Hello all,
I should start by saying that i have lurked off and on @ this site and its forums for years now. I have been in the planning stages for way too long... btw,I live in the Maryland,US.
I have decided I want to build a Cab capable of Mame, an assortment of other emulators and a jukebox that supports .flac ,with a modular control panel. I figure it will allow me to scale my controls from basic to more and more specific and allow me to use the cab from the beginning. ( It will be a living room Cabinet...gf willing.)
My problem lies in deciding what monitor to choose. As I understand it, If I go with a
standard Arcade monitor ( or a Nieman display) and an AVGA card or soft-15Khz I would be able to play most mame games except I might have to manually adjust screen geometry every time the resolution changes.( I DO NOT like the idea of making adjustments every time I start a new game at all.)
I had been leaning towards the
digital multisync monitors, but there seems to some problems with quality. I like the idea that a digital multisync would allow me to boot into XP, allow for a nice looking Jukebox, as well as a nice looking frontend, as well as play any standard console emulator at native resolution.
The
Wells Gardner D9400 sounds nice except for the lingering stigma of the WG quality in question. Haven't read much about anyones recent experience with new ones of those.
The
Betson Multisyncs are made by Kortek and I have read a few accounts of the quality being poor on those as well.
The
Billabs Wei-Ya multisyncs sound good but have recently read that some or all of those are discontinued? It doesn't help that the Billabs website is pathetic. I have tried emailing the sales department and have not received an answer.
So if I don't go with any of those(if those are options to start with), I'm left with abandoning an authentic looking monitor and going with a PC monitor of some high resolutiuon. Thoughts include a high end widescreen lcd that I can pivot from vertical to horizontal, but that really would look more like a new age cabinet.
I really would like to be able to run Mame, console Emus, a Jukebox software(supporting .flac), perhaps hookup my Dreamcast ( although I dont like that I cant find any guides on converting the analog portions of the DC controller to arcade controls.

)
I was thinking a nice 27" monitor would have been nice, allowing for vertical and horizontal games to look equally nice with no rotating, but with the quality/availability of the digital multisyncs in question, I really don't know what to do and feel as though I might end up with this project on hold forever.
I would appreciate any help, suggestions, or recent experiences with any of the ideas/monitors I mentioned.
Damage Jack