Fudoh's ode to old display technology

[davidwhangchoi]

aside from the green brown corner tint at a certain rotation alignment (pretty much dialed it out the green tint but with a slight, slight angled screen on top) the picture is so beautiful on this set. i'm falling in love w/ my old games all over again!




Late to the party but spamming some full size pics in excitement that i shared on GAF












KoF 99 ps1 drop dead gorgeous:











re3





re1

[nakedarthur]

Fudoh: Once again proving why you're a legend I was able to set monitor as VGA type in VMMaker, regenerate resolutions, then set mame.ini to use arcade_31 as display type. It's now outputting double scaled at 640x480@57.5hz with no issues! Unfortunately still having trouble with the really low frequency games like Mortal Kombat and Raiden II (54 and 55hz), but that might be asking too much. I saw he added a minfreq feature, so I might just have to bump those games up a bit to get them playable. Thanks again!

[Fudoh]

And gratulations on the find. It's become almost impossible to find any more of these beauties. Enjoy!

[ryu]

There was a BVM32D for sale in my vicinity. I let it slip...

[davidwhangchoi]

Fudoh: Once again proving why you're a legend I was able to set monitor as VGA type in VMMaker, regenerate resolutions, then set mame.ini to use arcade_31 as display type. It's now outputting double scaled at 640x480@57.5hz with no issues! Unfortunately still having trouble with the really low frequency games like Mortal Kombat and Raiden II (54 and 55hz), but that might be asking too much. I saw he added a minfreq feature, so I might just have to bump those games up a bit to get them playable. Thanks again!

that looks pretty. especially donkey kong vertically (tate) .

Spoiler

i'm still setting the contrast on mine as it had too much bloom earlier but got it adjust ok with revenge of shinobi.

[vasya228]

Hello! I have 14L2

1. How to fix these color lines ?
http://i.imgur.com/nL8fwud.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/gABo9Eg.jpg

2. These brightness levels are normal?
http://i.imgur.com/5qJrsqd.jpg

[Guspaz]

The colour lines are normal and are supposed to be there. Increase the overscan until they're not visible.

[vasya228]

If that is all info for my question then thank you, Guspaz

[werk91]

Alternatively you can get a cheap degaussing wand from Aliexpress. They go for as little as $5 including shipping.
I have one. Worked like a charm on a wonky monitor I had.

I've decided that's the only way forward as even with the service menu I can't shift the picture that much to the left to avoid all of the discolouration patch. Can anyone confirm if those will work fine in the UK without a transformer ? I can't find any info on whether they're 110/120V or 220/240V.

[sixbynine]

Fudoh: Do you know, by any chance, a quick way to get standard german cable tv into a bvm via component inputs?

[Fudoh]

Fudoh: Do you know, by any chance, a quick way to get standard german cable tv into a bvm via component inputs?

get any old DVD-R recorder. They have RF input and component (or RGB) output.

[FinalBaton]

Gonna watch cable on the ol' CRT professional monitor huh? Cool I plan on doing this also with the NEC

[Guspaz]

I'm surprised that it's even possible anymore. Analog cable was completely abandoned here years ago, and Europe is normally the place that you think of as being ahead of us in digitization of things like radio.

[sixbynine]

Yeah, got to love the good ol’ cable. Good idea fudoh, thx!

[FinalBaton]

I'm surprised that it's even possible anymore. Analog cable was completely abandoned here years ago, and Europe is normally the place that you think of as being ahead of us in digitization of things like radio.

Doesn't have to be analog cable

send a digital cable feed through component or through an HDMI to VGA converter and plug that into your CRT RGB monitor


As far as consumer SD CRTs :

my dad plugs the digital cable (coax) directly into his SD CRT in the basement and it works in 480i
I'm guessing that digital cable through coax carries both a 480i video signal AND a data stream for the HD decoders to work with. But I'm not sure about this



Having said that, my service provider does offer analog cable still. Guessing it's 480i.
But I'm gonna go with digital cable: will get a decoder and feed 720p and 1080i into the NEC via my HDMI to VGA converter

[Guspaz]

I meant possible as in, have analog cable television service that gets connected to an analog cable tuner.

