Did your parents think your console would ruin their TV?

[krslam]

What type of TV?

It's a Toshiba 43HX71 rear projection unit using, I think, DLP tech. Can't confirm that right now as I'm out of town with very crappy internet access but maybe if you Google the model number you'll find the answer.

 

*edit* It's a CRT per CNET

Edited October 21, 2015 by krslam

[Keatah]

Short of watercolor markers on wet paper, those rear projection sets were the worst for convergence and burn-in because of the higher heat and brightness.

[MaximRecoil]

It's a Toshiba 43HX71 rear projection unit using, I think, DLP tech. Can't confirm that right now as I'm out of town with very crappy internet access but maybe if you Google the model number you'll find the answer.

 

*edit* It's a CRT per CNET

 

Yes, CRT projectors and video games are a bad combination. Those things get heavy screen burn in relatively short order just from normal TV/movie viewing, so you can imagine what static images will do to them. Here is a typical example. Notice that it's not a static image pattern burn like from a video game, but a full coverage burn just from displaying ordinary video (and all of them with any significant amount of usage will have screen burn like that). The reason is: a CRT projector uses 3 small (usually 7" for a rear projection TV), high-intensity monochrome CRT monitors; one red, one green, one blue. They have to be high-intensity because they are projecting an image, which requires a lot more light output than direct-view, and because each of the 3 CRTs is monochrome, it is always the same color phosphors being energized in each one no matter what colors you're seeing on the screen. The warning against playing video games on CRT projectors has plenty of merit.

Edited October 21, 2015 by MaximRecoil

[awhite2600]

Plasma TVs can suffer burn in too. My parents have a 60" plasma that they bought about 10 years ago. They watch a lot of SD TV channels - at the correct 4:3 aspect ratio. There are noticeable large bars on the left and right of the picture when a 16:9 channel is viewed.

[CatPix]

Older plasma TV does. Newer ones apparently claims they suffer less from this.

 

Anywa, all displays by nature make light (aside from LCD, that simply "filter" light... which is why they suck at displaying nice black levels, because the backlight is usualy uniform) so they will all eventually wear and show picture burning from displaying the same thing over and over.

[LaserCat]

I have a 2009 plasma. I watch all of my movies and shows in their OAR. Never once did I ever have a hint of burn in. In addition I once did a 5 hour marathon of Quake 2 without any ill effects. My tv does have a burn in prevention feature called a pixel orbiter. This apparently shifts the pixels in an imperceptible manner to lessen the chance of burn in or temporary image retention. Having said that it seems that once plasma tvs entered the 3d generation image retention started to become a problem again for some models. At least this is the impression I get from following the forums over at Blu-ray.com. Damn shame as plasmas were the absolute apex of flat panel technology as far as film watching is concerned.

Edited October 22, 2015 by LaserCat

[Andromeda Stardust]

LCD can suffer from screen burn. I have a ZTE smartphone that is 4/5 years old, and the original interface had a white upper bar. And when you turn the screen you can clearly see the place wheer the bar is.

LCD does not burn. Your smartphone is probably OLED. OLED displays have horrible burn-in issues, which is why I'm not so keen on the gadget industry ditching their mature LCD tech, even if the black levels aren't ideal. Even Sony removed the OLED from the Vita and released a hardware revision using LCD because a bunch of gamers complained that their home menu and whatever wallpaper they picked was etched into the game screen. Many gurus recommended using only wallpapers with red/black logos or graphics, because red OLEDs are far less susceptible to burn in than green and especially blue. Nintendo still uses LCD tech in their 3DS and Wii-U Gamepad, so no worries there.

 

For HD gaming, I use LCD. For SD gaming, I use CRT.

Edited October 22, 2015 by stardust4ever

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

 

That Ms Pacman arcade monitor is a friggin' piece of art! Notice the fruit at the bottom of the screen, how going left to right from banana to cherry, the images get darker and darker.

[+SabertoothRetro]

My parents never let me game on the "good tv" in the living room because of this myth. Funny that my Gemini never damaged my B&W tv or the hand-me-down console tv we eventually had in the basement. At least some 2600 games actually looked good in B&W.

Edited October 22, 2015 by atariLBC

[Keatah]

My mom complained about the potential for burn-in. I had to assuage her fears by telling her I'd only play a game for a little while before doing something else. But, still, when a gaming session was over, everything had to disconnected including the switchbox from the screw terminals.

 

 

 

LCD does not burn. Your smartphone is probably OLED. OLED displays have horrible burn-in issues, which is why I'm not so keen on the gadget industry ditching their mature LCD tech, even if the black levels aren't ideal.

 

If you follow the replacement protocol of the gadget industry you'll do fine. You'll be upgrading before burn-in can happen.

