Monitors make me hate this whole thing.

[Guywiththegun]

Half of that is Greek to me. I'm nowhere near that level.

[tcancian]

I'll break it out to you:

Arcade monitors have scanlines and a fluid picture because they have half the horizontal frequency of a regular VGA monitor.

That is, the VGA has 31 khz and the arcade monitor has 15 khz.

An RGB signal from ArcadeVGA, SuperNES, Saturn, is always 15 khz, the resolution usually is 320x240 non-interlaced (runs at 60 frames per second, the most recommended) or 640x480 interlaced (runs at 30 frames per second, avoid if possible for arcade games due to flicker).

Now any Standart Definition CRT TV has 15 khz BUT your problem is: you can't input RGB because in North America there's no RGB connection. So what you have to do, is pick your RGB connection and a converter (not an adapter, there's a need to change the nature of the signal) to make it compatible with your TV. That would be the SCART RGB to YPrPb converter.

A member in shmups system11 told me it would work and i'm investing toward this setup. Let's pick two cenarios:

1) SDTV + ArcadeVGA + RGB to YPrPb

Neo-Geo (320x224) would run at 320x240 and at the correct frequency. It would have NATURAL scanlines.

2) LCD + regular VGA

LCD are bad. The reason is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_pixel_display

Fixed pixel displays are display technologies such as LCD and plasma that use an unfluctuating matrix of pixels with a set number of pixels in each row and column. With such displays, adjusting (scaling) to different aspect ratios because of different input signals requires complex processing.

In contrast, the CRTs electronics architecture "paints" the screen with the required number of pixels horizontally and vertically. CRTs can be designed to more easily accommodate a wide range of inputs (VGA, XVGA, NTSC, HDTV, etc.).

It means: LCD has only one resolution whereas a CRT has many. If you input something low-res at the LCD, it will have to scale it, and scaling is bad.

Not only that, as you're drawing 15 khz games at 31 khz, your scanlines will be gone and you'll have to emulate them with MAME or with an external box like SLG3000.

And by the way, don't dissamble a CRT monitor. They are VERY dangerous and could get you killed.

[Guywiththegun]

I've been trying out MAME on my LCD with the various filters and it looks fine to me. In fact, I had a hi-res bezel around filtered Donkey Kong and it looked amazingly real.

There is very little return for going with a CRT, IMO, unless you have an easily mountable one just sitting around or you REALLY know what you're doing (which I don't). Your last sentence is yet another reason I opted out of CRT. Bad enough I'm clueless . . I don't want to be clueless about something I need to handle like a land-mine.

I just want to get this thing done and play arcade games. I'm happy with my choice. Paralysis by over-analysis is a hell of drug.

[Blanka]

I still stand by my post though. a widescreen LCD will never look as good as a 4:3 CRT, even with s-video.

Here it looks way better 

[Blanka]

2) LCD + regular VGA

LCD are bad. The reason is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_pixel_display

Never use LCD with VGA. That is the dumbest ever.
And Fixed Pixel is no problem. The game we talk about here are in the 240x320 range. On a 1200x1600 it means all pixels are 5x5 pixels, on a fullHD 4x4. Who cares? The stunning pixel art will shine in all its blocky awesomeness. Throw in some wide gamut (which was never available in CRT) and these games shine like they have never done before. If wide gamut LCD's were standard in the eighties, they would not have used CRTs at all. It's a myth that scanlines and fuzzyness are ON PUROPSE. It's just a limit of tech at that time. The prove of this is the Atari 2600 and Colecovision. Way blockier than 480i was asking for. These consoles also had 4x4 pixel blocks! Second prove: have a kid watch an old game on the original cab and on my 27 inch PVA display. He will prefer the second. Kids are insensitive to nostalgia, and just pick the best, following the purest desires possible. They take the game for its game play and choose the best display to view it on!

[BurgerKingDiamond]

developers DID design graphics to take advantage of the unique characteristics of CRT's. As a result, they do not look as good on LCD's. There is also the issue of lag that LCD monitors have. I acknowledge that some people don't care and prefer LCD's, and I admit LCD's are more convenient because of they're size and weight compared to CRTs.

I first had an LCD in my cab and it wasn't horrible by any means, but after switching to a CRT I would never go back. You also have the issue of finding a large 4:3 aspect LCD. For the size of my cab for instance, it would be impossible to find a 4:3 LCD that would fit and fill it out properly, whereas a 28" CRT is easy to find and cheap.

[Guywiththegun]

They aren't easy to find by any means. The ones I see are either far too old and lack proper input for good PC use, or they have massive speakers on each side making it impossible to fit into a cab.

