HDTV driving anyone away from classic consoles?

[CGQuarterly]

Great article. Wish you had written it for my site.

 

Chris

 

Looking around the site, there are several typos in your articles. You should give your work a careful read-through before posting it. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the review of Dustin Diamond's book.

Edited May 10, 2010 by Jibbajaba

[kool kitty89]

I have a 34" Panasonic CRT widescreen,does a very nice 1080i. My dreamcast with house of the dead hates it though. The gun is inaccurate

 

Wow, I'm surprised it worked at all (even with poor accuracy), I've heard others comment that it won't register at all, though others that say scaling to 480p 60 Hz on a CRT works with modest accuracy... Neither givens the proper scan (480i or 240p 15.7 kHz vsync) of an SD CRT display (monitor or TV). I've heard some claim that it's impossible for SD console lightguns to work on HD CRTs...

 

Also, I'm not positive (I need to check for myself), but I think the way the NES zapper timing works might work on any display lacking significant delay (lag), including LCD/plasma, and it seem to read on a frame by frame basis, not synced to the beam/scan itsself as with most later guns. (and arcade games)

 

Also, there's a variety of cases for HD CRTs, most tend to have 1080i/540p/480p native, some multi-sync sets with 720p native support, others that scale 720p scaled to 540p or 1080i, some with 1080p scaled to 1080i, and some with no 720p and 1080p support.

 

 

One other thing would be guns on systems with 480p support, like the PS2 and Dreamcast: if games specifically catered to displaying in those modes, light cuns could work on CRT sets with a native 480p display. (be it HDTV or VGA monitor)

 

The absolute best high resolution image I've obtained was on a (at least 7 years old) 20" multisync SVGA monitor, that's for the wii in 480p, xbox in 480p, PS3 in 720p or 1080p, and 360 in 720p or 1080p. (all via a component to VGA transcoder -granted some of those have native VGA support, but we had the converter and not the cables -and the 360 and PS3 are from friends, not mine)

So I'm hoping our couple nice, big VGA monitors last and the next generation of consoles supports Y'PbPr and/or VGA output. (even if LCDs manage to reach the high contrast/black level of CRT, or OLEDs become common, there's still the issue of a single native resolution and loss in detail or artifacts from scaling, opposed to a true, multi-sync CRT monitor)

Unfortunatley, VGA monitors have long dropped 15 kHz sync support (some early VGA monitors, perhaps even into the early 90s had support for native CGA/EGA video modes, but I think by the arrival of SVGA and XGA they started becoming less popular and newer video cards had built-in support for scaling/scan doubling for the older modes, if they had support).

 

Unfortunately, no HD CRTs seem near that flexible, with 2 sync rates tops (1080i/540p -I think 480p is uses 540p- and sometimes 720p native -though I think there's variable refresh too, specifically 50/60 Hz, but I'm not sure how common that is -PAL support on NTSC SDTVs became more common in newer sets). So there's not nearly the advantage of the VGA monitors, plus HD CRTs tend to use high persistence phosphor masks like SDTVs (namely to avoid flicker in interlaced modes), so you get a bit more motion blur compared to VGA monitors. (which do have more visible flicker, and 1080i/60 does look rather flickery if the monitor supports it; it's in the proper Vsync range -it's really just anything below 30 kHz that's problematic, I think)

 

I'm going to say the opposite: my classic gaming consoles have dissuaded me from investing in an HDTV. True, I have to squint to read most of the text in Xbox 360 games, but it's a fair price for me to pay for a no muss, no fuss Atari/NES/SNES/Master System/Genesis/N64 hookup system.

 

There are a lot of LCD sets with good SD support, no ghosting deinterlacing artifacts, no denterlacing on 240p, etc, but's it's a bit hit and miss, so you have to test. Older, dedicated SD LCD sets tend to do that well. (our ~4 year old philips set is like that) I think philips LCD HDTVs may tend to be good too.

