A shite BVM-A20F1 vs Panasonic 2000's consumer EDTV look

[kamiboy]

I am in the middle of rearranging my living room and two ugly bulky items that I cannot find an aesthetically pleasing spot for just happen to be two CRT's that both serve the same niche purpose.

That is right, EDTV gaming, or gaming in that short lived obsolete gaming resolution, 480p.

In this corner I had a top of the line pro studio monitor by SONY in their now very coveted BVM line. In the other corner I had my trusty old Panasonic 4:3 EDTV capable consumer set that I imported from germany. Imported because a TV with such capabilities was a very rare beast here in Europe.

I thought now that I have both of these out and about it would be fun to daisy chain them to the same EDTV source, and have myself an old fasioned shootout.

The only EDTV source I could be arsed to drag out was my NTSC Wii. Now this would be where I would put lots of drool worthy pictures of the shootout, alas! Only camera I have in my possession is an iPad. So any pictures I'd take would be useless. But you'll get a single small teaser here:



I tested only two games but who knows, maybe I'll do longer comparison in the future.

Anywaste, onto the conclusion. Well, bear in mind that I am not anal about things such as geometry when assessing a CRT for my own use. I put much bigger stock in other things, such as colour vibrancy and overall sharpness.

So, the ugliness of the cabinets and bulkiness not being considered, which display would I choose? Well, my good auld Panasonic of course. Why? Well, in terms of display performance I do not see any meaningful gap between the two. So the Panasonic wins because it weighs in at a healthy 29" compared to the paltry 20" that the BVM boasts.

Size does matter, or it does to me in regards to CRT screens.

[nissling]

Although I can agree with you that size matters, not many CRTs can compete with a BVM in my opinion when it comes to 15KHz signals. With 480p there are many other good alternatives, but I'd much rather use a BVM-20F1 for 15KHz gaming than any consumer CRT at 29" but that's just me. I'm using a 50" plasma with my XRGB-Mini as well so if I want a big and nice picture that's the way for me to go.

Enjoy you Panasonic!

[Josh128]

The Panasonic Tau's were some incredible CRTs. Perfect 480p behemoths IMO.

[kamiboy]

Actually I do not like the 15khz performance of my BVM A monitor at all. It suffers from the same problem as the other multisync SONY monitors in that the space between scanlines is too thick, lending a very harsh quality to the image. As such I play all my 15khz games on a 25" B&O which nets me a very pleasing picture, and being a luxury designer item, it fits my decor very well.

Also, I do not think I'll keep that Panasonic around for too much longer. It is too bulky, and I do not play many 31khz games these days. I just have to figure out what I am going to do with it.

[bobrocks95]

So that Panasonic is genuinely a 480p tube, and doesn't upscale to 1080i like (I believe) the Hi-Scan Trinitrons do?

[BazookaBen]

So that Panasonic is genuinely a 480p tube, and doesn't upscale to 1080i like (I believe) the Hi-Scan Trinitrons do?

Actually, I've been using a Hi-scan trinitron lately, and I'm pretty sure show a 480p image centered in a 540p raster and then the picture is stretched to bring it to the edges of the screen, which means they actually are true 480p images. I've read this before and it definitely looks like that is what is happening. It is image does go through a digital processor though, so there is a frame or so of input lag, a little more when stretching/zooming the image.

Though 540p and 1080i images can be passed through uprocessed, for zero input lag, so that's what I feed it from my PC.

[kamiboy]

So that Panasonic is genuinely a 480p tube, and doesn't upscale to 1080i like (I believe) the Hi-Scan Trinitrons do?

Actually HD tubes were never really sold in Europe. Unlike the rest of the world we had no HD standard until the age of flatscreens. This Panasonic is actually 480i and EDTV only, it cannot display anything above 480p.

[MKL]

Actually HD tubes were never really sold in Europe.

Yes they were used in 100Hz TVs.

[kamiboy]

Splitting hairs now are we? I obviously meant that HD capable tube consumer TV's were never sold in Europe as opposed to North America and Japan who had 1080i capable sets and broadcasts in some form since the 90's. Actually I think Japan had high muse as early as the 80's.

TV manufacturers may very well have repurposed their overseas HD capable tubes for 100hz televisions in Europe. Though that does seem like a bit of a waste.

[Fudoh]

Same tubes, different chassis.

We only got ED component inputs on the very last generation of TVs and only from selected manufacturers (Panasonic for example). Sony managed to deny component to us Europeans up to their very last CRT.

[MKL]

HD capable tube consumer TV's were never sold in Europe

Some Grundig and Metz models can take VGA input through scart.

[kamiboy]

How high a resolution could these VGA capable TV's display?

I remember that in the 90's and early 2000's I was very disappointed in how basic SONY tube TV's in Europe were compared to other offerings. I guess that now that simplicity makes them more attractive for retro gaming as for that you would want to stay far away from any 100hz sets, or any with digital processing such as those Philips TV's.

Component input on EU TV's was very rare indeed.

[Josh128]

My 36" Hitachi Ultravision Digital was capable of 480p, true interlaced 1080i, and VGA of up to 800x600. It was a massive beast, and caused my real wood entertainment center to sag over the years I had it, but it produced a phenomenal picture.

[kamiboy]

Truly a shame that such quality sets are burdened with such bulk. Ideally I would like to carve a rectangular hole in the walls and stuff the set in there so only the display surface is visible.

Not a realistic proposition, though still, would be so nice.

