Best HD CRTs?

[atheistgod1999]

In addition to retro gaming on a BVM, last night I switched my 1080p LED monitor with a Dell CRT (E771p) manufactured in December 2000 and guess what, I like that better too. 4:3 is just a better aspect ratio for everything IMO, and I'd rather have a monitor that can display lots of lower resolutions at a higher framerate natively than a monitor that can display one resolution that's higher than all the ones on the former at a lower framerate. Also, it can actually display all 32 bits of color that the GPU is outputting . Now I want a CRT HDTV for my HD consoles so I don't have to use LEDs on a daily basis anymore but that's really hard to get. I got a BVM-20F1U which I know doesn't work. I know the PVM-20L5 can display 480i/240p, 480p, 720p, and 1080i, and I do need all those resolutions, but can it actually resolve all the horizontal detail? If so, that's great. 1080p would be nice, but 1080i is good enough. Sorry for the textwall and making yet another thread.

[BazookaBen]

None of the popular HD CRT's were multisync. Like the Sony XBR's, they were only capable of truly displaying 1080i/540p, and 480p. To do 480p, they used a trick where they center the image inside a 540p frame, then just increase the horizontal and vertical size. This trick used digital processing so you get a little input lag that way.

That said, the Sony Wega XBR's have outstanding color and sharpness, so if you're OK with the tradeoff of no multisync, they're worth checking out. Though they only reveal 1440 lines of horizontal detail in my understanding.

If you can afford it, I'd hold off for a couple years and get an OLED as they drop in price (and hopefully get better with input lag).

[panzeroceania]

a couple years ago I switched to all CRT, I use this guy

http://www.curtpalme.com/SonyG90.shtm

[nissling]

I'd rather have a monitor that can display lots of lower resolutions at a higher framerate natively than a monitor that can display one resolution that's higher than all the ones on the former at a lower framerate.

This doesn't make any sense at all. What the hell makes you think a modern display cannot show high frame rates with various resolutions?

[FinalBaton]

The NEC XM37 Plus can sync from 240p, all the way up to SXGA, all in progressive scan. It can also hit the following res in progressive : 1440x900, 1680x1050 and 1920x1080 (I tested these through an XRGB-3, source was a widescreen PSP game. 1920x1080 had bits of the image cut off on each side, but not much. It was still useful)

The number of tv lines might not be high enough for Full HD though. It's dot pitch of 0.85mm put it at 850 tv lines or so, according to my calculations.
That dot pitch is actually pretty good for a monitor that size. It's more than enough for High Resolution and even resolves enough detail for 1024x768, wich is the TV's native resolution. but for those higher res I mentioned? I can't tell you for sure. I remember SXGA losing a little bit of details in comparison to 1024x768, but it still looked great.
Of course 480p looks jaw-dropping, as does 1024x768. Check my pics in the "Fudoh's ode to old display" thread if it's of interest to you.
Note that it doesn't accept component video though, so you would need a converter for that.

The XP37 Plus, also from NEC, syncs up even higher (95kHz) but it has the same dot pitch as the XM 37 Plus.



Honestly it looks like the aforementionned monitor, or a multisync PVM/BVM is your best bet.

The Sony XBR HD crt's have very good colors and a good number of tv lines (1400) but, like bazookaben mentionned, there are some caveats. 480p mode has a bit of lag, and I suppose that 720p does as well? Maybe bazookaben can chime in on this
1080i looks great on it. Some of them even have a DVI/HDMI input, wich is neat.

[Josh128]

Hitachi Ultravision Digital 36SDX88B. Curved tube,1080i, 480p, 640x480 VGA, or 800x600VGA. Also accepts and displays line doubled 240p. Most impressive CRT Ive ever seen.

Hitachi released a later version that had the HD ATSC tuner built in, the 36UDX10S. It was silver, but aside from those differences was the same as the SDX88B.


http://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-36SDX88B- ... B00001Z3HG

http://www.cnet.com/products/hitachi-36udx10s/

[FinalBaton]

Hitachi Ultravision Digital 36SDX88B. Curved tube,1080i, 480p, 640x480 VGA, or 800x600VGA. Also accepts and displays line doubled 240p. Most impressive CRT Ive ever seen.