 

Industry wants OLED to happen really bad. Making an LCD panel is as complex as making a CRT when you compare it to the inkjet-style printing of an OLED panel. There's gotta be at least a 60% reduction in cost of fabrication if not more. But will you see any of those savings? Hell no! In fact you'll get charged more based on the sole reason it's new technology.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

 

If you follow the replacement protocol of the gadget industry you'll do fine. You'll be upgrading before burn-in can happen.

 

Industry wants OLED to happen really bad. Making an LCD panel is as complex as making a CRT when you compare it to the inkjet-style printing of an OLED panel. There's gotta be at least a 60% reduction in cost of fabrication if not more. But will you see any of those savings? Hell no! In fact you'll get charged more based on the sole reason it's new technology.

Keatah, I want my shit to last. Why else would I game on consoles that are 30 years old? We still have our 2006 Sanyo LCD. It works great and has an S-Video jack. Nothing wrong with it so why get rid of it? My mom bought her first cell phone in 2004, a Nokia. She used it for ten years before upgrading to a flip phone last year!

 

When I buy a new tech product, I want to know it will last. OLED is extremely immature tech. Early adopters spending $10k on early rear projection HD sets got ass-rammed because their sets were incompatible with HDCP and virtually all HD content as a result. Those "4k" UHD sets will look like ass in a few years and the UHD video cosortium hasn't decided on a connector standard yet. The industry might adopt something completely incompatible with current sets. Not to mention 4k video is a damned placebo unless you've got eagle-eyed 20/10 vision.

 

Good luck watching cable on your 4k set. Or Cenimascope movies. Or 4x3 content. You'll have yellow/pink letterboxes and pillarbars burned into your screen before you know it, along with network icons, news tickers, and what have you. Don't believe me? Plug in a pong unit and let it sit for a month. And what's up with those concave curves? Back in my day, TVs bowed outwards, not in. Good luck inviting the freinds/family over for movie night. Focal point is in the center of the couch. Everyone else gets a distorted view of your UHD world.

Edited October 22, 2015 by stardust4ever

[Keatah]

I understand that. I want my crap to last a long time too. I just picked up another 2 defunct laptops of the same make and model recently, for spare parts and a rebuild. Thus ensuring my current computing environment is viable for years to come. As soon as the parts in my emulation box fall off the map and go to clearance you damned well bet I'll get spares for pennies on the dollar.

 

If only industry would be less cost-conscious and let up the pressure on manufacturing a little we could all enjoy better built products and be happier. I hate having to replace the keyboard every year or two because the paint wears off. I get replacements from fleabay for $8 each though. That's one reason I hate new tech, it's built like shit.

 

Now. OLEDs seem to have problems with the blue colors, they fade and wear out faster than the other colors. And I understand they're heat sensitive more than LCD. IDK, I'm not expert in OLED like I am in LCD. Maybe there are other issues too.

 

The wife has that new LG curved display. It's stylish up-scale decor and all that and she rather likes it. Can't be more than 1cm thick. I'm non-plussed.

 

 

Good luck watching cable on your 4k set. Or Cenimascope movies. Or 4x3 content. You'll have yellow/pink letterboxes and pillarbars burned into your screen before you know it, along with network icons, news tickers, and what have you. Don't believe me? Plug in a pong unit and let it sit for a month. And what's up with those concave curves? Back in my day, TVs bowed outwards, not in. Good luck inviting the freinds/family over for movie night. Focal point is in the center of the couch. Everyone else gets a distorted view of your UHD world.

 

I dislike the curve as well. It looks different and garners lots of ohhh-wowwws from the joneses when they come over. But it does nothing for me. The coolness wore off after a couple of days.

 

Ahh hah! Another plus-point of emulation. You can have an entirely black screen in whatever aspect ratio you want. And you just set the emulator to "pixel-bin" and "prescale" the graphics. Only the game elements are drawn. No grey boarders, no 4:3 mode on your TV set required. You can stretch or compress the game as much as you want. Not all emulators can do this. But they are getting there. Mame gets it right however.

 

You can operate at the native resolution of the display device and not draw side bars. And your set won't draw them either because it thinks its doing a true 1920 x 1080p resolution. The game is in the center only. Mame just now uses many pixels to make one bigger game pixel.. For example this game, Star Jacker, has a native arcade resolution of 240 x 224. But mame renders it in your display's native resolution if you so desire. 1024x768 in this example. But you can prescale to much higher resolutions. All sorts of cool things.

 

In fact, what one can do is make a 4:3 picture frame-like overlay or facade and gussy it up to look like a vintage tv. Use big fish hooks to hang it over the top. Or just get a ratty set and chop off the front and make an overlay that you can also hang in front of your modern LCD - thus simulating the look of a 1970's TV. Just like a face mask.

