Arcade monitor do vs PC or TV?

[shorthair]

I'll open this by saying I just for the first time played Golden Tee. Never golfed before, even - I don't count miniature golf - and this is a fun game. A quick aside: I think people are getting juked with such low resolution on the real game. It's way cooler in XGA. (But so are all games, regardless of era, I think. I'm not a native dude, it seems.)

In any case, I'm wondering, what is it about arcade monitors that, aside from native resolutions, makes them good at or better for these games than a PC monitor or TV (whether it be SD or HD) ?

(I'm not saying personally it looks better, I'm just curious what those who work on and design these types think.)

[Fozzy The Bear]

In any case, I'm wondering, what is it about arcade monitors that, aside from native resolutions, makes them good at or better for these games than a PC monitor or TV (whether it be SD or HD) ?

Absolutely nothing at all..... apart from the fact that they allow you to run games at their original resolution and blur the pixels making them look less jaged.  As you said you think they look better on a PC monitor then and arcade monitor is not what you want and you'd really hate a TV set.

Personally having had both I actually agree with you. I'm not keen on arcade monitors at 15Khz driven from a PC.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Grinch]

I've recently changed the monitor in my cab to a TFT because the original Hantarex CRT died

I personally think that an arcade monitor is better because it does give the machine a more authentic look. The TFT does a good job and makes the machine a lot more useable (also doesn't weigh a ton now!). But I miss the old monitor

Oh and Hi everyone. I'm new!

[dmckean]

Arcade monitors are best for 80s classics. Donkey Kong and Pac-Man can look a little cartoonish on a high resolution monitor but on an arcade monitor in their native resolution they look cool. Most everything from the early 90s on and also any Vector games will benefit from a high resolution PC monitor.

The only other reason would be size, it's hard to find 1600x1200 27" monitors, but it's easy to find arcade monitors that size. Of course now big LCDs are starting to come down in price so it might be more feasible to use them in the next few years.

[NoOne=NBA=]

There is a middle ground.
I've got a 29" VGA/SVGA monitor from Happ.
It will do 640x480 and 800x600, so it can play PC games as well as MAME stuff.

I still prefer vector games on a hi-res PC monitor, and will probably build a vector cocktail for them, at some point.

[shardian]

One of the better things about arcade monitors is that the tube is shallower. For instance, in my taito cab, a 19" arcade monitor fits very well. A 19" or 21" pc monitor is deeper, and thus sticks out the back of the cabinet.

[JoyMonkey]

Oscar Controls used to have a very nice comparison of image quality; comparing the same Spy Hunter screen on a TV, PC Monitor, std resolution arcade monitor, and an XGA arcade monitor.
Unfortunately the site has gone the way of the dodo and the images aren't even available from the web archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060409142625/http://www.oscarcontrols.com/monitors.shtml

Shame 

[shardian]

Man, what happened to the Oscar controls guy? Anyone know how to get ahold of him? I'm sure Saint would host his technical stuff.

[Arcades R Fun]

I have to put my vote in for LCD flat Panels!

Prices keep going down. you can now get a 22" LCD monitor for around $250 these days.

Fits into a small 21" width and there's no problem with it sticking out the back.

Of course screen quality is very subjective when discussing the classics on TV's, arcade monitors, CRT's and LCD's.

Jack

[releasedtruth]

I have a very new Toshiba 25" flat tube FST TV and it's excellent, much better than most of the monitors I see in local arcades, granted they're mostly old and well, old, but still the colors are so rich and vibrant on my screen that people who own dedicated machines are always blown away when they see it. A good video card, knowledge of color settings and monster component cables won't hurt either. Just my .02

[Jeff AMN]

I'm using a 27" Samsung TV via component connection and I couldn't be happier with it. With some tweaking, it's pretty darn close to a real arcade monitor. In fact, until I tell people, they just assume it's an arcade monitor in the cab. I can tell the difference, but mostly because I know what to look for.

[ahofle]

There are a few threads like this in the monitor forum.  Here is one with side by side comparison pics of arcade monitor vs TV/s-video (no PC monitor though).

