting gears a little bit into more about,
you know, Loewe CRTs specifically. What do you think makes them different to the other premium European brands like Bang & Olsen, Grundig's or even the more well-known brands like Sony and that sort of thing? Right. Well, Sony completely different. Yeah. Sony, that's, I love and hate Sony because they used to be really the big brand of the 90s and they were so innovative and innovative. Sorry. And they were so innovative back then. But as far as CRTs, I think it really depends on countries. Yes. And also models, but also the kind of era. I feel personally that in the 90s, especially in Australia and Asia, the Asian market, the quality has gone down a lot. For Sony's you're talking about more so. If you go in the 80s, the West Germany, the Japanese
Sony's were really good quality. I personally feel they were over engineered and I'll segway back into Loewe. Convergence on Sony's is tackled by so many circuitry and so many different settings. Whereas convergence on Loewe is set at a factory with magnets inside like a plastic tube where you don't have the rings that you have traditionally with all the other tubes. It's not the most accurate, best convergence, BVM type convergence, but it's good enough. And guess what? 20 years later, it's still as good as day one. Whereas all the high-end Sony's I'm seeing from the same era,
you have to readjust. Consumer grades. Consumer grades. Yeah, static convergence has moved somehow. A lot of stuff needs to be readjusted. Why? So I think Sony is a bit over engineered. If you look at the equivalent of a VGA Loewe like this one, the one that's in there, the one that I'm making the cards for. If you look at the Sony equivalent, it has twice the electronics
inside and they age much poorer than the Loewe do. The chassis on the Loewe is just a L-shaped chassis and it's a lot less electronics than in a Sony. So Sony, yes, what to say? Loewe's are those Phillips tubes. Those Phillips tubes are amazing. Like I said, it's a molded yoke where you have the conversions and the purity all set at the factory. They have a high TV line count for consumers. So to me, they make those TVs flirt with presentation monitor grades. When we talk about professional
monitors, we got to make the distinction between something that I was meant to be displayed in a museum for a lot of people to enjoy on a TV set. The big Sony TVs, those QPVMs for instance, that's a presentation monitor. That was not meant to be grading Star Wars. That was meant to be displayed somewhere with bright lights and for people to see content in a very pleasing and flattering way to the content. And then you have the broadcast monitors, usually the metal cases, the smaller ones that were in dark studios and were meant to be very accurate. Not necessarily pleasing to see, but accurate. So the Loewe's I feel are close to the consumer grade. Sorry, to
the presentation monitor grade. So them different from the other premium brands? Not too much, because Grundig uses the same tubes. Even Bang & Loaf's and Olaf's and to some extent, they were plentiful, especially in Melbourne, Victoria. There were some, the main importers for Australia were here in Melbourne. There were high-fi shops. I forgot the names. I wasn't here back then. My friends talked to me all the time about it. I think in Richmond. So it was a luxury brand. Just
like you buy high-fi equipment. You don't go to buy a Macintosh. Pioneer, big brands. No, no, no. I'm talking about high-fi. These brands are still in the retail stores. I'm talking about the brands that you don't see. The audio file equipment. Audio file equipment. Audio file grade stuff is not being sold at Meyers or JB and high-fi. So that was that channel. Because of that, we have a lot of them here in Victoria. So they're plentiful. That's one thing. So I was able to see
a lot of different models throughout the years. I came in a little bit after, when I started in the game, there was this blog, Scart Hunter, for it in one of my old videos. I remember it as well, yeah. And so he did it in 2016, 17, 18. There was no competition. Nobody was looking for these TVs. And I went through all of them. And I kind of came in when he started stopping a few years after that, 2017, 18, 19. So the tune... That's when you first came across the Loewe TVs, like at that point. Because he highlighted certain models and certain technology within. And he's called out
those specific ones. Because at that point, people were tweaking onto RGB and SCART and those sorts of things as well. And then you kind of put two and two together and said, well, you know, that specific brand, we're in Melbourne, we're starting to see more of them pop up and that sort of thing. So the first thing to mention, I guess, based on what you just said with RGB, is that even though Australia, we're in PAL land, we don't have SCART. So we got the worst of both worlds. No SCART and PAL. So to have a TV that is guaranteed to give you SCART already is a plus. So that would be
