Does an "all in one" VGA monitor exist?

[maxtherabbit]

After some testing with the Wei-ya M-3129, I can tell you that it puts out an incredible picture at 15, 25, AND 31 KHz. Without a doubt, its what OP is looking for. Dreamcast through VGA looks stunningly crisp and vibrant.

Get yourself a $25 GBS 8200 converter and you can feed it component if you wish. I havent tested that yet, but I see no reason why it wouldnt work just fine.

how does one acquire one of these tri sync monitors? do you have to order direct from wei-ya? what's the price? how to get it shipped without arriving fucked up like yours did? (assuming it is actually a result of handling and not simply a manufacturing defect)

[Josh128]

https://www.betsonparts.com/makvision-2 ... a-vga.html

Betson Imperial is the authorized US distributor for the manufacturer HUAI-I / Wei-Ya, which is a Taiwanese company. They have 19 of them in stock. Betson actually told me over the phone they only ship as freight on a pallet because UPS and FedEx Ground have damaged too many of them. Freight is supposedly better because its shipped on a pallet and only handled by forklift/truck where as ground shipping gets manually handled and often gets sorted on conveyors, giving it much more chance to get thrown around. I still dont know if its a manu defect or not for sure, but I grossly underestimated the fragility of these things apparently. The box arrived in relatively good shape, one outside corner showed a bit of damage but the monitor itself looks completely perfect physically.

I suppose I fucked up big time by going with another seller that does ship UPS or Fed Ex. In order to save about $70, Im currently at the mercy of FedEx, the seller, and Wei-Ya and Im going to be extremely pissed if I end up with nothing but a $650 boat anchor.

Have you seen the photos I posted in the other thread? Very nice. The actual CRT in mine is made by LG in apparently the last CRT monitor production line on the planet. Only thing you need to know is that when you use the control for horizontal size, it will "fishbowl" (ie compress or decompress on the far ends vs the center) on you if you go too wide or too narrow. If you put it in the sweet spot its very close to perfect though. The sweet spot varies depending on the resolution you feed it. Using ArcadeOSD and adjusting there, I was able to get absolutely beautiful 384x224 for CPS-1 games and various other 15KHz resolutions. And the 512x384 medium res for Mace: TDA is beautiful, at least from MAME. I didnt put in my dedicated Mace cab yet as Im waiting to see how all this drama plays out. I also hooked my Dreamcast up via VGA for the 31KHz high res mode and it was as crisp as a new hundred dollar bill.

HUAI-I actually also makes a fucking monster 36"/38" version of this same tri-sync variety. Apparently Betson doesnt sell those as I dont see them on their site. Its a couple hundred bucks more from what Ive gathered though.

The actual CRT in mine is made by LG in apparently what is the last CRT monitor production line on the planet.

[Guspaz]

Anything that ships in a box is going to by physically tossed/thrown around/dropped in shipping. If the item you're shipping/receiving can't withstand being thrown and dropped, don't ship it as a parcel.

I wonder if it might be an interesting service for somebody to take these monitors and package them for use. Build a square PVM-style chassis with metal bending or wood, some 3D printing for what would have been injection moulded parts, sprinkle in a little extra electronics for handling various inputs (like a GBS), and sell it as something that people can just buy and plop down on a table/stand and just use.

It's also worth noting that we seem to have passed some sort of threshold where a refresh rate war started, with 4K monitors are now available at 165Hz, 1440p at 240Hz, 1080p at 360Hz, and BlurBusters having tested a working prototype of a 480Hz monitor.

Once refresh rates start getting high enough, you've got enough temporal resolution to start simulating things like phosphor decay, and as resolutions go up you start being able to simulate phosphor mask structures. 480Hz can only simulate a field raster in eight chunks (so eight levels of phosphor decay), but there's probably a point where you couldn't tell the difference between a simulated raster and the actual beam moving across the screen. Give it a few years and I'd bet you somebody could output a signal to a digital display that is indistinguishable from a CRT without a side-by-side comparison. For that matter, some sort of custom display controller using overlapping rolling refreshes could basically simulate the raster process too.

[orange808]

The refresh rate battle is intriguing. Seems like a marketing gimmick.

Outside of simulating a raster scan out (something manufacturers aren't doing), what's the practical use case?

I wouldn't call competitive sport gaming is a practical use case. That's a niche within a niche within a niche. Mainstream software already struggles to hit 60fps.