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=65263.0

[shorthair]

ahofle: yeah, but I don't really see the difference in those pics.

I notice several are talking from specific cab set-up conditions. Important, depending. I ALMOST bought a 29" presentation monitor off ebay for under $200, that went up to XGA. Wish I had, cos then I could put it next to my Billabs...though comparing both my 21" PC's to it, the Billabs seems brighter or richer in color. Possibly, as Jeff said, that's more a color settings thing. Although either I like a lot.

I saw a new-issue Centipede at Castles and Coasters - had, I think, a 25" monitor - and it was very nice-looking, with no scan lines. Seems the Ms Pac re-issue is set similarly, and I like that. I think it's interesting that a lot of people prefer how it orginally was, when that was just a cost-cutting thing.

On the LCD thing, besides the backlighting and viewpoint issues that make golden age games almost unplayable, I haven't had the opportunity to see games run on something faster than 12ms - though I bet the fastest, the best.

Anyways, thanks.

[MaximRecoil]

ahofle: yeah, but I don't really see the difference in those pics.

The S-video (TV) image has a lot of color bleed while the arcade monitor image has none. It is a very noticeable difference.

Most everything from the early 90s on and also any Vector games will benefit from a high resolution PC monitor.

Any game designed strictly for a standard resolution (CGA) monitor is in the same resolution range as the 80's classics and does not look good on a PC monitor. For example, this is a screenshot from Street Fighter 2 (1991) which is probably the quintessential "early 90's" game:



That image is in SFII's native resolution (384x224), so imagine playing that on your PC monitor, centered in the middle of your screen surrounded by a sea of black. The only way to make it fill your screen (even a low PC monitor screen resolution of 640x480 is about double the resolution of SFII) is with processing techniques (e.g., hardware stretch), which by its very nature can only degrade the image compared to its original form.

[shorthair]

I'm not talking about ahofle's pictures, but the pac pics.  Pictures, especially too close up, can be deceiving. I think that SF II image is good. But, at least when using the avga (I just select 'switchres' and either 'auto' or the resolution if it's available or something that seems close), there are scan lines. There are supposed to be scan lines, right? This is a matter of the resolution being used on a screen that has more pixels lines than the resolution has, right?

[SavannahLion]

Man, what happened to the Oscar controls guy? Anyone know how to get ahold of him? I'm sure Saint would host his technical stuff.

It wasn't that long ago his site went off line is it? I could swear I saw some page that did have a screen comparison between monitor types using Spy Hunter as an example.

[MaximRecoil]

Man, what happened to the Oscar controls guy? Anyone know how to get ahold of him? I'm sure Saint would host his technical stuff.

It wasn't that long ago his site went off line is it? I could swear I saw some page that did have a screen comparison between monitor types using Spy Hunter as an example.

Within the past couple of weeks. I noticed it recently with his LS-30 thread, which was used for a long time whenever someone wanted to know how to remove the caps from those, and the pictures on that thread, which he had hosted from his site, worked fine until recently.

[Grasshopper]

I'd definitely use a VGA CRT monitor, partly because they're so flexible, and partly because they're now so cheap on the second hand market.

If the large pixels on older games bother you, then I'd suggest you try out AdvanceMAME which has a variety of effects built in to unsharpen the image. My favourite is scale2x.

http://scale2x.sourceforge.net/

All you  have to do is set up a custom screen mode with the horizontal and vertical resolutions both two times the games native resolution and then apply the effect. It breathes new life into many of the old games.

[shorthair]

I messed around with Advmame enough to experience that effect. Originally, I didn't notice how to change it and thought it was a permament thing...and was bummed cos I didn't like it. I like high-res, and am not a fan of scan lines, particularly on large monitors, but the scale thing did make it look computerised. Looking at the algorithmic representations, though, I may give it another look just out of curiosity.

Sometimes, with the avga, I would try to get non-scan line images by doubling or tripling the horizontal dimension, and would succeed sometimes. And though it was a slight sharper than DD with RBG sharp, or D3D, I didn't think it was remarkable enough to keep the card.

