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Are we "de-fuzzing" our memories?


lingyi

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Like many here, I’m old enough to have experienced the heyday of the 2600 in all its glory through the RF switch and CRT. And in a search to relive the joy of my youth have come back to the 2600, though modded with S-video and composite outputs. I’m currently playing on a LCD (heresy! :-D ), but am on the lookout for a CRT that will fit on my shelf.

 

I recently reorganized the wires from my consoles (a 2600 and a WII) and spent several hours swapping out cables and switchboxes trying to get rid of the moving horizontal interference from the composite out of my 2600* (I’ve minimized, but haven’t completely eliminated it). Then a bit of nostalgia struck me as it brought back memories of the less than perfect picture that brought my brother and I so many hours of joy back then.

 

It dawned on me, are we (Generation 2600) de-fuzzing our memories of the past by searching for the “perfect picture”? Unless you or your family were in the 1%, your TV probably only had RF in and even then console AV mods were probably years away. Hey, our picture was less than perfect and darned if we didn’t love it! :thumbsup:

 

In 2018, we’re able to get the best possible images out the 2600 (either through the console itself or through emulation and external boxes like the Framemeister), but is this true to what we grew up with and grew to love?

 

Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that what I’m able to get now is head and shoulders above what I had then, but I find myself turning down the sharpness and color, and even tweaking the tint a little bit to get that slightly off-color tinge to my gameplay. And I'm still yearning for the day I can find the money and space to be able to to play on a 32" XBR Pro CRT like the demo I saw in a local videogame store years ago.** :P

 

*I use the composite out on a second TV without an S-video input

**I actually used to own a PVM2530 and did play my then 2600 on it. Still my bubble was burst when I saw the PVM3230 in use. *SIGH* :woozy:

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I don't know if I'm lucky but my no-longer-impressive LCD TV with 3D capabilities still runs straight out the RF signal pretty good, yes its probably modifying it to the extent it isn't a "true signal" but even ballooned to a 1080 resolution TV at 54" its playable, sharp, lagless; its nice not having to use anything else when I want to play just the console and the TV like it should be. When I bought my house, a CRT tv was left, one that was small enough that it won't take up much space. I'm keeping it for light gun games but the likely hood is I won't use it for day to day gaming, would I even want to? I don't think so. When I get the need for a Galaxian fix my modern TV does the job well.

 

Thinking back, I didn't think "oh this looks bad on a CRT TV", I went from 2600 to Sega Saturn on a goldfish bowl 15" TV before I even had a flat screen CRT, the resolution of the games fitted the TV sizes of the time. Now they look pixel'y yes on what we use as our "living room TV" but there's a charm to that too.

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Like many here, I’m old enough to have experienced the heyday of the 2600 in all its glory through the RF switch and CRT. And in a search to relive the joy of my youth have come back to the 2600, though modded with S-video and composite outputs. I’m currently playing on a LCD (heresy! :-D ), but am on the lookout for a CRT that will fit on my shelf.

 

I recently reorganized the wires from my consoles (a 2600 and a WII) and spent several hours swapping out cables and switchboxes trying to get rid of the moving horizontal interference from the composite out of my 2600* (I’ve minimized, but haven’t completely eliminated it). Then a bit of nostalgia struck me as it brought back memories of the less than perfect picture that brought my brother and I so many hours of joy back then.

 

It dawned on me, are we (Generation 2600) de-fuzzing our memories of the past by searching for the “perfect picture”? Unless you or your family were in the 1%, your TV probably only had RF in and even then console AV mods were probably years away. Hey, our picture was less than perfect and darned if we didn’t love it! :thumbsup:

 

In 2018, we’re able to get the best possible images out the 2600 (either through the console itself or through emulation and external boxes like the Framemeister), but is this true to what we grew up with and grew to love?

 

Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that what I’m able to get now is head and shoulders above what I had then, but I find myself turning down the sharpness and color, and even tweaking the tint a little bit to get that slightly off-color tinge to my gameplay. And I'm still yearning for the day I can find the money and space to be able to to play on a 32" XBR Pro CRT like the demo I saw in a local videogame store years ago.** :P

 

*I use the composite out on a second TV without an S-video input

**I actually used to own a PVM2530 and did play my then 2600 on it. Still my bubble was burst when I saw the PVM3230 in use. *SIGH* :woozy:

 

Awesome observations! The picture from the past was vastly superior and can't be recreated with modern technology, at least not yet.