 

With component inputs (or RGB) on a good, properly calibrated SDTV, text shouldn't be hard to see on newer consoles... (resolution for SD modes or even 480p hadn't really changed since 1999 with the Dreamcast) Maybe not on a TV under 20" or a crappy CRT.

 

 

we should have everyone go on TV-buying stike, untill they make tv's with better SD compatability.

The compatibility is there, just not across the board...

Edited May 10, 2010 by kool kitty89

[HawgWyld]

Great article. Wish you had written it for my site.

 

Chris

 

Looking around the site, there are several typos in your articles. You should give your work a careful read-through before posting it. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the review of Dustin Diamond's book.

 

Heh. I didn't think it was that bad. But, indeed, typos do pop up from time to time -- it all depends on how tired I am when editing posts from other writers on the site (and posting my own, of course). Self editing is a bad, bad habit and one that I'd love to avoid (solid editing from people paid to do such a thing has made me look good through careers in journalism and public relations).

 

Truth be told, I've spent what little time I can devote to the site (a full time job in public relations and a regular freelancing gig for a newspaper in the area do keep me busy) to dealing with finding solid Wordpress plugins, customizing my theme, etc. Hopefully, I'll have more time for good old editing once we get the site more established.

 

Ah, that Dustin Diamond. What a man...

Edited May 10, 2010 by HawgWyld

[potatohead]

It hasn't slowed me down. My Panasonic Plasma works fine with the older consoles. The resolution is passable, and no ghosting or other glitches.

 

I prefer the older TVs though. They do look better. That's what the game room is for

 

I've a Panny plasma as well. It does a very good job on the older signals. If you are thinking about HDTV, take a system with you. We've had this thing for a year or so, and it's got some good attributes. One is it can really tease out the detail on higher resolution composite signals. Your C64 or NES will look great, even without S-video

 

When we were checking out sets, I found I did not like the LCD TVs at all. Most of them just can't do real black, and they have significant motion artifacts. Some of the plasma sets had a high latency. IMHO, this is due to the speed of the video processor inside. The Panny I got, was rated at 400Mhz, and it can do 120Hz, and the Blu-Ray theatrical 24p rates. Anything with component looks great, and honestly, that's the best up-scale for DVD media. The TV does a better job than the Blu-Ray player does.

 

The thing I like most on the plasma is real glass on the front. The thing I like the least is it's performance on ordinary definition video. It's upscaler doesn't play well with the low compression artifacts seen on cable / sat delivery systems. OTA looks great no matter the definition.

 

New school gaming is excellent, and low latency. A PS3 is simply excellent, and it's Blu-Ray / DVD output is some of the best there is.

 

I've sent a variety of older school video signals into it, along with many variations I've coded up on the Propeller. The only thing it has trouble with is a Ben Heck modded VCS, running Atari corp titles. Those lose sync, though every other game I've tried appears to work well. The VCS looks good on composite, with just a touch of smudging on some colors, and I like it that way, because it has always had that smudge since I was a kid. Looks older school.

 

I don't game on it too much though. Mostly testing and the occasional group session. I use an old SONY WEGA for more gaming / computing fun.

 

None of the HDTVs I tried were pixel perfect. No matter what, there is some processing on the signal. Frankly, I wish we could get an option to combine frames at 30FPS to take the flicker out of VCS games. Why not?

[Lendorien]

I count myself lucky with my TV. My LCD is a 37 inch 720p Olevia, which was a budget brand when I bought it about 2 and a half years ago. I've always been impressed with how well it handles composite video. My NES looks really pretty good on it. Svideo signals look amazing. Rf is decent.

[Video]

I love my Polaroid LCD, it's old enough it's still a 3/4 set (which plays hell with newer consoles oddly, like playing Xbox on 360 mashes the image and puts bars on the left and right side ) But, this thing works perfectly fine with my older stuff. Of course, it is/was a more expensive set, even though it's only a 15" set, it worked perfectly for me.

