Anyone else come full circle?

[andykara2003]

I’ve been on here for almost 10 years now. Over that time I used this amazing forum to help me amass a lovely collection of pro & consumer CRTs & consoles along with the usual plethora of transcoders, Extron boxes, cables etc.

However, after all this was said & done, my collection consists of almost exactly the same setup that I had in the 90s - RGB signals into consumer Sony Trinitrons.

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).

I’ve been lucky enough to end up with some brand new and very low hours consumer sets - this was crucial as new sets still have the maximum possible vibrancy and clarity.

I now much prefer the 6th gen consoles on consumer sets in 480i rather than 480p on pro sets. I find 480p too pixelated and inauthentic - interlacing softens the pixels & gives a much smoother image. Sitting 6ft from a 25” consumer set, you really don’t notice the interlacing, which looks way too prominent on pro sets.

Consumer sets aren’t as vibrant as BVMs, but the solution to this is to play in low ambient light - the image leaps off the screen in low light conditions.

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.

Of course this is all personal taste & I’m not putting down pro sets or scalers+flat panels, which have a great & legitimate part to play in our hobby. But for me, consumer sets are the best way to play retro games.

I just thought it was curious that after god knows how many hours of experimentation & lots of money spent, I came to the conclusion that the perfect image & perfect way to play retro games was exactly as we played them back in the day. I wonder if anyone else here has the same view?

[spmbx]

BVM 2010s bought years ago for 50 euros a piece, sold for 600 a piece. Consumer trinitron picked up from our local craigslist-like site for free. Difference in picturequality is negligible especially considering the cost. It was a no-brainer.

[Guspaz]

Modern scalers, with the ability to dial in the exact amount of smoothness (or even use composite input for the authentic dither blending) and the exact appearance of the scanline and phosphor pattern masks, let you get it to your exact presence even when using modern TVs.

It's too bad that FPGA/HDMI transmitter hardware isn't there to deliver affordable 4K60 output yet... The OSSC's scanline and mask effects in its 4K30 mode look absolutely gorgeous even when compared to 1440p.

[andykara2003]

Modern scalers, with the ability to dial in the exact amount of smoothness (or even use composite input for the authentic dither blending) and the exact appearance of the scanline and phosphor pattern masks, let you get it to your exact presence even when using modern TVs.

Very interesting indeed. What setup would I need for this? I’ve been out of the game for a while & it seems like I’m a little out of touch with modern developments.

I don’t suppose you could direct me towards an image/photo of this in action on screen? Super curious.

[FinalBaton]

Same here! My main and only larger crt is a consumer Trinitron 25'' with RGB hookup. love that screen to death, I missed seeing some vertical gaps in scanlines. It's got a great balance of tight colour and good definition and pleasing textures, without being too tight

had a 20L5 here and I got bored of the ''tight'' look of scanlines and lack of phosphor texture.

[tongshadow]

I feel more or less the same about the PS2, there's really NO replacement for a SDTV on it. You can get away with 240p games on a good scaler/line multiplier into a modern set due to the resolution scaling rather evenly, but 480i just demands a proper display that was meant for it and there's no better example of this case than the PS2.

[Ed Oscuro]

I kinda feel like I went full circle twice. I've got a lot of time in emulation, then a lot of time learning the hardware, then a lot of time in emulation, now kinda interested in hardware again...the neverending cost churn! Somehow I can still hear CRT whine.

Right now the big push (at least for me) is trying to figure out how to share rare content. It seems like some new cameras and stuff are getting closer to ideal for that case, since perfect capture or perfect emulation of old systems are "solved" and "boring" issues. I will say, though, I wouldn't trade good new panels for old CRTs if it came down to it. They've got a niche but do everything outside of instantaneous response worse than modern tech. But even just a few years ago this wasn't as true as it is now.

[andykara2003]

I’m trying to find images of shadow mask emulation on hardware but I can’t find anything that manages to emulate the real-time bleed & bloom of CRT phosphors correctly. I’ve been out of the game, so probably aren’t looking in the right places - can anyone help? Found lots of beautiful images attempting this though - it’s great to see the progress being made. And I don’t think a frame or two of overall lag is too much to fuss about.

