LCD display for marquee, anyone ever done that?

[Lectoid]

Has anyone ever thought about having a custom LCD sign made and making that a marquee.

Think about it, you could have it display whatever game you are playing at that moment. Or display anything for that matter, scores, lives, etc.

[Lectoid]

I should note, I don't mean the monochrome LCD displays people use on their cabinets. I am talking about like if you took an LCD TV and cut the top and bottom off (yes I know that's not possible). Full color display.

[Lectoid]

I just measured my 14.1" laptop screen and it's 7.5 inches high by 12 inches wide. If you just stuck two of these side by side, you'd have an average marquee size.

Interesting. Other than that, I am not finding anyone that will make custom LCD monitors.

[ChadTower]

Haven't seen it, mostly because as you mentioned, they don't come in a reasonable shape for a traditional marquee.  People have used BetaBrites, I believe.

[moriartyds]

Possibly a cheap option is to take one of those digital picture frames.  Load it up w/ screenshots from games and put it on slideshow mode.  You can then surround it on the sides with regular marquee material (to accomodate the size difference).

It'd probably look like ass, but it's doable.

[ChadTower]

They're pretty much just 4x6 or 5x7, though... nothing like what someone would use for a marquee. 

[SavannahLion]

I could swear that I posted this already. Hhmm..

In the Examples section, there's a few cabs that use LED sign marquees. I think it looks like crap, but whatever.  

I had the exact same thought myself. I was at a casino when I noticed that some of the rotating marquees were actually very wide low/medium resolution LCD screens. I figure 10" tall and 4' wide. I Googled around a bit and found a promising manufacturer (didn't keep the link though) that produces LCD signage in different sizes. The smallest being like a large Marquee. It's mad money though, about a two or three thousand for the most basic.

[(+_+)]

Haven't seen it, mostly because as you mentioned, they don't come in a reasonable shape for a traditional marquee.  People have used BetaBrites, I believe.

Ditto, unless of course you camoflouge the fact that an LCD would be too high by framing it in somehow. You can decase it (which can be done because I've done it), frame it somehow and display your marquee within the framed area only. May have potential. Love to see it if you go that route.

[ChadTower]

Why bother with that route, though?  Your cabinet would still have to have the marquee area big enough to house the whole thing, and at that point, you're wasting LCD real estate.  I'd say if you're going to use a larger LCD, just redesign the cab to accommodate it nontraditionally.

[GAtekwriter]

One possibility is hacking the JuiceBox... that little toy LCD screen for kids.

Here's an instructable.com link and I know I've seen other links where people have taken these apart to create their own displays... might be possible.

http://www.instructables.com/id/E1MF1CGOQLEXCFFOXD/

Jim

[ChadTower]

Hrm... very small screen for the price, but you'd be able to do more than with an LCD pictureframe.

[GAtekwriter]

I'm guessing you'd need to have 6 or 7 of these, side-to-side, to make one marquee sized display.  At $70 each, that would be a high-priced solution but I imagine it could be done.

Jim

[Dervacumen]

I Googled around a bit and found a promising manufacturer (didn't keep the link though) that produces LCD signage in different sizes. The smallest being like a large Marquee. It's mad money though, about a two or three thousand for the most basic.

Did the same thing a couple years ago and when I saw the price range I decided on a $13.00 pre-printed generic one from mamemarquees.com.

[ark_ader]

Why bother with that?

Have your marquees on a roller like a blind and have it scroll to the chosen game you are playing (obviously your options are limited) but maybe some trigger like mamehook which can drive a small motor or the like.  I'm sure some of you coders out there can bang something to gether pretty quickly.

Its very do'able.

So lets see who does it first!!!

[NickG]

I have been brainstorming on changeable marquee options for a long time now and ended up getting two 15" lcds yesterday to mount flat and vertically in the back of my upright "Arcade Paradise 2" - shaped cabinet.  I tried a few things last night but I can't seem to get the optics corrected in the small space above my main crt.  I think I may have to use an LCD for my main monitor as well, just so I can have a fixed stretched image the shape of the marquee.  It has been a nightmare trying to research for examples of other DIY projects like this.  Google mostly comes up with patents, not so much consumer products. 

I had thought about the banner/tape method with stepper motors.  Then, alternatively, of a system for multi-game selection via the marquee itself.
Instead of the marquee changing mechanically via the game selection, one could manually roll or replace the marquee, which could be identified by Reactivision fiducial (using a camera) or via a barcodes setup.  Then this identification could be sent to an app to launch that specific game.

If anyone knows how to magnify the image and refix the viewing angle like a rear projection TV please post or PM me to help me find proper optics.