Hitachi released a later version that had the HD ATSC tuner built in, the 36UDX10S. It was silver, but aside from those differences was the same as the SDX88B.


http://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-36SDX88B- ... B00001Z3HG

http://www.cnet.com/products/hitachi-36udx10s/

There must be some scaling of sorts applied to display the resolutions I underlined, though. I very much doubt that it displays all those in their native form

Most likely it does native 1080i and slightly scales the rest, just like the Sony XBR HD crts

[BazookaBen]

480p mode has a bit of lag, and I suppose that 720p does as well? Maybe bazookaben can chime in on this

Yeah, 720p is downscaled to 1080i, and it has the most noticeable lag of all the modes.

[Josh128]

Hitachi Ultravision Digital 36SDX88B. Curved tube,1080i, 480p, 640x480 VGA, or 800x600VGA. Also accepts and displays line doubled 240p. Most impressive CRT Ive ever seen.

Hitachi released a later version that had the HD ATSC tuner built in, the 36UDX10S. It was silver, but aside from those differences was the same as the SDX88B.


http://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-36SDX88B- ... B00001Z3HG

http://www.cnet.com/products/hitachi-36udx10s/

There must be some scaling of sorts applied to display the resolutions I underlined, though. I very much doubt that it displays all those in their native form

Most likely it does native 1080i and slightly scales the rest, just like the Sony XBR HD crts

All I can say is that Wii and GC looked phenomenal in 480p on it. That and I never noticed any lag at all (though I didnt properly test for it), and it was my primary display for GC, SNES, Genesis, and Wii from 2003 to 2011. Put a LOT of gaming hours on it. Only real knock against it was 480i could have been a little better.

[atheistgod1999]

What about the 16:9 24" and 36" BVMs (BVM-A24E1WU and BVM-A32E1WU)? They got 1000 TV lines, what's about the maximum resolvable horizontal resolution on those? I was PMing Fudoh and he said they can fully resolve 720p and almost fully resolve 1080i.

[Fudoh]

1000 TVL on a 16:9 screen means that they should be able to resolve about 1600-1700 lines over the whole screen. The actual ability to resolve small details sligtly drops outside the inner square area (hence the definition of TVL for the inner square area only).

[atheistgod1999]

1000 TVL on a 16:9 screen means that they should be able to resolve about 1600-1700 lines over the whole screen. The actual ability to resolve small details sligtly drops outside the inner square area (hence the definition of TVL for the inner square area only).

So do you recommend I get it and hook up a Roku, PS3, PS4, and Wii U to it along with 6th gen and older consoles?

[Bahn Yuki]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOgexSq ... 5WVIQ4WL8l

This TV is pretty amazing for 240p content. I used the 240p suite on the Wii and it handled everything flawlessly. Playing PS1 games on my Ps2 through component is pretty great too. Currently I'm using the Nintendo Wii/Sega Dreamcast/Xbox(modded)/Xbox 360 on it.

[FinalBaton]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOgexSq ... 5WVIQ4WL8l

This TV is pretty amazing for 240p content. I used the 240p suite on the Wii and it handled everything flawlessly. Playing PS1 games on my Ps2 through component is pretty great too. Currently I'm using the Nintendo Wii/Sega Dreamcast/Xbox(modded)/Xbox 360 on it.

looks great

downside is, there's a bit of lag in all modes but 1080i. how severe is the lag in your experience?

Also : I'd be curious to see 240p on this, if you don't mind doing another video

[atheistgod1999]

What about the FW900? That any good for console gaming? Also, off topic, but are there any good 720p to 1080p upscalers for my PS3 games for the time being?

[Guspaz]

Umm, the PS3 outputs a native 1080p signal...

[nissling]

Yes but relatively few games support any higher resolution than 720p.

[FinalBaton]

So it looks like the HD CRT tvs are a very nice solution for both 1080i and 480p gaming, if you don't mind a little lag for the later mode. It'd be interesting if someone could do an actual lag measurement for 480i, 480p and 720p on a Sony HD CRT.

I don't think I ever saw lag measurments for Sony HD crts anywhere on the web. And I searched for them quite a bit.

But for a lagless solution? yeah it's gonna have to be a multisync crt monitor

[BazookaBen]

What about the FW900? That any good for console gaming?

I think PC CRT's are the best displays for video games, period. And the FW900 is one of the best PC CRT's.

So it looks like the HD CRTs are a very nice solution for both 1080i and 480p gaming, if you don't mind a little lag for the later mode. It'd be interesting if someone could do an actual lag measurement for 480i, 480p and 720p on a Sony HD CRT.

One thing I noticed is that 4:3 480p (normal mode) is noticeably less laggy than 16:9 480p (wide mode). Dreamcast shooters were quite playable (since they are all in 4:3), but Wipeout Pulse in widescreen on my PS2 was hard to play.