[Well Fed Games]

They aren't easy to find by any means. The ones I see are either far too old and lack proper input for good PC use, or they have massive speakers on each side making it impossible to fit into a cab.

I'm still with you on this. I appreciate the strategies outlined in this thread, but I agree that the display aspect of my arcade project was one of my most frustrating and the thing I felt I had the least control over, unless I wanted to throw a ton of money at it.

[DNA Dan]

CRTs are old tech and going the way of the dodo bird. Even if you like it better, buying and maintaining one is only going to get more difficult as time goes on. We live in a digital world, and panels of glass that turn into monitors is the wave of the future. The sooner you make the transition, the less pissed off you'll be when your beloved CRT dies.

[Woodshop Flunky]

CRTs are old tech and going the way of the dodo bird. Even if you like it better, buying and maintaining one is only going to get more difficult as time goes on. We live in a digital world, and panels of glass that turn into monitors is the wave of the future. The sooner you make the transition, the less pissed off you'll be when your beloved CRT dies.

My grandma is old and cost more than she did in her 20s... I think we should transition to a new family member.

Just kidding guys!

Of course you are right... CRTs are dying and digital will soon be our only option.  However, until then I'm going to try and suck the last drop of joy out of them.

[Gray_Area]

Building a nice, 'square' cab isn't hard. A table saw, a radial arm saw, and a mounted router, and you're good to go. However, these are pricey items/rigs, and take a lot of space.

Monitors aren't difficult, either. Knowing how they work and what features various models have are crucial before even thinking of going to look at one. There's information in the wiki here, as well as at KLOV and other places. Researching is crucial. If you don't have the patience for at least this, really don't bother.

[BurgerKingDiamond]

They aren't easy to find by any means. The ones I see are either far too old and lack proper input for good PC use, or they have massive speakers on each side making it impossible to fit into a cab.

I guess it depends on your area. There is a pawn shop a few minutes away from where I live that has a whole wall of CRT's ranging from 22 to 32 inch. I got a 27" panasonic with s-video and component inputs for $50. I decased it and threw in my candy cab (i broke the original monitor neck.  ).

But it ended up working out fine. I have my PCB's going through a s-video converter (decent quality, but not arcade perfect) and my 360 through component (very good quality) in the cab.

[Guywiththegun]

Building a nice, 'square' cab isn't hard. A table saw, a radial arm saw, and a mounted router, and you're good to go. However, these are pricey items/rigs, and take a lot of space.

Monitors aren't difficult, either. Knowing how they work and what features various models have are crucial before even thinking of going to look at one. There's information in the wiki here, as well as at KLOV and other places. Researching is crucial. If you don't have the patience for at least this, really don't bother.

You know how a lot of the information on this hobby goes? Like this:

"A table saw, a radial arm saw, and a mounted router, and you're good to go." It is full of holes, takes huge leaps, and generally just starts from an assumption that you already know what you're doing, just not 'quite' there, as opposed to being a full on beginner in all things wood-working.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Sounds like it's time to get a few simple tools and just start cutting wood. Learn as you go.

[Gray_Area]

You know how a lot of the information on this hobby goes? Like this:

"A table saw, a radial arm saw, and a mounted router, and you're good to go." It is full of holes, takes huge leaps, and generally just starts from an assumption that you already know what you're doing, just not 'quite' there, as opposed to being a full on beginner in all things wood-working.

Well, again you seem to want to quantum magically 'know' how to saw things. That's fine, it may not be too far off. As for experience and skills, I had some shop in high school, and haven't done much else since then. But again, the internet is a great place to cheaply find novice wood working info.

And, in contrast to my statement about tools, check this out. Also, you might want to see my recent addition at the end.

Although, you are kind of busy getting attention here. You might not want to leave.

[Blanka]

developers DID design graphics to take advantage of the unique characteristics of CRT's.

That accounts only for a small space in gaming-time: the 16-bit era (1986-1990). 8bit games had too few colours and too slow processors, so stuff is just blocky and candy-coloured and looks like that on a CRT and even brighter, more colourful and blockier on an LCD: pefect! After that, video sections became capable of colour maps 64-4096 colours, so dithering in graphics was introduced. These dithered games are the only few who look better on CRT. After that, 256K and 16M colour was getting common, 640x480 or higher resolutions were introduced so the dithering went away. These true-colour games were made for rom-based or disk based systems (no longer single game PCB's) in various cases with various displays, and they also look great on LCD.

That so called lag is there with LCD's, but with the right ones it is no problem: good IPS screens have 5-15ms lag, which our brain compensates for automatically (we have to signal our own muscles also a bit in advance!).

[Guywiththegun]

Well, again you seem to want to quantum magically 'know' how to saw things.

