LCD/LED monitor information.

[kalimah]

I seriously need information on which LCD/LED monitors are good to put in a cabinet. I cannot for the love of me find a decent topic in regards to this.  Usually, the forums end up in a CRT VS. LCD flamewar without discussing the actual question at mind.  I know CRTs are the best but I do not posses the skills in handling a potentially dangerous object.  CRTs are also a dying breed sadly and want to Futureproof myself. Software emulation has made it that LCD s look good with scanlines and all that jazz.  What I am looking for are which LCDs are good. Name, brand, model number, etc.  I always see those 19" Vision Pro LCDs for sale at sites like Arcade shop etc.  This will be for my custom MAME machine.  I might make multiple cabinets for dedicated games etc.  The first ones that I will build will be for the arcade games of the early 80's like Gorf, Pac-Man, and Dig Dug, etc. 19"+ monitor suggestions needed.  Thank you in advance for your help!

[Ken Layton]

The Happ Controls "Vision Pro" series are made for arcade game cabinets. They also turn on immediately when power is applied to them. Ordinary LCD monitors require you to push a power button or operate a wireless remote control to turn them on.

[lilshawn]

99% of panels are LCD. LED monitors typically describe the backlighting (cold cathode flourecent backlighting vs LED backlighting.) the glass panel itself is still liquid crystal. the exception being OLED with currently the first decently sized one being the ASUS PQ22U.

most computer LCD monitors will retain their last power state (with the exception of some of the weird off brand chinese makes), so you can just pull the AC power and they'll start right back up again once the power comes back.

the main issue is the resolutions. most computer monitors won't even consider syncing up to anything less than 31k , so it's no good for std res or med res gaming (15khz and 25khz) at native resolutions, so you'd need an upscaler for running actual hardware...of course (as always) there is the exception of the odd monitor that does. running MAME it's not a problem since you'd do scaling in software first.

as far as the best looking monitors... it's all subjective.

IPS panel monitor. in plane switching has incredible viewing angles, color reproduction and pretty good black levels... which when standing side by side at a cabinet, you both can see a perfect image. the downside is that IPS panels are more expensive and may have slightly slower switching speed. it's not delay or anything... just how long it takes for a pixel to change state. some people think this couple milliseconds is the difference between playable and unplayable. I think they are full of puckey.

TN panels have been around for donkey's years. they are cheap as chips and typically have a faster than IPS response time. these are the panels that laptops typically have. the issue is that unless you are standing straight on to the panel, you end up seeing weird, washed out, inverted color images. and some have uneven backlighting issues. so unless you are making a dedicated single player setup, this falls short in every other aspect.

VA panels (vertical alignment) are a visual compromise between the 2 other technologies... with the benefits of better color reproduction than TN...and good black levels like IPS....better pixel response times... still bad viewing angles...worse than IPS, but better than TN. it's a okay compromise.

like everything... nothing is perfect. you sort of have to choose what's important to your gaming experience...and pick your LCD to match as much of it as you can.

[keilmillerjr]

Cant handle a potentially dangerous crt? Kids and wife are safe in my house. Only lcd is imac and iphone. Crt’s everywhere in my house.

Anyways... older lcd monitors might not be the best quality but will have a proper 4:3 format. I would decide if an older monitor with proper fprmat is fine, or if you want to figure out how to incorporate a 16:9 without making it look ridiculous. It can be done, but takes some thought.

[schmerzkaufen]

80's games have a lot of black/space backgrounds and neon-like colors, for that I'd think a VA panel is better suited.
VA panels also have less issues with uneven or bleeding backlight (the latter manufacturing flaw is frequent on IPS monitors)

For using simulated scanlines I wouldn't buy anything less than 1080 in vertical resolution, otherwise in many cases there'll be scaling artifacts (uneven scanlines thickness creating ugly patterns)
And, well, in fact note even 1080 is too tight for crt shaders, artifacts happen. 1200 and above is better, there are still a number of 1920x1200 (16:10) monitors available, most of them IPS though I believe.

There's also the question of framerate and fluidity, most of the games you've mentioned clock above 60Hz (60.05, 60.60) and in our day and age most monitors and TVs will apply framerate conversion to that, meaning you'll experience stutter/hiccups.
There's only two possible fixes:
- force 'sync to monitor refresh' in MAME (games will run at slightly reduced speed, hard to tell the difference)
- use a monitor that's vertical refresh-agnostic in combination with an AMD graphics card, CRT_Emudriver, and GroovyMAME (an unkown pool of +/- decade-old monitors, or many current ViewSonic monitors. in 1200p they only have the VG2438Sm though, afaik)

WARNING: no 16:10 monitor that I know features justified 16:9 aspect ratio mode for external 16:9 sources. You'll be fine if the source is a computer of course, but no guarantee the picture won't be stretched with a console or arcade board. Oddly some of them feature a 4:3 mode, but it'd be wise to check before buying.


The first solution is of course immensely simpler and satisfying for everyone but accuracy-OCD people. ^^

The second solution is much more complex but opens the gate of accurate clean smooth-everything, almost all games in MAME running perfectly at their real refresh speed (yeah even MK games and such), and it requires one of those old monitors or one of the select compatible ViewSonic that are vertical refresh agnostic (which can be determined in the user manual if you find any mention of 56Hz in the supported modes list)
It's like the results of basic FreeSync or G-Sync setups, but arguably more accurate (those nVidia and AMD variable refresh techs reportedly have a few issues with stuff like 60.05 or so that are the closest to 60)

Now I guess you weren't asking about that but heh, I think the framerate topic was still worth mentioning for the sake of being thorough. 


Leaving that aside and going back to finding good 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 monitors, well the former are found everywhere really, in IPS most of the time but there are a few VA too, in 21~22", 23~24", 27" and 32" (avoid the 28"), and the latter 16:10 afaik only exist in IPS now and are also not too hard to find from the usual name brands, though sometimes they're listed as business monitors.
 
Telling you which models are 'good' is tough, since nobody reviews such low-resolution displays these days, people are all over 4K, and some still WQHD (2560x1440), but no one cares for Full-HD or 16:10 anymore.
I'd get advice from pcmonitors.info, one of the few websites to still care, they have recommendations and a friendly community forum (they have no knowledge of emulation etc though, but they know what matters for quality monitors, still, be thorough explaining what you seek)


EDIT: *sigh* guys those 'tell me a good lcd' threads are ALL the same no matter the community forums you're at, a guy asks questions sounding serious, people post detailed replies and....OP's gone.
Bet 9/10 times they expect 'yo bro buy that one its the best' but arent ready for the technical stuff if it comes. Too bad, you can't have the best stuff if you don't learn. :p