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1 hour ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

I would need to play this one again, but one thing I did notice immediately when I moved over to s-video on Jaguar (Now RGB) was that many jaguar games used dithering in them to simulate more colors. I don't know about Ruiner, but Pinball Fantasies does this. It is most noticed on Stones N Bones where the top ramp on the left looks transparent on an CRT, but looks like a waffle iron on RGB/S-video on a modern display. Still, I prefer the overall sharpness for most games that I'm good with it and don't see myself ever putting a CRT in permanent use in my game room ever again.

 

 

I hear you about CRT's. They are heavy, bulky, and can die at any minute. It's great (and necessary) that we have options to get these to modern displays. Personally though I just have a hard time living without a true CRT. If I have to (in the future I may) I will move back over to new displays. But I have decided that I am not going to do that until I really have to ;)

 

The upside of the CRT is that there are so many available out there for the cost of simply taking it away. This is a great option for people that cannot afford an OSSC or a RetroTink in order to make their games look correct on a new TV

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  • 2 weeks later...

The other thing with CRT and old consoles is there is absolutely no issues with lag.

 

Plus they are eminently repairable. I have two that are playing up. I know a couple of guys who are gurus and imma pick their brains and learn up on repairing them ?

Edited by danny_galaga
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I know I'm in the minority here, but I ever since I got my Framemeister with RGB on my 55" 4KTV with my Jag. There's no way I'm going back. It simulates scaliness pretty well and can make all sorts of adjustments to the picture (gamma, etc.) to allow me to see things I couldn't before on a CRT. Lag is usually a sticking point for many purists, but it's not even noticeable enough for me personally.

The pixels are razor sharp and I just love it. When I had to play as a kid with a CRT and RF it was like there was vaseline smeared all over the picture. it hurt my eyes.

Anyway, that's just me. I'm crazy like that.

8EB98A6F-1399-4614-84C0-25AB79D9C324.jpeg

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It sounds like you're comparing a shitty tube to what you have now. 

There is a world of difference between a cheap consumer grade tube and a professional studio monitor with component / RGB. 

 

I don't think many of the people above are rocking RF ?

 

I found the framemiester practically unusable when I had mine due to the latency. 

OK for certain games but forget about shooters or fighters. The OSSC is as good as modern panels will allow regarding lag. 

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I currently have two 27" Trinitrons I use for my classic consoles (I either have them connected via SCART to component or s-video). I have an OSSC, but I just use it when capturing game footage.

 

To me, the games really do look nicer on a CRT. No worrying about lag, either (there was a time when I was using a cheap SCART to HDMI converter, and I didn't realize just how laggy it was until i went back to a CRT).

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This is my current stash of CRTs. There's a spare 20" PVM and 13" Trinitron portable (only thing I have with RF, though it's also got RGB SCART) lurking on the shelves on the right of the first photo.

 

All the consoles except the 7800 are going through the Extron switch as RGB. However the dreamcast goes to the LaCie VGA monitor, the rest go to the 20" PVM. The 7800 goes to the PVM's S-Video input.

 

Consoles0620-1.thumb.jpg.e449bdd381cc2041cf664218ccbccdb7.jpg

 

For the computers and 2600, they're all also RGB into a Extron switch into the 14" PVM here. The Binatone Pong is running a bodged composite into it.

 

Comps0520.thumb.jpg.00870104665f2b4b183c85d935cbe6bb.jpg

 

I started with scalers, but they're really no substitute for RGB into a CRT. On the plus side you can also pick up most of them for next to nothing. The down side is obviously the size of the things and the space they take up. That said my only other screen is my main TV and that's a 43" plasma. That eventually just ran out of options when that's all I was using and my console and computer collection started to grow...

 

GameOverRig.thumb.jpg.8ce232772cc5539dbacafe77a5be149a.jpg

Edited by juansolo
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It's awesome seeing everyone's setups on here.  Keep em' coming!

 

I didn't used to think my old man reflexes could tell the difference between flat screen TV latencies and CRT, but now that I have a CRT again for the first time in years, it's just unbearable to do any serious gaming on the flat screen.  I don't mind the upscaling artifacts as much as the latency.

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On 7/30/2020 at 11:25 PM, tripled79 said:

I know I'm in the minority here, but I ever since I got my Framemeister with RGB on my 55" 4KTV with my Jag. There's no way I'm going back. It simulates scaliness pretty well and can make all sorts of adjustments to the picture (gamma, etc.) to allow me to see things I couldn't before on a CRT. Lag is usually a sticking point for many purists, but it's not even noticeable enough for me personally.

The pixels are razor sharp and I just love it. When I had to play as a kid with a CRT and RF it was like there was vaseline smeared all over the picture. it hurt my eyes.