the first appeal back then, the first interest. Those TVs being straight in post from Japan would literally, quite literally, in most cases, a plug, not the cord, they're not replacing the cord, they would cut the cord and fit it with a clip cell, which is a local electric supply brand plug. So they'll keep the German cord and just fit an Australian plug onto it. So how did you first come across the Loewe TVs? I think you mentioned you saw Scart Hunters, you know, site and that sort of thing. But how did you first come across them and actually experimenting with them? Right. Well, it was a friend of mine that found one on Hard Rubbish and it had a few faults, including a chipped tube. All right. We brought it up the same apartment, third floor,
no. It was hard being a CRT enthusiast back then. It was a show of dedication because you certainly felt CRT. And when you... You felt the dedication in your joints and in your sore muscles. And the price of it when you brought them up and then you turned it on and it's like, "Oh, that's no good. " Back and back it goes on the Hard Rubbish. That wasn't fun. Anyway,
so we brought it up and we put it side by side with Neo Geo, a Neo Geo AES next to my Sony flat screen Wega Asian market. Really nothing special, to be honest. I think these are very overrated here in Australia. I was just amazed. And the blacks, everything, everything, when I was like, "Oh, I don't want this Wega anymore. " It took me a very long time to find the equivalent model
in a good one because that Loewe had different issues with geometry and stuff. Yeah, that's how I saw it. It was Loewe first night. Yeah. And you started experimenting with them at that point when they weren't working quite as well. You got them working at that point? You started messing around? No, not that game. You hadn't got to that stage? No. Yeah. Then with the loewes,
you have the 68 centimeters which have the almost flat. Just remind me, 68 centimeter equivalent in inches. Rest of the world, 29. 29 inches. America, 27. Okay. So Japan, Europe, Australia, we call it 68. 29. 29? Yes. And America, they call that 27. Yeah. And America, they call it viewable size. Yes. And the rest of the world measures tube size. Yes. Including the... The bit you can't see
or whatever. Yeah. Okay. I was wondering what that... And so with a lot of loewes, and I don't have any of the tubes here, I love the German stuff in those Phillips tubes, those high-grade Phillips tubes. You have the EAK series, which is more bulbous, and 68, so they call that a 28 inch. 66, sorry, 66 centimeters. And it's not quite as sharp as these tubes at the 68, the ESF. So I first experiment, my first look at the fully working one, that was a 66 centimeter, which is very good and more arcadey feel, but a little bit softer image. And then you have the ESF, which I know you have one as well in your Calide, E3000 chassis. Yeah. Cut the B-roll maybe of some
of that. Okay, carry on. And that is a razor sharp image, for a 29 inch consumer. And it was a Scart Hunter that specifically called out that model, and I went on a mission to find exactly that model, because he said that this spec, this model is the one to get. And there are other similar, obviously similar models and what have you. Well, that's an interesting point about Loewe is that Loewe, they have... It's completely different from other electronics brand when it comes to the CRTs, because they have the Planus, the Arcada, the Calide and so on and so forth, right? Profil. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, to the profile, whatever, right? And all of this is based on the case, right? But
it turns out that these cases can have basically any, almost any of the chassis that they've done. Yeah. So in your case, you have Calide 5072. Yes. 72 being... 72, 72. 72 centimeters, which is really the 68 centimeters. Two sizes, super confusing. And it's an E3000 chassis, right? Yes. Well, you could basically have... E3000 black line, I think it was referred to? Yeah, black line is the ESF. Yeah, exactly. Black line is marketing stuff. Yes, yes. But what I'm trying to say is you can have a Planus with a completely different model number that inside has exactly the same guts as yours, except for the speakers, right? So I have a Planus E3000, well, this one actually, this one over there, that's the same guts, 100% as yours? 98, I guess. The speakers are the only
