Amiga 500's had a colour RF or composite output adapter that hooked into the video port.

It probably looked fine for you back in the day, but if you've ever compared RF or composite on a TV to RGB on a proper Commodore monitor the difference is night and day.

But as far as PC's go, there are plenty of video cards with TV output.

Older TV's generally didn't have any inputs apart from an antenna, to recieve broadcast TV. RF outputs, like you would get with old game consoles or home computers like the Amiga would convert the video and sound signal into radio-frequency (RF) so the TV could pick it up like a TV station. This is why these systems required you to set the TV to a particular channel to use them (usually channel 3 over here).
The quality is abysmal.

Composite was usually the most popular type of video input for CRT TV's, but the quality is usually mediocre at best. It is better than RF though.

S-Video was another popular one (although not all CRT TV's had it) and the quality is generally better than composite but not brilliant.

Late model CRT TV's had YUV, or YPbPr, or YCbCr (all colloquialliy used to refer to the same type of signal, although the technical definition varies). Also generally referred to 'component' video. This separates the video signals and generally offers the best quality of the three video signals mentioned so far.

Since you are in Europe you should be able to find a TV with SCART. Over here in Australia SCART was very uncommon, but its basically like Component in that the red green and blue signals are seperated, and gives good video quality.

If you use a modern TV it will probably have HDMI inputs which many modern video cards will output natively. Many modern TV's also have VGA and DVI inputs so you can just use them like a computer monitor.

Now, nVidia and ATI both have TV output video cards. Sometimes for TV-output to SCART, component, or composite, these cards have a small round DIN connector, with 7 or 9 pins. You need a small dongle to plug into this DIN connector, which allows you to connect your RCA or SCART leads between the TV and video card.
Unfortunately the pinouts between ATI and NVidia are different. When I was trying to connect my PC to my TV I found that every dongle on ebay was the nvidia pinout, I ended up having to swap my ATI card for NVidia.

I've currently got a small PC hooked up to a 68cm CRT TV using component, and it works quite well for emulators/ROMs and the like. I was using composite but it really did look terrible and your resolution is limited.

So my advice is to go for SCART or Component if you can find a video card that outputs these signals and a TV that will accept them.

Yes I remember the RF and tunning NES and Mega Drive (Genesis)...🤣

Later on I'll be experimenting, I've got here a CRT 34cm with SCART and RCA inputs for that purpose and one of those nVidia cards (I think its an Aopen branded 5200 "Personal Cinema"?) and also a Ti4200 with "TV-out" .
For now I'm going to test it with a laptop with S-Video output, so , yeah , I got stuff to do!

Do I have to worry about resolutions? I know that I can damage a CRT monitor if I get it to use higher refresh rates that they can handle, but what about resolution, would 800*600 be a good starting point?

Back in the day, I had an old, but huge TV and a mediocre 15" CRT. I used to watch divx movies on the TV via TV out and never really used it for gaming ;-/ I know that the only possible resolution was 640x480 which was acceptable for movies - but it sucked for games. Afterwards, I noticed that some newer CRT TVs can support up to 1024x768, but the quality (for gaming) was still lacking. Also, some video cards had better TV-outs then others. For example Voodoo 3 3500 has a great TV in/out, but some early radeons and some cheap GF2MX really sucked.

elfuego wrote:

I know that the only possible resolution was 640x480

Does this mean we have to set the PC to that resolution and then plug it to a TV?

Yes I had problems with resolution. I think my nvidia card was smart enough to detect the TV and offered an 'SDTV PAL' resolution, but this was quite small for a PC desktop.
Using Component instead of Composite allowed for a higher resolution.
My TV would just lose the signal if the resolution was wrong. Older TV's may not be so forgiving, YMMV

Filosofia wrote:

elfuego wrote:

I know that the only possible resolution was 640x480

Does this mean we have to set the PC to that resolution and then plug it to a TV?

Or 720x480 (which I use for accurate TV-out PC capture), but isn't PAL 720x576?

I used to have my old Pentium 4 box hooked up to a late-90's CRT TV about 6 years ago. It was great for emulators and stuff, and I even remember using that setup to play Descent console-style under DosBox with a USB gamepad, but quite frankly it was terrible for anything requiring higher resolutions than like 320x240. 🤣

The main difference between a CRT TV and a CRT monitor afaik is that a CRT monitor usually has a much higher-quality tube, and it's made in such a way that it can accept higher-quality signals, while an average CRT TV has a lower-quality tube and is locked into accepting PAL/NTSC signals.

leileilol wrote:

Filosofia wrote:

elfuego wrote:

I know that the only possible resolution was 640x480

Does this mean we have to set the PC to that resolution and then plug it to a TV?

