Anyone else come full circle?

[kitty666cats]

27" flat trinitron (pre-hd) is my go to currently. Scalers and line multipliers are fun, but I find them mostly going unused these days. NES composite on this thing is fantastic. Atari 2600 rf is pretty rough, but I just found a camera photo from 1980 or '81, of a pitfall run I did, and man the interference was almost more present than the game graphics. All that is to say, by comparison, even RF gets a nice upgrade on a high quality consumer set compared to what I was playing on as a kid.

Today, everything SD, from the earliest gen consoles to arcade gets played preferentially on the trinitron.

I have seen screenshots of JVC shadow mask and N64, and that softened image is just stunning. Closer to what I was playing on when n64 was new - 27" RCA my parents bought new in early 80s. Wouldnt mind adding a JVC to the collection to recreate that environemt, but sadly no more room in my man cave/setup.

Lastly, as said, trinitron service menu tweaks will eliminate the red bleed and leave you with a vibrant, well balanced image. Theres a thread around here somewhere and where to start with the basic service menu settings.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

The comb filters on Sony WEGAs are soooo damn good. It's crazy impressive to go back and see composite on them after you've been in the hobby for a long time & have developed a better-trained set of eyes

[digitron]

Curious if any of you have switched over to OLED with your scalers yet? I love me a good CRT's but man they take up so much room..

[fernan1234]

Curious if any of you have switched over to OLED with your scalers yet? I love me a good CRT's but man they take up so much room..

In terms of saving room I don't feel like the big flat panels you're forced to buy nowadays are that much better (QD-OLED TVs are coming at 55'' as the smallest size available--and the Alienware ultrawide monitor is not appropriate for retro stuff). Unless you wall-mount them, although that in its own is another way of taking over room.

At least my 17'' CRT monitor I can easily move around on my own.

[andykara2003]

Nostalgia has a lot to do with ones preferences with CRT's imo. And yes I also like playing in low ambient light.

Same goes - I only get the full nostalgia blast playing exactly the way I did back in the day. Plus I can't get my head around playing with borders on a widescreen TV. Just a personal thing though, I can totally see why people love the flat panel stuff.

Today, everything SD, from the earliest gen consoles to arcade gets played preferentially on the trinitron.

I have seen screenshots of JVC shadow mask and N64, and that softened image is just stunning. Closer to what I was playing on when n64 was new - 27" RCA my parents bought new in early 80s.

Love this, I have a E3001 chassis Loewe (last of the 50Hz Loewes before 100Hz). Beautiful shadow mask as well. It softens the super-sharp Megadrive RGB image just enough to be smooth but still clean. But I mostly play on consumer Trinitrons too - as I did back then. I have 20" and 24" too (labeled 21" & 25" in the UK. 20/21" just pulls everything together so nicely for NTSC - although the aperture grille obviously defines the image, it's dense enough to not be intrusive & the image comes together as a smooth, clean, cohesive image, just like I remember from back in the day.

[matt]

I have seen screenshots of JVC shadow mask and N64, and that softened image is just stunning. Closer to what I was playing on when n64 was new - 27" RCA my parents bought new in early 80s. Wouldnt mind adding a JVC to the collection to recreate that environemt, but sadly no more room in my man cave/setup.

That's not surprising; JVC used RCA tubes in most of their 27" TVs.

[Machineman]

Me... i think i just took the first step

[jd213]

Red bleed may be due to red push, which can be improved via the service menu of consumer Sony and Toshiba sets.

Lastly, as said, trinitron service menu tweaks will eliminate the red bleed and leave you with a vibrant, well balanced image. Theres a thread around here somewhere and where to start with the basic service menu settings.

Thanks for that, couldn't find the thread here but there was one on neo-geo.com : https://www.neo-geo.com/forums/index.ph ... ns.235099/

The RCUT on my set was all the way up to 15, turning it way down (as well as the GCUT and BCUT for good measure) seemed to eliminate the bleeding.

Will have to play around with these particular settings some more and see if I can get better colors with minimal bleeding.

[KPackratt2k]

I'm happily trade consumer CRTs for BVMs to anyone else who feels this way

Same. I'll also be willing to trade my 3-chip SNES for a 1-chip model to anyone who prefers the softer image of a 3-chip.

[NewSchoolBoxer]

Sorry late to the party.