[vrf]

What if one were to integrate a small LCD into a larger marquee design, like on one side? It would take a pretty clever design, but if you got the colors and integration right, it could work well. Maybe the marquee theme could be a generic "arcade classics" kind of thing... and then the LCD area would be used for more specific artwork from the original cabinets.

[SavannahLion]

Have your marquees on a roller like a blind and have it scroll to the chosen game you are playing (obviously your options are limited) but maybe some trigger like mamehook which can drive a small motor or the like.  I'm sure some of you coders out there can bang something to gether pretty quickly.

Dude... This is the 21st century. Go build a Steam Punk cab if you want to do that.

[NickG]

What if one were to integrate a small LCD into a larger marquee design, like on one side? It would take a pretty clever design, but if you got the colors and integration right, it could work well. Maybe the marquee theme could be a generic "arcade classics" kind of thing... and then the LCD area would be used for more specific artwork from the original cabinets.

That's like my "Plan B" for mine.  A big "Now Playing" Neo-Geo style Marquee (with the LCD as the mini-marquee).  Going to try to make sure I can use the touch screen if I do it that way.

[ChadTower]

I'd say a more realistic use at this point would be a small one next to or embedded in the CP that displays relevant info as a game loads... control scheme, hi scores, etc.

[NickG]

Sometimes you have to think outside the CP...         

[ChadTower]

You also have to use technology reasonably available... there just aren't LCDs that really fit the traditional marquee shape yet.

[SavannahLion]

I'd say a more realistic use at this point would be a small one next to or embedded in the CP that displays relevant info as a game loads... control scheme, hi scores, etc.

That's probably what this guy was planning on doing with his panel. 

[steveh]

what is the standard markee size?

come to think of it.. the best way to do what your thinking about doing would be with a cheep projector, from behind.  you could then have it whatever size you wanted... i dunno how bright it would actually be tho,

[ChadTower]

You'd never get a reasonable focus of beam for something like that.

[shorthair]

I thought of this some months ago but with the idea of digital paper. Not here yet, but should be. Could use it for side art, etc.

[ChadTower]

Before that I thought of using a tiny Jenny McCarthy from 1995. 

[shardian]

I keep waiting for someone else to post it, but noone did so here is McCoy's Varsity Club machine:


It uses a dual monitor setup, and technically the top monitor acts as an interactive marquee.

[shardian]

You'd never get a reasonable focus of beam for something like that.

Sure you could do that with a tv projection lens and a small scale lcd, but the resolution, contrast, etc would be horrible.

[ChadTower]

That's pretty much what I meant.  You'd end up with something like a viewmaster projector quality.

[ark_ader]

Ok how about a PS1 LCD with a magnifier, angled so it fills a rectangle sized marquee area.

It might be blurry but its an idea.

[shardian]

Ok how about a PS1 LCD with a magnifier, angled so it fills a rectangle sized marquee area.

It might be blurry but its an idea.

If you are gonna do that, just use a widescreen pc lcd.

[NickG]

Using an lcd with only a magnifier lens get the image large enough , but only from a viewing angle of near 90° from the magnifier.  At other viewing angles,  The image is shifted to the side and/or distorted.  The image must be both magnified and re-diverged and diffused at the viewable marquee surface.  What type(s) of lense(s) ar required at this point? 

[shardian]

Using an lcd with only a magnifier lens get the image large enough , but only from a viewing angle of near 90° from the magnifier.  At other viewing angles,  The image is shifted to the side and/or distorted.  The image must be both magnified and re-diverged and diffused at the viewable marquee surface.  What type(s) of lense(s) ar required at this point? 

You can pick up a page size fresnel lens at an office supply store for around $8 to play around with.

[NickG]

I have two A-size page magnifier size fresnels from inside an old broken Barcodata2100 LC projector.  I was messing around with them the other day; I tried to magnify with the first and diverge with the second but I could not seem to make that work.  (I will try again later and use the fresnel only for the front screen and perhaps magnify by other means.) 
After I saw this thread , I became excited about the idea again, and shoved my little olympus VP-1 into the speaker area of my cabinet.  using a broken hand mirror and the mirror out of my old broken projector I was able to project a good mockup of a marquee onto some plain white biology paper cut up in the marquee area.  It's maybe a start, but I stilll have to hold the mirror out further than the back of the cabinet.  Back and forth I think I need to recover approximately one meter if all components are to fit inside the cabinet.  With this setup the throw length is too great for only one or two reflections.  Here are some caps of my quick and sloppy projector marquee experiments:

Yesterday I was manually holding two mirrors up to reflect the second desktop image to the marquee.  I was able to get fairly close to the cabinet but I had keystoning.