 

This 2600 game still plays well on LCD but it's flat and lifeless by comparison, even a composite mod takes some of the design magic away:

https://youtu.be/aghqgf6qqRw

 

 

 

 

I went out of my way to leverage the 80's programming techniques

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As others have stated elsewhere, we seem to have the most luck when we pair like with like:

 

RF and CRT for pre-crash 8-bit consoles

Component and CRT for NES, Genesis, SNES, GameCube, PS2

HDMI and HDTV for PS3, Xbox360, PS4, Xbone, Wii U, Switch

HDMI and UHDTV for PS4Pro, XboxOneX

 

Put an Atari VCS on an LCD and it's not going to be great ... there's no "Racing the Beam" when each pixel is lit independently.

 

I am OK with letting go of the phosphor dot fossils, and I love being able to see the crisp edges of pixel graphics in razor sharp clarity ... because I'm not sitting on the floor to play Atari Combat with wired controllers anymore.

 

My memories remain fuzzy, but that doesn't mean I have to look at those fishbowl screens anymore. That's just me, many people on here have strong opinions one way or another.

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I even remember games I played on a B&W TV in color! :)

 

It may just be my fading memory of past, but when I played on a B/W TV or switched to B/W on console, I could still visualize everything in color, especially Asteroids! :-o I think it's because I associate B/W with vector Asterorids and color with the 2600.

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It may just be my fading memory of past, but when I played on a B/W TV or switched to B/W on console, I could still visualize everything in color, especially Asteroids! icon_surprised.gif I think it's because I associate B/W with vector Asterorids and color with the 2600.

 

I did that too ... it's nice that we were able to make do with what we had, right?

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It may just be my fading memory of past, but when I played on a B/W TV or switched to B/W on console, I could still visualize everything in color, especially Asteroids! :-o I think it's because I associate B/W with vector Asterorids and color with the 2600.

 

Technically it was in color. It wasn't just black and white you had all those shades of grey or gray...

 

When I was very very young, we only had a little black n white TV and I can remember watching Underdog cartoons on it. I also remember that for some reason, I always knew his cape was red and I can remember it coming up in discussion one day with my mom. She seemed surprised I remembered about this because she told me I used to tell her all the time that I could see the 'red' on his cape on our black and white TV and should could never figure out how I knew that.

 

Most of my Atari gaming was done on a 19inch color Magnavox TV with rotary dials that we had from the late 70s till the mid 80s when it either died or was replaced with our 26" Sylvania stereo console TV. However, my step dad wouldn't allow me to play the Atari on the new TV because by then the word had gotten out about screen burn. So instead I had the Atari setup in a corner of the living room with a small 13inch goldstar color TV and used it until I got my first computer in '88. That was when I stopped playing console games and became a PC gamer for the next 10 years.

 

But to get back on topic, I don't recall ever disliking the picture quality from the Atari back then. But I do remember how much I disliked the way it looked on my modern LCD. I've got nearly all my retro consoles AV modded now and honestly I don't regret it one bit. My eyes aren't getting any better with age and so the larger more clear picture I get now from the AV mods is much preferred.

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Yeah, my Atari was hooked up to the spare b/w 13" tv. Thing was ancient too, you had to turn it on with a pencil eraser because it was missing the knob, and you had to smack it just right to get sound. When we eventually upgraded the main tv, I got an old (Panasonc?) 22" color tv and it was like christmas.

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I think this is basically a variation on the CRT vs. LCD debate we have here every once in a while... I think there was just a 13 page thread or something about it again recently. We also had a thread on connection types, and whether people preferred upgrading/modding their old systems for modern connections or sticking with RF.

 

But yeah, like with like. That's my preference.

 

I still use a CRT for my 8 bit consoles, personally.

 

The thing about CRT's is that people treat them as inherently inferior to LCD's these days, but they're actually not. There are certain things that even old CRT's do better, and I think these aspects are part of our memories of old consoles too. It's not like we all want crappier pictures to go with our old consoles. CRT's have better adjacent pixel/phosphor contrast (an LCD can have high contrast across its full width, but not with adjacent pixels), which makes the picture "pop" or have what a lot of people describe as "depth". To get a similar look today you have to look at plasma or maybe OLED, since they can switch off adjacent pixels entirely. I always feel like 8 bit consoles on LCD's look cartoonishly oversaturated but at the same time kind of dull because of the lower contrast. It just looks weird.

 

Someday the price of OLED will come down and we'll have smaller OLED computer monitors at reasonable prices that can really stand in for a CRT and give you the best of both worlds. Of course it won't be *black and white* if that's really what you prefer because you remember it, but you can always just turn the color all the way down.