 

Frankly, I wish we could get an option to combine frames at 30FPS to take the flicker out of VCS games. Why not?

 

I've thought about building a box to combine signals from multiple sources or combine every other frame, for toying with programming on the C64, but never got around to it....honestly, wouldn't really know where to start. The Atari could benefit greatly from something like that

[Herbarius]

Excuse me thread hopping, but for me it's more like classic consoles are driving me away from HDTV

 

(I went to some lengths to get a new (as in: not used) CRT TV back in December).

[Tr3vor]

Well, HDTVs arn't driving me away from classic gaming, because I don't have one. But, I still play NES on my dad's HDTV sometimes...

[kool kitty89]

I love my Polaroid LCD, it's old enough it's still a 3/4 set (which plays hell with newer consoles oddly, like playing Xbox on 360 mashes the image and puts bars on the left and right side ) But, this thing works perfectly fine with my older stuff. Of course, it is/was a more expensive set, even though it's only a 15" set, it worked perfectly for me.

 

That's really weird... Never had those problems with our 17" Phillips LCD SDTV (~4 years old, 4:3, no EDTV or HDTV resolutions, or DTV tuner). You get no picture (or odd scrolling lines) if you try 480p, 1080i, 720p, 1080p, etc via component, it's SD only, so just 240p/480i with anamorphic 16:9 support too. (like most contemporary SDTVs)

 

You sure you had the 360 set to 480i? Actually, when using my friend's 360 I noticed there was no "480i" option at all, just "480p" so I have no idea how it tells the difference, unless there's no 480p support at all. (at least via component video -we were using an SDTV with component, so it was obviously 480i)

[Dittohead Servbot #24]

I tried to use a CRT TV for my NES (as a test) but the main disadvantages to using CRT is the fact that some of the picture (on all four sides) is chopped off not to mention the picture is TILTED (fire up SMB and look carefully at the brick floor and you'll see what I mean). Whereas with our 32" Sharp Aquos TV, I can see the entire playing field with no tilting at all.

 

The only drawback I can think of is when playing NES/SNES Mario games (especially the NES version of SMB1), the controls feel kinda off (especially when trying to punch bricks). I remember being able to breeze through SMB3 back in the 1990s but though I still mostly can, it just feels kinda off. I've seen videos on YouTube doing comparisons of CRT's vs LCD's showing this effect. But yet, none of the other games seem to be affected at all by this and two, is there something I can tinker with on the TV's settings to help correct this problem? Does picture size have anything to do with it? Our current TV is 32"--before then I never played games on anything bigger than 20" and growing up in the 1990s I only had a 13".

 

And I don't know about the rest of your HDTV's, but my classic games look gorgeous on it. You guys are remembering to use the best possible hookups for each console (for example, the SNES and N64 can take S-video--USE IT!!). And personally, I LIKE being able to see the individual pixels in NES/SNES games--it gives me the sense that I'm getting the most crystal clear picture possible.

Edited May 10, 2010 by Dittohead Servbot #24

[kool kitty89]

I tried to use a CRT TV for my NES (as a test) but the main disadvantages to using CRT is the fact that some of the picture (on all four sides) is chopped off not to mention the picture is TILTED (fire up SMB and look carefully at the brick floor and you'll see what I mean). Whereas with our 32" Sharp Aquos TV, I can see the entire playing field with no tilting at all.

That's poor calibration of your TV, especially the tilting/warping, many allow this to be adjusted in the service menu (you need a code or sometimes things like holding menu when you plug it in the wall socket), though sometimes those are limited. The overscan issue is intentionally done for marketing purposes (to ensure no black shows...), in some cases you can fix that with the service menu, but in one of our newer CRTs (5 year old sanyo) only the vertical scan can be adjusted, not horizontal. (on really old sets you have to manually adjust the potentiometers)

Some LCDs do that too though, either a default overscan setting for SDTV content or automatic boarder removal stretching the display to remove any black areas within a certain range I think.

