NTSC SNES games on European CRT TV

[cachaito]

Hello! Everybody talks that retro NTSC games (especially 240p) are superior to PAL, point out that both have different power supply or that PAL games have slower games pace (like in SEGA Mega Drive and Sonic game).

I'm in search for a decent consumer CRT TV (probably some Sony Trinitron) to connect it with my North American SNES with a good SCART cable and I wonder about other thing.
Please look at this tv label:


Is there any limitations that NTSC console works in 60Hz and his PAL CRT runs with 50Hz?

[mvsfan]

I live in ntsc land, so this is limited advice but here goes.

Some tvs in Europe support 60hz consoles. they have a mode for it. externally though they will all run at 50 hz.

I believe you want a tv that says PAL60 or something similar.

[azmun]

All my consoles are NTSC-U/C and NTSC-J. Never had issues running the games on our PAL/European CRT television sets via SCART (RGB). I've not encountered any slowdown nor black bars. Just make sure your SNES isn't the Mini/Jr. since those revisions don't output RGB natively.

Regarding games running slower and having other problems, I believe that only happens when you cross-over and run software optimized for NTSC on a PAL console and vice-versa.

[Sumez]

Most European CRT sets that aren't too old, or some cheap no-name brand, will have 60hz support. I don't remember ever seeing one that doesn't aside from a few early 90s TVs that people had in store somewhere.

I would be baffled if a Sony Trinitron CRT didn't support 60hz

[PascalP]

The 50Hz on the label related to the power supply (220V / 50Hz).
This has nothing to do with the display of 60Hz system, your NTSC consoles will run just fine

[Xer Xian]

Yeah, pretty much all european CRT TVs from early '90 onwards support NTSC and PAL60 (which is 480i@60Hz with PAL colour/audio encoding - not sure if NTSC is displayed maintaining the original color/audio encoding). I did a quick search and apparently that model has a FE-1 chassis, which is not super-old so should be fine.

A fun fact is that PAL is the better standard in terms of not only resolution but also colour handling (there's an old joke that NTSC stands for 'Never the Same Color' ). The other side of the coin is that it has less frame/fields per second (due to bandwidth limitation for broadcasting). Lots of info can be found on the wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL#Multi ... 2PAL_60.22 and also here's a well-made video from a videogaming pow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWSIhf8q9Ao

[Sumez]

The lower framrate on PAL isn't really much of a tradeoff. Any game designed for 50hz display should give you an experience just as solid as 60hz games. In fact, there are many situations where PAL games suffer less from overall slowdown in games timed to the framerate because they get more CPU time during a frame.
The whole issue that gives 50hz such a bad reputation is obviously that games just weren't made for 50hz ever. I even see a ton of European developed games on the NES that are timed for 60hz consoles.

Anyway that's all really off-topic, it's just something I tend to think too much about.

[Xer Xian]

Well, having a slower refresh rate is a con in absolute sense. If the picture/field is refreshed every 20ms (instead of 16.6ms) the game WILL be a touch less responsive to inputs (bordering on nitpicking territory yeah but it's a fact). 50Hz flickering is also borderline acceptable.

It goes without saying that the quality of the conversion plays the more critical role by far in making a PAL game acceptable or not. And sadly we know how things used to go back in the day.

[cachaito]

Thank you guys! I definitely will buy some nice CRT in near future. Although I got three questions more:
1) currently on my Sony KDL-32V4500 I've noticed strange thing when I play (RGB cable) on my NTSC - sometimes when main character moves (in various games, usually when game starts) I got strange image artifact like that
After couple second those lines disappears and proper image is presented: example.

Is this 50Hz/ 60Hz artifacts?
2) Xer Xian mentioned about model chassis checking - is there any page for this?
3) I'd want to take advantage of the situation and ask you guys for examples of nice CRT consumer TV (specific chassis model?) that you would buy for your retro setup.

Best regards!

[Makinx]

Thank you guys! I definitely will buy some nice CRT in near future. Although I got three questions more:
1) currently on my Sony KDL-32V4500 I've noticed strange thing when I play (RGB cable) on my NTSC - sometimes when main character moves (in various games, usually when game starts) I got strange image artifact like that
After couple second those lines disappears and proper image is presented: example.