difference. Yeah. Because it's a different case, it doesn't fit the same speakers. My speakers are in the bottom as well, anyway. Well, actually, the speakers that are in yours, I have them as well, but this has more speakers. Oh, right. Okay. So this is the three way... What is the side story as well? This is... That's kind of funny. E3000s were the cheapest Loewes, the non-hundred hertz, because 100 hertz technology was what they wanted to rely on. Yeah, that was the new... It was very expensive. The new generation essentially was this 100... So the non-hundred hertz Planus like this
one had a two-way speaker system, and if you get a 100 hertz Planus, there was an extra tweeter. So obviously what I did is I modified the case and I stole some speakers from 100 hertz, so this is a three-way, non-hundred hertz Planus. But we will forget, because nowadays, every retro gaming enthusiast is looking for those non-hundred hertz TVs, but if you look at the catalogs, these were the first prize. Those were... I don't want to say discount, but those were the entry, entry, entry level Loewes, so they didn't have the nice speaker sets or the inputs, outputs, option cards, and all of that. So, look, I know you have a lot of experience with CRTs, and included in that is you've picked up and worked on and used quite a lot of PVMs even, Sony PVMs, even other professional grade monitors like... I know we've spoken about JVCs and some other ones,
but I know that you still regard and prefer Loewe consumer grade, the Loewe models that we've been speaking about so far, you regard them more and you prefer them compared to a PVM. So why is that? Right. Well, it was entirely subjective, right? And after speaking to a lot of different CRT enthusiasts and kind of debating in a friendly way and trying to understand bridging the gap and not agreeing on why I'm not that impressed with a BVM, for instance, and they are, right? 20L5, I have no love for 20L5, I had one and I never liked it. And after really looking into it, I realized why. It was because for me, what pleases me in a picture is vibrant, vibrant colors. I like
TV lines like everybody, but doesn't have to be super, super, super razor sharp, but I want deep blacks. That's why I splurged for an OLED as my main TV. And those broadcast monitors, and again, not the presentation monitors, the ones that are meant to be in a studio. Typically PVM's, BVM's, not the prosumer ones, but the 20L5's and the similar BVM's. These monitors were great. The analogy that I like to use is in the audio file world, you have studio monitors that engineer music producers use to grade music, to tune music, so it's absolutely accurate. So they want... One
that is as flat or as accurate as they possibly can. They don't want all the bass boost and all the stuff that maybe we like to hear, listen to our music. They just need to grade it. Yeah. And it's a tool. It's a grading tool. I see a 20L5 or even a BVM. I see them as grading tools. Whereas
if you go to some studios, they have two sets of speakers. So they have your, I think they Yamaha NS10's or those black speakers of this proportion with a big white woofer. They use that to grade. And then what do they do? They put on the big ass woofers and then to get like big bass when somebody comes in and "Hey, listen to the last song that we just mastered. " You're not listening on those small studio monitors. You're listening to the big, boom, pleasing thing. So for me, it's the same thing. A presentation monitor or a high grade consumer is meant to be enjoyed. It's not
going to be accurate. It's not going to have great geometry. It's not going to have great linearity, but it's going to be pleasing to the eye. You're kind of trading that. And I would say as well that typically a lot of PVMs, as an example, you're looking at a 14 inch or below or 20 inches at most usually. Whereas these guys, you're up there, you're heading towards 30 inches. It was designed for a living room, which is often where you want to, if you don't have them in Arcade cabs, you're sitting on a couch. You're sitting this far away. Isn't it? I'm not sure, D32 money. Yeah, well, you've got the high end BVM stuff, which is its own thing. But typically, when all's said and
done, you have a lot of PVMs that are smaller anyway. And if you have the bright lights in a room, you're looking at that. It does look a little washed out more often than not, even if it's not an aged tube, it doesn't look a little bit washed out. These are designed for a living room, everyday living room. But some people are looking for that. So first of all, some people don't have room for a big CRT, I think. I know people that 14, 20 is their limit. Absolutely, right? So they like the smaller one. And if you're up close, if it's on a desktop,
