The ultimate cabinet accessory

[tritonarcade]

Forgive me for dreaming, but would this not be the ultimate add-on for any MAME cab:

Instead of using a static marquee graphic, use a full color backlit LCD that is programmed to load the actual marquee for whichever game is being played on the cabinet.  Would that not be unbelievably cool?  Albeit prohibitively expensive?

I've done a search to see if anything exists that is even close to the form factor of the typical marquee, and I haven't found a lot.  One could use two LCD panels side-by-side, but there would likely have to be a gap in the middle of the marquee.

Perhaps this is something that could be more feasible with OLED displays, say in 5-10 years?  Hell with OLED why not add dynamic side art panels as well?

[Lilwolf]

Its been talked about before.

Some ideas are the active picture frames.  But they are a little on the small side.  I wish they had bigger ones.

I don't think anyone has ever found a LCD that would fit...t hat you could really use.

[zzsprade]

tritonarcade,

Mate could you possibly show us some of things that you have found in your searches. I for one am definately curious to see what you have found. Are there any links at all to any products that you have found that you could share?

Cheers mate!

-Alex

[AlanS17]

The ideas of using LCD's and scrolling LED marquees have both ben considered. One guy even got an LED scrolling sign to owrk with his cabinet through a hacked version od Arcade OS (for got the site). I think he had to program each game, though. And as we know there are thousands.

An LCD screen would be infinitely easier to program, though, and it would be prettier. About the only thing making it less than ideal is the shape and size. However, you could trim the image on the screen to fit the proper marque shape or you could use a full-screen screen shot of the game title screen.

A good front-end programmer could probably code that last part in a day. Almost definitely if given a week. (However, I'm not a good front-end programmer.)

At that point the only prohibitive barrier is the cost of an LCD screen.

By the way, when I say LCD screen I'm not refering to those dinky lil things people throw on there computer cases to show time and temperature. I'm talking about LCD monitors with a VGA interface. Those lil LCD screens would be difficult to program, too, unless they had s-video or RCA in (like car flip-down screens).

[tritonarcade]

tritonarcade,

Mate could you possibly show us some of things that you have found in your searches. I for one am definately curious to see what you have found. Are there any links at all to any products that you have found that you could share?

Hey Alex, so far I haven't really found a lot that would be worth posting.  I've been going to different manufacturer pages (Sharp, Panasonic, etc.) to see if they had anything that might work.  

My conclusion is this:  About the best thing one could do with current technology is mount a widescreen 16:9 lcd somewhere in the marquee section of the cabinet, with some type of generic border graphics around the marquee.  I also considered the possibility of adding an LCD somewhere else on the cabinet, maybe even on the CP somewhere.  

Having said that, I don't know if there would be a point.  Most Front-ends already display the marquee - so what would be the point of having a second screen above showing the same thing?  Personally the only way I'd do this mod is if I could put together a screen that was equal to or very close to the actual size of the marquee.  And then I would be faced with not only programming issues but also with finding decent marquee images that wouldn't look like crap blown up to that size..

[AlanS17]

You got me all excited when you said "The ultimate cabinet accessory." I thought you meant a Bud girl manning a keggerator.

[tritonarcade]

Budweiser girls?  Bah, that's what all of the porno mahjong (sp) games are for.

[AlanS17]

Budweiser girls?  Bah, that's what all of the porno mahjong (sp) games are for.

Then all you need is a ticket dispenser replaced by a spigot.

[zzsprade]

This may be another idea, though I am probably dreaming (its like 4:30 in the morning here).

What about using the board that a memeber was working on recently (dino something - appologies to the person out there) where 400 odd LEDs could be independantly controlled. Now the cost would be enourmous having like two contrasting colours and it would be a pain to implement (programming and putting together) but I am sure it would be possible.

Similar in principle would be what they use for scoreboards.

Actually, it clicked that maybe there is the possibility with what they have on pinball machines to display the score - would it be compatible to connect to a computer? I would imagine that the case would be that you could then code a program to output an unbridged version of the rom name along with setting up different fonts for each game, or even maybe the same.

I know this is a step away from your colour marque tritonarcade but it may be an idea.

-Alex

[AlanS17]

When I mentioned a scrolling marquee, that's pretty much what I meant. They make stand-alones that interface with a PC through the sreial port. I think ArcadeOS has some sort of built-in feature to support something along these lines, but it's far from advanced. Plus I think you would have to manually program each ROM name. That would suuuuuuuuuck!

The easiest solution would be an LCD VGA screen, but they aren't exactly a dime a dozen...

[Brad Lee]

What about something like this?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3031171983&category=32826
Has RCA input,and it's 16:9 aspect so it may look pretty good with marquees
~100bucks

[Shieldwolf]

Late to the subject, but Im' torn about the 4 player thing. In addtion to mame, i will be using other emulators and a lot of those have 4 player games.