Pioneer 40" 4:3 native VGA plasma panel PDP V402

[withalligators]

Hi,
For all intents and purposes this is my first post and I'm new here, though I've been toying with the idea of building a mame / emu cab for years.  At first, I was going to build one around a Sony 40XBR-800 CRT.  I tracked one down but it's just too heavy to be practical (320lbs!), plus low res stuff looks like garbage on it, though 1080i and 720 look great.  I came across mention of these very early plasma screens that were very large, 4:3, and did native 480.  I've had my eye out for a while and missed many on craigslist because they were too far but just snagged a pair off ebay for 160.  A friend who passes my area often, lives near the seller and is going to pick them up and deliver them for free(!).  I was lucky that they were the pioneers in the thread title which were supposed to be the best of the small group of 4:3 plasmas of the era.  I know many here really like the scanlines and I can see why, but I happen to prefer the more clean and crisp pixel art, uninterrupted by CRT technology ( And I hate up-scaling, it looks like garbage [why 1080?  why not 960 or 1440?]).  So I was lucky to get these.  I have been reading up on refresh rates and soft15k and resolutions and such, but a lot of it is still kind of muddly in my head.  Here is a link to the manual which has a bunch of stats at the bottom of page 1:
http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pio/pe/images/portal/cit_3424/31820852PDP402GSpec.pdf
Specifically, in the Video input section, it mentions the fact that the Hfrequency is 15k.  Does that make it compatible with soft15k if I use the RGB in instead of the VGA in?  What do you all think of these numbers?  Is there anything I should be careful of?  Did I just make a mistake?
Give me your learned thoughts, I am all ears!
Cheers,
Alex 

[SNAAKE]

according the specificnation it probably cant do 15khz. vga should look great though. plus newest mame32 has scanlines options.

wanna sell the other one ??

[withalligators]

Howdy,
Oh well, so what is the 15khz in the Hfreq referring to?

I'd like to say yes, but I'll save the second for backup considering their rarity and new-technology-crappiness.  There's always this knucklehead though:

http://rockford.craigslist.org/ele/2461803293.html

Why do CLers always think everything they have is worth a million bucks?  If you want one though, I've seen about half a dozen sell in the past year on CL for 1-200 ducks.  One guy in TX found 4 brand new ones in a warehouse he worked at and wanted to trade them for wii games.  I couldn't get him to ship though.  Keep your eyes peeled around Xmas, that's when I saw most go, mainly from businesses who upgraded during sale times. 

Thanks for the advice, and any more you feel like giving! 

I'm sure I will be on here very very much as I gather parts over the next few months.

Cheers,
Alex

[MonMotha]

It very likely supports 15kHz RGB, yes.  Heck, it'll probably do it on either connector, but it may be bitchy and make you use the BNC connectors (which you could do with a breakout cable).  What it'll do with it in terms of scaling is another matter.  It may not look very good since it'll have to upscale it to 640x480.  If you're looking to use an emulator, you may do better to upscale it in software since it gives you more control over the process.

You'd be surprised what will (and won't) accept 15kHz scanrates in RGB colorspace.  I've seen CRT televisions that won't despite happily accepting it and natively displaying it on their YPbPr component inputs, and my old 480p (16:9) plasma will take it on its HD15 VGA input, despite the documentation insisting it won't, though it's kinda finicky about it.

[withalligators]

Howdy,
I haven't got them yet so I haven't been able to see how stuff scales in it.  It will be primarily for a mame and console emulator cab so all scaling ought to be done by the rig.  Most of the stuff I like is from mid to late 80s up to late 90s.  Most of those resolutions are divisible by 480 (I think, correct me if I'm an idiot) pretty easily.  Because it's so big though, displaying in native resolutions of 320 and such would still look fine.  I hope to make this cab the sort of be all of SD and lower resolutions.  I'd like to get emulators for everything up to the Wii (when it's no longer supported) backwards.  All of this seems possible as well, except for the XBOX, whose emulator is still in it's earliest stages. 

Note that I have all these systems, and have no interest in full romsets, just for the games I like and probably already own.  I do not own any boards though, but would like to have a full romset of arcade games (at least for the controls I install).  If people are interested, I can post back with my impressions on the monitor when I have it in a few weeks.
Cheers,
Alex

[withalligators]

The more I read about native resolutions and how they are not intended to be fixed pixel but scaled to a 4:3 analog CRT display, the more convinced I am that this is going to look like garbage.  The fixed pixel nature of plasma will lend itself to antialiased scaling, which would be less noticeable on a higher resolution panel.  On a SD panel like this, especially one this big, I have a feeling it'll be bad.  For some reason I thought that all resolutions prior to HD were somehow divisble by factors of 480.  like 320 x 240, 160 x 120, and their interlaced counterparts.  How untrue this is.  It actually seems like very very little corresponds to this ratio in both the mame and console worlds  I guess the final test will be when I get the units and hook one up. 

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

the trick is to not scale to the entire frame. Fixed pixel is not a bad thing if you've got sufficient size and resolution to work with!
The biggest deal is doing "cleanstretch" or "integral scaling", that is scaling by an exact number like 2x, 3x, etc. It might not fill the entire size of the monitor (eg, a 320x240 game scaled to exactly 640x480 and centered on the screen), but it will be pixel perfect.

there are several builds of mame that do this easily.

[withalligators]

Howdy,
Yes, I realize this.  For these applications it will be a beautiful solution.  I mean for strange resolutions like NES's 256 x 224.  Double scale will be 512 x 448.  While this is in the parameters of this monitor, the fixed picture nature of plasma assures that I have either the pixel perfect resolution and narrower than 4:3 (8:7 actually) aspect ratio, or the correct native 4:3 aspect ratio of the monitor and, I imagine, horrible antialiased scaling.  See what I mean?  If the screen was an analog CRT, It could scale to fit the screen and still be "pixel perfect" (as perfect as 3 electron guns and an aperture grill can be anyways). 
And CPS-3 resolutions like 384 x 224.  WTF is that?  Even if I didn't 2x scale it, There would be all kinds of weird h scaling to equal 4:3.  It's a 12:7 fixed ratio.  I wish I hadn't been in la la land before I bought this and had researched a bit more.  I must have just looked up Saturn and DC and called it a day.  Oh well, I guess I'll see how it goes.  Maybe it'll be nice.  Maybe I should just be attitude for gains.