Without a simulated raster, users get nothing but a sticker on the bezel with a big number.

[Guspaz]

The amount of smoothness and input lag on 60Hz versus 144Hz is enormous, night and day difference. Any time I go back to 60Hz, the Windows mouse cursor just seems choppy and laggy (even on the same monitor). Which is kind of constantly since due to covid I have a 60Hz office monitor right next to me. I'm not a competitive gamer, or even a particularly good gamer, the difference to me is huge just on the Windows desktop.

144Hz to 240Hz I haven't personally experienced, but the testing that I've seen shows that improvements in human response times are measurable, but I doubt it's all that noticeable. Beyond that, I think you're way too far into diminishing returns.

All that said, higher refresh rates do improve motion blur from the lower persistence, even without BFI. So even if you can't notice the difference in terms of responsiveness, you may still notice a reduction in motion blur. There are also potential benefits from having a wider VRR range. A powerful computer on a monitor with a 40-144Hz VRR range, you probably need to futz about with framerate limits to stop the monitor from exceeding the maximum VRR threshold, but that's a lot less likely on a much higher refresh rate display. Makes things simpler.

Simulating a raster with a rolling refresh would require support from the manufacturer, but you could still simulate it by just drawing every frame in eight chunks purely via the monitor's input.

[Josh128]

Simulating the look of a CRT involves more than just rolling scan and phosphor decay though. Transmissive vs. emissive display visual differences and viewing angles also play a big part. Those things aside, I was playing with adjusting the CRT shaders in game on MAME on a 1080p LCD the other day, and the way it can simulate the curve, bloom, and shadow mask or aperture grille when you set it up right is pretty damned cool already.

As far as the parcel shipping, yeah of course hindsight is 20/20. The seller I bought from buys direct from HUAI-I and has had good luck with UPS and FedEx. If I get a replacement or refund I will certainly go with freight going forward. As I said, they didnt destroy the package. I just underestimated how fragile the innards of a tube can be.

[orange808]

The amount of smoothness and input lag on 60Hz versus 144Hz is enormous, night and day difference. Any time I go back to 60Hz, the Windows mouse cursor just seems choppy and laggy (even on the same monitor). Which is kind of constantly since due to covid I have a 60Hz office monitor right next to me. I'm not a competitive gamer, or even a particularly good gamer, the difference to me is huge just on the Windows desktop.

144Hz to 240Hz I haven't personally experienced, but the testing that I've seen shows that improvements in human response times are measurable, but I doubt it's all that noticeable. Beyond that, I think you're way too far into diminishing returns.

All that said, higher refresh rates do improve motion blur from the lower persistence, even without BFI. So even if you can't notice the difference in terms of responsiveness, you may still notice a reduction in motion blur. There are also potential benefits from having a wider VRR range. A powerful computer on a monitor with a 40-144Hz VRR range, you probably need to futz about with framerate limits to stop the monitor from exceeding the maximum VRR threshold, but that's a lot less likely on a much higher refresh rate display. Makes things simpler.

Simulating a raster with a rolling refresh would require support from the manufacturer, but you could still simulate it by just drawing every frame in eight chunks purely via the monitor's input.

Could be useful for desktop. Although, I'm not familiar with how well browsers or video subscription service applications handle frame rate conversion. Those would be my big concerns for general users.

Personally, I hesitate moving to high frame rates on the desktop because I work on content that targets ~60fps. I probably could let a simulator or emulator go full screen and change the signal, but waiting on the handshake would get old really fast.

[NJRoadfan]

Best bet to keep costs down with freight shipping is seeing if you have a shipping hub nearby with the company the seller intends to use. Its a lot cheaper to have it shipped direct to the facility and you pick it up in your own vehicle. Otherwise you'll pay extra for the truck transport, lift gate service, and residential address service. Another alternative is if you work somewhere that has a loading dock, just ship it there.

[Guspaz]

Could be useful for desktop. Although, I'm not familiar with how well browsers or video subscription service applications handle frame rate conversion. Those would be my big concerns for general users.

