BazookaBen wrote:You know what I always thought looked really stellar for 480p content? 480p.
If we're solely talking CRT's here (like we are here), there's a couple big problems with that. First is availability. 480p CRT's of a decent size (20"+) are extremely hard to find. Especially if you're not looking for 200+ pound behemoths like Sony HD consumer TV's. In a little less than two years I've found over a hundred PVM/BVM-type monitors so far. Only 7 of those were 480p compatible, only 3x were 20" or larger (and I paid going rate for several of those = VERY expensive because they're rare and there's a high demand for them).
For VGA PC monitors, do you know how many higher-quality 19"+ (i.e. Sony, Mitsubishi, ViewSonic, LaCie, and their rebrands, etc.) monitors I've found? Three. For all of these that also took searching every avenue of the web for multiple hours every. single. day. Hour upon hour round trips. Having to leave work early to make it there before the other 5+ people who wrote the person back arrive so I can grab it first. Oh, and back to these PC monitors, TWO were picked up within hours and I missed out on them (only have a single, lonely, nicer-quality 20" PC VGA monitor ;(
For consumer HD CRT's, I've picked up five or six of the higher-end models, breaking my back in the process, every single one was jacked-up to all and I ended up giving them away to somebody who wanted to put the time into trying to fix them.
Granted, finding smaller 17" CRT monitors (nothing high-end as those were usually larger), can be pretty easy...you can still pickup a consumer HD CRT (with some lag and upscaling going on), but that's about it for 480p CRT's. You can of course luck out and find something nicer, and larger, even for free, but one of the larger reasons many people downscale 480p to 240p is because they lack a nice 480p CRT, and don't want to have to resort to using a lcd/led/flatscreen type monitor or TV because they love the CRT look.
The second large reason (talking overall here about downscaling) is because people don't want to have to resort to playing those (mostly 6th gen) consoles in flickery 480i (again, because they lack a nice 480p CRT), because TONS of people absolutely hate the flicker 480i can give on a CRT. That's why there's this entire market revolving around downscaling higher resolutions to 240p via an Emotia, Mimo Genius, Corio2, etc.
So, like you said, there's still other ways about this, like emulation via PC or RP3 or whatnot, but there's still a very valid reason why people like to downscale, and a very valid reason why so many people (like the OP) don't have access to a nice 480p CRT (which would undoubtedly be SO much easier to do just like you said!). Plus, like has been said, it's simply fun to mess around with newer stuff on older CRT's!
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