What happened to Micomsoft and Framemeister?

[avrame]

Hi all,

I was looking around my old Amazon orders receipts and dug up my receipt for my Framemeister, I manage to nab one back in April for $335 from a US Seller. Decided to check Amazon to see if it has dropped in price, only to see that the shot has shot up significantly:

https://www.amazon.com/DP3913547-Framem ... 00QUBK6RK/

WTH happened? I decided to peek at eBay to see if this was an anomaly on Amazon, but saw that the pricing was consistent on eBay as well:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R4 ... 5573.m1684

Did Micomsoft go under or something? I did a quick search through JunkerHQ and the American Framemeister wiki, and came up blank.

[Gunstar Green]

I dug this up: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/259674 ... o-a-close/

In short, demand is high and production is ending. A Framemeister 2 may or may not be in the works.

[avrame]

Wow, good to know. Mine wasn't seeing too much use, so I considered selling it for now to ease the Holiday budget pains, with the intent to buy it later if I craved it again, but I'll hold onto it know that there is a valid reason for the price jump.

Maybe they are looking into developing 4K upscalers?

[Ziggy]

I'm hoping to see a successor to the Framemeister. Here's my wish list:

1) Better sync time (no delay at all would be nice).

2) Better support for profiles (ie: easier to name and sort).

3) Better "easy" boarder cropping options as well as some useful filters

4) All inputs on back of unit, no mini-DIN dongle bullshit.

[avrame]

4) All inputs on back of unit, no mini-DIN dongle bullshit.

YES. Oh god, such truth.

[stickem]

The successor is supposed to be the ossc, open sourced scaler.

[Jagosaurus]

As an update, according to Solaris' site, they're projected to ship March 28th and are on pre order.

[Ziggy]

Framemeister Supply in 2017 :: PSA - MY LIFE IN GAMING: LINK

Video by My Life in Gaming.

Lots of people are panicking about the Framemeister being discontinued, but if you know where to look, it's actually no more difficult to get one than it has ever been. Should you get one now, or go for an alternative? Be smart, and don't support price gouging.

The video explains that the main IC used by the Framemeister has gone out of production. BUT! Micomsoft has apparently purchased enough of said IC to manufacture the Framemeister for the next two years (based on previous demand).

My guess is that once word got out that the IC has gone out of production, people assumed new stock of the Framemeister would dissappear quickly. Demand went up slightly because people are thinking "I better get one now while I still can!" And eBay... Yeah, sellers take full advantage of situations like this. The rest of the sellers follow suit.

And really, there's absolutely no cause for alarm. You think that, since that IC has gone out of production, that once Micomsoft burns their inventory they'll just exit the upscaling scene? The Framemeister is famous world wide. You bet there will be a successor once the Framemeister goes out of production.

For now, you can still get the Framemeister from Solaris for the same price you always could: http://solarisjapan.com/collections/micomsoft?aff=65

[Jagosaurus]

I'm back to seriously considering this again...

My 2 current LCD sets have s video, VGA (1 set), DVI (the other set), composite, component, & HDMI. To be honest, they're passable for retro but the XRGB would definitely look better & "future proof" me as those inputs get removed over time.

Good to know they're still gping to be available.

[Ziggy]

I'm back to seriously considering this again...

If retro gaming on your current HD set works, and it looks acceptable, I would wait.

What I mean by "works" is that your TV doesn't improperly detect 240p signals as 480i, have an unacceptable amount of delay, etc. What I mean by "looks acceptable" is no artifacts, scrolling jitter, etc. But most important, that YOU'RE happy with the way it looks.

My first HDTV was a 32" 720p LCD screen with S-Video inputs. 720 is a perfect integer of 240, so my theory is that retro gaming looks better on 720 sets than 1080. Retro gaming looked awesome on this TV.

When I upgraded to a larger 1080p set, my retro consoles didn't look so good anymore. And this is despite the fact that my set proper detects 240p. I don't know if your current sets are 720 or 1080, but what I'm getting at is, they might be good enough as is. If I bought a Framemeister for ~$350 for use on my old 720 set, I probably would have been very disappointed. The only reason why I ended up with one is because retro gaming on my current 1080 set was a noticeable step down in quality from my old set.

And that being said, I get what you're saying with being "future proof" but that might be more of a reason to hold off. The Framemeister is great, but there's definitely room for improvement. I truly believe that Micomsoft will release a successor to the Framemeister. If you don't need an upscaler, I say wait.