33" Sony Tube VS 27" Betson

[jefftse]

Well, here is my story.   When I start planning my MAME project, I was sure that I needed an arcade monitor.  Then I saw a betson 27" on ebay $200 plus $100.  I jumped right on it.  I should be getting the monitor tomorrow!!!  I also realized I have a 33" sony tube in my bedroom and I was trying to get rid of it for a long time.  so I plug my laptop to the s-video input.  It didn't look too bad. 

I can always save that betson for another project like "Car Racing Cab" or sell it to someone else.  Also I will need to buy AVGA in order to make it to work probably (another $100). 


Do you think Betson 27" is much better than the 33" sony tube for MAME? 

FYI, i"m building a 4 play CP cabinet.

Thanks
Jeff

[ahofle]

An arcade monitor will always look better than a TV.  I hope your cabinet is a showcase style because you are going to get a headache with that huge of a TV.

[Organic Jerk]

An arcade monitor will always look better than a TV. 

Is that an absolute, even when talking about multi-purpose cabs running things like PC games and console emulators?  I would also be wanting to hook up a PS2 and/or Xbox to it seldomly...

As you could probably tell I havent made my monitor purchase yet and I'm STILL going through the pros and cons..

[ahofle]

An arcade monitor will always look better than a TV. 

Is that an absolute, even when talking about multi-purpose cabs running things like PC games and console emulators?  I would also be wanting to hook up a PS2 and/or Xbox to it seldomly...

Well, if you want to hook up consoles to it, that might be reason enough to use a TV.  Otherwise you will have to get some type of converter to feed an NTSC signal (s-video for example) into an RGB arcade monitor as well as a switch of some sort to select the various inputs.  As for console emulation, they all look fantastic to me on an arcade monitor (they also looked very good on a TV though).

Here's my general rule of thumb opinion...if you already have a good spare TV sitting around, use that to get started (you can always go for an arcade monitor later).  If you are going to have to buy a display either way, spend a little extra and get an arcade monitor.  Just my 2 cents.

[shorthair]

I'm surprised at the price of the Betson.  Could you post a link to the auction?

[jefftse]

I'm surprised at the price of the Betson.  Could you post a link to the auction?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=001&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&viewitem=&item=110105737739&rd=1&rd=1

here u go!

[shorthair]

Thank you.  Looks like a smokin deal. He still had the box, I would've gotten him to ship like the way I got my Billabs: set-up a fedex account and they picked it up. He didn't still have the packing but was gracious enough to get some. With that, the shipping came to $90, cross-country. I mighta grabbed this had I been looking. Alas.

[jefftse]

Yea, I got UPS to pick it up.. I got it on thursday but I haven't opened it yet.