Today I prepared (somewhat) a marquee image and just set it as my desktop.  Then I held just one mirror up (a bit further out.)  Little to no keystoning this time.
I want to try using two vertical mirrors but I am not sure if the image can be reflected back and forth in this manner without doubling up upon itself in such a small space.  Also, I am mostly certain that I can not compensate for the throw length with the current projector lense...
In case anyone can not deduce, the dark vertical lines in the marquee are from the overlaps in the paper sheets I had slopped up there.

Edit:  I was thinking about this again this morning.  Is is all so simple now.  Going to plan F.  I have to shotgun two projectors inside the cabinet; side-by-side.  The two projected images will only need to be half as wide as the single projection I have tried before.  Therefore the throw length can be shorter and maybe I can fit everything into the cabinet.  The composite (stitched) image will still be the full size of the marquee.  I am thinking about buying another identical projector just to try this out in the cabinet, and building my own custom projector later to reduce the heat, noise and power requirement.  Then I can use the off-the-shelf projectors for movie night.

[Flack]

My first thought was, why not use two or three flat panel monitors and arrange them like a Dragon's Lair marquee?

[ChadTower]

Doesn't address the lack of an LCD in that rectangular shape.  Can't have three if you can't have one.

[tommy]

I'm sure you could get a good size screen and cover up the parts of the screen you don't need and make it fit a normal size marquee opening, as long as you can move the image to where you want it on the screen.

[brandon]

Doesn't address the lack of an LCD in that rectangular shape.  Can't have three if you can't have one.

wouldn't 3 in a row make a rectangular shape?   The 4:3 aspect ratio times 3 would be be 12:3.  IOW, 4 to 1 which is much skinnier than most marquees I think.  The problem is the spaces between then monitors.. 

[vintagegamer]

Maybe I'm showing my age here, but when I brought my Ms Pac and Asteroids machines home, I was so proud of the fact that not only were both marquees in tact, but they both lit up and looked great.  That part of the machine is one of the foundations of the unit in my book, since you were always looking for that familiar marquee of your favorite game in a foreign arcade (back in the day).

I wouldn't think of tearing them out to replace them with anything else.   Now, if I had a machine that was missing the light hardware and/or the marquee, maybe I'd consider something like this- 

[ChadTower]

wouldn't 3 in a row make a rectangular shape?   The 4:3 aspect ratio times 3 would be be 12:3.  IOW, 4 to 1 which is much skinnier than most marquees I think.  The problem is the spaces between then monitors.. 

It would, yes, but then you have to feed synced split images to three different monitors... and even a decased monitor has housing that would introduce gaps between the three screens.

Tommy, your suggestion was mentioned above... you'd have to do that in a nontraditional shaped cab to fit the screen.

[RandyT]

I understand that this would costs some bucks to do, but I have always wanted to use a widescreen format TV wide enough to stretch across most of the width of the cab. 

The way I was thinking about doing it was to de-case the unit, cut a slot in the top of the cabinet and slide the screen into the marquee area.  You would then just use the bottom portion of the screen to display your marquee images.  Of course, the rest of the screen is still sticking up above the cab, so put it to use!  You can display the instruction cards for the game, run arcade related animations, use it to display the name of your cab, whatever.  If you do it right, it would look like a narrow LCD sign sitting on top of the cab, while the marquee would look like a marquee, but changeable!

Aside from that, I think the projector Idea is cool if the logistics can be hammered out.

RandyT

[ChadTower]

Interesting concept... if you decase it, you end up having to make a custom case for just the exposed bit.  You'd also have to account for the width of the ceiling of the cab being "unusable space" on the LCD.

[RandyT]

Interesting concept... if you decase it, you end up having to make a custom case for just the exposed bit.  You'd also have to account for the width of the ceiling of the cab being "unusable space" on the LCD.

That's true.  De-casing would probably be required though, in order allow for closer placement to the bottom of the marquee area, etc...  Perhaps the case could be cut to create the frame for the upper section?  Honestly though, I would just make a new frame and save the original parts just in case I decided I needed the screen for something else down the road.

The unusable area of the screen would just be one of those things that would be necessary to complete the effect.  The operation of such a thing would also require a second video source that was controllable via a front end, but that's something that will be common to all normal video methods.

RandyT

[ChadTower]

Maybe you wouldn't need a second video source... you could make your own custom content instead that took into account the gap and the two different "screen areas", one source feeding both with merged source material.  Possibly more work than two individual sources, though.

