To those with cabinets with TVs: what MAME video settings do you use?

[ahofle]

Just curious what people with TVs in their cabinets have found works best for video settings for MAME.  Preferably since the 107 video rewrite, but not necessarily.  I've noticed that 'GDI mode' looks VERY crisp, but I'm wondering how much longer before it's pulled from MAME.  D3D looks pretty blurry, DDraw sometimes looks good and sometimes not for me.  Just wondering if there is a known best configuration for people using a TV as a display.

[Glaine]

I can't use auto resolution, gotta use forced 640x480 or some games will go off the screen just a bit. Other than that I don't really have to tweak it very much to get a good picture on the 2 TVs I've tried.

[mahuti]

I also use 640x480 resolution. No other special changes.

[ahofle]

What renderer do you use?  (ie DirectDraw, GDI, Direct3D)

[Turnarcades]

I use 800x600, with no effects and no buffering. Great picture, great speed and no crashing.

[Drugstore_Cowboy]

Direct Draw, no HW stretch, switch resolutions to fit.

[Glaine]

I use whatever the default renderer is, Direct3d I think. I use HW stretch to get full screen fighter games, some would be small without that.

[tist]

i didnt built mame cab yet but i tested on my 27" tv. used 800x600, no effects or anything. looked fantastic

[Bluedeath]

For pal TV I suggest 720X576 hw stretch

[boodroe]

I have found that the only resolution that will fit perfectly on a tv is 640x432 (using component input on mine maybe different for a different input). Most video cards wont come with this resolution inbedded in them so sometimes you have to use powerstrip to write the resolution to your video card.

[escher]

I have found that the only resolution that will fit perfectly on a tv is 640x432 (using component input on mine maybe different for a different input). Most video cards wont come with this resolution inbedded in them so sometimes you have to use powerstrip to write the resolution to your video card.

Same here.  ATi's software lets me use 640x432 without powerstrip though. 

[ahofle]

Well I took some pictures last night using Mame v0.108 and Joust, all on auto resolution (my desktop is at 800x600 in case that matters).  I took a picture for each rendering method (GDI, DirectDraw, and Direct3D).  Surprisingly, GDI looked the best by far and the others looked horrible by comparison.  Then this morning I tried messing around with ddraw and I was able to get it much crisper by manually specifying the resolution to 640x480.  I then tried Marble Madness and got totally different results (D3D with no bilinear filtering looked the best).  I guess I'm going to have to experiment with the video settings for each game and find the one that looks best.  I attached the pictures I took last night on auto res...from the top down they are D3D, DDraw, and GDI.

[ahofle]

Another set...notice especially the fine text.

[releasedtruth]

Have you tried any of HC's techniques as noted here:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=53799.0

A bit of work, but well researched is he.

[ahofle]

Wow, very interesting... Thanks for the link!
I actually played with the overscan a long time ago in the Radeon display settings, but gave up pretty quickly when I saw how much of the screen was cut off.  I also use a ton of other emulators, so I'm not sure I'll be able to apply Howard's tricks in all cases.  Very neat idea though.