I want to know where to start. Everything I find starts 10 steps in, even the link you posted.

Its no problem, all this info is free and given by people just trying to help, but lets not pretend the vast majority of information on this hobby doesn't build from a foundation of previous experience.

[Woodshop Flunky]

I want to know where to start. Everything I find starts 10 steps in, even the link you posted.

Its no problem, all this info is free and given by people just trying to help, but lets not pretend the vast majority of information on this hobby doesn't build from a foundation of previous experience.

I have built a lot of furniture for my wife over the past fiew years.  The very first piece I built was a country hutch that I designed.  My wife often tells guests that I built the piece and one of the questions that continues to come up again and again is, "Where did you learn woodworking?"  There is an assumption by some that you must know how to do something before you can do it.  I tell folks, I had zero experience building furniture before this piece.  I didn't take woodshop in high school, and I didn't grow up watching anyone do this sort of thing.  I learned to build the hutch by building the hutch.

Take cotmm68030's advice... pick up a circular saw or jigsaw and maybe a mid-range router and start making sawdust.  You'll learn fast.

[tcancian]

2) LCD + regular VGA

LCD are bad. The reason is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_pixel_display

Never use LCD with VGA. That is the dumbest ever.
And Fixed Pixel is no problem. The game we talk about here are in the 240x320 range. On a 1200x1600 it means all pixels are 5x5 pixels, on a fullHD 4x4. Who cares? The stunning pixel art will shine in all its blocky awesomeness. Throw in some wide gamut (which was never available in CRT) and these games shine like they have never done before. If wide gamut LCD's were standard in the eighties, they would not have used CRTs at all. It's a myth that scanlines and fuzzyness are ON PUROPSE. It's just a limit of tech at that time. The prove of this is the Atari 2600 and Colecovision. Way blockier than 480i was asking for. These consoles also had 4x4 pixel blocks! Second prove: have a kid watch an old game on the original cab and on my 27 inch PVA display. He will prefer the second. Kids are insensitive to nostalgia, and just pick the best, following the purest desires possible. They take the game for its game play and choose the best display to view it on!

Even if you do happen to set resolution to 1200x1600 you would still have the LCD's native resolution. It is a fixed pixel display, no matter what resolution you set it, it has only one. If the native resolution were to be 1200x1600 (which dare I say it's rare, very rare, never seen one) then maybe your scaling would be fine, but the pixel art would be very messed up. So yeah, in the avarage-Joe's LCD even if you did set that resolution, the LCD would scale it to the native resolution and destroy the image quality as a result.

The reason that CRTs are better is because they "don't have resolution" meaning that whichever resolution you input, as long as the CRT is able to draw horizontally and vertically at the given refresh rates, you will obtain a pixel perfect native resolution image. That's why it's an analog display. Some really fast games like F-Zero GX, Third Strike and Counter-Strike are barely playable on LCDs. Trust me, I have a Plasma, 120 hz input LCD and a CRT and the CRT beats the other two by a wide margim. Third Strike in a 240p TV turns parrying WAY easier. Combo that with a Sanwa joystick and you're in heaven as far as fighting games go.

It is true that space is the biggest issue with CRTs, can't be helped though.  

Edit: And by the way, I don't know if you're into consoles but at consoles having to scale 320x240 or 640x480 interlaced (deinterlacing will be necessary) is ill-advised at best. I tried to scale ICO which is 320x240 non-interlaced to 1024x768 for my FPD 42" Plasma and it looked horrible. Much better on the CRT, and the CRT had natural scanlines.

[DNA Dan]

I have to agree with others that you need to physically do some of these things with some tools in hand in order to master the skills. If you don't have the time, money, or tools for this, perhaps you're better off buying a kit that you could assemble. There's a lot of great stuff out there and you just need to assemble it. I agree with you, a lot of people take it for granted that you know how to do this cut, or that cut, this design or that design. It's a little daunting, and unless you're the type of person who is really into having these skills and perhaps using them for projects around the house, perhaps it's better to just not bother with mastering them. Building your own cab from the ground up is no simple task. As an experienced woodworker, I would not say it's the most complicated thing, but there are some complexities to it.

[Guywiththegun]

Oh I wouldn't start with a full cab. But even just to be able to build a CP would be amazing to me. Even putting in shelves in the cab, and making the monitor mount myself. That's all I need right now. I already have an emptied out Kangaroo cab.

But thanks, its nice being heard.

My Father knows some wood-working. This saturday we're supposed to 'work on it.' (I don't even know enough to know what to 'work on'). I'm gonna pick his brain I guess.

I agree with you, a lot of people take it for granted that you know how to do this cut, or that cut, this design or that design.

Yes! Exactly this.