[Ed Oscuro]

In hindsight it seems like limiting the better sets to only such gigantic sizes was indeed a bit of a misstep. Ideally there would have been more 480p/1080i sets in around a 27" size. I guess the common 36" size for 480p speaks to the use of these sets for family viewing of 480p movies, though that didn't seem to catch on.

[quash]

480p capability on smaller sets would have been nice, but to be entirely honest, a good interlaced set with a component source looks damn good, anyways. Not to say there isn't a difference, but I don't think it's as big as most people would imagine.

[Josh128]

480p capability on smaller sets would have been nice, but to be entirely honest, a good interlaced set with a component source looks damn good, anyways. Not to say there isn't a difference, but I don't think it's as big as most people would imagine.

Speaking from my personal experience with component connected GC with both-- my 27" SD Flat Tube Trinitron does look quite good, but the superiority in dot pitch /sharpness and complete absence of flickering/shimmer on my 36" Hitachi Ultravision make it hands down visually superior in my book. The immersive size of the 36" definitely helped, but when it died, the 36" JVC SDTV I replaced it with definitely was inferior, even though it still produced a very nice picture.

Found an old pic of my Hitachi--ah the good old days. Of course you cant see the quality of the set from this picture and the little 240p composite video cycle game my son is playing, but it was a fantastic set.

[kamiboy]

I remember being blown away by the jump in quality by going to 480p. Before I played that generation of games in 480i on a regular SDTV of same size.

Ever since owning a Gamecube I had been determined to get the most out of it 480p capabilities. Took me a long time to hunt down a set with such capability. These things were not exactly well advertised or known technologies in Europe at the time, since there hardly were any sources for them available.

[BazookaBen]

A PC CRT is great for 480p consoles if you don't mind the scanlines. And with the PS2 you can use GSM to force 1280x960 in a lot of games, eliminating the scanlines and keeping the proper pixel aspect ratio.

And I think the vast majority of consumer-grade CRT TV's capable of displaying 480p in the states were actually 1080i sets, and any 480p image the showed had some degree of input lag since they were run through a processor. Not always scaled, mind you, since they could display 480p inside a 33.75hz 540p image and just stretch it, but there was still analog>digital>analog conversion happening in order to center the 480p image in that raster.

[kamiboy]

I saw no lag on the Panasonic. It would have been obvious since I had the SONY next to it showing the same game.

[BazookaBen]

I saw no lag on the Panasonic. It would have been obvious since I had the SONY next to it showing the same game.

Can it do 1080i?

[kamiboy]

No. EDTV only.

[BazookaBen]

No. EDTV only.

Whoa, cool. Not sure I've seen a set like that in the states before. I'm pretty sure we went straight from 480i to 1080i, at least with CRT's. The only EDTV's I've seen are LCD's.

[BONKERS]

No. EDTV only.

Whoa, cool. Not sure I've seen a set like that in the states before. I'm pretty sure we went straight from 480i to 1080i, at least with CRT's. The only EDTV's I've seen are LCD's.

Which is a god damned shame. I'd love to have a decent consumer 480p only CRT.
Sure would be easier than tracking down a 480p capable Pro monitor for a decent price. Or having an ugly giant widescreen 1080i CRT
If it accepted 480p 31khz, who knows if people could get old low res PC stuff to work well too.

[BazookaBen]

If it accepted 480p 31khz, who knows if people could get old low res PC stuff to work well too.

He could probably use CRU to set up a 960i resolution for higher-res games. If 540p works on my 1080i set, I imagine the reverse could be true on sets like kamiboy's.

[kamiboy]

If I remember right the set does accept PAL progressive as well as NTSC. I remember I was quite astonished to discover that back in the day. PAL progressive sources were rare as hen's teeth though.

[kamiboy]

No. EDTV only.

Whoa, cool. Not sure I've seen a set like that in the states before. I'm pretty sure we went straight from 480i to 1080i, at least with CRT's. The only EDTV's I've seen are LCD's.

There was no proper "PAL" HD standard in Europe until the flat panel days of midt to late 2000's. So there was no reason to sell 1080i capable consumer sets in Europe.

[Josh128]

A PC CRT is great for 480p consoles if you don't mind the scanlines. And with the PS2 you can use GSM to force 1280x960 in a lot of games, eliminating the scanlines and keeping the proper pixel aspect ratio.

And I think the vast majority of consumer-grade CRT TV's capable of displaying 480p in the states were actually 1080i sets, and any 480p image the showed had some degree of input lag since they were run through a processor. Not always scaled, mind you, since they could display 480p inside a 33.75hz 540p image and just stretch it, but there was still analog>digital>analog conversion happening in order to center the 480p image in that raster.

The Ultravision CRTs actually changed horizontal scan rates for different resolutions and they were capable of 60 or 72 Hz refresh, 31kHz or 37kHz. I believe this set likely did the opposite of what you are saying-- it displayed 480p at native 31kHz /60Hz or 37kHz/ 72Hz and 1080i in a 37kHz scan rate . There was no lag at all on 480p resolutions as far as I could tell.

[bobrocks95]

Whoa, cool. Not sure I've seen a set like that in the states before. I'm pretty sure we went straight from 480i to 1080i, at least with CRT's. The only EDTV's I've seen are LCD's.

There are lots of small LCD EDTV's that I've seen (< 20") that I would assume were used as kitchen or maybe bedroom TVs. If you want a decent-sized EDTV all we got were plasmas AFAIK, which ran up to 42". Panasonic and NEC are the two manufacturers I know of.

[Fudoh]

Hantarex and Hitachi as well. But there are honestly very few reason to go for 480p flat screen set, so I would it call more or less a waste of time, especially if sombody doesn't have a specific reason to hunt for such a display.