I use this little guy for old consoles and a C64, it's a 14" I think. And I have a 21" version of it too for new consoles. They're a nice, no fuss TV with composite input.

thats a nice TV , though I assuming its an American TV given the lack of any RGB outputs?

I can't use composite anymore, it looks terrible compared to RGB SCART, and I actually find it odd that some consoles I own like the N64 or 3DO lack an RGB option , while my master system does, although in those cases the consoles do have S-video which isn't bad ,Nintendo systems in general have pretty mediocre image quality, at least compared to the Sega or Sony machines , the Saturn and PS1's RGB signals are sharp , and the Dreamcast's VGA is very very crisp.

Darkman wrote:

thats a nice TV , though I assuming its an American TV given the lack of any RGB outputs?

I can't use composite anymore, it looks terrible compared to RGB SCART, and I actually find it odd that some consoles I own like the N64 or 3DO lack an RGB option , while my master system does, although in those cases the consoles do have S-video which isn't bad ,Nintendo systems in general have pretty mediocre image quality, at least compared to the Sega or Sony machines , the Saturn and PS1's RGB signals are sharp , and the Dreamcast's VGA is very very crisp.

Aussie TVs didn't have SCART either, and in fact most didn't even have composite until the mid-to-late 90s when DVD took off.

Composite gets a bad rap, but it's more often than not the TV that makes composite look terribad. A high end set with a good comb filter can give you a good picture with no bleed or dot crawl. The colour will usually be less saturated than with RGB or S-Video, but not so terrible that it's unplayable.

For instance, my LaserDisc movies look awesome on my Sony PVM set, and that format is composite right from the disk. The ol' NES actually produces a nice looking composite signal, provided you have a quality monitor to separate Y and C properly.

And of coursee Dreamcast VGA looks sharper, it's 31kHz 480-line progressive scan, not a fair comparison.

Yeah compisite all the way for me - there is the odd European TV around with SCART, but they're usually huge and harder to find a decent one. I think what I have looks fine, and ignorance is bliss.

SquallStrife wrote:

Aussie TVs didn't have SCART either, and in fact most didn't even have composite until the mid-to-late 90s when DVD took off. […]
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Darkman wrote:

thats a nice TV , though I assuming its an American TV given the lack of any RGB outputs?

I can't use composite anymore, it looks terrible compared to RGB SCART, and I actually find it odd that some consoles I own like the N64 or 3DO lack an RGB option , while my master system does, although in those cases the consoles do have S-video which isn't bad ,Nintendo systems in general have pretty mediocre image quality, at least compared to the Sega or Sony machines , the Saturn and PS1's RGB signals are sharp , and the Dreamcast's VGA is very very crisp.

Aussie TVs didn't have SCART either, and in fact most didn't even have composite until the mid-to-late 90s when DVD took off.

Composite gets a bad rap, but it's more often than not the TV that makes composite look terribad. A high end set with a good comb filter can give you a good picture with no bleed or dot crawl. The colour will usually be less saturated than with RGB or S-Video, but not so terrible that it's unplayable.

For instance, my LaserDisc movies look awesome on my Sony PVM set, and that format is composite right from the disk. The ol' NES actually produces a nice looking composite signal, provided you have a quality monitor to separate Y and C properly.

And of coursee Dreamcast VGA looks sharper, it's 31kHz 480-line progressive scan, not a fair comparison.

oh of course the quality the TV or monitor will make a difference, a quality Sony or B&O can make even composite look ok (I think a PVM will make just about anything look good) , but at the same time if I had a Sony or a B&O I would simply run RGB on it ,higher end PAL TVs even from the early-mid 90s usually had RGB on them. which will always give you a better picture than composite, whether the TV is of a good quality of not.

in fact I never really bothered with component on my PS2 for instance because RGB gave me the exact same quality, with the exception of 480p.