Or 720x480 (which I use for accurate TV-out PC capture), but isn't PAL 720x576?

720x576 interlaced, yeah.

Some games on PlayStation and later consoles allowed 60Hz Progressive using PAL colour encoding, but standard is 576i 50Hz.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

The main difference between a CRT TV and a CRT monitor afaik is that a CRT monitor usually has a much higher-quality tube, and it's made in such a way that it can accept higher-quality signals, while an average CRT TV has a lower-quality tube and is locked into accepting PAL/NTSC signals.

Cyan colors is also another consideration

I used to have my old Pentium 4 box hooked up to a late-90's CRT TV about 6 years ago. It was great for emulators and stuff, and I even remember using that setup to play Descent console-style under DosBox with a USB gamepad, but quite frankly it was terrible for anything requiring higher resolutions than like 320x240.

CRT TVs have an effective resolution of 320x240 progressive scan or 640x480 interlaced. They did at one time make VGA -> NTSC converter boxes, but obviously they were limited to the resolutions I mentioned and fuzzy and jerky due to interlacing.

while an average CRT TV has a lower-quality tube and is locked into accepting PAL/NTSC signals.

That's partially true. TVs have a relatively low dot pitch, making them coarser than the majority of computer monitors. Even composite displays in the 80s like the Apple ones had higher DP. Computer monitors tend to also have been factory-adjusted to a better standard as far as things like convergence and whatnot.

Most all consoles and computers in the 70s and 80s used progressive-scan video (the FCC forbade TV stations to broadcast this way), but in the 90s, starting with the 16-bit consoles they began using interlaced 640x480 as well. It was rarely utilized because of being too demanding for the hardware, but by the PS2 era, it was normal.

The major early console game I can think of that's such a resolution is 1993's Secret of Mana. It used 512x448 for the menus but only took advantage of the expanded horizontal lines for text resolution

kao wrote:

CRT TVs have an effective resolution of 320x240 progressive scan or 640x480 interlaced. They did at one time make VGA -> NTSC co […]
Show full quote

I used to have my old Pentium 4 box hooked up to a late-90's CRT TV about 6 years ago. It was great for emulators and stuff, and I even remember using that setup to play Descent console-style under DosBox with a USB gamepad, but quite frankly it was terrible for anything requiring higher resolutions than like 320x240.

CRT TVs have an effective resolution of 320x240 progressive scan or 640x480 interlaced. They did at one time make VGA -> NTSC converter boxes, but obviously they were limited to the resolutions I mentioned and fuzzy and jerky due to interlacing.

while an average CRT TV has a lower-quality tube and is locked into accepting PAL/NTSC signals.

That's partially true. TVs have a relatively low dot pitch, making them coarser than the majority of computer monitors. Even composite displays in the 80s like the Apple ones had higher DP. Computer monitors tend to also have been factory-adjusted to a better standard as far as things like convergence and whatnot.

Most all consoles and computers in the 70s and 80s used progressive-scan video (the FCC forbade TV stations to broadcast this way), but in the 90s, starting with the 16-bit consoles they began using interlaced 640x480 as well. It was rarely utilized because of being too demanding for the hardware, but by the PS2 era, it was normal.

Do we have to have a graphic card capable of such low resolution? For instance the lower this PC gets is 800x600 🙁

Do we have to have a graphic card capable of such low resolution? For instance the lower this PC gets is 800x600

That's just because Windows Control Panel won't let you set resolutions lower than 800x600. Almost any video driver will let you use 640x480, either in the driver's setup program or by setting it as a custom resolution. For example, this is on my old XP machine.

Again of course, 640x480 converted to NTSC will look terrible and has no real purpose except novelty value.

Composite was usually the most popular type of video input for CRT TV's, but the quality is usually mediocre at best. It is better than RF though.

As I mentioned earlier in here, purpose-built composite monitors like the Commodore 1084 had better dot pitch than TVs and were often specifically tuned for that computer's video signal. Some HDTVs (mostly junk Chinese brands) are known to choke on the nonstandard video signals put out by 80s computers/consoles because they're "smart" devices and expect straight by-the-book NTSC (traditional CRT TVs are dumb analog electronics similar to a radio and are more forgiving of goofy video signals)

Now, OP mentions having used his Amiga with a TV. On those and the Apple IIgs (which had very similar video modes), you could only get B&W if you were in hires (ie 640x200) mode, presumably because the resolution was too high and you'd experience major bleed if the NTSC burst were left on. Thus, a RGB monitor was required to use 640x200 mode in color.

