Am I being too fussy?

[gingerone]

I currently use a 21" Phillips monitor in my cabinet and I am getting frustrated trying to get the arcade look.
I can't afford a wells and gardner type monitor at the moment so I am thinking of using a 21" inch TV and connecting via RGB scart and getting an arcadevga card.
Will this method yield much better results or is it not really worth the outlay?

[Ken Layton]

The only way to get the real arcade monitor look is to use a real commercial arcade monitor.

[eggedd2k]

Ken's right.doing what you're planning will take you a step further in recreating the arcade look on a non-arcade monitor but nothing will be exactly the same as an arcade monitor.  what's wrong with your current setup?

[gingerone]

It just looks a bit too blocky, the only way to get around this is with effects which then become distracting. I have had good results with increasing the resolution to 1600x1200 but I start getting performance issues then so it's bit of a pain.
I'm wondering if I should start trawling the arcades and amusement vendors and see if I can pick up a monitor cheap.

[AlanS17]

Have you tried using AdvanceMAME? It's a particular flavor of MAME designed to recreate the original image better than regular MAME.

[gingerone]

How does advance mame work with mamewah?
Are thee any compatibility issues?

[AlanS17]

How does advance mame work with mamewah?
Are thee any compatibility issues?

I don't know if the name of the executable is the same, but the rest ought to work just fine. If you set all your changes into INI files then MAMEWAH shouldn't even know the difference. MAMEWAH just runs command lines.

[Brewser]

Buy the arcade monitor and forget the rest, well I haven't got my monitor in yet but others tell me it's nice. I bought a Toshiba 27A34 TV for $214, Sapphire ATI 9600 with component adapter and component cables $130. The card didn't look that great so everyone says to buy a true ATI card, so I went and bought a ATI 9550 from Best Buy for $130 and it still sucks but not as bad as the Sapphire. I finally just ordered the ArcadeVGA and Betson Monitor.
So if you look at this, I tried to save money by using a TV, but was never happy. I have $475 into the TV setup and decided to but the true arcade monitor and card for about $600 total. I could have saved a lot of money and hastle just by going with the arcade monitor in the first place.

[stellarola]

You can always find arcade monitors on eBay. And they don't cost as much as Wells sells em for. 

[gingerone]

Well it looks like I can get a Tv for nothing so I'll get the arcadevga card and run up a vga to scart cable and see how I get on.
I'd be buying the card anyway so it's no loss really. If I don't like it I can wait until I can afford an arcade monitor.

[richms]

A mate has used a scart TV with a hacked VGA cable and advance mame, works sweet as.

Get the dumbest TV you can tho. We tried a philips with pixel plus, and the results were awefull, it was trying to deinterlace, and it was jumping all over the place with the weird timing from the vga card.

An NZ$200 fishbowl shaped screen junker of a 21" tv was fine with whatever the card dished out. Remember that there is an additional 1/2 scanline added on interlaced signals to get the lines on the second field to appear between thefirst field. This doesnt happen on the arcade output, and I think thats what was messing the philips up.

[ALeX K]

can you run me through how to get hold of or make a hacked vga to scart cable? I don't like the loss of colour in the svideo signal to tv...

[rchadd]

TV with RGB Scart is the same as std res arcade monitor.

[GameOver]

Don't blame ya for ditching the PC monitor.  It's like eating fat free ice cream.  It'll do the trick if that's all ya got, but nothing beats the real thing! 

Now, I don't have a real arcade monitor in my cab, and since I'm a yank don't know anything about the SCART set-ups, but I do use a 24" RCA TV in my cabinet.  I've been playing on it since last Sept/Oct when I finished my cab, and have absolutely no complatints.   It was cheap & easy to set-up, and is pretty close to classic arcade.  Yeah, there are some drawbacks (vector games not so crisp, but still very good, also small print can be hard to read) but overall for the price & ease of installation I'm very satisfied with using a TV. 

Unless you got some money burning a hole in your pocket or are a perfectionist, get the TV!

[gingerone]

Well the missus has put a stop to ' spending more on that flaming arcade cabinet' so I've been fiddling some and settled on some settings that look a lot better.
I'm using D3D at 1600x1200 res and using rgb4v effect.
It gives a nice bright i,age without looking too much like lego.
Not perfect but for now it will have to do.

[gingerone]

Well it looks lik ethe plan is back on after all, my sister is giving me her 21' TV so all I need now is an arcadevga card and to build a vga to RGB scart lead and I'm in business.