Of course it depends what image you like - if you like a BVM style image, bog standard scanlines with no complex shadow mask emulation would do. But if you like the smooth consumer CRT image without a prominent mask. Then you’ll need really detailed ‘sub-pixel’ emulation in real time with phosphor bleed & bloom. We used to assume that an 8k set would be the minimum to do this properly.

I guess that back in the day, we weren’t obsessing over scanlines & shadow masks, we just wanted a smooth clean RGB image. I want my image as authentic as possible where the mask defines the image but doesn’t present into the image too noticeably. As a result I won’t use a CRT larger than 25” or the mask starts becoming too noticeable. Back then, the heavy scanlines of a very large CRT was regarded as a kind of degradation of the image. So blowing this up to a 60” oled is going to give a very prominent mask indeed, which is great for people who like this, but not so much for me. Just a matter of personal preference & taste though & I can absolutely see why people love this kind of image - it’s just not what we were seeing back in the day.

My other issue with shadow mask emulation in the past is that the resulting image ends up being quite a bit dimmer than without - have they fixed this? I like a nice vibrant image - my OLED is bright enough, but if I were to take away from that too much I’d have to play in the dark.

[maxtherabbit]

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

[andykara2003]

I've done some research & it looks like we're not quite there yet with shadow mask emulation. Still there are some great attempts resulting in beautiful images & I'm glad people are enjoying them. It'll happen one day of course - but I'll still hold onto my CRTs for the authentic experience.

I think the one issue that can never be overcome is that there's no way of blowing a 240p image up to 60" where the simulated mask won't be strongly apparent. Great for some but not for me.

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

If you have a brand new Sony Trinitron I'll consider it :)

[jd213]

I recently got a 24" widescreen consumer Trinitron from 1998 (so no HD circutry, and no need to worry about input lag, unlike the 1080i Wegas), and it's my biggest CRT and works great for the few widescreen-compatible 240p/480i games, as well as games with big status bars that I don't necessarily need to have onscreen.

But it only does composite and S-Video, and has a good bit of color bleeding on reddish colors (maybe the capacitors need replacing?), so all things being equal I'd probably rather use one of my PVMs. I mostly prefer composite for Famicom/NES games rather than RGB, though.

[andykara2003]

and has a good bit of color bleeding on reddish colors (maybe the capacitors need replacing?)

That’s one of the quirks of consumer sets - it has to be pretty fresh & low-use for a really clean, vibrant image. They’ll have at least a partially degraded image if they’ve had a normal life with daily use. New/unused sets are really hard to find now, your best bet is to find one that’s spent it’s life sitting in a guest room & rarely used.

Being in the UK, most of our sets have RGB. You could use an RGB to component transcoder. But yes, PVMs are awesome too.

I mostly prefer composite for Famicom/NES games rather than RGB, though.

Really interesting. The NES has somehow escaped my net so far & I'm thinking of correcting that. Can I ask why you prefer composite?

[jd213]

The NES is the main system I had while growing up, and I obviously didn't use anything better than composite at the time. RGB certainly looks "better", but composite just looks more "authentic", for lack of a better term. I also seem to remember something about certain NES graphics being made with composite in mind, similar to the waterfalls in Sonic, but can't remember where I saw this.

It's not a hard preference though, NES with crisp RGB does look good, it just depends on my mood I guess.

[Guspaz]

Modern scalers, with the ability to dial in the exact amount of smoothness (or even use composite input for the authentic dither blending) and the exact appearance of the scanline and phosphor pattern masks, let you get it to your exact presence even when using modern TVs.

Very interesting indeed. What setup would I need for this? I’ve been out of the game for a while & it seems like I’m a little out of touch with modern developments.

I don’t suppose you could direct me towards an image/photo of this in action on screen? Super curious.

The RetroTINK 5X is currently the best at it for original hardware. I believe that MiSTer also got very good filters recently.

Wobbling Pixels has posted lots of shots of RT5X scanlines on one of his twitter accounts: https://twitter.com/5Xpixels

Sometimes he posts scanlines with RGB input, but often scanlines with composite input, which really completes the CRT look. You need to click through to the full resolution images for the full effect.