Is this 50Hz/ 60Hz artifacts?
2) Xer Xian mentioned about model chassis checking - is there any page for this?
3) I'd want to take advantage of the situation and ask you guys for examples of nice CRT consumer TV (specific chassis model?) that you would buy for your retro setup.

Best regards!

I'm pretty sure that's because the tv doesn't display 240p correctly. Your character has these lines going through it, when instead it should be blinking. Probably when the game starts, your character is invincible for a while and it blinks (normally) to indicate this.
This has nothing to do with 50hz/60hz. It's a common problem with modern tv's.

[Xer Xian]

Xer Xian mentioned about model chassis checking - is there any page for this?

I've only bumped into an incomplete Trinitron list here: http://www.empresas.mundo-r.com/cromavi ... Y%20TV.pdf (posted from user matrigs in this thread: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=47173). In general you have to resort to enthusiasts forum for CRT stuff - this subforum is great, but it may also be worth to check other places too (like here, here or here).

Anyway keep in mind that most CRTs are now at least 10-15 years old and as such may need servicing or may even be beyond repair. Instead of looking all over the world for that one model everyone likes, you should probably look around your area and see what you can find - then maybe look it up online, and if it's not a 100Hz model (or a particularly bad one) go and test it to see if it's worth picking it up.

[neorichieb1971]

Had 5 or 6 Sony Trinitrons in the past and never had any issues running 60hz NTSC games on any of them.

Quite a few of mine had Svideo inputs on the front and they took 60hz NTSC signals perfectly. I ran my 1994 PS1 on svideo for 5 years perfectly well. Strangely I didn't like RGB on the Trinitron tubes. The colours were always bland and darker than even cheaper CRT's on the market at the time. I remember looking at a Panasonic that weighed half as much as my trinitron and the RGB on the Panasonic was excellent just like an arcade monitor. Svideo on the Sony was very slightly blurrier than RGB but the colours popped so I went with that. Not to mention that every SCART lead I ever tried caused a huge amount of humming on white screens. And the PS1 booted with a white screen

Personally I would never buy a CRT ever again. I'm surprised that a similar technology hasn't been shrunk down somewhat to make it more modernized. I know Americans have 6 spare rooms and 2500 sq ft of basement space, but for us UK space starved people there isn't really an option to be lugging 20 year old CRT's about.

[Xer Xian]

I'm surprised that a similar technology hasn't been shrunk down somewhat to make it more modernized. I know Americans have 6 spare rooms and 2500 sq ft of basement space, but for us UK space starved people there isn't really an option to be lugging 20 year old CRT's about.

Slimmer CRTs were a thing in the mid-2000s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_r ... limmer_CRT , https://www.cnet.com/news/slimmer-tube- ... at-panels/

I've never seen one in person, but apparently getting good geometry/convergence was trickier than with fat CRTs. There was also research to mass-market an evolution of the CRT tech that replaced the electron gun with tiny electron emitters (one for each phosphor dot) but sadly it never went anywhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-c ... er_display

[Xyga]

That 32" Sony is most probably a 100Hz model (pretty much all 16:9 models are iirc), those typically force deinterlacing on low res 288/240p signals so what he's seeing on those pics are combing artifacts from in-game flickering objects.

Basically normal sets do 50-60Hz in true original low resolution, 100Hz sets double 50-60Hz to 100-120Hz and downscan in interlaced mode -> avoid those 100Hz sets absolutely, it's a well known rule of the consumer crt tv world.

Protip: normal sets are all 4:3 and come labelled as 50Hz, while 100Hz models can also be 4:3 but do not always specify they're 100Hz, it's necessary to document oneself before acquiring.

EDIT: the fuck, I'm saying bullshit, I though it was a crt and it's just an lcd LOL. But still those look like combing artifacts.

[cachaito]

Thank you all for a great answers! Xer Xian your links are awesome! Can't wait to compare this "combing artifacts" on a proper CRT model.
Here also I found a great article with examples about this issue: http://www.hdretrovision.com/240p/

[Xyga]

For your use on a proper 50-60Hz crt there won't be any at all, no problem.