Video mode output when using emulators and HD TVs.

[Floob]

Ok, so apologies for such a general question, but I'm looking to try and understand the video output available to me on my setup.

Whilst I appreciate playing retro games is often best with a CRT TV, I'm not enough of a purist to want that over my LCD at the moment, or not until I have more room anyway.
I do have a MegaDrive hooked up to an XRGB mini onto a HD TV which gives me some great results, but my question is more about an emulator.

I have a Raspberry Pi, running RetroPie. I am playing Blazing Star from SNK using the FBA(4pi) emulator (I could also run this on mame4all or gngeo on the Pi).
This works pretty well, and you can see the output here (would be interested to know if you think this looks horrific):
http://youtu.be/FE9UtLCYyqg

My video mode is CEA mode 4 here:
http://elinux.org/RPiconfig#Video_mode_options
hdmi_mode=4 720p 60 Hz

From looking at the screen I'm getting pretty much a 4:3 output, and I think the ratio seems ok.
I'm wondering if there are any recommended steps I should take to improve (make more authentic) the video output.

FBA does support scanlines, but doesnt seem to implement them that well - they seem really wide when I try.

Whats your view - am I pretty limited due to my setup? (I do have an MVS where I could play this properly, but I quite like having the whole SNK library available on a 16GB SD card.)

Any thoughts much appreciated.

[12345]

I'm also interested in this topic, especially when it gets to what is the best resolution to set an emulator to.
Regarding this I'd like to know: Should I set the emulator's output to the highest resolution possible or rather to e.g. 240p and let an external upscaler such as the framemeister do the job?

[Xyga]

When playing with emulators and LCD it is always better to match the native resolution of the display period.
The various effects and filters were not designed to work in combination with an external scaler further altering the picture, that second stage of upscaling is unwanted.

Still, you can try and use your emulator and pc as a 'simulated-XRGB' by setting a simple 480 lines output, or source-based linedoubled output with fake scanlines hiding one in two lines of that linedoubled picture (even or odd lines, depends).
The problem though is that very few emulators feature real software simulated scanlines (MAME up to v0.106 did) most offer simple - and wrong - overlays.
Anyway even with the right fake scanlines beware the results will depend greatly on your display's built-in scaler (it better be at least full hd), also sometimes forcing 4:3 from the display will be necessary as not all emulators can control the aspect in simple linedoubling mode.