Anyway, that's just me. I'm crazy like that.

8EB98A6F-1399-4614-84C0-25AB79D9C324.jpeg

 

 

There's no doubt that an incredible picture can be obtained on modern TV's. I was doing that primarily with all of my consoles for quite some time. The only problem was the lack of depth. It's hard to explain but even with the crisp detail and simulated scanlines something is lost here. It is sort of like emulating a screen image experience you had back in the day. You can emulate it and get some pretty outstanding results, but at the end of the day you are only emulating or simulating what the real thing was.

 

I love the fact that I can hook up the Jag and other consoles to modern TV's with near zero lag nowadays and sometimes that is the more convenient option. But, having the choice....got to go to a real CRT.

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3 hours ago, Ross PK said:

Unfortunately my 21 inch Trinitron has developed a problem, it now has faint swirly/wavy lines on the screen. So I've had to break out the ol' Matsui 14 incher.

 

SAM_3361.thumb.JPG.fc16607334ede71cb53cc7d1d6c9a45e.JPG

 

SAM_3344.thumb.JPG.39765ed34871ac365b1dd9841cae2bbd.JPG

SAM_3388.thumb.JPG.9bac9fd3a7f336c808553dcc01e063a5.JPG

 

 

I had the exact same issue with my 21" Sony. I had to make the image darker to hide the wavy lines. That was only ok for certain games though. 

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For me they seem to be less noticeable the lighter/brighter the picture is, and with certain colours.

 

At first the wavy lines were not visible at all most of the time with any of the games I played, and when they did sometimes become visible in certain places on the screen, due to a particular colour/shade/darkness/whatever, they were very faint and not that noticeable.

 

It was like this for a few months, but now they've suddenly got worse, they're noticeable on the screen in certain places most of the time with whatever game I play and I cannot un-notice them, even if I turn the brightness and contrast up, so this spoils my enjoyment of playing a game.

 

When I get around to it I will try fixing it. Hopefully it's just something simple like a capacitor needs changing or something.

Edited by Ross PK
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On 7/31/2020 at 5:10 AM, Gummy Bear said:

It sounds like you're comparing a shitty tube to what you have now. 

There is a world of difference between a cheap consumer grade tube and a professional studio monitor with component / RGB. 

 

I don't think many of the people above are rocking RF ?

 

I found the framemiester practically unusable when I had mine due to the latency. 

OK for certain games but forget about shooters or fighters. The OSSC is as good as modern panels will allow regarding lag. 

C'mon really? Finding a professional studio monitor with component/RGB is like finding a unicorn: it'll never happen.

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22 hours ago, tripled79 said:

C'mon really? Finding a professional studio monitor with component/RGB is like finding a unicorn: it'll never happen.

It happens. I found two when a local TV station went bankrupt and I was asked to drive their old equipment to the junkyard. That was five years ago mind you, but I bet there's still TV stations with old PVM's who haven't bothered to get rid of them yet. 

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On 11/22/2020 at 4:32 PM, tripled79 said:

C'mon really? Finding a professional studio monitor with component/RGB is like finding a unicorn: it'll never happen.

Patience is the key. They are always up on Ebay but at huge money. You need to find a local version of Gumtree (I think that's Craigslist in the US) and just lurk there. You might not find anything for months but occasionally they pop up. Otherwise as mentioned above, it's trying to get your hands on liquidated stock from TV studios and what have you.

Edited by juansolo
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Hunting PVMs is not worth the hassle, regardless of the fact that there are zillion scalpers with alert bots set up on all the major sites such as Craiglists, and it's extremely unlikely you will ever get one this way. They also have already  been to all the TV studios and done all these tricks which could've worked 5 years ago.

 

Decent consumer sets are free/super cheap and still available all around. The image quality of modern Trinitron, for example, is not that far off from PVM anyway. I actually  I find their thicc scanlines a bit intrusive, it works well for text but not for art itself in games.

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PVM's are impossible to get on the east coast (I live in NJ). I had a lead on one in NYC only ONE time years ago, but the seller couldn't wait the 20 minutes for me to arrive before selling it to someone else.

 

But then I thought about it. How much fun am I really going to have on a small 13/17/17 inch display? Screw that. I have a nice 27 inch Wega and things are beautiful now ;)

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I recently purchased a digital to analog converter (HDMI/SDI to Composite video & S-Video & Component video & DVI & VGA...plus audio output)...specifically, so that I could play this:

 

vezVXb.png

 

...on a CRT rotated to its vertical orientation...as Mr. Miyamoto intended me to.  Old school games just look better on a CRT, and "simulated" scan-lines can't/don't provide an authentic look.  Obviously to each is own, and everybody (no matter how ignorant), is entitled to their opinions (no matter how wrong they are).  ?

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