[Guspaz]

Yes but relatively few games support any higher resolution than 720p.

That's irrelevant, the PS3 can output at 1080p regardless of what resolution framebuffer the games use. Heck, it's not like 720p is the native resolution for a lot of games anyhow, they render at some arbitrary resolution designed to hit a framerate target and then scale to the output resolution. So why would you set the PS3 to output at 720p and then upscale it, instead of just having the PS3 do that itself by outputting at 1080p?

[nissling]

Uh, what? I have my Ps3 set on all resolutions through HDMI and games in 720p still outputs 720p. If I deselect 720p (and still have 1080p selected) it will output 576p instead. Maybe I'm missing out something...

[Guspaz]

Deselect every resolution except 1080p.

EDIT: It seems that some games just fall back to 480p/576p and there's no way around it. Wups. Some games will upscale to 1080p, some will render at 480/576.

[nissling]

You cannot deselect 480p/576p. There's basically no way to force 1080p so I'd consider the question being completely legit.

[atheistgod1999]

Yes but relatively few games support any higher resolution than 720p.

Exactly.

[atheistgod1999]

Yes but relatively few games support any higher resolution than 720p.

That's irrelevant, the PS3 can output at 1080p regardless of what resolution framebuffer the games use. Heck, it's not like 720p is the native resolution for a lot of games anyhow, they render at some arbitrary resolution designed to hit a framerate target and then scale to the output resolution. So why would you set the PS3 to output at 720p and then upscale it, instead of just having the PS3 do that itself by outputting at 1080p?

Because the PS3 doesn't have any internal upscaler besides the games doing it.

[Ed Oscuro]

Huh...if 720p scaling is an important thing, a 1440p panel could be useful.

[bobrocks95]

That's irrelevant, the PS3 can output at 1080p regardless of what resolution framebuffer the games use. Heck, it's not like 720p is the native resolution for a lot of games anyhow, they render at some arbitrary resolution designed to hit a framerate target and then scale to the output resolution. So why would you set the PS3 to output at 720p and then upscale it, instead of just having the PS3 do that itself by outputting at 1080p?

I am a brand new PS3 owner and my TV has reported every game I've played so far as being 720p (except Kingdom Hearts HD). The boxes are generally accurate with what the game renders at/closest to, at least compared to most 360 titles.

I have read that some games that list 1080p on the box have a special mode that's enabled when only 1080p is selected. In Final Fantasy XIII's case it actually lowers the rendering resolution, then upscales to 1080p, and actually runs worse than when set to 720p output. This was from an in-depth Digital Foundry article; you could probably find similar cases with other games that claim 1080p support. The article also worded it like it was a new development and they hadn't seen 1080p modes before or at least not frequently. That may be conjecture on my part though.

Point is, a majority of PS3 games target 720p and it doesn't seem like the PS3 has a dedicated chip for upscaling like the 360 did, where everything was spit out in whatever resolution you set in the dashboard.

[Hoagtech]

There are not a lot of VIABLE options for 1080p big screen 16:9 CRTs other than a few VGA monitors.

Most do 1080i in a 4:4 upscale interlace of 480p.

That being said there are better 1080i signals supported by select consoles. For instance the PS3 and ps4 look terrible but the WII U and Xbox 360 shine. (Component or Dvi D to HDMI)

One thing that bugged me about high def or wide CRT's personally was the different overscan settings that each console had. Switching between transcoded RGB and component/HDMI had me constantly digging through the service menu tricks to display the right Vettical and horizontal size and position like a mad man. (Try switching from Genesis to Halo 2 on OG Xbox)

I'm liking my Low input lag 65" LCD. But I think the pinnacle of my setup is going to be a large VGA arcade monitor for anything 240 to 480p 4:3 and my LCD for 16:9 480p and above.

Your tastes may be different but assuming old technologies will be able to handle our current gen at a big screen level is a pipe dream outside of playing a projector only at nighttimes.

[Xan]

Point is, a majority of PS3 games target 720p and it doesn't seem like the PS3 has a dedicated chip for upscaling like the 360 did, where everything was spit out in whatever resolution you set in the dashboard.

The RSX GPU does feature a scaler, but Sony only enabled horizontal scaling for developer use, possibly due to a hardware flaw. For instance, Wipeout HD uses a dynamic framebuffer for its 1080p output, as explained in this article.

[atheistgod1999]

Huh...if 720p scaling is an important thing, a 1440p panel could be useful.

I was looking into getting one, but even the cheaper ones are way too expensive.