Im a big fan of CRT TVs.
I would not use a CRT TV to completely replace a monitor for modern computers, they do not have fine enough resolution. Instead i use them as secondary display for some stuff.

I currently connect a PC with S-video to my 32" Wega Trinitron ( Awesome quality TV ). I watch youtube stuff full screen on the CRT and It can also be used for gaming with stuff that are 640x480 or lower. It is awesome for Emulators, to get the authentic console feel.

You need, of course, to have a TV output on the computer, They are easy to get now but in the past it was much harder, which brings me to the next point:

kao wrote:

I...They did at one time make VGA -> NTSC converter boxes, but obviously they were limited to the resolutions I mentioned and fuzzy and jerky due to interlacing.

They still make them, they are very cheap and the Chinese have "unlimited supplies" of them.
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/PC-Laptop-VGA-to-S-Vid … =item2a24f75619

I have one of these and they are quite cool honestly, WELL WORTH the ridiculously low price asked for them. The nice part is that you can use this to connect your RETRO PC to a TV. Allows your to have the Game console feel with your old school DOS games using Genuine Hardware. And yes, it is as cool as i make it sound. Also, you can use the same gadget to capture footage from your retro PC.

kao wrote:

Do we have to have a graphic card capable of such low resolution? For instance the lower this PC gets is 800x600

That's just because Windows Control Panel won't let you set resolutions lower than 800x600. Almost any video driver will let you use 640x480, either in the driver's setup program or by setting it as a custom resolution. For example, this is on my old XP machine.

Again of course, 640x480 converted to NTSC will look terrible and has no real purpose except novelty value.

640 by 480, that is the minimum I get in this computer when listing All Modes! But this is a laptop with Mobility Radeon so... maybe with older cards in one of my retro computers...,

kao wrote:

Composite was usually the most popular type of video input for CRT TV's, but the quality is usually mediocre at best. It is better than RF though.

As I mentioned earlier in here, purpose-built composite monitors like the Commodore 1084 had better dot pitch than TVs and were often specifically tuned for that computer's video signal. Some HDTVs (mostly junk Chinese brands) are known to choke on the nonstandard video signals put out by 80s computers/consoles because they're "smart" devices and expect straight by-the-book NTSC (traditional CRT TVs are dumb analog electronics similar to a radio and are more forgiving of goofy video signals)

Now, OP mentions having used his Amiga with a TV. On those and the Apple IIgs (which had very similar video modes), you could only get B&W if you were in hires (ie 640x200) mode, presumably because the resolution was too high and you'd experience major bleed if the NTSC burst were left on. Thus, a RGB monitor was required to use 640x200 mode in color.

That's right! I remember we wanna play Last Ninja so hard we didn't mind it was black and white!Lol... Kids!
First time I played isometric and it drove me mad!

MaxWar wrote:

Im a big fan of CRT TVs. I would not use a CRT TV to completely replace a monitor for modern computers, they do not have fine e […]
Show full quote

Im a big fan of CRT TVs.
I would not use a CRT TV to completely replace a monitor for modern computers, they do not have fine enough resolution. Instead i use them as secondary display for some stuff.

I currently connect a PC with S-video to my 32" Wega Trinitron ( Awesome quality TV ). I watch youtube stuff full screen on the CRT and It can also be used for gaming with stuff that are 640x480 or lower. It is awesome for Emulators, to get the authentic console feel.

You need, of course, to have a TV output on the computer, They are easy to get now but in the past it was much harder, which brings me to the next point:

kao wrote:

I...They did at one time make VGA -> NTSC converter boxes, but obviously they were limited to the resolutions I mentioned and fuzzy and jerky due to interlacing.

They still make them, they are very cheap and the Chinese have "unlimited supplies" of them.
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/PC-Laptop-VGA-to-S-Vid … =item2a24f75619

I have one of these and they are quite cool honestly, WELL WORTH the ridiculously low price asked for them. The nice part is that you can use this to connect your RETRO PC to a TV. Allows your to have the Game console feel with your old school DOS games using Genuine Hardware. And yes, it is as cool as i make it sound. Also, you can use the same gadget to capture footage from your retro PC.

This is awesome, can not wait to try it!