Greg is doing the right idea because with a separate GS, the range is further for us non-mini-quad FPV'ers....

All the other HD GS box won't allow you to attach your own Goggles to it, until now

I thought Greg was lazy and all he did was collect our money....i was full blown wrong
as I sampled/wronged out that new SCOUT goggle. It will replace my all time fav HEADPLAY SE.

Originally Posted by Nathan_116

You all realize that they can't "just make it compatible" with their existing goggles? There's little to no point of playing a 720p HD video into a SD screen. If you wanna get HD video in your goggles, you're gonna need to most likely go Box goggle for an AIO setup, just because of the size of the required receiver and the screen resolution. If you wanna just plug it into your HD3s or HDOs, the receiver has to be like/tripod mounted and you're gonna introduce latency because of the HDMI encoding in the goggles..

They just came out with 2 new box goggles without hdmi in.. This obviously was meant to be released with a new set of goggles in a year or two. Maybe I'm just salty because I just got into the hobby and bought Fatshark Scouts. I think I might have waited had I known that a few weeks later they would unveil a new ground breaking product haha.

Originally Posted by RadMulRot

Many of us use 4:3 cams and goggles. If this vtx transmits only 16:9 and vrx crops the picture to 4:3, then it will likely be useless for us because too much of the picture will be cropped off

The output is selectable 4:3 or 16:9 (still records 16:9 on either output). You have 3 options:

1) Fly with a wider angle lens so that the "cropped" 4:3 portion of the display is still what you normally fly with. You still fly with HD quality while recording cinematic 16:9.
2) Use 16:9 goggles (like DominatorV3, BaseD, Glyph, etc).
3) Fly in 16:9 mode with 4:3 goggles (compressed screen).

Fat Shark

Originally Posted by Daemon

One of the biggest gripes reviewers have with the new DJI system is that it requires that
you buy their proprietary expensive goggles to use it. I much prefer a standalone
HD VRX with HDMI output that I can feed to whichever goggles I prefer, whether that's
HDO, Transformers, Headplays.. etc.
If this is really based on HDZERO tech, then it looks like different VRXs with two
and four antenna diversity are options, and interestingly the ability to plug in an
analog SD camera, and run it over the HD link. That would allow one to show BF OSD
on what is hopefully a more stable link. I am curious if there will
be any provision for telemetry or control in the digital link, or OSD on the HD
image. The only real downside I see is that the onboard DVR is a separate
board, so two layers in the stack for VTX+DVR.

For me though, the "dealbreaker" in any HD link is how gracefully it degrades.
Up till now, most have been pretty terrifying when pushed to the limits.

The onboard DVR really isn't needed unless recording for perfect cinematic flights. Because the system isn't bi-directional, the downlink is always crisp 720p without variable latency. It doesn't pixelate or lower resolution in low RF situations so the ground station recording (included) is the same quality as the onboard recording. The difference is the ground station will record exactly what you are flying with and that will include the sparkling and noise as you approach limits.

The system does gracefully degrade at a rate similar to analog but it does drop off completely when exceptionally low signal. So there is an adjustment to how you would fly compared to analog (be ready to punch up as the system has immediate signal recovery).

Fat Shark

Originally Posted by propsdeepcanada

Reading the facebook post it doesn't seem like this is a finished product. It's a knee jerk reaction to getting flak by people over the DJI release.

At the very least, they should have to made it compatible with all of their goggles (especially the new releases this summer) - or made all of their new goggles compatible with it - knowing that they were going to release it a month after they came out. I think that is pathetic not to give customers a chance to make an informed decision.

It just reeks like it wasn't going to be released for a year or two and now they have had their hand forced.

Hardly a knee jerk reaction when we're already in PVT and able to send out fully tooling sample units to reviewers in two weeks. I agree we weren't planning to announce until end of next month as we we're expecting DJI to announce end of August. The chipset started development about 9 years ago. We've been flight testing and refining the system for FPV for the last 18 months. We even had three systems in Australia last October doing side by side testing with multiple units and analog. I'm confident pilots will be happy.