it's clearly going to have its benefits. Yeah, it's like, that's a very good point. It's like an OLED TV. The view distance defines also the size that you need, right? So a common friend of ours, Marco Retro, that has a great YouTube channel and a series about downscaling, he loves BVMs. And through discussion, we figured out why he really doesn't care about deep blacks. A washed out black doesn't alter his ability to enjoy the picture. But he is very pedantic about linearity. If it has bad linearity, for those who don't know what it is, bad linearity will give you with a scrolling picture, will give you the- A little bit of a wavy looking thing, yeah. He hates that. So it's really
more about, he enjoys more picture than, well, really good geometry. His first famous video was about spending hours and hours, all his experience on rebuilding and calibrating a BVM D20, or maybe not the multi format, but a 20 inch BVM. So that's where his passion lays as far as picture quality. For me, it's the big, bright, vibrant, not necessarily accurate. So really, it's subjective, depends what you like. And there's room for everybody. And BVM's, they serve the purpose, but it's not the end all be all. It depends what you're looking for in the picture. I think as
well, something to be said for you, you're not going to be sticking a 20 inch PVM into a Lockheed cab either, which you have done it. People have done it. Yeah, okay. Maybe, yeah. 14 inches, that's a bit better. But not these guys, but anyway. No, no, no, not the community, that's for sure, yeah. Yeah, cool. All right, well look, moving on to some of the projects that you've had in the past, you're probably more well known for somewhat preserving certain types of Loewe TVs, because you actually, about two years ago, you put out a clone card that had certain features. Typically, if I'm even shopping around or looking for a CRT, I'd always be like, "Okay, 100 Hertz. " As soon as I see that, I move on, kind of keeping an eye out for scart plugs and stuff, but 100 Hertz, especially with the Loewes, you see a Z straight away, you just move on from it, right? Because it doesn't process 240p, if that's your goal, is to put in these consoles and have a CRT to have that era of consoles plugged in, it just misses the mark, as far as that's concerned. But
when did you realize that those Loewe 100 Hertz TVs, a bit different to maybe some other 100 Hertz brands or TVs that were out there? Right. Well, as when I saw on a random, I think that's how I knew about it, or maybe I read some articles, but I remember seeing on Facebook Marketplace a Loewe with a VGA, not slot, but a VGA port. I was like, "What? This is cool. " And then, you know, your nerd imagination- senses. senses were tingling. Could it potentially bypass all the nastiness of the Z of the 100 Hertz? You know, like, what would that will allow us to do? Surely that's different from scart. Really, I'm curious, I want to see. And so I got that TV, it was a Q23, with a VGA card, it died shortly after, I kept the card away, tucked away. But then I remember
putting a Dreamcast and saying, "Wow, that's amazing. Wow, that's really good. " So it was, the trigger was knowing that there was a VGA card, even though you rarely, rarely saw it. Right? All right, so, you know, you kind of got this sniff of a product or solution out there because Loewe had the possibility of having this VGA card, usually, or almost exclusively would have been in, I imagine, 100 Hertz model as well. So when, you know, that led eventually to you developing an actual clone board to enable 480p inside 100 Hertz television. When did that project start and what was the process like? Right. So the motivation was like, okay, this card exists. And then I saw back
then, things have changed now, but back then we're talking, I don't know, maybe 2018, that all the Z, you know, the 100 Hertz Loewe were being neglected to a point that people wouldn't even pick them up for free. No. And it would sit on country or, you know, local classifieds, marketplace, whatever, for weeks and nobody would pick them up. Not only that, I remember some people selling them saying that they're great for retro gaming and you know, there was plenty of people like ourselves are going, "Guy, this isn't good. You should not tell people it's good for retro gaming. " Because you saw one Loewe sell for a lot. Yeah. That doesn't mean... Yeah, they're trying to get their money for it. But anyway. Yeah. And so then I connected the dots with the fact that, okay, there is a card that was created that transforms this useless CRT into a 31K 480p powerhouse, right, that any retro gamer would want. But I'm like, the reality is there's only, and this is just ballpark,
but for every 10 of those TVs that can support this card, there's maybe one card out there. Because the process is kind of interesting. We're back to those high-fi, audio file, specialized stores. You would walk in and say, "I want to love a CRT. Cool. All right. You want a widescreen?