I developed a distaste for the strong scanlines and heavy pixelation of my BVM, NEC & Ikegami monitors, their images being completely different to what we were playing back in the day. We weren’t lusting after heavy scanlines & heavy pixelation back then & enjoyed the much smoother image of consumer sets (preferably Sonys).

This! I knew the vague concept of scanlines on consumer sets from SNES games on an LCD looking wrong and not being able to count the rectangles of the reputation meter in Ogre Battle. Meter just blurred into one line. I made an account here the day I learned of the existence of professional video monitors, typed "pvm" into Craigslist and found a medical supply reseller. Paired the 20" L2 with 20" JVC I'Art my family gave me to live the Time Crisis II/3 system link dream. Then I realized I had no one to play with, this hobby is lonely. Average person may like the concept of playing with real consoles but not on CRT when they live in world of 50"+ LCD/OLED.

The consumer JVC has thicker scanlines than PVM but the thickness feels artificial to me because it wasn't what I experienced playing back in the day as you said. It's more like some status symbol used to justify expensive accessories with referral links imo. I then learned of the concept of dithering and how it doesn't exist with clean Component and RGB. Not a big deal with SNES and PS1/PS2 but certainly some games used it and I find S-Video looks the most authentic. Blurry Composite looks so bad to me today despite being all I used and knew of until Xbox 360.

As a side, the same applies to the 1-chip SNES - I found the image much too grating & pixelated. An original 2-chip on a new/low-use consumer set in low ambient light via RGB looks so clean, smooth, vibrant & authentic - just like back in the day.

I bought 1-chip SNES from Yahoo Japan for cheap but I don't think it actually looks better than 2-chip. Playing 1-chip one day, 2-chip next day, they look the same. That's interesting then that you say it doesn't look better for different reasons.

What I actually play on now is a 32" Panasonic Plasma I bought for cheap. Comes close to CRT look and I measured it out to be 25" with 4:3 letterboxing. Thing takes RGB over its own BNC and VGA inputs with support for 240p, 480i and PS2 480p sync on green! Then it has rest of analog inputs to round things out. But, you know, I barely play retro games anymore. This was all a phase. I spend more time on message boards talking about retro games and electronics.

[it290]

I've been spending the past month or two playing retro games using the Mister and a repurposed LCD screen from an iPad3 which supports 2048x1536 resolution. This is obviously a small display, but in 4:3 aspect ratio, and the pixel density is glorious. It's been kind of a revelation. Using the shadow mask settings Mister offers, I can achieve CRT-like smoothness and near-zero latency, while still being able to make out details in the pixel art that I've never seen before on any display, whether it be a 15khz CRT, VGA monitor, or what have you. Since this screen was designed for an iPad, the viewing angles are also superb, and the geometry is obviously perfect. The only downsides are that the black levels aren't quite there (although still very good for LCD), and the screen has a bit of light leak along the edges due to the case design which can be distracting. I'd still classify it as an almost perfect way to enjoy a lot of these games, though, especially since the whole setup takes up very little space and you can pair it with your favorite desktop stand to make it easily TATEable. Have been getting more use out of this setup than my various CRTs recently.

[gray117]

There's too much about the physicality of crts to completely replace them. Unless we end up with some very arcane solutions. And I continue to hoard 3 crts.

But I'm kind of in the reverse situation. Sure I tend to err towards softer solutions than some defaults you see whacked on people's screenshots, I will play with rgb offsets and pixel masks in mame, but although serviceable in mame, most of the time these implementations in commercial releases are trash... But now input lag is generally a solved issue, I now prefer the convenience of digital displays and perfect geometry.

Repairing crts is something I have no time for compared to the games themselves. The idea of recommending others should acquire and own crts is difficult to me if they don't already.

[Dreamcazman]

I gave up on CRT's over 10 years ago and welcomed to say goodbye to the flickering, small screens and sheer weight of anything over 51cm.

Then around 6 months ago I found out about the RGB modding and wanted to give it a go and maybe get back into some retro gaming.

Bought a Sony TV a few months ago for $40 (~$28 US), successfully completed the mod and the TV just sat there hardly being used. Then when I did use it, I started having some issues with it. Ended up replacing 90% of the caps which didn't fix anything, then it died completely. Ended up giving it away.

TBH, I'm glad it's gone, my wife thought I was nuts getting it in the first place and it was just taking up too much room.

Even though I grew up with CRTs, I think my memories of them are viewed through rose tinted glasses. I hightly doubt I will ever pick up another one, but at least I had fun doing the RGB mod.