Digital cable, you've either got the decoder downscaling HD channels, or are just limited to SD channels. During the transition period, the cable companies tended to give you free analog cable if you subscribed to digital service, but that ended when they finally killed the analog signal.

Analog cable television is enormously wasteful of spectrum, and cable systems are very limited in how much spectrum they have to play with. Typically this is something between 800MHz and 1000MHz. Each analog channel consumes 6MHz (more in Europe, 8MHz IIRC), which is enough for 38 Mbps for cable Internet (NA, after overhead), a dozen or more digital 480i channels, or 2-3 1080i digital cable stations. With SDV (switched digital video, which is sort of like on-demand multicasting), you can stretch it much farther.

If you're curious, here's a link to my local cable provider's detailed spectrum breakdown:

http://www.illicotech.com/NumMtlMGM.html

Each QAM represents a single analog cable channel (6MHz slice). Of particular note is the SDV block a bit before halfway. They allocate only 8 QAMs (so 8 analog TV stations), and use it for 146 standard def channels and 49 high-def channels. 8 analog channels, or 195 analog channels. Each choice for a cable company to make!

[FinalBaton]

Oh so you're in Québec too, Montréal I guess?
Always nice to see a fellow PQ resident here.
I live near Québec city, 100 km to the east, on the St. Lawrence River's northern bank

Luckily my CRT monitor displays 720 progressive and 1080 interlaced natively. So I can pick up digital cable, a digital tuner, and output HDMI from that into a converter. By sending this to my monitor, I will get 720p and 1080i feeds on my CRT.

I don't have an analog tuner here so I don't mind picking up a brand new digital one.

[FinalBaton]

Digital cable, you've either got the decoder downscaling HD channels, or are just limited to SD channels.

Are you speaking about using certain analog inputs on a digital decoder? I'm not sure I understand this sentance, I must be having a brain fart.

[Guspaz]

Yeah, I'm in and from Montreal. Although I actually live in the 800MHz region, not the 1000MHz region, since I only qualify for 60/10 cable and not 120/20 or 200/30 cable.

If you're talking about a PVM or BVM that supports 1080i, you could get an HD-SDI input board for the monitor, and then convert HDMI to HD-SDI with a relatively cheap adapter. Or convert HDMI to component, that works too.

Are you speaking about using certain analog inputs on a digital decoder? I'm not sure I understand this sentance, I must be having a brain fart.

Analog cable doesn't exist here anymore, so the only cable is digital cable. Videotron's digital decoder boxes support upscaling and downscaling: they will output whatever resolution you tell them to, so if all your display supports is 480i, you set the decoder box to 480i and use that.

I've not tried any of their newer "NG" boxes (I cancelled my service a year or two ago and now rely on digital OTA), but my previous HD PVR (Scientific Atlanta 8300) supported pretty much every output imaginable: composite, component, s-video, analog RCA audio, optical digital audio, coax digital audio, HDMI.

[sixbynine]

Hmm, I read up on the topic and they indeed plan on phasing out analog cable and dvb-t (digital sat) for dvb-t2.
Might aswell buy a cheap dvb-t2 hd capable receiver and plug it into the hdfury. My display does 1080i and 720p, so why not.

[ryu]

Anyone know if a pair of headphones can be hooked up to a PVM's audio output w/o risking damage to the internal amp or headphones?

Considering the newer units that is (L4 in my case).

[Guspaz]

The PVM outputs line-level audio (actually the same levels as is fed in), so you can't use headphones with it. You'll need a headphone amplifier. I grabbed the Monoprice one for this purpose, and also connected my PC to it via USB so that I can also use it for that.

[ryu]

Wow, what a bummer. I thought I could get away with just buying a cable adapter here.