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When I was very very young, we only had a little black n white TV and I can remember watching Underdog cartoons on it. I also remember that for some reason, I always knew his cape was red and I can remember it coming up in discussion one day with my mom. She seemed surprised I remembered about this because she told me I used to tell her all the time that I could see the 'red' on his cape on our black and white TV and should could never figure out how I knew that.

 

YES

me too!

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Someday the price of OLED will come down and we'll have smaller OLED computer monitors at reasonable prices that can really stand in for a CRT and give you the best of both worlds. Of course it won't be *black and white* if that's really what you prefer because you remember it, but you can always just turn the color all the way down.

I hear you and I agree!

 

I want to add, let's not make the mistake of the computer magazines of our youth that promised things like "super-fast tape drives" or faster networking via duplexed modems. OLED is current tech and doesn't have to be the way forward. QLED or microLED ... or even more likely, something we haven't even heard of or imagined (or could think we need or want) will fill the gap. And people like me will be all "1080p is enough for me" or there will be some tradeoff just like we have with CRT vs LCD.

 

What you say about plasma makes sense to me as well. My big screen is plasma, which I like because it reminds me of a movie projector screen, not a computer screen like an LCD TV. I suspect it's not as bad as some of the low end laggy LCDs that people hate on around here.

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I'm pretty happy with what we have today, it's so much better than the CRTs of yore.

 

I wonder if microLED will have better lifespan and more consistency over time across its gamut? There is the potential to have more emissive material in those. OLED still has issues there, especially with blue.

 

Perhaps we'll end up with a variation on the QuantumDot + microLED, or some sort of laser technology. Either way, it looks like matrix accessible displays are here to stay. And I can't wait to see what they come up with next!

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For me, I couldn't stand the RF interference back in the 80's and I can't stand it now, which is why playing in emulation is the best way for me to enjoy my retro games. Now there is the advantage of a crystal clear screen which is even closer to arcade quality. You didn't see interference on arcade machines back in the day did you? I'm perfectly happy with the quality of game play so it's a win-win!

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I always worked hard to eliminate as much RF interference as possible, whether it was with my B&W set or the various color sets that I got later, so an excessively fuzzy screen wasn't (usually) a part of my day-to-day experience. It was still RF, of course, so it was always a little fuzzy, but using composite on a CRT TV comes close enough to that experience for me. The 8-bit games in particular don't look right when the display is so clear that every pixel distinctly stands out like a stack of colored bricks; they were designed for displays which would smooth the pixels together and lend a certain glow to them. That's why I plan to stick with CRTs until another comparable solution comes along, but I certainly don't mind losing RF interference.

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I want to add, let's not make the mistake of the computer magazines of our youth that promised things like "super-fast tape drives" or faster networking via duplexed modems. OLED is current tech and doesn't have to be the way forward. QLED or microLED ... or even more likely, something we haven't even heard of or imagined (or could think we need or want) will fill the gap.

Well, true - but I was really thinking in terms of 2-3 years from now. I think we will have small, affordable OLED screens before anything else, and those will be fantastic screens that solve the contrast problem. Lots of LCD screens these days advertise 1,000,000:1 or some crazy contrast ratio, then they get tested and you see actual results that show more like 1,000:1 in the real world, but even that's not really accurate because that's testing between the brightest and darkest parts of the screen. And that's important, but just as important is the contrast between a pixel that's lit and one next to it that's not. And measured that way, that same "1,000,000:1" LCD might really only be 10:1 because LCD's (even those with full array LED backlighting) can't turn off the backlighting for every pixel individually like OLED, plasma or microLED can.

 

But OLED is the one of those techs you can buy now (unfortunately plasma is no longer offered by anyone), and it'll keep getting better, smaller and cheaper. It's almost mainstream as it is, so I think a lot of us will have an OLED TV in the next few years, and if you really want to have that *small* screen experience you remember, we'll probably be able to have that too.

 

And the funny thing is all the contrast talk about any of these technologies is mainly just trying to get us back to where we were in the days of CRT. Standard LCD's just aren't ever going to get there. They've gotten better, but I have LCD, plasma and CRT in my house, and I've thought about why my brand new 4K LCD with its FALD and its excellent black level still looks flat and lifeless compared to either my plasma or CRT, and this adjacent pixel contrast thing is almost definitely a big reason why.