Actually, I think I've been too involved in caring that much about and exploring native resolutions, when I already liked what I had, but you know it's hard at times just to sit around not knowing of other things. A lot of hassle it can be finding out, though. In any case, below are some pics I took last night. I'm curious what people think. (I'll disclose the technical details, later.)

[dmckean]

That image is in SFII's native resolution (384x224), so imagine playing that on your PC monitor, centered in the middle of your screen surrounded by a sea of black. The only way to make it fill your screen (even a low PC monitor screen resolution of 640x480 is about double the resolution of SFII) is with processing techniques (e.g., hardware stretch), which by its very nature can only degrade the image compared to its original form.

It's the old school pixelated games that use 16 or 32 colors that suffer the most from being scaled up in resolution. Games like Street Fighter with 4096 colors and no black backround screens scale well on modern graphics cards, and with power strip and a CRT monitor you can be pretty flexible with your resolution choice as well.

[ahofle]

shorthair, just out of curiousity, how big is your arcade monitor?  I'm guessing it's rather large if you are noticing (and annoyed by) scan lines.  240 lines on a 27" CGA monitor is going to have bigger scanlines than 240 lines on a 19" or smaller monitor (which is what most of the classics used).  To test this, try shrinking the image down and you should see them get smaller.

I'm not talking about ahofle's pictures, but the pac pics.

Which pac pics are those?

[tetsu96]

Actually, I think I've been too involved in caring that much about and exploring native resolutions, when I already liked what I had, but you know it's hard at times just to sit around not knowing of other things. A lot of hassle it can be finding out, though. In any case, below are some pics I took last night. I'm curious what people think. (I'll disclose the technical details, later.)

It's hard to tell from the pictures since the fact that photos of displays don't usually look near as good as the display does in person tends to make it difficult to be objective, but they don't look like they're native resolution to me.  At a native resolution, you should see natural scanlines in almost anything MAME.  With the larger monitors the scanlines become a bit more harsh to look at, but if you're using advancemame you should be able to double up the resolution and use 50% scanlines to soften the effect.

Here's some pictures from my cabs (big pictures too, right click and view image to get the non-resized impact).  They don't look quite as good as they look in person (no moire effect, no image tearing from the refresh, etc), but maybe they illustrate how scanlines might look if done properly.

--EDIT--

Can't link images from MAMEWORLD directly anymore, but you can view the pictures of the cabs from the website.  Cabs #1 and 2, the pictures near the bottom of their pages show some hi-res closeups.

http://tvmame32.mameworld.net

[RayB]

On an arcade monitor, scan lines become really obvious if you set the focus too sharp. You're supposed to set it so it's a balance of pixel clarity AND blending with the neighboring pixels a bit.

Basically, an arcade monitor has "round" pixels, whereas PC is a square. Why would anyone want to display a nice soft blob into a hard square instead?
 

[shorthair]

No, those images aren't native, of course. I just wondered what people thought of the quality (in a neutral sense) of them.

Ahofle: might be another similar thread I'm thinking of. Yeah, it's 27 inches. 19 is just too small, anymore. Fun, but not really fun. Remember when you were a kid and saw a 13"?...and thought it wasn't anywhere near as cool? I did, at least. Same kind of thing, though I'm sure there's a distinctive difference between a lower res and a tri-sync. Still, I'm not shrinkin - at least, not yet - so the monitor has to be bigger.

Tetsu: ....what happen to da pic-chures?...

RayB: I can see your point, there.

[Zebidee]

Nothing can beat the colour depth of a good CRT, especially the Sony Professional Video monitors I am using at the moment.  Handles cga and ega modes well.  They also have a super trinitron screen with their special tri-phosphor coating that makes the colour jump out at you.  Simply beats the pants off everything.

I reckon that cga games simply look bad on vga monitors, for all the reasons outlined above.  Advancemame does some neat stuff to make them look not so bad though.

Reckon I'll stick with cga/ega CRTs until their capacitors wear out.

[RayB]

They also have a super trinitron screen with their special tri-phosphor coating that makes the colour jump out at you.

Doesn't that scare you?

heh

Um Are you talking TVs or Monitors? Sony no longer makes Trinitron PC monitors.