You're preaching to the converted, dude. 😉

I like to think of RGB SCART in PAL territories as an excuse for years of bad 50 Hz ports and many unreleased games 😀

d1stortion wrote:

I like to think of RGB SCART in PAL territories as an excuse for years of bad 50 Hz ports and many unreleased games 😀

youre right, fighting games especially suffered from this, and Capcom was particularly guilty of this.

although I will say that outside fighting games, the loss in speed doesn't bother me quite so much , so I prefer the better picture (and I own quite a few Japanese versions of the various fighting games, mostly on Saturn or Dreamcast)

I grew up in a European country and RGB Scart was awesome. It's leaps and bounds better compared to composite.

Ideally you had a console modified with a 50/60 Hz switch and imported US or Japanese games.

For the PSX (Playstation) you needed a boot chip and I sourced US and Japanese versions of "great" games such as Metal Gear Solid, Rage Racer and Ridge Racer Type 4, Grand Tourismo, Resident Evil 2.

My display of choice? A Philips Amiga monitor. It has controls at the back to adjust the image perfectly. On most TVs you miss out on information because of overscan.

It was a great time but I don't miss them to be honest.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I grew up in a European country and RGB Scart was awesome. It's leaps and bounds better compared to composite. […]
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I grew up in a European country and RGB Scart was awesome. It's leaps and bounds better compared to composite.

Ideally you had a console modified with a 50/60 Hz switch and imported US or Japanese games.

For the PSX (Playstation) you needed a boot chip and I sourced US and Japanese versions of "great" games such as Metal Gear Solid, Rage Racer and Ridge Racer Type 4, Grand Tourismo, Resident Evil 2.

My display of choice? A Philips Amiga monitor. It has controls at the back to adjust the image perfectly. On most TVs you miss out on information because of overscan.

It was a great time but I don't miss them to be honest.

I did that , my PS1 and Saturn can play imported games at 50/60hz, best of both worlds really, lets me play Street Fighter Zero 3 on the Saturn , without a loss of speed and with good quality.

thankfully a few other consoles I own like the 3DO or Dreamcast play import games very easiy (3DO doesn't even have copy protection or region locking, very useful)

until relatively recently I had a 21inch Panasonic CRT TV from 1997 (can't remember the exact model) , but sadly it died out on me, so Im using a 2005 21inch LG LCD , not as good as a CRT , but since its not HD its not quite so bad, at least until I can find a good CRT replacement, by good I mean something at least as good as that Panasonic, as it had RGB, S-video and 50/60Hz support.

Darkman wrote:

in fact I never really bothered with component on my PS2 for instance because RGB gave me the exact same quality, with the exception of 480p.

With RGB being the more "pure" signal, given that this is what the graphics in games are stored as, I think it's not a bad idea to go with this over YPbPr. You can also get native 480p RGB out of the PS2 when hooking it up to a monitor that supports Sync-on-green, which most Sony monitors do. Hmm, might get myself the right cables and try that kind of setup out. Too bad that only a minority of PS2 games supported 480p, and then a good percentage had it removed in the PAL version for no apparent reason...

Also, when talking about LCDs the majority of them will either not recognise 240p at all, or recognise it as 480i and process this accordingly, adding unnecessary lag. This kind of setup is common with those Wii VC titles and it did cause people grief when they had to turn to the "inferior" RGB SCART cables.

its not even just the PS2, these kind of things happen with other consoles, the PAL Xbox lacks any sort of progressive scan mode (without modding anyways) , as did the PAL Gamecube (it officially supports it, but the games had the feature removed) and even with the Dreamcast, several games which had VGA support in the JPN/US version had it removed in the PAL release (Code Veronica is one such game)

at least on the PC one never has to worry about things like that (instead one has to worry about other things not working of course)

Darkman wrote:

until relatively recently I had a 21inch Panasonic CRT TV from 1997 (can't remember the exact model) , but sadly it died out on me, so Im using a 2005 21inch LG LCD , not as good as a CRT , but since its not HD its not quite so bad, at least until I can find a good CRT replacement, by good I mean something at least as good as that Panasonic, as it had RGB, S-video and 50/60Hz support.

If I didn't have my PVM, I'd be using an X-RGB Mini with a nice 40-50" low latency LCD. There's a guy on the ASSEMbler forums selling them at practically wholesale cost + shipping.

