Keatah, on Tue Oct 16, 2012 12:43 AM, said:

I never said they all had them on the front, I said they were readily accessible, meaning you can access them without taking anything apart. However, some of the older PC monitors (CTX comes to mind) didn't have a pot at all for horizontal size; the only way to adjust it was with a plastic Allen wrench to turn the horizontal width coil on the chassis (you have to remove the monitor's housing to do this). This also applies to most older TVs and most older arcade monitors.

Quote

Standard resolution CRT TVs were fully optimized for an NTSC signal at the factory. Since they are only ever used with NTSC or NTSC-like signals at home, there is no need for the end user to ever have to adjust raster size and position, unless something goes terribly wrong with the TV. That's why most of them don't even have readily accessible raster size/position adjustment controls.

Quote

The two differences between a 15 kKz CRT TV and a 15 kKz CRT arcade monitor are:

1. The arcade monitor has no TV tuner
2. The arcade monitor has RGB input

All of the adjustment controls on an arcade monitor are readily accessible because they have an open frame; i.e., they are not encased in a plastic or wood housing like TVs are. Also, they have better picture quality than TVs because of the RGB input (RGB is the purest analog video signal possible), and because they are usually displaying progressive scan video (i.e., not interlaced). There are a few exceptions, like Nintendo's Popeye, and some of the Bally Midway games like Tapper, which are interlaced. But, any CRT monitor or TV can display interlaced or progressive video, as long as it falls within its sync range (which is ~15 kHz for standard resolution arcade monitors and TVs), so those oddball interlaced arcade games used ordinary arcade monitors.

Keatah, on Mon Oct 15, 2012 11:04 PM, said:

CRT monitors always have readily accessible V/H size and V/H position adjustment controls, because there is no standard signal that the manufacturer can count on the monitor always receiving (unless it's an old composite monitor, in which case it expects an NTSC signal like a TV). A standard resolution arcade monitor for example may get a 395 x 254p @ 53 Hz signal from a Midway Mortal Kombat board, or a 512 x 448i @ 60 Hz signal from a Nintendo Popeye board, or a 292 x 240p @ 60 Hz signal from a William's Defender board, and so on. The same goes for a PC, and to a greater extent, so PC CRT monitors are usually multisync, because the user could select any resolution between say 640 x 480p @ 60 Hz and 1920 x 1440p @ 75 Hz.

Standard resolution TVs however, expect only one type of signal: NTSC; and as such, the V/H size and V/H position can be set at the factory and never have to be touched by the end user. I have 6 standard resolution CRT TVs here and none of them have V/H size and V/H position adjustment controls that are accessible from the outside, nor have I ever needed those adjustments on a TV.

Keatah, on Mon Oct 15, 2012 5:10 PM, said:

I've never had to adjust "H.size and V.size and position" on a TV for anything; not for video game consoles, not for TV transmissions, not for VCRs / DVD players; nothing. In fact, I've never even seen a standard resolution CRT TV that even has those adjustments on the outside (those pots are on the chassis; you have to take the TV apart to get to them). Everything that was designed to display on a standard resolution TV in the U.S. market generated an NTSC signal (or NTSC-like signal), and as such, they overscanned beyond the viewable area of the tube, which meant the picture always filled the viewable screen 100%.

Your uncle either had a very weird TV or you're misremembering things. Also, your claim of being "blown across the room" from a static charge off the screen is dubious at best.

Keatah, on Sun Oct 14, 2012 11:45 PM, said:

No, it is a good thing when it is predictable and improves the appearance of the simplistic graphics you are limited to.

Quote

There is absolutely no smearing there nor anywhere else in the image. There is a clean transition between the color of the gun and the colors that surround the gun. Do you even know what "smearing" means?

Quote

They are not "stretched". A single pixel won't take on a perfect square shape on a standard resolution CRT, because of the relatively large dot pitch of the phosphor dots and the relatively large rounded rectangular openings in the shadow mask. This is a large part of the reason why 15 kHz CRTs look better for displaying simplistic graphics than high resolution monitors.

Quote

The transition between colors is well-defined.

Quote

That's absurd. I'm reading fine text at 1600 x 1200 on a CRT right now, with sharpness and clarity, so those "problems on paper" are irrelevant to the real world. Standard resolution CRTs are not necessarily any less precise with beam control than the high resolution CRT I'm using right now, they just paint with a bigger brush so to speak.

Quote

LCDs are not "much sharper", nor do they even look remotely "old school" regardless of the settings (those settings/effects fool no one). New CRT arcade monitors look beautiful out of the box (I've bought 3 of them new in the past few years), and require no picture quality adjustments at all. The only adjustment that may be needed is a one-time vertical and horizontal size adjustment so the raster fills the screen properly (which only takes a few seconds). This is because different arcade game boards often output different size rasters, so there is no single raster size adjustment on a monitor that will be correct for all possible arcade game boards.

Quote

Yes, I have already said as much. I think it is odd that you try to mimic the look of a CRT on your LCD with settings and effects (which fool no one), rather than simply using the real thing in the first place.

Keatah, on Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:25 PM, said:

Absurd. In the case of simple graphics, not producing "exactly what they are told" is a good thing, because "what they are told" looks like MS Paint, and what they produce looks more like a real painting on a canvas. Real painting on a canvas trumps MS Paint. So we have a case of "It's a good thing CRTs improve the look of these crappy Lego block graphics that we are limited to," rather than, "I wish this round-appearing sprite on this CRT looked more like it was made with Lego blocks."

Quote

"Lazy" has no meaning in this context, and they don't "smear" at all. Go ahead and point out the alleged "smearing" in this picture:

Quote

Which is a bad thing for primitive graphics (see above). Also, the idea that you have to constantly adjust CRTs is pure nonsense. I've never made a single adjustment on the ordinary 32" RCA CRT TV that I bought new in '05, and it still looks exactly the same to me as it always has. The same goes for the 3 Happ Vision Pros in my arcade machines.

Also, high resolution CRTs can "do what they're told" just as well as LCDs (and look better doing it), so this isn't even an issue that is inherent to CRT or LCD. Unfortunately, that means that high-resolution CRTs also make old video games look crappy (just not quite as crappy as LCDs).

Quote

Which is irrelevant, because it has nothing to do with how the graphics were intended to be seen by the user. All of the classic raster consoles and nearly all of the classic raster arcade games were intended to be displayed on 15 kHz CRTs.

Quote

Absurd.