Rotating Monitor: pros vs cons

[crashwg]

I'm pretty sure I've finaly decided to go with a tv in my cab (reading that back, it doesn't realy make sense... but anyway)and I am considering making it rotate.  Rather than posibly wasting my time/ ruining the tv I want to hopefully get some more information on what exactly I'm getting into.

Basicly, a few things have come to mind:

• Degaus, will I need a tv that can do this, is there such a thing, or will I have to turn off the monitor for a certain amount of time?
• I've read often on this board of tv's overheating, is that more of a problem on rotated tv's (I have this crazy idea of using a pc fan and some dryer vent hose anyway but I wasn't sure if that'd be enough)
• Is this just plain bad for the tv, I'm pretty sure they don't design these things to be rotated.
• Feel free to add your own concerns here.
  

Not sure if this information is needed but I'll provide it anyway because it never fails that someone will ask me for more info than I provided.
That said, I'm looking at 20" flat screen cheap-ass wal*mart tv with s-video.

[wpcmame]

Feel free to add your own concerns here.

I was also thinking of a rotating monitor but in the end I got a bigger monitor instead. A vertical game on a 25" horizontal monitor is approx the same size as a 20" vertical monitor.

My reasons for not using a rotating monitor:
- I am not the only one playing games. I wouldn't let my kids use anything but a fully automatic, motor driven rotating monitor. Haven't seen any such thing and if it exists I am sure it is outside my budget.
- I don't play the same game for a long time. A few PacMan rounds and then maybe some GnG. I know I am to lazy to rotate the monitor each time.

[bluGill]

Don't forget it will be less reliable in the long run.   Moving parts are far more likely to  break.   Cables that you need to be careful won't pinch, and won't break from the stress of rotation.  A mechanism that not only needs to hold your TVs weight, but needs to rotate.  Eventially those bearings will wear out.  (Perhaps longer than your cab if you choose right, but a simple choice won't work for long) And because you are rotating it, you need to plan on some easy way to move things, unless you want to always be there when someone else wants a different game.

I recomend two cabinets on the theory that you may have guests who want to play, and two different cabinets with different games will allow more to be enertained at once.   Of course that assumes space for them, money to build them, and family situation that will allow you to have more than one.  

[BillyJack]

From reading the alt.sci.tech TV/monitor repair FAQ, most TVs have a degauss circuit that activates on power up.  I think that's why they want you to wait about a minute between power-ups, so you don't overheat the degausser...  so you'd have to power down, rotate, power up (if your TV was having issues with being rotated, which i hear they do...)


Billyjack

[Pipercub]

I built my first cab with  a rotating monitor, and it worked fine, and didn't seem like too much trouble at the time. I would generally get on a streak of playing horizontals for a while, then verticals. Then I built my second cab as a fixed vertical and I have not rotated my other one since. In fact, I have loaded just verts on the vert cab so that the menu is shorter. I am going to remove the verts from the horizontal cab soon.

[patrickl]

In fact, I have loaded just verts on the vert cab so that the menu is shorter. I am going to remove the verts from the horizontal cab soon.

Heh, you have made yourself a "rotating player" then  

I'm designing a cab myself and I was wondering the same thing. I wanted a rotating monitor too, but it seems like quite a hassle. Still not sure what I'm gonna do.

I was very impressed with Carlos' Centipede rotating monitor (select Rotating in the monitor section) It realy does look rather straighforward. But then when I though about building something like that myself I just didn't know where to begin. He bought it somewhere. I guess you can get lucky like that, but I'm not counting on it myself.

I don't think a TV would mind (i.e. get damaged) from being rotated. In fact you see a lot of CRT's vertically mounted. I doubt they are specially designed for the task. So apart from the cabling breaking I don't think that's an issue.

A thing I tried was to put the monitor on it's side. The colors really do turn ugly when you do that. Degaussing fixes that luckily.

[Xiaou2]

 I recomend not rotating, but rather just getting a 27" tv instead.  Horizontally mounted, it will display vertical games at a perfet 19 inches diag., as they were meant to be seen at. (i measured it : )

 And for horizontal games, its awesomely huge .  Great for tripple screen games too (like darius).

[slicer_d]

I'm a pretty big shmup (shooter) fan and I remember back when all the shmups were coming out for the Saturn in Japan and a lot of people turned their tv's vertical to play them arcade like and quite a few had tv's that ended up dieing on them I just dont think tv's are made to be turned vertically pc monitors on the other hand seem to be more forgiving and but even then I would be suprised if they ended up dieing quicker especially if you are rotating it alot.

[rampy]

FWIW I believe carlos carsten built an automated rotating monitor.

Besides the 2 cabinet theory, and the large horizontally mounted TV theory.... let me suggest another alternative:

In Mother Russia the cabinets rotate you!

In other words: build a coctail with controls on each side (well at least 3 sides.  You play horizontal games on one side, vertical and shmups on the other side...  Smack's mondo turtlehead cocktail is an excellent  example ... it's mint (tm)!

bah let me know and I'll dig up the links...

rampy

[crashwg]

Wpcmame, thanks for bringing up the swithching back and forth between horizontal and vertical games and how often I would have to rotate the monitor, I didn't think about that much.  Normally, I don't realy play a whole bunch of different games at one time, but I do know others that will use the cab probably will.  And about using a 25" monitor, that just seems way to big to be like 2 feet from the screen.  I've tried playing on my 25" tv and I don't think I got much closer than 5 feet.

Thanks to Patrickl also for the link, this looks very promising.  I e-mailed Carlos, but I might as well ask this here too... he has it set up so that it automatically deguases when it reaches h/v, and I was wondering if you could rig up a tv's coil to do the same, reason being that I like how the games aren't cut off in the corners on a flat screen.

Oh and by the way, how does a fixed deguas coil work anyway it's not the same as one of those external ones is it?  What I realy need is a flat screen 20" tv with a one-button deguas, now wouldn't that save me alot of trouble!

[Larry Smith]

I built my cab with a rotating monitor (PC 20""). To me the biggest con is construction time/difficulty. It doubled the build time of my cab easily.
I'm pleased with the results but if I had it to do over I would go with the coctail cab with CPs on 3 sides idea.

I agree with Pipercub I tend to play with one orientation for a while then switch to another. If I switch back and forth more than 2 or 3 times the screen needs more degaussing than the built in degauss coil can provide, at that point I have to leave it off overnight then its fine.