Put these on an OLED, where you can get CRT-light pixel response times and contrast ratios and even a CRT-like 60Hz flicker with BFI, and you've got a mighty fine looking CRT simulation.

[fernan1234]

You haven't come full circles until you're using composite or even RF!

Well if you grew up in Europe exclusively using RGB then I guess it counts.

I really like how consumer CRTs look, but I've come to prioritize a desk arrangement, which means I have to sit too close to the screen to tolerate all the glaring imperfections of consumer sets.

Next gen scalers like the 5X and beyond really do make for a compelling case to move past CRTs--is what I would like to say, but sadly modern flat panels still only have imperfect solutions to sample-and-hold blur for legacy content (60fps and below).

So for now in my case I'm still sticking to a high end super sharp pro CRT monitor, though I do enjoy using composite on it for specific systems especially the Famicom, so that's like a quarter circle.

[matt]

But it only does composite and S-Video, and has a good bit of color bleeding on reddish colors (maybe the capacitors need replacing?), so all things being equal I'd probably rather use one of my PVMs. I mostly prefer composite for Famicom/NES games rather than RGB, though.

Red bleed is normal - it has always been that way with composite and, to some degree, S-Video. It's an artifact of how the color is encoded. The good news is that your capacitors are probably fine!

[Ed Oscuro]

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

[andykara2003]

Pixels has posted lots of shots of RT5X scanlines on one of his twitter accounts: https://twitter.com/

Checked it out earlier, absolutely gorgeous. Fantastic to see the detail of the various mask simulations.

RGB certainly looks "better", but composite just looks more "authentic", for lack of a better term

I totally get it. I keep composite, s-video & RF cables just mix it up occasionally.

Well if you grew up in Europe exclusively using RGB then I guess it counts.

Yes, in the UK we had RGB from SNES onwards (Except for the N64, but we were modding NTSC units back then, so N64 RGB feels authentic to me).

Love that you use composite on your BVM flat panel! I’d like to see that in action. I haven’t picked up an NES as we were mainly on the spectrum/C64/Amiga wagon here but I’d be tempted to go with composite rather than NESRGB as well for the authentic look. I’m toying with the idea but am balking slightly at the idea of going down another expensive rabbit hole.

[fernan1234]

Love that you use composite on your BVM flat panel! I’d like to see that in action. I haven’t picked up an NES as we were mainly on the spectrum/C64/Amiga wagon here but I’d be tempted to go with composite rather than NESRGB as well for the authentic look. I’m toying with the idea but am balking slightly at the idea of going down another expensive rabbit hole.

Yeah, NESRGB is a really cool project and was truly revolutionary, but personally I think it (and anything else that uses an RGB palette) just doesn't feel like a real NES/Famicom, both in terms of how the graphics are displayed (especially graphics that aimed for some degree of "realism", and those that relied on blending) as well as colors.

Other systems where composite (or RF) can look especially good are PC Engine and N64. PS1 also has a good argument for it due to all the dithering. Then there's the MegaDrive/Genesis, but unfortunately the composite output is simply horrible to the point where the advantages outweigh the downsides when going RGB for it. But basically all retro systems can look great using those lower quality signals.

[kitty666cats]

I definitely am leaning, somewhat, into the 'full circle' thing - I have had a BVM-20F1U before and was totally 'meh' about it. My favorite SD monitor? A2M6014 AppleColor RGB, for the Apple IIgs. Love how everything looks on it!



Between that & this -

http://mikejmoffitt.com/articles/0051-nettv-rgb.html

I am pretty much all set (I also have a higher-end PC CRT but I'm not attached to it, I just happened upon it by chance last year).

[andykara2003]

My favorite SD monitor? A2M6014 AppleColor RGB, for the Apple IIgs. Love how everything looks on it!

Absolutely beautiful image, this is my favourite image style.

[azmun]

Not sure if I'd consider myself coming full circle but I've been gaming on an old (mid 90s) Sony XBR 27" consumer set via composite and s-video since I can remember. I've dabbled with new tech (HDMI equipped retro consoles, flat panels paired with scalers/line doublers) and recently added pro-level CRTs (PVM) to my setup. For me, they are all unique and co-exist. I will say, the mix-up enhances or at the very least, helps me appreciate the quirks and charms each one offers.