I think I have just one disk for the PS2 that does 480p, and that's the PS2 Linux kit. 😜

SquallStrife wrote:

Darkman wrote:

until relatively recently I had a 21inch Panasonic CRT TV from 1997 (can't remember the exact model) , but sadly it died out on me, so Im using a 2005 21inch LG LCD , not as good as a CRT , but since its not HD its not quite so bad, at least until I can find a good CRT replacement, by good I mean something at least as good as that Panasonic, as it had RGB, S-video and 50/60Hz support.

If I didn't have my PVM, I'd be using an X-RGB Mini with a nice 40-50" low latency LCD. There's a guy on the ASSEMbler forums selling them at practically wholesale cost + shipping.

I think I have just one disk for the PS2 that does 480p, and that's the PS2 Linux kit. 😜

correct me if Im wrong, but doesn't the XRGB (any of them) have a VGA output? , if it does it might be possible to use some of these consoles on a VGA monitor.

133MHz wrote:

You and your awesome super high resolution CRT displays with aperture grille tubes and sexy refresh rates... Gentlemen, I give y […]
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You and your awesome super high resolution CRT displays with aperture grille tubes and sexy refresh rates... Gentlemen, I give you the complete opposite (all pics are click to zoom):

That is the most beautiful story (and monitor) I've ever heard. I'm totally in love with your monitor (it looks so cute sitting next to that nice tower). Honestly, mad props to you my friend.

I'm sort of in a similar situation though maybe not as dramatic as yours. I found two 17" monitors abandoned from a shutdown factory. They're both Viewsonic's; one from 1994 (1782-2) and the other from 1995 (1782 GS?). I received them both with black-blue oil paint streaked across both sides of them, and small chips on glass; they looked hopeless. Low and behold they both fired up. Thought they would be 800x600 max resolution but to my amazement, they both do up to 1280x1024 (possibly higher from the high khz). Funilly enough, the older one from 1994 does up to 160hz if you drop the resolution (think @ 640x480 and 800x600). The newer one goes up to 120hz I think but max khz freq. is lower (can't remember the max khz on either one). MSRP was around $900-1200 dollars for the 1994 Viewsonic I believe.

Don't have pics from before I wiped them down (had to use nail polish remover since spray paint was oil based). Also, the older one stopped showing display unfortunately. Can audibly hear the screen fire up and make the static charge to warm up, but screen remains blank. I'm hoping new caps will bring it back. The other still works but the screen intermittently loses vsync (screen flashes vertically into nothing). Hopefully this one needs new caps as well (older one did the same thing). The 1994 viewsonic has a Panasonic tube but not sure of the 1995 one. Here's pics of the 1994 Viewsonic (no 1995 Viewsonic pics but looks practically identical):
http://imgur.com/8TOFYX1
http://imgur.com/T1opPjd
EDIT: pics removed due to problems

Hopefully only needs new caps (nothing seemed fried but who knows):

Think they're shadow mask but not sure. The blacks are pure black so it wouldn't suprise me if they are; Samsung 955DF currently does great at pure black and it's shadow mask (sharp as a razor too) They did go really bright too (too bright).

While the older one was working I played Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 in Mame via Slackware, with native 400x254 resolution and double refresh rate (109.xHz); produced natural scanlines like most CRT's will at this resolution. Don't have pics of when it did run, but I do have some from my current monitor in use so you can see what it looked like. Samsung 955DF:
http://i.imgur.com/mHfHiRi.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/8dZaaRP.jpg

Also have a Viewsonic P220F that looks horizontally warped at low resolutions (640x480 @ 60hz for instance). Hopefully only needs caps...

Darkman wrote:

SquallStrife wrote:

Darkman wrote:

correct me if Im wrong, but doesn't the XRGB (any of them) have a VGA output? , if it does it might be possible to use some of these consoles on a VGA monitor.

