Newbie help: BVM20F1E and arcade resolutions. Limitations/things to consider?

[raatiol]

Thanks for letting me in

Been planning to build a "arcade setup" with Mister and my Sony BVM20F1E. (using RGB via Scart as my other retro computers already do that). I know that the Sony only can handle 15Khz stuff. But what exactly does that mean in practice? All "standard resolution" games work ok? There are some vertical resolution games that don't? I really don't care about the "newer" arcade games, I rather play those so called classics from 80's and/or early nineties.

Could someone with more experience give me a short rundown regarding the planned setup vs. game compatibility:) Highly appreciated!

[buttersoft]

Take a look as section e) of this guide (Other parts are out of date, but still better than a lot of advice out there)

https://www.aussiearcade.com/forum/arcade/m-a-m-e-emulation-projects-and-discussion/89704-a-guide-to-connecting-your-windows-pc-to-an-sd-crt-tv-pvm-or-arcade-monitor#post2194681

So, if you have a 320x240@60p game, it's probably scanning horizontally at 15kHz. If you physically rotate the screen, a game running vertically at 240x320 is fine, because it's really running at 320x240 on the monitor, only you rotated the monitor. If you want to leave the monitor and rotate only the game, it's native resolution would be 240x320 and a 15kHz monitor cannot handle 320 vertical lines @60p (=60fps progressive). So you either have to go to 480i (640x480) and either filter or scale unevenly, or just shrink the image right down.

In some edge cases you might be able to trade FPS for vertical lines, but you won't get to 320 lines. The most you can squeeze into 15kHz is about 300@50fps and even then you're at about 16.2kHz which is the practical limit of a lot of monitors.

[Zebidee]

Thanks for letting me in

Been planning to build a "arcade setup" with Mister and my Sony BVM20F1E. (using RGB via Scart as my other retro computers already do that). I know that the Sony only can handle 15Khz stuff. But what exactly does that mean in practice? All "standard resolution" games work ok? There are some vertical resolution games that don't? I really don't care about the "newer" arcade games, I rather play those so called classics from 80's and/or early nineties.

Could someone with more experience give me a short rundown regarding the planned setup vs. game compatibility:) Highly appreciated!

To play vertical games as accurately as possible on a 15khz CRT you have to rotate the screen. If you don't, in most cases you'll have to play your vertical game in an interlaced mode, the refresh rate will likely be wrong, and in any case the scan lines will be running the wrong way.

No game setup can play all games, so a lot of people have 2 or more cabs for this reason. Good thing about boxy monitors like Sony's is that they can stand vertically fairly well (but they weigh a ton!).