I'm not a fake scanlines fan but probably, ten years from now, almost all crt screens will disapper off the face of the planet and with them arcade video authenticity; So I think that the only way to preserve the "real" arcade feel will be accurate scanline simulation for flat screens (at the moment, lcd and plasma technology)
Actually, on my cabinet (with a 19" 5:4 LCD PVA display), I use software scanlines with mame and every other emulator that supports them. I must admit that the result is not bad (expecially with mame, that has a huge list of overlay effects to choose from), but for sure it's not "authentic".
The larger screens that I've tried (2 x 42" full hd panasonic plasma), just do not display scanlines correctly (no matter wich resolution set, or overlay effect applied) showing them uneven. Even if one day I'll get them working properly, I doubt that the result will be better than the one I obtained on smaller screens...
So, waiting for Oled monitors that (maybe) will suppor stellar reslolutions an so ultra realistic software scanlines I'm just wondering if crt scanlines could be successfully simulated, printing the pattern on a trasparency film with a hi dpi printer / plotter.
The idea is probably too simple / simplistic to be good, but I'd like to know whath do you think about it.
Cheers
Valken