If you wanted the factory case to stay on you could route out the appropriate insets in the marquee area to move it forward some.  A little creative woodworking could probably get it quite close.

[RandyT]

Maybe you wouldn't need a second video source... you could make your own custom content instead that took into account the gap and the two different "screen areas", one source feeding both with merged source material.  Possibly more work than two individual sources, though.

That's the whole idea.   I meant a second video source overall in order to drive the monitor.  2 sources required, one for the game and one for the top screen.  But as I stated, it would be no different than any other method employing an actual video screen.

RandtyT

[ChadTower]

Oh, duh, I thought you were talking two sources to the LCD.  That actually wouldn't work with most LCDs anyway.

[Havok]

Randy is just trying to throw us off the trail. He is secretly working on the MarqueeWiz (tm), which is a high resolution LCD screen, to the exact measurements of a standard marquee size. The only delay is getting the MarqueeWiz (tm) software to automatically display the game image you are playing at the moment.

 

[RandyT]

Randy is just trying to throw us off the trail. He is secretly working on the MarqueeWiz (tm), which is a high resolution LCD screen, to the exact measurements of a standard marquee size. The only delay is getting the MarqueeWiz (tm) software to automatically display the game image you are playing at the moment.

 

Hah!  I can't even imagine how much  the tooling for something like that would cost.  It makes my head hurt just thinking about all of the elements that would be required to pull that one off 

I guess I'll need to start looking for investors 

RandyT

[brandon]

you could always just use two monitors like Punch Out or Play Choice 10... and make the upper monitor display artwork when its not being used for the actually game..  I dunno...  I have another idea for using Ps1 LCDs but then the marquee would have to be recessed in the same way mirror monitors are. (Lethal Enforcers, T2, X-Men)

[shorthair]

Just re-design the cabinet. Mappy had basically an extended marquee piece. And  there are other, more recent games like this, too.

[brandon]

Just re-design the cabinet. Mappy had basically an extended marquee piece. And  there are other, more recent games like this, too.

and of course there was Dragons Lair and the GEM of a game that was "Batman Forever"...  I'm Maming one at this very moment and I feel ZERO remorse! 

[RandyT]

For anyone with the excess scratch and the unquenchable desire to try it, I was just visiting the local Wal*Mart and took a look at the offerings there.  It seems that the lowest price of admission to do it "right", not counting the clearance model, was a 26" HD LCD with HDMI for $448.

The actual screen was about 24" wide and about 13" tall, so a very good match for a standard size arcade cab.  The marquee area on my Defender cab has an 8" vertical including molding, so a very  non-imposing 5" of screen would be sitting on top of the cab, which sounds just about right for game instructions, etc...

I'd give it a shot, but that's still a little rich for my blood.  Maybe when the prices drop some more.

RandyT

[ChadTower]

If you wait for a reasonable sale at an online retailer you can get one like that for half the price.  There are 32" HD LCDs going in that price range now.

[RandyT]

If you wait for a reasonable sale at an online retailer you can get one like that for half the price.  There are 32" HD LCDs going in that price range now.

I actually started looking for those .  If anyone finds a great deal on one throw me a heads up please.

Strangely, I noticed that last night as well.  32's were going at very close to the same price as the 26's.  Probably one of those "economies of scale" pricing oddities.  I chose the 26 because it seemed to have the best fit in a cab with 24" or less of interior width.  It also won't be as tall, if that's a concern to anyone (as it is to me.)

RandyT

[knave]

I wonder if 4 small LCD's would fit in a Neo-Geo 4-slot marquee? y'know in place of the mini-marquee's. That way you could just set the image for the carts that are installed.

[ChadTower]

Why wouldn't you just swap the cards as designed?  It's not like you can hot swap carts.

[ChadTower]

Randy, go 42" plasma for that sub $500 price...

If there were a Fry's anywhere near me I'd be all over this.

[RandyT]

Randy, go 42" plasma for that sub $500 price...
If there were a Fry's anywhere near me I'd be all over this.

I don't know about for a marquee, but that has VisualPinball written all over it.  Sadly, none around me either

RandyT

[ChadTower]

Oh wow you're right it does, especially given how hard it would be to find a nonHD plasma or a plasma in that price range.

[NickG]

I found this a while back whilst looking for extra wide LCD's; 'might be good for a minicab/bartop marquee or something:

32:9 aspect ratio LCD.
They are made for cars.  10.2 inches wide × ~2.8 inches tall

[mccoy178]

Nick, I can't believe you didn't mention your cabinet!

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=70598.msg723461#msg723461