You want this one?" What color do you want or something? Yeah. Can you afford 100 hertz? Yeah, sure. Okay. 100 hertz. Do you have a PC? No. Move on. That card will never have a VGA port. If you, David, say, "Yeah, I have a PC. Would you be interested at some point to plug in your PC and
your TV?" Yeah, why not? All right. I can offer you a fitment of a card, and I have some old price sheet. It will be $200, $300 at the time. We can get that card fitted, and up you have a VGA input on your TV. So that was the only workflow to lead for those Loewes to have... So it's a subset of a
subset of a subset. Right. It's only to display. And we're talking 96, 97. Who wanted to put their PCs on? And we're talking about Melbourne, too. It's not like it's the home of Loewe TVs, where everyone potentially is buying one, right, at the same time back in Europe or whatever the case is. So then, because the numbers were so low, and I saw all these beautiful ESF tubes, these beautiful cases, just beautiful TVs, not realizing the full potential being useless as they were, being thrown out and thrown out and thrown out. It's like a lot of waste. If we made a card, a reproduction card, we could save all these TVs and have really good TVs for every different gaming enthusiast. So shortly after that, I realized that the schematics for this card were online. But it was
still years till I managed to get it done, because Loewe basically put some misinformation out there as to how it was compatible, how it worked. So getting it to a point where I have a fully reliable plug and play kit that people can buy and have zero issues, it took a few years of testing, acquiring different TVs, testing, swapping things around. But the schematics are there. Yeah. So you got it together and you got it working. And it was two years ago that you've had that going. So just to remind me again, what TV and chassis do you need to look out for at the moment for this particular original board? Because yes, you have maybe a Z series. Yes, it says you know, you know, it's 100 Hertz. It's a possibility, for example, that you might be able to plug this particular
card in there. Was there a specific indicator on the backs of those TVs or whatever that tells you that it will work with the board that you have? Yeah. So the card is compatible with Q24 and Q25 or in other words, Q2400 and Q2500 depends on where you look. Sometimes it's referred to as the one letter and two digits and sometimes it's got two extra digits. Yes. Q25 has got 22550 as well, which is similar. But I've noticed as well that it isn't just say like in big bold writing,
this is your Q25. It's tiny and it's also like numbers and letters before and after that sort of thing. So I'll have to show on the CH type 110 dot or something. Yeah, it doesn't jump out at you exactly. You kind of have to know what you're looking for a little bit. On my eBay store, I have photos that show, but I encourage people to contact me to make sure to have zero doubt. Please send me a picture and I'll tell you, yeah, Loewe on the Q24 had all the options on all the Q24s. What they did for I believe cost savings on the Q25 is on a cheap Q25, they removed some options and some chips and they compartmented the three types of Q25 chassis, which at the core is the same. But when it comes to especially the signal processing and the options and the audio inputs
and all of that, they cut them up in three. B for basic M for medium and H for high. So if you go with the 32 inch flat tube wide screen, Aconda, that was one of the most expensive and you have more than 32 inch. There's one that is a 38 inch. That's the biggest Loewe ever made, I think those were the Q25 H and they were compatible with DVB T and, you know, satellite cards and all sorts of stuff. The four by three TVs, which again, now I'm more desirable, they were the lower end. So these kind of on its way out, we were moving onto wide screen. Right. Yeah. So those were Q25B. Now in the official Loewe documentation about the VGA card, it says that the VGA card is compatible with Q25B and this was a massive, massive red herring for me. I wasted,
I can't count the hours, I wasted months on this because I had the manual that said compatible with Q25B and Q25B now I know is not only missing the internal connector, but it's missing circuitry. It's on the signal board as well. So you cannot plug in a VGA card on the Q25B. Original or clone or otherwise it just won't work. No, no. So there's three kinds. So the basic one, no, but the other two, you're okay. It was a medium and M and H no problem. And then so that's the Q25 and the Q24 is all of them at that point. Yeah. So it's been out for two years and I've actually took a peek at some of your feedback as well that you've received and, you know, it's all, you know, very interesting and positive like that I've seen on there, you know, people thanking you and people from kind of all over the place, you know, random places in Europe and Australia. You know,
what have you found? What has the feedback been like and can you kind of talk to, you know, you've had to make these boards bespoke yourself, get them produced yourself, you know, failure rate, you know, have you had any, you know, bad stories to tell like, what has it been like? Yeah. So first of all, you're right. I've been blessed. I'm so happy to see this feedback is really, really, really gratifying to see that people are happy. There's a lot of passion and nostalgia behind it,
right? So you're not selling tomatoes, you know, you're selling very specific things that people are wanting. I've been blessed by great feedback and also reliability. So the challenge, like I said, the card itself, the schematics are there. I'm not an electronics engineer. I didn't design this card. This was the schematics are available. If you don't want to buy a card from me, you can just build one yourself. There's no problem. Solder a couple of wires, you'll get VGA. If you want to DIY it, there's no problem. What I provide is a plug and play
kit with support. If you don't want to start looking into this and doing something hacky, you have an option. But really what I provided is getting the right cables. That was actually hard in designing the card. Cost wise and complexity wise is getting the right internal cable.
