Pretty good monitor find: Hitachi Superscan Elite 20

[Jack Burton]

So today I stopped by my local second hand store after I learned they were putting out some new stock.  I saw several monitors through the window yesterday so I thought it might be worth looking into.  

When I got there today I found three that were interesting.  The first and second were just some fairly large dell and gateway monitors of no particular significance.  They'd still make some good candidates for a smaller MAME cab.

The third one is what caught my eye.  It was a Hitachi SuperScan Elite 20.  I immediately noticed that the plastic surrounding this monitor was yellowed, indicating that it was rather old.  The numerous buttons across the front indicated no OSD, another sign of age.  And finally there were BNC connectors across the back.  

Immediately my mind went to thinking that this might be a monitor that will support 15khz.  So I went to buy it.  When I went up the counter I asked how much it was, and the cashier told me that if I could pick it up and take it out of the way I could have it.  I'm no stranger to lifting heavy loads in this hobby, so I immediately agreed and set it in the trunk of my car, took it home and hooked it up.  

This monitor is a dinosaur.  The screen is extremely curved and takes some getting used to once you've been using flat screen monitors for years.  

When I first got it the image was sort of dim, flat and bluish.  I know from experience now that monitors of this age and size require at least an hour to warm up, so I let it sit for that long and then got to work.  I brought up my favorite test patterns and resized the screen to fit more correctly, set an appropriate resolution (1024x768@100hz) and set the brightness and constrast.  I also eyeballed the colors and changed the color temp to something closer to 6500k than the extremely high blue setting it came with.  

Now after a little bit of tweaking the image is very good.  Blacks are deep and colors are excellent.  Running advancemame in 31khz/120hz mode I am able to play arcade games in their native resolution and they look awesome.  The dot pitch of this monitor is .28mm so it's coarse enough that scanlines aren't very noticeable at all, especially if you sit back a couple of feet.  

I haven't taken the back off of it yet, but I suspect that this monitor will feature a metal cage housing it.  This cage means that if you chose to decase this monitor and place it in an arcade cabinet it should fit onto the same mounts as a 19" arcade monitor with little or no modifications.  

I'm writing this review just for future users who might be trying to decide how to put together their MAME cabinet without going to much expense.  You can find these kinds of monitors all over craigslist and ebay, and if you visit the right places frequently you'll stumble across a couple a year.  

Sorry, no pics.  Even with all the electronic junk I have sitting around, a digital camera isn't one of them.  But overall the image is very arcade-like, especially compared to the more recent arcade monitors like a Makvision.  

I'm happy with my new monitor