 

There are other things about CRT technology that gave it its particular look, and I don't think any tech will be able to really reproduce all the effects of an electron gun lighting up a bunch of phosphors side to side and up and down every 50 or 60 seconds. But like most people, I'm willing to make *some* small tradeoffs in the name of higher resolutions, bigger screens, etc. It doesn't need to be an absolutely perfect facsimile, including all the warts of CRT too. But for me LCD is just not close enough to what I see on a CRT when playing 8 bit consoles. I know that plasma is close enough, so any of these other technologies that do similar things probably will be too.

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I can completely understand people wanting to play on displays they remember, that is nostalgia after all.

 

Personally, that Sega Genesis I received for christmas was played on a 19" Trinitron with RF. If I had known that console could do RGB out of the box, and you dropped an OSSC and modern flat panel in front of me in those years.... There's no question what I would have picked. :-D

 

De-Fuzzing memories, I'm fine with that. Aspiring for higher quality stuff is natural, even if it's better picture and sound from ancient gaming hardware.

 

What I completely don't comprehend, is the fuzzing of memories so to speak (rose-tinted glasses). Buying stuff now and hyping up items that at the time were considered undesired and couldn't be sold despite deep discounts. I've seen on a few occasions now people post collection photos of something like the game.com modem. A completely useless object. You didn't use one in 97, and you aren't using it now. :? You're literally showing off garbage. Honestly, that's an insult to garbage because spent cans and paper can be repurposed. You're sitting on boxed electronics refuse that should be sitting under a couple feet of methane generating waste, but is instead resting on a shelf in your living room.

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An RF (or A/V composite, where applicable) connection to a CRT was perfect. It's the way it was. Never had a problem with it then and certainly don't now.

 

And although I've been known to shoot the bird at nostalgia-for-nostalgia's-sake, there is something warm and fuzzy about warm and fuzzy phosphor pixels. But it's really not even that so much as just that anything sharper simply doesn't look right--and in some cases it actually looks just plain bad. My 42" HD TV saturates the color so much on certain 2600 games (although not others) that the sprites look like amorphous bleeding messes. These technologies weren't designed with each other in mind. Maybe if we'd had LCD HD TVs 30 years ago it would be different, but we didn't.

 

All this HD stuff people are doing now is fine, I guess, and they can do what they want, but it's not how it actually was.

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I can completely understand people wanting to play on displays they remember, that is nostalgia after all.

 

Personally, that Sega Genesis I received for christmas was played on a 19" Trinitron with RF. If I had known that console could do RGB out of the box, and you dropped an OSSC and modern flat panel in front of me in those years.... There's no question what I would have picked. :-D

 

De-Fuzzing memories, I'm fine with that. Aspiring for higher quality stuff is natural, even if it's better picture and sound from ancient gaming hardware.

 

What I completely don't comprehend, is the fuzzing of memories so to speak (rose-tinted glasses). Buying stuff now and hyping up items that at the time were considered undesired and couldn't be sold despite deep discounts. I've seen on a few occasions now people post collection photos of something like the game.com modem. A completely useless object. You didn't use one in 97, and you aren't using it now. :? You're literally showing off garbage. Honestly, that's an insult to garbage because spent cans and paper can be repurposed. You're sitting on boxed electronics refuse that should be sitting under a couple feet of methane generating waste, but is instead resting on a shelf in your living room.

 

A few months ago I finally attained one my Holy Grail items, a near pristine 1970 Coke harlequin / diamond can for the bargain price of $70.00! Yep, $70.00 for an empty, near 40 year old soda can that I'd been searching 25 years for! :o

 

Insanity? No question, but there's something about seeing and touching an object that brings back a memory of my youth that may or may not be real because I'm not 100% sure we had those cans in Hawaii! :roll:

Edited by lingyi
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for a bit, i had my 2600 and my 994a connected via coax adapter to my $99 el cheapo walmart flat panel and the picture was adequate imo- i don't really have the space even for a 13" crt so it fits my particular needs just fine.

 

my wife recently bought me a modded 2600 for RCA and i'm very pleased with the picture output. :)

 

I grew up with the phosphor glow of the crt and a lot of games I feel take advantage of that technology (and simply don't look the same on an LCD)- but I think that functionality plays a bigger part for me now than nostalgia.

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All this HD stuff people are doing now is fine, I guess, and they can do what they want, but it's not how it actually was.

 

 

I don't buy this conditional selective nostalgia. It reeks of cherry-picking. We couldn't buy used games off the internet 30 years ago either, but people who swear by CRTs have no problem doing that. If you're going to go with "how it actually was", then I would expect you to apply that stance to all aspects of the hobby, not just where convenient.

Edited by keepdreamin
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