Who makes the best (as in, trouble free) 27 to 33" monitor?

[Causality]

Hi,

20 years ago I was an electronics technician in the navy.  So I am not afraid to troubleshoot and repair a CRT. 

However, I just don't want to. 

I am happy to pay a higher price for reliability.  My budget for the monitor is several hundred dollars.  I'd like to keep it under a thousand, if I can.  I'd like a bigger monitor because I want the MAME cabinet to be oversized so that I feel smaller when I am playing it (as I was smaller when I played Pac Man and Space Invaders for hundreds of hours in the arcade back when I was a kid).  I only need the cabinet to be narrow enough to fit through a typical front door (with the control panel removed).  I don't plan on moving it more than once nor will I be moving from my house for at least a few years. 

I am planning on buying this monitor in August or December (I have a couple weeks of time off in both months). 

After reliability, I would say that a hybrid monitor is what I am looking for. 

Something that shares the characteristics of both an arcade and a PC monitor- capable of displaying nearly all arcade display modes and CGA, EGA, VGA, and SVGA PC modes. 

Oh, and I don't care if it is new from a manufacturer or used from ebay/whatever.  If it hasn't been made in a few years but it's still the most reliable around, I'll take it.

Thank you for any and all advice. 

- C

[iscariot]

Does it have to be an arcade monitor?

Why not get your hands on a 24-inch CRT with component video jacks?

[Rigby]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wells-Gardner-27-CGA-EGA-VGA-digital-monitor-WG-D9200-4-pcs-NEW-in-Box-Aracde-/251308861483

They're new, so they have a good chance of lasting a while.  There's four of them, in case they don't.

That's the "money is no object" option.

The better option, in my opinion, would be to buy a monitor from eBay or some seller here or on KLOV, then sending it to someone for repair.  This way you don't have to actually do the repair yourself, if it's even needed, and you don't have to cough up a lung to get a working monitor.

anything larger than 27" would be a mistake, in my opinion.  You can make it taller without making it wider or too much heavier if you want to feel like a kid, but if you're playing games you played as a kid, you'll feel like a kid no matter what size the cabinet is.

[MonMotha]

The D9200s are actually notoriously unreliable.  When any little thing goes wrong, half the parts on the board will die making it very difficult to repair.

In general, all the CRT arcade monitors you can still buy new are crap.  It's also really hard to get replacement parts in some cases.  All the older monitors are going to have some serious hours on them and might break on you, but at least they'll be easy to repair if you get a common model.  The tubes are usually higher quality, too, but they'll again have hours on them.

Not probably the answer you were looking for, but it's pretty much the state of affairs.  You might get in touch with Rick Nieman and see if he still has any monitors left.  He knows his stuff and at minimum will stand by what he sells in the event you do have trouble.

[Rigby]

The era of the CRT is all but over.  A few of us keep it going, and we're fueled by tube swaps and disagreements.  No one even makes CRT chassis anymore, and most active components on most CRT chassis can't be found anymore because they aren't made anymore.  Someone could design a good CRT chassis and add a few more years to CRT arcade monitor legitimacy, but eventually harvested tubes from TVs will get too expensive, and then we'll truly be done.

LCDs are an inevitability.  We need now to find out how to make them look as good as they can, while adding 0 latency, ideally.

[rCadeGaming]

Rigby is all doom and gloom, but I could stockpile enough good 27" Trinitron TV tubes to last the rest of my life and my children's for a few hundred dollars.  Scratch that, I WILL stockpile enough tubes.

As far as arcade tubes though, yeah, people know what a quality vintage tube with minimal burn-in is worth.  A lot.  Some of the best I've seen people getting lately are decent Nanao monitors in candy cabs.  Not cheap though.

[Rigby]

eeh, doom and gloom I wouldn't say but I don't think that chassis replacement parts are going to be available for much longer.  My point was that there are a very finite number of days left before CRTs will fall far short of cost-effectiveness.  That won't stop a collector, but it'll slow him down considerably, I think.

I found a vendor that seems to have plenty of each of the K7000 ICs in stock, and the K7000 flybacks are still made (or at least still sold) but those parts will be exhausted before a tube shortage arises.  If there are other K7000 monitor parts that are no longer made, I don't know what they are; the rest is pretty much just passive stuff or the PCB itself.

I'm still putting CRTs in my stuff, but I think it's wise to start looking at other display options in the meantime.

[jimmy2x2x]

Its very sad, but I have to agree with rigby.