[andykara2003]

Other systems where composite (or RF) can look especially good are PC Engine and N64.

Very interesting - do you know anything further about the N64's composite image implementation or quirks and why it's so good? Just asking as it's a favourite system of mine. I've done exhaustive (read OCD-ridden) research on how it's RGB image works with different CRT types but never looked into it's composite output.

P.S. totally agree re. NESRGB. Totally understand why people love it, but if the image produced has little to do with the original output it feels just a step too far from authentic hardware for me.

[fernan1234]

Very interesting - do you know anything further about the N64's composite image implementation or quirks and why it's so good?

Not at a technical level. Just based on my own observations, it has a really clean composite output compared to other systems, and a lot of the N64's 3D graphics and effects do mesh well with it. That said, I personally still use an N64Advanced's RGB output plus de-blur when I play N64, since it happens to look exceptionally good on the monitor I use, while IMO not too far from the look of composite output, since the latter is from the start of very good quality. That was generally the gist of the argument that many people made against RGB modding N64, since the jump in quality even to S-video is small. RGB only really gives an advantage in terms of cleaner looking colors. To me the real advantage is the ability to apply de-blur to games that do benefit from it, but it's hardly essential.

[Ed Oscuro]

Last Legion UX is a game that makes this sharp output especially easy to see. It looked a bit like it runs in 240p. On the technical side, I do believe Sony and other RGB encoder chip makers were continuing to make big strides with their hardware well into the 32-bit era.

[pablumatic]

I'm still where I was originally.

Seeking the best ways to play my retro consoles on big HDTVs. Was never into the BVM/PVM look with the heavy scanlines and distracting Trinitron damping wires (although I do own a consumer 27" Trinitron).

Still waiting for a 4K scaler, but the current ones are okay.

[thebigcheese]

Honestly, the more I tried to go back to CRTs, the more frustrated I became and the more I went to emulation. There's something to be said for "it just works" with CRTs and everything being perfectly 100% compatible, but imperfect geometry and the sheer size of CRTs were real drags on my enjoyment. I still have a PVM in a closet in case I want to use it, but the MiSTer is by far the best-looking and overall most convenient way to play for me these days (and a RetroTink 5x for those consoles that can't be done in FPGA yet). I particularly like that that sort of emulation can overcome some of the limitations of the original hardware, like reducing slowdown and flicker. Sure, there's a certain nostalgia to those things, but... eh. So I guess in a way it's full circle in that I was using things like Virtual Console, then got into original hardware again after watching a lot of MLiG, and now I am back to emulation.

[Taiyaki]

I came full circle too. I went into my PVM/BVM phase too. I loved it at first but quickly ended up annoyed by the thick scanlines (even on lower tvl pvm's). Felt closer to emulated scanlines than the natural CRT like image I was accustomed to.

In the end I'm back where I originally left CRT's, with my favorite era of consumer sets which are to say the early 2000's flat consumer sets (both aperture grille and the flat variety shadow masks, (forgot the name of these)). To me that era just represented the peak in terms of color, brightness and appearance. I can see how many prefer the 90's look though. If I hadn't upgraded several sets in the early 2000's I'd probably feel the same way. Nostalgia has a lot to do with ones preferences with CRT's imo. And yes I also like playing in low ambient light.

[NoAffinity]

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

[Taiyaki]

For what it's worth my favorite sizes ended up being 20 inches (the flat models measure 21). 24 is my second preferred size and a favorite for multiplayer, but as I like to sit really close to the screen (like 2~3 ft), 20 inches just gives me the best balance for that distance. I also like having no issue moving the tv when needed (such as for adjustments). 24 inches is still manageable in that respect too.

As for connections I try to stick to RGB and Component for everything, but S-video looks great on these consumer sets, and even Composite is undeniably useable. Reason I stick to Component (and RGB via transcoder and switchers) is because they run on a different standard when it comes to color calibration. If I calibrate for S-video and Composite connections, the colors via Component ends up looking wrong, and vice versa. This is the case on most 2000 era Sony Trinitron sets in my experience.