 

The only drawback I can think of is when playing NES/SNES Mario games (especially the NES version of SMB1), the controls feel kinda off (especially when trying to punch bricks). I remember being able to breeze through SMB3 back in the 1990s but though I still mostly can, it just feels kinda off.

Some HDTVs have pretty bad lag, especially for SD content (inefficient deinterlacing/scaling/filtering), if the TV had a "game mode" that might help, but in many cases you're stuck. (some have up to a full second of lag for SDTV content)

Not all HDTVs are like that, some are as good as the better LCD SDTVs, some in the middle. (like no problematic lag, but still deinterlating artifacts forced on non interlaced games, and ghosting rather than combing in some cases)

 

And I don't know about the rest of your HDTV's, but my classic games look gorgeous on it. You guys are remembering to use the best possible hookups for each console (for example, the SNES and N64 can take S-video--USE IT!!). And personally, I LIKE being able to see the individual pixels in NES/SNES games--it gives me the sense that I'm getting the most crystal clear picture possible.

Hook-ups won't help if the TV dislikes SD content... Some won't even display 240p via Component video. (not sure about 480i being a problem, but 240p component using an RGB adapter on some old systems or for Virtual Console can really screw up)

 

For such TVs, an HDMI upscaler is the best option.

[Dittohead Servbot #24]

Yes, it has a "Game Mode" but I'm not sure exactly how it's used.

[Koopa64]

I still say Plasmas are better than LCDs. The Panasonic Viera line of Plamsas are actually really forgiving when it comes to vintage games. I highly recommend looking into buying one of them.

[potatohead]

I still say Plasmas are better than LCDs. The Panasonic Viera line of Plamsas are actually really forgiving when it comes to vintage games. I highly recommend looking into buying one of them.

 

Seconded. That's the model I have, and the ones with the faster video processor have very little latency, to the point where I don't notice the difference between game mode and ordinary TV mode.

[+HammR25]

Some of my 2600 games look horrid due to bleeding. River Raid comes to mind in this category. Otherwise all my 7800 games look great. My 7800 is modded to use composite and svideo out though. I haven't tried the svideo, just the composite.

[NinjaWarrior]

Does Goodwill even sells CRT's??

 

I havn't seen any in the Good Will's I go too

[potatohead]

Man, there are a freaking ton of them around here! Some pretty nice ones too. I see WEGA TV's all the time. They usually are under $100.

 

Maybe that particular one is near a recycling center, or has chosen not to clog their retail space with the things. I would branch out some. There is gonna be a pile of CRTs near you.

[kool kitty89]

I've heard of goodwills selling soem decent TVs for well under $50 (for the big ones, for 20" or smaller, often less than $20). Around here, anything ~25-30+ inches for a CRT goes for $80-100 (keep in mind that the remotes are expensive and necessary -unless universal ones work, or you get a Sony TV -which tend to have all functions available on the TV control panel/menu).

I've had much better luck with Craigslist.

 

One thing that kind of sucks is newer TVs (HDTV or SDTV) tend to have the speakers on the outer edges, widening th eTV, rather than sitting compact in the lower front edge. It makes the sets unnecessarily bulky, problematic to fit in many older entertainment systems designed for crts (not even talking about widescreen), and really adds no advantage for sound. (for really good sound, you'd want external; speakers anyway, though some TVs have pretty decent onboard sound, but having speakers on columns to the side really isn't helpful -except for some older high-end consoles built-into a cabinet with full-sized speakers, but that's different)

[BydoEmpire]

I actually play my classic games more now than I did before this gen. Mostly because I just don't have much time for video games anymore, and classic games are better suited to my schedule. Regarding the displays, I have a bunch of system hooked up to a (27"-ish) CRT TV in the 2nd bedroom, and a bunch hooked up to my Commodore monitor in the studio (right next to the HDTV). I can't see hooking up classic games to the HDTV, though, seems kind of pointless. Then again, I'm not super strapped for space.