Looking at a thin panel lcd vs tube tv

[Love5508]

well, I have a great chance to snag a nice 26 inch samsung tv or a 28 inch lcd monitor.  Currently I have a Sansui 27 inch tube laying around I was going to use but to fit in the cabinet I need to either decase it or hack up the case somewhat to make it fit.  Soo...My only hesitation is that I hear the lcd screens will "distort" or stretch the image either maiking it look funky or even affect gameplay. 

 -Is this true?
-what would be better, the 720p tv or the hi res monitor?
-should I just suck it up and stick with the trusty old tube?

[Flake]

If those are widescreen TV's I think you'll get a "bigger" picture with the 27" Sansui since I'm assuming this tv is a 4:3 aspect ratio.  I dont this the widescreen monitors will "stretch" the picture unless you have the display settings set to full or whatever its called on that particular monitor.

Also, your 27" Sansui will present vertical games in the same size as a 19" vertical - which is a nice benefit.

Finally, the only other thing to take into consideration I would think is to determine the connectivity of the TV's/monitors.  If your 27" Sansui doesnt have component inputs available then you have to consider whethere you will be OK with the decrease in PQ that TV will provide as opposed to the other newer monitors.

[Turnarcades]

Whatever you choose you will be best looking at 4:3 aspect monitors for more accurate displays. If you choose a widescreen you will either have to put up with a slightly stretched picture or lose a lot of size keeping games at their proper aspect ratio. Having a 28" widescreen and using the correct aspect ratio is no better than, at a guess, a 21" 4:3 screen as it would only measure about the same vertically.

[wp34]

I'm debating the same thing at this point.  I've been testing Mame on a 26" LCD in non-stretch mode.  It looks well enough to me but Turnerarcade is correct that there is a lot of a wasted space on the sides.

This site has a handy screen ratio calculator.

http://cavecreations.com/tv2.cgi

You can put in various 4:3 and 16:9 sizes to compare true height/width and overall square inches between two screens.

Near as I can tell you need a 32" 16:9 LCD to closely match the height of a 27" 4:3 screen.

[Turnarcades]

Thanks for that. This will come in handy when advising customers of the viewable differences when choosing a monitor for their cabinet.

[Jack Burton]

There's also the question of input delay.  

LCD monitors will have a delay between when you press the button and when the action on screen takes place if they are not set up properly.

I see so many people on this forum who put LCD monitors into their cabs.  I wonder how many even know or care about this?  

[richms]

Thats mainly a problem on LCD tvs when processing interlaced and/or composite video, but I have seen delays on a plasma on the VGA in before.

Some have a game mode to turn off all the processing to get the update time down. Otherwise you can go into the menus and find every "enhancement" and turn it off like noise reduction, digital comb filter, motion smoothing stuff etc.

But nothing will be faster then a tube which unless its 100Hz or similar lays the image to the tube as its coming in from the video card in real time.

My vote goes with the tube options.

[Turnarcades]

There's also the question of input delay.  

LCD monitors will have a delay between when you press the button and when the action on screen takes place if they are not set up properly.

I see so many people on this forum who put LCD monitors into their cabs.  I wonder how many even know or care about this?  

Never really noticed the difference myself. As most LCD's I use have sub-10ms response times I wouldn't notice as I probably blink slower than that. I imagine it could be a concern on older, point-orientated games with good collision detection where a split-second can make all the difference.

[Jack Burton]

I have been told that the response time on LCD monitors refers to the ability of the screen to change the onscreen image and prevent ghosting and actual input delay is separate from that.  Is this correct? 

I have played fighting games on old DLP and LCD televisions that did not support game mode and the lag was horrible.   

Even on my roommates new samsung TV with MAME running at the native resolution of the screen (1360x768) I can notice a perceptible lag on games compared to running on a CRT screen.

[Blanka]

The program to calculate sizes is very limited. It gives hard to read results, and does not cover 5:4 or 16:10 screens.
Here is a scheme I drew quickly, with as far as I got, most available screens. If you see a size that's not on my scheme, report me the name of the model with the true screen size in mm, or the dot pitch in 0.xxx mm format, so I can include it too.



O yes, and lag is different than refresh time. It is almost never measured by the manufacturers themselves and included in the specs. You need a test to know it.
TN screens have mostly no noticable lag, S-IPS about 1-2 frames and SPVA 2-3 frames, depending on the overdrive technology used.
Forget about the response time, they are all around 5ms now and can be ignored. With LCD, try to grab either TN or one of the faster SIPS/SPVA models. Check prad.de or so for real life lag-measurements.

As you can see, the 32 inch LCD TV has similar height as that 26 inch CRT.

[Love5508]

Appreciate the responses, lots of helpful info here.  I think I'll stick with the tube. 

[xtravbx]

http://tvcalculator.com/

[wp34]

http://tvcalculator.com/

Very nice. I like the image options. 

[Blanka]

http://tvcalculator.com/

I miss the metric options, and the pixel pitch is never mentioned in pixels per square inch. Even Rednecks are calculating them in .xxx mm. So you cannot compare them to tech specs. I tried to show every panel available in one view.

[Blanka]

I included even more available screens, mostly laptop and carputer options as well as the new gigantic Philips cinema aspect one (Galaga, Pac-Man and Donkey-Kong side by side, so triple-MAME please ).



I still have a gap between the 24 inch 16:9 and the 32 inch 16:9, and you can see that 16:10 is pretty dominant, even down to the tiny screens. The 21.3 inch vertical LCD is huge for vertical games, even compared to many large widescreens.
You can use the dotted lines to see how much is used of the screen when displaying another aspect ratio. You can see cinema-content still leaves much black on the 16:9 tv's.
The dot pitch goes from micro 0.095mm on carputer screens to 0.649 mm on the old HD-ready giants.

[xtravbx]

The point of the link was simply to show the amount of image on a screen, nothing more, nothing less. It helped me when shopping around.

http://tvcalculator.com/

I miss the metric options, and the pixel pitch is never mentioned in pixels per square inch. Even Rednecks are calculating them in .xxx mm. So you cannot compare them to tech specs. I tried to show every panel available in one view.