You write a lot, and a lot of the things I disagree with 😀

My findings stem from mucking around on a 55" 1080P display.

1. Old games will not look blurry when scaled to 4k. On the contrary, the scaler has more pixels to work with, the result will look amazing
2. That scaler does 320 x 200 games of course. This mode is found on the datasheet as 70 Hz for 720x400
3. Why use a VGA scaler when you can get VGA to HDMI scaler which do the same thing, scale VGA to 1080p and have aspect mode correction
4. Forgetting about 3dfx, PowerVR and other cards, you can just use a GeForce with DVI > DVI to HDMI plug > Into TV. It will be a 1080p signal, the TV just needs to have a 4:3 zoom mode and you're set

Since that last thread on monitors, did you actually get a monitor and have you used it or are you still going by what has been said? The reason I'm saying this is there is theory and there is practical results. I think you are over-thinking many things here and you will be surprised with a GeForce that has DVI output and play DOS and Windows games on a TV or Monitor.

From past experience, scaling very low resolution ("SDTV" or lower) to high resolution (FHD+) is generally not very pretty. I remember PS1 and similar consoles on my XHD3000 being fairly pixelated looking, and I really can't imagine going up to 4K would somehow improve upon that. Running 480p into a Wega or similar highend SD/EDTV is also sharper (imho) than into a 1080p display, because again you aren't interpolating so much to "fill the screen." I also wouldn't want to convert anything that starts out 4:3/5:4/whatever into 16:9/16:10 - something will be stretched. Modern scalers are clever and put most of the stretch on the "sides" of the image, because they assume TV/film content which is generally centered so you don't notice it as badly, but it's still apparent. RCA used to have a great set of sample frames showing the various scaling "modes" that HDTVs and displays employ in terms of AR conversion, but I unfortunately didn't keep a copy, and I'm not sure if they're still easily available online. And also keep in mind the whole Vert-/Hor+ dichotomy - a lot of older games won't support WS, and many that do are Vert-, so it's actually worse to enable WS, as you will see less of the viewport even if you're running at a higher resolution (so now you're blowing more bandwidth and processing power for less image).

Regarding "GeForce to TV at 1080p" - it depends on the card. In order to get 1080p via SL-DVI you need a card/driver that supports reduced blanking (CVT-R), and it's also worth pointing out that many early DVI cards tend to have issues with very high resolution output (the TMDS transmitters tend not to deliver full SL bandwidth), so you may have problems with image stability or quality. This is all variable depending on the specific card, driver, display, etc but it's worth keeping in mind.

On the AA thing: I'm still trying to figure out how nVidia's "Dynamic Super Resolution" is in anyway distinct from SSAA beyond the marketing. On a TV, I've seen those Sharps that "internally process at 4K" and honestly it's nothing special. They're overly bright/saturated, like all Sharp displays, because of the extra sub-pixels, but that's about it. If you want/need AA, do AA on the graphics card. 😊

This past Black Friday I purchased a Vizio 4K TV from Wal-mart. It was a great deal and is future proof. It can accept 4K @ 60Hz through one of the HDMI Inputs. Now I just have to find a PC that can output that resolution and refresh rate!

Great Hierophant wrote:

This past Black Friday I purchased a Vizio 4K TV from Wal-mart. It was a great deal and is future proof. It can accept 4K @ 60Hz through one of the HDMI Inputs. Now I just have to find a PC that can output that resolution and refresh rate!

Only very new graphics cards can do that via HDMI; GeForce 600 and higher and Radeon GCN and higher iirc. It requires HDMI2.0 (HDMI1.4 can carry 4K but not at 60Hz). Of course that says nothing of whether or not they will be powerful enough to handle whatever game at 4K. 😊

For testing purposes, I tried running my TV at 1920p30 Hz and you know what, after a while you don't really mind it. For watching TV (I use a USB TV tuner), TV Shows, Movies 30 Hz are fine. Even browsing the Internet (I use a Logitech K400) was ok. 24 Hz however and the mouse becomes really jerky.

For gaming of course you are better off switching to 1080p60.

Vizio is a brand I would love to be able to buy in Australia. I'm always looking at the cheaper end of the market with brands such as TCL, Hisense, Seiki and others. Got my 55" in 2012 and it's a glossy panel which is awesome so I'm not in a rush. Next TV will be 65" or 70" though.

The best route is probably a plasma TV. I've found the response time issues of LCD tech to be magnified with old low resolution gaming. Plasma reminds me of a CRT because there is no ghosting. Image retention of plasma is an overblown concern too IME.

I use an old Samsung 50" plasma, I think I bought it 2008. I will be really sad when it one day dies because I cant stand LCD TVs.
LCD screens are bad enough as computer screens. Lets hope OLED lives up to the hype.

swaaye wrote:

The best route is probably a plasma TV. I've found the response time issues of LCD tech to be magnified with old low resolution gaming. Plasma reminds me of a CRT because there is no ghosting. Image retention of plasma is an overblown concern too IME.

IR/burn-in depends on the quality of the display IME. Cheap and/or old plasmas tend to be pretty bad about it, but newer quality models tend to be pretty liveable. I still wouldn't want to leave CNN on 24x7 but gaming shouldn't ruin it. 😀

Of course, also keep an eye on the actual specs of the tube in the PDP - some are only 1024x768 (and yes that means non-square pixels). Again, new + nice models can absolutely be 1080p, 3D, etc but it's still worth consideration if you're buying used or similar. 😊

Skyscraper wrote:

I use an old Samsung 50" plasma, I think I bought it 2008. I will be really sad when it one day dies because I cant stand LCD TVs.
LCD screens are bad enough as computer screens. Lets hope OLED lives up to the hype.