 

Or keep it simple and get a bit of wood paneling and cut some real woodgrain sidebars and tape them in place.. Or go all out and do a custom upgrade of a vintage set.

 

One thing for certain is you can count on the tech industry to do stupid things in the blind pursuit of your money. Soon you'll be thinking this is the hottest thing trending. Not wide enough? Try the 25:9'ers in development now.

 

[Algus]

Someone who knows more about old CRTs can probably explain this:

 

When I was a kid we had these RCA CRTs, nice sets like 22''-24'' I think, which was good size for one of those things. Anyway, something in the TV broke and it pushed the image down on the screen (like it would be static or black and the image would only fill 3/4 to 1/2 the set but it would be "pushed" so the bottom part of the image was off the screen). We used to bang the top of the set and it would push the image back up temporarily.

 

My parents claimed it was my consoles that kept breaking the TVs (and they kept buying them! We went through three of them I think!). This was early to mid 90s, before I ever got my N64. Dunno how accurate that was or what would have even broke to do that to the set but there you have it.

[MaximRecoil]

Someone who knows more about old CRTs can probably explain this:

 

When I was a kid we had these RCA CRTs, nice sets like 22''-24'' I think, which was good size for one of those things. Anyway, something in the TV broke and it pushed the image down on the screen (like it would be static or black and the image would only fill 3/4 to 1/2 the set but it would be "pushed" so the bottom part of the image was off the screen). We used to bang the top of the set and it would push the image back up temporarily.

 

My parents claimed it was my consoles that kept breaking the TVs (and they kept buying them! We went through three of them I think!). This was early to mid 90s, before I ever got my N64. Dunno how accurate that was or what would have even broke to do that to the set but there you have it.

 

Whenever something can be fixed, however temporarily, by banging on it or wiggling something, the problem is the result of a bad electrical connection somewhere. The most common cause of a bad electrical connection in consumer electronics is a bad solder joint. I would suspect one of the solder joints for the vertical position pot on the chassis first. Your consoles obviously had nothing to do with it.

Edited October 22, 2015 by MaximRecoil

[Keatah]

Completely agree.

 

I had to get the shitkickers on and beat the old Zenith Chromacolor so the Blue drive adjust pot behaved itself. Otherwise the image would be red/green tint all the time. Eventually I put a new one in and all was well. Later I found it to an intermittent connection on pot's internal connection. A break between the tin pin and the carbon material.

 

My parents said Air-Sea Battle caused it because it was using all the Blue power in the circuits.

[CatPix]

LCD does not burn. Your smartphone is probably OLED.

I checked and amazingly, the phone indeed came with either LCD or AMOLED displays. I guess mine is AMOLED then. You learn things everyday

 

However, I have a 94's Toshiba laptop with a passive matrix, and the screen is all "marked" with different zones of different color,t hat correspond more or less at the Windows "you can switch your computer off" screen, and other things.

So LCD does wear out over time, as it was mentionned somewhere in the thread.

Edited October 22, 2015 by CatPix

[MaximRecoil]

Completely agree.

 

I had to get the shitkickers on and beat the old Zenith Chromacolor so the Blue drive adjust pot behaved itself. Otherwise the image would be red/green tint all the time. Eventually I put a new one in and all was well. Later I found it to an intermittent connection on pot's internal connection. A break between the tin pin and the carbon material.

 

My parents said Air-Sea Battle caused it because it was using all the Blue power in the circuits.

 

That's funny. A couple months ago I had the exact same problem (and the same cause) in the upper monitor in my Super Punch-Out arcade machine, i.e., it would intermittently lose blue, only showing green and red (I happened to have one of my regular Punch-Out boardsets running in it when I took the picture):

 

 

If I smacked the side of the machine the blue would come back. The problem was this:

 

 

A broken leg on the blue bias pot. I found it while I was reflowing its solder joints; as soon as I touched the iron to that leg's solder joint, it moved freely; obviously broken.

Edited October 22, 2015 by MaximRecoil

[awhite2600]

My parents said Air-Sea Battle caused it because it was using all the Blue power in the circuits.

 

Used up all the Blue power. That's awesome. I love it when people that don't understand technology create wild answers to explain something.

 

This kinda reminds me of the time in 1982 when my Dad played a pinball game on my VIC-20. The shift keys controlled the flippers. He kept jiggling the computer like you would do to a real pinball machine. When the jiggling didn't help his game he proclaimed that the computer was defective and walked away.

[empsolo]

Not really, no. I mean it helped that my father worked with electrical and electronic equipment and so didn't believe myths surrounding consoles and TVs.