That was the biggest hurdle. was the biggest challenge to get the card going is to get it into the form of a kit that can be manufactured with modern technologies and that is reliable. As far as reliability, it's a very simple circuit. I get the cables made professionally. I started soldering it myself and I quickly realized it wasn't scalable and you can easily make a manual mistake with one of the pins. Because I sell them all across the globe, especially in Europe, I don't want to have to troubleshoot that of having to re-send and people have a bad experience because of badly crimped cable. I got them made professionally. So far, zero returns,
zero issues that were related to the card itself. People had a couple of issues installing or that were due to the TVs but no return touch wood. That's pretty cool. Obviously, you're always keeping an eye on the secondhand marketplaces and things like that for these. Have you noticed as the word kind of gotten out there in the past two years that now even the Z's which were once very maligned, you'd be like, "I wouldn't even touch a Z or look at a Z. Swipe over. Show me something proper. " Are they more desirable now? Are they selling for more because they are more desirable because you can resurrect them as a 480p CRT effectively? Yeah, yeah. Well,
I think there's a couple of factors. The VGA card most likely had an impact on that. People know and I know some people in local groups and some friends that are looking for a card for a TV that I can fit a card to. It was no longer than yesterday. There was a guy looking for one on one of the local groups. Look, the world has changed when it comes to CRT in general but of course with CRT. So people are grabbing pretty much everything now and everything now is compatible even to some
extent the Z's that are not VGA compatible. If there's one for 50 bucks, people are going to grab that. Well, there's a difference between 50 and immediately $300 for a TV. But I have a story where just before I released the card and I had a few myself and I was modifying them myself because I wanted to do it locally first before sending the card. I wanted to be able to get a set, fit one of my cards in, do some testing for a few days, make sure that everything is good, do local transport, see that nothing fails in transport, see how reliable it was. And so I sold a couple first like that. And they were mostly 4x3 which those sold already then pretty well. But then one day
I had a 32 inch Planus curved screen. I fit a VGA card. I tried to sell it for 200 AUD which is 100 something euros, 100 something USD. And it sat there with zero interest for weeks and weeks and weeks. In the end I had to take off the card and sell it for $15 or something. Because anyone would have seen at that stage is again, it's a Z series, move on. They didn't even register in their heads that there wasn't even an option to make it. Well I mentioned it and I showcased it with beautiful
video clips. But I think the stigma was there. I don't know how much of them. And now people are paying that without the card and then buying the card from me. So it's definitely true that two years has made a lot of difference. The word has definitely gone out there. Great. So we're talking about, you know, the CRTs. They're 480p. Typically, people want to a 480p for a specific reason. So you're preserving and resurrecting these TVs to give them a new lease of life as a
480p TV. What was the typical primary use case that you had for those TVs to begin with? The 480p? Yeah, the 480p. You got a card in there now. You now have a TV that's no longer kind of this 100 hertz garbage. And it's now usable 480p. What was the main kind of use case? For me, Dreamcast. Because Dreamcast also has a tie-in with arcade, you know, in the indie games. Yes. So many really good arcade, you know, accurate, you know, even 2D fighters and Capcom ones. Dreamcast is cheap.
And you put in a GDMU in there, just off your go with the card. Yeah. And the picture is just, you know, so good on a 480p option, you know, on a screen, you know, it's so good. So that's for me. A lot of my customers, I have a widescreen TV, you notice, the Aconda and Articos and those wider ones, those larger ones with widescreens. I usually, you don't have, Loewe has one model
that's super cute with a Q25B and I managed to modify that by harvesting an H card, but I call it the Baby Loewe and it's a 22-inch widescreen. Widescreen, yeah. So like a PC monitor. Yeah. It's ridiculous. It's awesome. So that's cool. So we have the Dreamcast, but obviously there's a lot of sort of that 480p consoles of that era. You have GameCube's, you even have Wiis to a certain extent
as well, the Dreamcast and maybe some others I can't think of off top my head. Straight up 480p content into the TV, maybe even like some PCs and stuff like that, you know, computers. Again, it depends if you have a widescreen or a 4x3. Yes, 4x3. The widescreen loewe, unfortunately, the implementation of VGA on these chassis is good and very good in some regards. You have a VGA geometry menu that's really practical. It essentially transforms into a monitor, you know, PC monitors, the CRT monitors of the day. You had all these geometry settings right on the front,
right? So it's the same thing that it does because it was meant for PCs. What is not so elegant is there's no widescreen 4x3 mode. So if you have a widescreen CRT and you input a 4x3 resolution, you will see artifacts on the side and you'll kind of have to resize it manually. So to make sure that you have a 4x3 image, you'll have to either measure or wing it. So it's not super