Thanks for letting me know!

[Guspaz]

Well, consider also that the PVM only supports mono audio, so you don't really want to be doing anything with its audio output in the first place, unless it's a NES or other mono console.

[Ed Oscuro]

Technically speaking you often can use headphones with line-level outputs; many outputs are often somewhere between line level and headphone. As a rough generalization line level should give quieter audio; the issue is not blowing up the headphones but not driving them enough. I personally take a "listen and see" approach - but I have been using low-impedance headphones some years now; these do better with line level outupt. There's no risk of damage.

Still, the PVM is not the place to go hook up your audio; bypass it entirely. And, of course, you may well find that you need a headphone amp (especially if you have high impedance headphones). The real question, therefore, is what kind of audio source you have. That'll determine what you need to buy, if anything, to get sound through headphones.

[Guspaz]

I tried the SNES and PSOne directly (Stereo RCA to headphone adapter) to a pair of Sennheiser HD438 headphones (32 Ohm), and the audio was so quiet it was useless. They're not low impedance, but it seems like "low impedance" starts at 25 Ohms and under, so it's not far off.

So, I mean, technically they work, you connect them and sound comes out, but it's whisper-quiet.

I bought this headphone amp, which solved the problem and works well:

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=11567

I have my desktop connected to USB IN, my retro game switcher plugged into AUX IN, my PVM plugged into PRE OUT, my home theater system plugged into LINE OUT (for when I loop video through the PVM to my projector), and my headphones plugged into the headphone jack (which needs a quarter inch to 3.5mm adapter).

The output to the PVM is rather quiet for some reason, which I just solve by flipping the GAIN switch when I want to use the PVM speakers. I'm planning to eventually get real speakers instead of using the built-in PVM one, but I haven't found any compact speakers that look like they'd fit well yet. You need to pull the volume knob on the amp out a bit so that it doesn't scrape against the chassis.

I got it for $114 CAD from NewEgg Canada, which surprised me because that's actually ~10% cheaper than Monoprice when converted to USD, and it was free shipping to boot.

I understand that the Monoprice amp is basically a Fiio E09K with a built-in DAC.

[ryu]

Hmm. I'm currently using some shitty cheap ass speakers for use with smartphones on my PVM. The volume on the headphone out port is super loud, and can't be adjusted by using the speaker sets' volume dial.
Since it can't be adjusted I assumed it to be line level, but I guess it's the exact opposite from your experience. Maybe the speakers just output a fixed volume on the headphone out.

I just bought another set of Yamaha NX-50 speakers. Got those for my PC a while back and they're pretty good and not as bulky as my set of studio monitors which are too large for my current setup. My headphones aren't that great and I wasn't planning on using them forever when playing on a CRT anyways.

[Einzelherz]

I have two of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/231882384057

One for my computer's speakers and one for my PVM. The audio is fantastic with both.

Edit: There is no audio out line for headphones, which seems to be your primary concern.

[dak1]

Thanks for the help with my PC -> PVM / Extron questions a while back. Here's the setup so far.

[Blair]

Hey thanks again all. I've used two different SCART-BNC cables, tried rotating the connectors and had no success, so I'm struggling a bit.

I suppose the next thing will be to try a different video input method? I'll also try connecting to a flatscreen with my SCART lead to rule that out as well.

I was hoping it would just be a change within the PVM settings but it's sounding like that's not the case?

Thanks again for any bright ideas...

My PVM-14m2u does this same grey streak thing with dark green backgrounds. i've heard its caused by bad solder joints on the connector board. (I use mostly component input)

not a hard thing to fix (just a re-ball) if your a solder-gun bro, but i'm not. not that big a deal (only time I notice it is on that one level in super Mario world).

Thanks for the help with my PC -> PVM / Extron questions a while back.

that is an awesome looking setup, and it reminds me that I need to repair my Saturn arcade stick (if possible).