If you stick to integer multiples, there's not a problem, and you can run these displays at any refresh rate you want. A 144Hz display will work perfectly fine at 120Hz, which is an integer multiple of 24, 30, and 60. Everything will still divide evenly. That said, you won't see all possible refresh rates in the dropdown (I see 60/100/120/144) regardless of what the display can actually do. If you want to go off the beaten track of the defaults, you'd need to create a custom resolution in the AMD/nVidia control panel, but if you want maximum compatibility, 120Hz and 240Hz are both safe values. 144Hz and 165Hz are less safe (in that it may not be divisible evenly for media). That said, I run at 144Hz, meaning 24 FPS content scales evenly, but 30 and 60 FPS content doesn't, and... I don't really notice the judder unless I look hard for it. If it bothered me, I'd just drop down to 120Hz.

Personally, I hesitate moving to high frame rates on the desktop because I work on content that targets ~60fps. I probably could let a simulator or emulator go full screen and change the signal, but waiting on the handshake would get old really fast.

Not a problem if you stick to multiples, but if you do need to change resolutions, you could just switch the display to 60Hz while you work, and change it back after. VRR might also mitigate this by removing the requirement of a handshake to change the refresh rate.

Word of warning: most operating systems and graphics card drivers do a somewhat poor job of handling multiple displays with mismatched refresh rates. It works, but there are often side effects.

[Fudoh]

On a regular PC setup, there's no cadence lock between the source file for a media player and the output to a display. But then again the framerate conversion is handled quite nicely on the player's side. After all most displays still run at a fixed 60Hz rate, while contents (be it downloaded or ripped material or Youtube) comes in a whole variety of refresh rates.

To pick one example: 30fps content on 144 vs. 120Hz displays. With 120Hz you would somehow minimize the cadence breaks, but you'll only hardly get anywhere near a locked 1:4 cadence. It's not really worth bothering at all. And the higher the source material's refresh the less noticeable it gets anyway. 50 to 60Hz video conversions are still a lot smoother than any 2:3 cadence (for 24fps on 60Hz).

[jd213]

I wonder if it might be an interesting service for somebody to take these monitors and package them for use. Build a square PVM-style chassis with metal bending or wood, some 3D printing for what would have been injection moulded parts, sprinkle in a little extra electronics for handling various inputs (like a GBS), and sell it as something that people can just buy and plop down on a table/stand and just use.

Would be interested in something like this myself as I'm planning on getting the 27/29" model fairly soon. Would probably be satisfied with a cheap plywood case, as long as it can be put together easily enough, allows for rotating, and adequate ventilation (thinking of adding some pc fans as well).

Tried Googling for already made designs but couldn't find anything, here's the dimensions that were posted in the
For Sale thread:

[SuperSpongo]

After some testing with the Wei-ya M-3129, I can tell you that it puts out an incredible picture at 15, 25, AND 31 KHz. Without a doubt, its what OP is looking for. Dreamcast through VGA looks stunningly crisp and vibrant.

These do look very nice on paper! How is the geometry and linearity in the different modes? A buddy of mine had a Wei-Ya Tri-Sync chassis and the horizontal linearity was fine for 15kHz content, but very bad for 31kHz. It led us to believe that the comparatively simple circuit was designed for a certain frequency primarily and is not ideal for others.
He tested a couple of different cap values for the S-shaping capacitor and could indeed improve the linearity a bit. But that messed with the 15kHz signals.

[Josh128]

Its pretty good for a flat tube. Slightly better than my 27" FD Trinitron in fact. I find the geometry doesnt change much between modes on this unit. You can get it pretty decent with just the control pots. The pincushion control is a bit jumpy/touchy, but acceptable.

There is a "fishbowl" effect on side scrolling graphics if you stretch or compress horizontal size too much. Find the sweet spot and its quite uniform.

Looks like Betson just sold a shitload of these in the past two days. They are almost sold out now. Im still waiting on a resolution on my issue. I want a properly working unit for my cab. Ive asked the seller to hold one for me pending a response / refund from the manu or FedEx.

This is medium res vs std res on the unit:
Medium




Standard

[Josh128]

Well, the seller is going to refund my money provided I ship this unit back, so Im out $170 on shipping. He would provide a replacement, but Betson's freight quote is the best Ive seen, so I placed an order there. I could have had the seller ship again FedEx Ground but theres no fucking way Im rolling those dice a second time. At Betson, here was only 2 left when I ordered, those things are selling like hotcakes apparently?!

So lesson learned here, in trying to save $70 Im ending up paying about $320 more overall. What a fucking nightmare...

[kitty666cats]

Looks like my post got pretty glossed over, here's an example of how awesome the subwoofers are:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDCjoozFyNw/

and here's some 1024x768p KODI

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDC5iLOFzD3/