[ChadTower]

Plus the Trinitrons have that thin thread looking thing that goes straight across the screen like two thirds of the way up.  I still can't figure out why that is there.

[dmckean]

Plus the Trinitrons have that thin thread looking thing that goes straight across the screen like two thirds of the way up.  I still can't figure out why that is there.

All aperture grille monitors have those. It's from two thin wires that run perpendicular to the grille and are used to maintain equal spacing between the vertical wires of the grille

[shorthair]

All aperture grille monitors have those. It's from two thin wires that run perpendicular to the grille and are used to maintain equal spacing between the vertical wires of the grille

OH. And I thought my Dell P1130 had screen burn in those thin places. Looks like they had some screen on for long periods of time that was cut in thirds...uh, almost. Got so I don't notice it, anymore, but still. Learn sumpm new evry daay.

[Zebidee]

Ahhhm, by Sony Professional Video Monitors, I am not talking about  the VGA monitors but the Broadcast monitors that they used in TV studios and professional AV places (in the industry they were often called "cubes", as they are built into a sturdy metal frame and stack easily).  They accept a wide range of cga and ega inputs (eg all of the ArcadeVGA card modes, including the problematic 400x256x53khz one), and will even show vga modes in a split-screen format (the vga split-screen is not good for gaming, but OK for troubleshooting).

They have a 27" screen, model no. PVM 2730QM

They are theoretically able to display 600 vertical lines, which means that 800x600 looks OK for windows and other games.  Most CRTs can't really do 800x600 very well.  When my friends see it , they usually say something like "Wow, that's clear" or "Those colours are bright/good".  They are also incredibly durable/sturdy, and have steel/magnetic shielding around the entire monitor back.  They accept a wide range of video/RGB inputs inc SCART AND outputs.  This means that you could, for example, output the video/games/DVD to your TV in addition to having it run on the monitor.

They also have a built in quality sound amp, which is powerful enough to drive 8-16 Ohm external hifi speakers.  So no need to worry about the amplifier for you cabinet.

I've managed to pick up about 6 of these cheaply and opportunistically, as they are now considered obsolete (there are newer 29" CRT video monitors around now) and some local studios have gotten rid of them.  However, they still fetch around $400+ on the market as many people know them and their quality.  I've recently decased one and popped it into a large upright cabinet I found at the recycling centre(!), and it runs very sweetly indeed.  And as the inputs (and screen adjustments) are still accessible via a little door at the back, it can still be used as a Professional Video Monitor in addition to Arcade Games, jukebox and movies etc.

I'm a very happy little arcade junkie.

[gse123]

I have been running MAME on a regular TFT PC monitor until recently, as I had no other choice - no room for a full size arcade cab at least.

I have now got it hooked up to a regular CRT TV via RGB scart, and the picture is fantastic - everything just looks 'right'. Very similar to a true arcade monitor (to my eyes anyway)

[Zebidee]

Yes, when I first got mame running on a CRT TV with RGB via VGa-SCART cable, i was literally stunned by how good it looked.  Couldn't do much else but gape for about an hour or so.  Dunno how else to describe it.    As GSe123 says, it simply looks right, and the way it was meant to be.

[1cal]

One thing I noticed when switching from an S-Video TV to using a monitor with proper arcade resolutions, is the lack of interlacing. (its actually a TV with an AVGA wired into the SCART socket but it's practically the same thing) This wouldn't show on a photo of the screen but is fairly noticeable on some games. I seem to be particularly sensitive to the flicker that the interlacing produced and couldn't play some games without getting a headache. OK perhaps its a doctor I needed rather than a new monitor however playing the games on non interlaced resolutions made the picture much more stable.

You won't get interlacing on a computer monitor either of course and I'm not sure if you could use the progressive scan mode on the component input of new TVs instead.

[tommyinajar]

They accept a wide range of cga and ega inputs (eg all of the ArcadeVGA card modes, including the problematic 400x256x53khz one)

I've got a chance to pick up one of the newer models PVM2950Q 29" I believe. How do you hook this up to a ArcadeVGA ?

