interlacing visible even on CRTs! Why did I never notice?

[xeos]

I always thought that deinterlacing was a necessary evil of LCDs, but recently I've been watching my 8 year old daughter play ps2 games on our sony consumer CRT TV and I've been struck how often I can see lacing artifacts in the 480i adventure/platform games. I guess when I'm playing I don't have the spare attention or maybe some games are worse than others? In any case it's interesting to me that this was a problem for the decades we used CRTs and nobody really complained about it until we switched to LCDs. Admittedly, it seems much more obvious on a LCD without deinterlacing tech (or are we just paying a lot more attention because we know it's a problem?).

Still strongly prefer my low hours sony Trinitron (KV-27FS100) display even so. deinterlacing is not without it's own artifacts and lag issues.

[fernan1234]

Deinterlacing is indeed a necessary evil of flat panels (with a few extremely rare/expensive exceptions in effect). CRTs (15khz compatible ones ones at least) don't deinterlace, they show the original interlaced picture as it was intended to be seen, and unfortunately combing artifacts are a part of it. Some reasons why we noticed this less in the past was less sharp signals and tubes, probably were watching OTA broadcast hooked up to RF tuners, VHS tapes, etc. on low TVL consumer TVs, maybe smaller as well, sitting from a couch, with child-like wonder.

If you want to minimize interlacing artifacts on a CRT the best thing to do is to use smaller tubes (they can be sharp with fine dot or AG pitch). I've found that ~9 inches is where you basically don't see combing artifacts.

[xeos]

re: size

or just sit further back. Though the smaller the CRT the better since they are so bulky ;-p

Though, if the idea is not to be able to see the lacing by making it too small visually, then bob deinterlacing should likewise be mostly invisible at that distance unless the image happens to have single pixel tall horizontal lines.

[Taiyaki]

Yeah with interlaced games it's harder to sit close up. I still prefer them on CRT's if they're games designed for 480i/p. On a mid size tv just sit back a few inches (20~24 inch), and a foot or so on a large tv, and should be all good. On small tv's like 13 inches it should be quite comfortable even from regular viewing distances imo.