Personally would use a line doubler if you game on a computer CRT. Using RGB has caused nothing but humm-buzzing noise in audio and even visible diagnal lines at times (bright screens) on most of my NTSC systems (SNES, Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, etc. Yes I'm American so keep that in mind); it's a lot of hassle building your own cables too (and I don't think it's right to mod classic systems; should be left alone. Poor things 😜 ). Using NEC IDC-3000 Line-doubler with svideo gives solid 480P display with no lag whatsoever (you can see the VBI region if you shrink the visible display on your CRT), and it's virtually indistiguishable from RGB though there are interlacing artifacts if you put your nose on the screen during static images (movement is still silky smooth). Only problem (which is extremely minor), when things happen too fast the deinterlacing sometimes can't keep up, and faint lines become visible on objects that move too fast (helicopter blades on Crazi Taxi, or flashing Sprites on MVSC2 Dreamcast games sometimes exhibit this); it's a very minor problem and nitpicking however, and there's no lag. It also does 3D y/c seperation so composite video looks fantastic (I've never seen composite look as good as on this thing; no rainbowing whatsoever but sometimes it depends on the console. It does show some dot crawl at times but it's faint and not all the time (think this also depends on source cvbs quality); has still mode to remove dot-crawl but then lines appear horizontally all the time when stuff moves and looks ugly). Yes cvbs can look like RGB-VGA at times with sharpness at 0; pretty weird... Was only $50 and it has a monitor out, VGA passthrough (like a dreamcast VGA box), and doubles as a video selection switch (very big and sturdy metal). Monitor out is really nice because I can feed the original audio/video signal to a capture-card on PC, while using PC (with audio) on monitor. Has service button to change brightness, contrast, tint, sharpness, etc; some of these can be set for each individual video input seperately (has 5 a/v inputs but only two have svideo; composite uses BNC). VGA out is via BNC. Has DNR but it's useless (causes motion blur and loos of details). Don't need to mod any consoles with this (syncs better than capture card with Genesis). IMO, it's the best deal if you game on a CRT monitor, and find one for $50 after shipping (MSRP was over $2400 dollars). I bet it looks great with those scanline generators I've seen some people use.

Just picked this baby up for free!

Holering wrote:

Personally would use a line doubler if you game on a computer CRT. Using RGB has caused nothing but humm-buzzing noise in audio and even visible diagnal lines at times (bright screens) on most of my NTSC systems (SNES, Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, etc. Yes I'm American so keep that in mind); it's a lot of hassle building your own cables too (and I don't think it's right to mod classic systems; should be left alone. Poor things 😜 ).

Whaaaaa???

No need to build your own cables if you don't want to, http://www.retrogamingcables.co.uk/ has them all, PAL and NTSC versions where applicable, reasonably-ish priced too.

And the XRGB-Mini Framemeister is, like, the gold standard in 240p vintage console upscaling. If you're getting these sorts of interference, you have a faulty cable or something at play.

I can recommend that site as well. Had a smooth experience buying there.

With the XRGB, while I can see the appeal of that I find it disappointing that it was only released in Japan. A CRT can often be sourced easier and a lot cheaper. I also prefer playing games on monitors that match the aspect ratio of the game whenever possible, but that's just me. 😀

d1stortion wrote:

With the XRGB, while I can see the appeal of that I find it disappointing that it was only released in Japan.

They're trivial to obtain and have English menus.

d1stortion wrote:

A CRT can often be sourced easier and a lot cheaper. I also prefer playing games on monitors that match the aspect ratio of the game whenever possible, but that's just me. 😀

CRTs are also massive space hogs, and you can get huge LCDs now days that dwarf the biggest non-rear-projection CRTs you're likely to find. Also as time wears on, CRTs will eventually develop focus, convergence, purity, and geometry problems, all requiring service that someone might not be confident to do themselves. CRTs can be found easily and cheaply, yes. GOOD CRTs on the other hand, are slowly disappearing into the collections of purists like us. On top of all this, finding CRTs with RGB inputs in places like Australia and the US is a frustrating endeavour.

Aspect isn't an issue, XRGB pillar-boxes the picture to suit, it also emulates scanlines, and plenty of other neat stuff, since it's not just a doubler, it outputs your panel's native resolution.

It's not the real thing, but it's very good, and there are number of very real benefits.

I don't see how someone with a RGB capable console and a good scaler like framemeister on a 50" LED wouldn't be happy.