elegant like that. So really, whether you have a 4x3 Loewe or widescreen Loewe is really going to define what your use cases are going to be. If you have widescreen loewe, Xbox 360, 848x480, wonderful resolution. Daytona USA on this. Yeah, so good. So then you have some out of the box use cases as well. I think I was talking to you before we got recording as well. So it's not that big a
step to get your 240p signal or content and line double it. So you effectively, and then you might have like, if you still want scan lines and that, you can still apply the scan line. But there's a lot of devices that lined up like that, like your GBS-C and some maybe a retro things or 2x's, Tinks like that. But it's not that hard. You won't get virtually any lag, but you also then have a whole slew of 240p level signals and consoles that you can still use on a CRT TV. So there's a bit more
or a broader use case there as well. And if you were someone like our friend Marco, he would get everything that's more modern potentially and then downscale it down to that. So it's kind of like a good middle ground without being a multi-format model. There today, there's a lot of ways of getting the most out of it. If you only want one CRT and you had one of these, you could
get a lot of use case out of it. So just last but not least, I guess, if this is news to someone and they actually have found a Z series 100Hz Loewe, how do they get a hold of one of these cards? Oh, just there's an eBay store. And if you type "Loewe VGA" on Google, you'll see my video or the retro RGB post that has... What I'll do is just for anyone watching this video, I'll put a link in the description directly to the eBay page, if you like, as well. And you'll find it, obviously,
if you search in other places as well, because two years ago, you've released a few... There was a fun video on it. Yeah, and there's not a lot of stuff around "Loewe VGA" anyway. So if you type "Loewe VGA" in any search engine, it'll probably lead you through it or even through eBay. Yeah, because what happened since day one that I sold it is that some eBay listing expired, because I ran out of cards, the quantity got hit zero, even though I had more. And so I had to relist it, and so it becomes a new listing, and so the old listing ring doesn't work. So the SEO maybe dies
off or something like that. Anyway, it just makes me... You have to start from scratch. What that means is that the eBay link on YouTube or on RetroRGBs article, then it doesn't work anymore. It dies, yeah. But if you just go on eBay and type "Loewe VGA", you'll find it on there. Now, this original card that we've been talking about so far, we've mentioned that it only works on the, well, quite a lot of 100-Hz TVs, but the Q24 and the Q25s. There are older series TVs, the Q23, is that essentially where it lands as far as the 100-hertz TVs are concerned? So up until now, certainly that card is not going to work for those at this stage. And, you know, part of the reason we're even getting together today is that you've been working busy behind the scenes to develop another card, right? Yeah, for the Q23. So effectively, it's now official. You've finished developing this particular card and you are, you know,
essentially ready to be able to sell these cards to users with a Q23, almost, yes. So can you show us? Can you show us this card? Sure, yeah. Can show you a couple of things. I want to kind of maybe talk about the difference. Yeah, what's different about this version? You know, can you show us like a bit of old, a bit of new, and, you know, how you got to this? So as you said, Q23 is older. There are other 100-hertz chassis on Loewe, many of them Q21, Q22, Q44, Q41, Q41 for these heaps. The only other chassis that I'm aware of has an official VGA card for,
even though it's not really documented. It's more because I found it, like you were asking earlier, I actually found a Q23 TV years ago with a VGA card is the Q23. So I focused on that, but there's unfortunately still 100-hertz TVs out there, a chassis that don't support VGA. So yeah, it's an older chassis, like you said, and as far as picture quality, it's going to be identical as the Q24. As far as functionality, there's a little bit of differences, which I'll get into. But from an implementation perspective, it's quite a bit different. Now, this, I'll start with this. This is the Q24 reproduction card, and while it's a bit different to the original card,
it's very similar in the way it fits. So you have a plastic IO board where you have your SCART connectors and so on and so forth. You have a little cutout of a VGA, which you will snip with flush cutters, and then you slide in the plastic tray. You slide your card, and then you have one connector that goes to the signal board. That's the installation. Of course,
you have to turn it on in the service menu, but it's very simple, right? So it's a very sturdy implementation from a physical perspective because you are plugging and straight in to the card, and then you have one connector to the signal board. Now, I want to show, this is the 100% original Loewe VGA card. It also has some kind of infrared display I forgot, or it could be rotation module. Anyway, it's something that is not used for us. So I didn't replicate that part of the circuitry. The top part here, there's a line in between. What I replicated is this bit. You have this square card with connectors on both sides, and this is where, I don't know what Loewe was thinking, but it really looks like an afterthought. So the card was mounted on this plastic bracket, and that was mounted on the neck. Essentially, the card is sitting in the middle of the TV,