Fat Shark

for me hd system need to be affordable if we want to see more about them on the field
for the moment it s overpriced for most of us.
now i prefer this system over dji for many reasons...in two years dji will have a new system and will push you to buy the new model..
compatibility between generation is very important because the price of this system are not cheap

Originally Posted by rclab1

Greg is doing the right idea because with a separate GS, the range is further for us non-mini-quad FPV'ers....

All the other HD GS box won't allow you to attach your own Goggles to it, until now

I thought Greg was lazy and all he did was collect our money....i was full blown wrong
as I sampled/wronged out that new SCOUT goggle. It will replace my all time fav HEADPLAY SE.

It's was the safest way to ensure the best performance in a Gen1 release. It's compatible with existing frames and goggles so it's an easy way for existing goggle owners to get a taste of HD.

Glad you are enjoying the Scout. I literally built them with you in mind.

Fat Shark

Originally Posted by propsdeepcanada

They just came out with 2 new box goggles without hdmi in.. This obviously was meant to be released with a new set of goggles in a year or two. Maybe I'm just salty because I just got into the hobby and bought Fatshark Scouts. I think I might have waited had I known that a few weeks later they would unveil a new ground breaking product haha.

It's still the best way to get into the hobby as you'll want to get good at flying Mobula 7 type quads before risking more expensive setups. It'll be awhile before digital can be micro quad size or as cheap as analog.

Fat Shark

Originally Posted by propsdeepcanada

They just came out with 2 new box goggles without hdmi in.. This obviously was meant to be released with a new set of goggles in a year or two. Maybe I'm just salty because I just got into the hobby and bought Fatshark Scouts. I think I might have waited had I known that a few weeks later they would unveil a new ground breaking product haha.

As Fatshark said, your saving a ton of money by starting out with analog. Quite frankly, it's probably more than good enough for whatever flying you're doing, and it's cheap. The HD is a great upgrade for people really trying to "thread the needle" and for people who just have a ton of money to throw at products just so they can "have the best." My quad setup is like 4 years old and still flies great, have no plans on upgrading to "HD" until the system has gone through a couple versions. Trust me, you don't want to be a V1, or V2 for that matter, adopter, as you're basically just a beta tester that had to pay for the product. Let other people suffer through the early versions and in a years or two, once the technology has matured a little, invest in it.

Looking good! For me an important point is a customizable OSD for mavlink telemetry. I would like to be able to replicate minimosd or F405-wing osd.

Originally Posted by fatshark

It's still the best way to get into the hobby as you'll want to get good at flying Mobula 7 type quads before risking more expensive setups. It'll be awhile before digital can be micro quad size or as cheap as analog.

Fat Shark

Put out an hdmi model and one without to let customer decide (if the base cost is that much more) ? Unless it's just not worth the time from a business point of view.. but to me it would drive more sales of your HD units and more likely to keep that customer on a go forward into your higher end goggles (assuming they stick with the hobby and progress) . Anyhow, appreciate the response given my criticism wasn't as polite as you've been.

Note the DJI system requires you to register with them to unlock it past 25mw, and it will limit the system based on where it thinks you are.

I hope the Fatshark system doesn't do anything like that?

This DJI new thing is a totally different thing and it requires a large additional investment to buy this alongside with our analog systems. At least for those who'd like to occasionally fly anything smaller than a 5".
I don't think they are competing products. They are way too different in equipment, specs and cost. This fatshark/hd-zero will likely cost around 50-60 bucks for vtx and 120-200 bucks for vrx station.

The good thing about the DJI system is that it seems to not crop the image when using it in 4:3 mode. So the picture is likely better suitable for most 5" racers.

First video:

Fatshark HD FPV System first test - HDZero based system (1 min 42 sec)

Pushing 720p 60fps uncompressed is a shitload of data... how much spectrum is this gonna take up?