Does it have the VGA hook up in back ? I seem to remember it only had standard RCA type jacks.

[dmckean]

Does it have RGB inputs? The older models have BNC connectors and you have to buy a VGA to BNC adapter cable.

[tommyinajar]

Yup I looked again, BNC's

[Zebidee]

That Sony PVM2950Q is the big brother of the 27" Sonys I was talking about in my earlier post!  That would be one awesome arcade monitor, so long as you can find a cabinet big enough to put it in!

They do take RGB + composite sync via BNC connectors.  they also accept component input, which is cool if you ever need to hook up your DVD player.   And with the super trinitron screen those colours will be awesome if fed an RGB signal.

Hey, here is an idea for you if you can't find/build a big cabinet.  Because these Sony monitors are basically one big rectangular-cube, try leaving it out of the cabinet, then you can rotate it onto its' side for playing vertical games!  Mind you, playing 1942 on a 29" monitor boggles my mind.  The pixels will be big .... and the monitor must weigh a virtual ton.  How much does it weigh?  60kg?  the 27" Sony PVMs tip the scales at 47kg.  I lift serious weights, but I can only just heave these around by myself.

if you people want tech info on these kinds of things, try looking at this website:

http://www.eserviceinfo.com/

they have heaps of service manuals & tech data available for many models of TVs and other gear.  I've found it invaluable when trying to work out, for example, how to enter a TV's service mode to adjust the overscan.  There is even a forum.

[tommyinajar]

Hey thanks for the link. I got me a manual 

I think I'm going to go pick it up.

I didn't even think about actually even mounting it. Now that I have the measurements, it appears I'll have a whopping 1/4 inch on each side. Going to have to modify the top a bit.

Cabinet is a Ironman Ivan Stewart's Super Off Road



Size

687 X 538 X 529 mm
27 1/8 X 21 1/4 X 20 7/8


Close on the weight 52kg, (114 Lbs for me )

[Zebidee]

are you decasing the Sony 29" monitor?  If it is like my 27", it is very suitable for it.  The supporting electronics ("chassis") is actually arranged in a small box-like metal frame which sits around the CRT neck, providing some protection.  I also found some screen adjustment pots that are inaccessible until you de-case.

I reckon that the "Off-Road" cabinet would be fantastic for driving games!  Is that how you are setting it up?  Would probably also easily convert to a 3-player joystick arrangement.  How big was the monitor in your cabinet?  I barely managed to squeeze the 27" Sony into a large cabinet designed for 25-26" arcade monitors.

You will need to make sure that your cabinet goes back far enough to accommodate the "boxed-chassis around CRT neck" arrangement.  In my own case, I had to lower the screen slightly from where I wanted it to accommodate the top of the box at the back (does that make sense?).

The 27" screen has quite large mounting brackets on the corners (larger than on other naked TVs I've seen), which makes it pretty easy to mount to an existing wooden/metal monitor frame.  I had to do some minor carpentry to widen my wooden mounting bracket a little.

If you are decasing, pls take lots of care and all normal precautions around dangerous electrical devices.  I recommend that you leave the monitor OFF & unplugged for SEVERAL DAYS before decasing, to make sure that there is minimal residual charge in the tube/capacitors.  I also recommend that you DON'T wear something like a woolly jumper (it is winter in Oz now), coz of all the static electricity potential.  Finally, unless you are the incredible hulk, you'll likely need to get someone to help you lift the thing into your cabinet.

cheers, zeb.

[shorthair]

Zeb: I would say the weights aren't doing you any favour, as I'm average height at about 150 pounds (about 73 kee's?), and I can easily move my 29" Billabs around. Hell, I bet I could maneuver it around much easier if not for the open-frame design. Like Matt Furey says: it's not the size of the dog, but the size of the fight in the dog. I don't lift weights. (I mean, not to dis you or anything, really, just mentioning. Someone, whether I know them, comments on something like the above about something I know, I immediately ask why they say so, cos they may likely know something I don't know, but surely want to. They're offering it free. Can't ask for better.) Anyways, yeah, it's definitely a good idea to have someone help you install it.