right under the neck, and has a connector on one side. This is all original. Again, this is all from factory Loewe. So you'd have that connector, that red connector sits, or it was this side, but similar. And then you have this proprietary, I want to say, proprietary VGA cable,
VGA connector that has threads into it, and that can mount. Now, normal VGA connectors can't mount the same way. And you also have this kind of strain relief, and see how it's bent here? Yeah, it's like a proprietary bend in the cable. Yeah, and basically, there's no clearance in the TV itself. You have a signal board here, so you can't... I don't know why they put it there,
why they had a circuit behind that when there was room elsewhere to put it. And so on the IO board, you don't have a slot for the card, just like we do with this one. And then you have audio, and you have this cable also, that doesn't go in the card, that screws with a mounting screw into a little hole on the IO plate, and then you have to connect this to a connector on the signal board. And then obviously, you have the cable that goes from the card to the signal board. So that complicates everything. So that's three cables coming off the one set of cards, cards effectively
going to all different parts of the TV. That's the original design. And yeah, and so there, you know, starts with the thing hanging in somewhere in the middle of your TV, and then going off in different directions to the rear of the TV, and then to different signal boards inside of each other as well. Yeah, it's not elegant at all. For lack of a better word. So replicating this, I've took two liberties. One is to design a card so it fits in the IO plate. So this plastic
plate that every Loewe has. There's a slot for a satellite card. And I made the executive decision that I don't think anybody will still use would need both the satellite card and the VGA card. If you are a potential customer and you want your satellite card, please be aware you're going to have to make a choice. Because then I can have the same kind of mounting that I did with this card is it slots. And it makes for less runs of cables as well. That was my thought process on this. Not that this is impossible to do. It's not that hard. What's the name? The neck. The tightening bracket,
metal bracket. Maybe that would have been harder. But getting a bracket like this to fit on the neck is not hard. But then I have to tell customers to remove the neckboard and it's just why? And it doesn't add anything to it. Especially if we all agree that satellite cards are not used
anymore. Right. So we can use that slot. It's much more elegant. That's the first difference. The second difference is to circumvent this fairly proprietary cable with a bend here. And these wires kind of take the bend. But if you have a proper VGA cable, a shielded one, and you try to bend it, it's just not very good for reliability. So I made this little breakout board that the single board where there's blockage stops around here. So there's clearance here for
this cable. But there's no clearance behind this particular connector. So this PCB, I'm getting them assembled professionally. Again, there's less room for anything. You can make cables manually, but there's always a bit of room for error. That's why I'm on everything done professionally. So yeah, that's the new card. It sits in the satellite slot. That's the pre-production
run. Yes. The card will be exactly the same. But what I mean by pre-production run is I've made these cables by hand. They look close to identical to... No, sorry, these two. These two, I made them for five kits that I've already sold to customers. But I'm waiting to have the professionally made cables. These were made using all the other parts. So these are harvested cables that are modified to fit the purpose. But we will have soon. I'm still waiting for the cables. Once the cables arrive, I will make probably a video demonstrating the quirks. So while I was saying that one of the
differences with the Q23 card is that it doesn't have a dedicated VGA channel. By channel, I mean AV. It does have a channel, but it's channel 196. And you need to know that. And the quirkiness about that is probably the worst bit, is that on the Q24/25, you're on VGA. It's going to give you a blue screen. And if you have no input, it's going to stay there until you put an input. On the Q23, that's the one thing that makes it a little bit inferior, I would say. It's not a deal breaker.
But you select channel 196. If there's no VGA input, it's going to display, how do you call it, snow? Which is weird because the tuner is not on, but it displays snow, I believe. And then after five to 10 seconds, it defaults to the last channel that you use. So if you turn on the TV and
you haven't turned on your console yet, you're going to have to re-enter 196. So that's the one quirk. It still has a geometry menu, although we have found so far one TV that doesn't have a geometry menu. Everything works on it, but it doesn't have a geometry menu. I'
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