LCD TVs vary but yeah plasma is pretty hard to beat for gaming. I don't think I've seen a LCD that handles dark action games like FEAR well. Always some ghosting. You don't want to combine that with low resolution and certainly not a noisy analog source like an old console.

obobskivich wrote:

IR/burn-in depends on the quality of the display IME. Cheap and/or old plasmas tend to be pretty bad about it, but newer quality models tend to be pretty liveable. I still wouldn't want to leave CNN on 24x7 but gaming shouldn't ruin it. 😀

Of course, also keep an eye on the actual specs of the tube in the PDP - some are only 1024x768 (and yes that means non-square pixels). Again, new + nice models can absolutely be 1080p, 3D, etc but it's still worth consideration if you're buying used or similar. 😊

I have a ~2008 Samsung 720p (1360x768) 50". I have played a ton of games on it without issue. Image retention happens easily but it goes away. I also watch a lot of 4:3 TV on it without issue.

I have seen some plasmas with major burn in. There's no denying that there are special considerations with a PDP. I wouldn't want to put one into use with kids who might leave it on all night for example. I'm also not convinced that they have the same longevity as a LCD in general so I wouldn't get one for an application where it would be in use continuously.

swaaye wrote:

obobskivich wrote:

IR/burn-in depends on the quality of the display IME. Cheap and/or old plasmas tend to be pretty bad about it, but newer quality models tend to be pretty liveable. I still wouldn't want to leave CNN on 24x7 but gaming shouldn't ruin it. 😀

Of course, also keep an eye on the actual specs of the tube in the PDP - some are only 1024x768 (and yes that means non-square pixels). Again, new + nice models can absolutely be 1080p, 3D, etc but it's still worth consideration if you're buying used or similar. 😊

I have a ~2008 Samsung 720p (1360x768) 50". I have played a ton of games on it without issue. Image retention happens easily but it goes away. I also watch a lot of 4:3 TV on it without issue.

I have seen some plasmas with major burn in. There's no denying that there are special considerations with a PDP. I wouldn't want to put one into use with kids who might leave it on all night for example. I'm also not convinced that they have the same longevity as a LCD in general so I wouldn't get one for an application where it would be in use continuously.

My Samsung plasma (full HD) also gets Image retention very often but its never permanent.
But if I played Starcraft 2 all day and all night every day and every night I would worry 😀

swaaye wrote:

I have a ~2008 Samsung 720p (1360x768) 50". I have played a ton of games on it without issue. Image retention happens easily but it goes away. I also watch a lot of 4:3 TV on it without issue.

I have seen some plasmas with major burn in. There's no denying that there are special considerations with a PDP. I wouldn't want to put one into use with kids who might leave it on all night for example. I'm also not convinced that they have the same longevity as a LCD in general so I wouldn't get one for an application where it would be in use continuously.

Alright I should've clarified what I meant by old a bit better; 2008 is certainly in the "newer" category (but we're in 2015 now, and that's seven years ago 😲). I meant displays from the 1990s and early 2000s ("ten years ago" - except it's more like twenty now 😵). 😊 🤣

obobskivich wrote:

Alright I should've clarified what I meant by old a bit better; 2008 is certainly in the "newer" category (but we're in 2015 now, and that's seven years ago 😲). I meant displays from the 1990s and early 2000s ("ten years ago" - except it's more like twenty now 😵). 😊 🤣

😀
I don't have any experience with plasma displays made before 2006 but yeah I have heard they were more easily damaged and less reliable.

Great Hierophant wrote:

This past Black Friday I purchased a Vizio 4K TV from Wal-mart. It was a great deal and is future proof. It can accept 4K @ 60Hz through one of the HDMI Inputs. Now I just have to find a PC that can output that resolution and refresh rate!

Sounds very interesting. I wonder how does it handle 640x400 @85Hz.

Higher resolution = more room and more options for scaling. If my main concern was image quality, I would go with the highest resolution monitor/TV I could find.

My main concern is "input" lag though, and I think yours should be as well. Read up on it. Most TVs have terrible display lag (I'm NOT talking about what TV manufacturers list as response times).

Yeah the more processing the TV needs to do to the source the more delay. If you can feed it a native resolution signal and disable all enhancements (or use a PC mode), lag shouldn't be a problem.

swaaye wrote:

Yeah the more processing the TV needs to do to the source the more delay. If you can feed it a native resolution signal and disable all enhancements (or use a PC mode), lag shouldn't be a problem.

On many modern TVs, it's still a problem. It is on many monitors too.

On monitors your chances of getting a low input lag monitor is better, but with TVs I definitely would recommend research.

Everything you need to know about scalers, although it is console centric: http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/

You don't need a VGA to composite adapter, you need a scaler 😜 Some let you pass through the signal without scaling, but since you are doing an analog-to-digital conversion, you might as well scale it to the panel's native resolution in the process. The less lag, the better.

For those recommending plasmas, the only company that was left making them was Samsung and I think they recently stopped production. A shame because I prefer those displays over LCDs (even circa 2014 IPS LCDs still have viewing angle and black level issues). They also seem to be more repairable when they fail too. That being said, if you can find a higher end Panasonic 1080p plasma used locally, I wouldn't hesitate to pick it up.

These review sites are great for console gamers and whenever a new scaler appears the console community review them. But they never bother running an old 320 x 200 DOS game to see what it looks like 🙁

The issue is that not only does it have to be scaled, it also needs aspect ratio correction because 320 x 200 on modern square pixel displays has a 16:10 ratio and needs to be converted to 4:3.

You just need to check YouTube and 95% of DOS videos are in this wrong 16:10 aspect ratio.

The other issue is that console gamers focus on low resolution images. They don't look at scaling quality at 1024 x 768, 1280 x 1024 or 1600 x 1200. At these high resolutions you can easily spot the weak scalers.