gdjacobs wrote:

oeuvre wrote:

Try to find a Dell 2007fp, they're 20" LCD panels with 1600x1200 resolution and great image quality for its time.

The HP LP2065 is also a great option.

I can only second this. I've been using an hp L2035 for the last 8? years and I got it second hand then. Recently bought another one for dual monitor. The main one is used daily, and I'm pretty pissed on Bethesda for messing up F4 on square monitors.

Some people report that the Dell 2007 series had reliability problems.

Here's why I think I am confused with this. I've been a console gamer since the 80's. I could never afford a good PC until about 6 years ago. So I missed that whole era except for a few games like Black and White that ran almost at a crawl.

From being a console gamer for so long I just know that for specific consoles all the games were designed for CRT and without those scanlines they look bad. I know PC Engine looks best on a CRT with RGB, as do many other consoles, but once you hit the PS2 era LCD is the way to go.

Do the scanlines even matter in PC gaming, were the old games developed with CRT scanlines in mind?

How do you draw this point to determine which games benefit more from CRT opposed to LCD?

I feel like windows 98 and prior is obviously a CRT operating system, but XP seems kind of split to me. Like the first half would be CRT, and the second half LCD.

Are there alternatives on these legacy operating systems to get scanlines if you want them? With my consoles I just use an XRGB mini, but it doesn't support VGA. I would think using a PC that software could take care of this.

jforrest1980 wrote:

Here's why I think I am confused with this. I've been a console gamer since the 80's. I could never afford a good PC until about […]
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Here's why I think I am confused with this. I've been a console gamer since the 80's. I could never afford a good PC until about 6 years ago. So I missed that whole era except for a few games like Black and White that ran almost at a crawl.

From being a console gamer for so long I just know that for specific consoles all the games were designed for CRT and without those scanlines they look bad. I know PC Engine looks best on a CRT with RGB, as do many other consoles, but once you hit the PS2 era LCD is the way to go.

Do the scanlines even matter in PC gaming, were the old games developed with CRT scanlines in mind?

How do you draw this point to determine which games benefit more from CRT opposed to LCD?

I feel like windows 98 and prior is obviously a CRT operating system, but XP seems kind of split to me. Like the first half would be CRT, and the second half LCD.

Are there alternatives on these legacy operating systems to get scanlines if you want them? With my consoles I just use an XRGB mini, but it doesn't support VGA. I would think using a PC that software could take care of this.

My experience taught me that XP works perfectly fine to me on either CRT or LCD, and later my experience with 9x and LCD seemed fine as well (I didn't experience any significant troubles related to the LCD screen not displaying properly for whatever reason.

I haven't tried my Nintendo in ages, so I wouldn't know about it. Don't even have a CRT TV anymore.

edit: I forgot to mention that I used the more squary LCD screens and not some widescreen variant

jforrest1980 wrote:

scanlines

VGA displays at worst 400 lines. On a 14" monitor like it was common when VGA was introduced, this definition is too high for the eye to see distinct scan lines. Hence PC gamers don't have the cult of the visible scan lines like console gamers have. Higher end monitors made to resolve up to 1200 lines have very thin scan lines and when you drop the definition to 400 they are clearly visible.

I'm using a 21" 1600x1200 CRT, and I'm currently playing NOLF at 640x480 on it. The scan lines are completely resolved and it does give a very interesting look to the game. The jaggies on the polygon edges aren't cool though. The 320x200 line-doubling is super visible on this display, and DOS games look weird, like too sharp. I think I like them better on my 17" CRT which has a much lower resolution.

I agree.
On a newer CRT the image is very sharp and the scanlines are very visible on 320x200 double-scanned resolutions.

LG Flatron 17" from 2002:
Click to enlarge:

Another factor for scanline visibility is the shadow mask, which tends to be in triads on a PC monitor to blend the scanlines.
On this LG Flatron the configuration is like on a TV or a Trinitron but much denser, not in triads like a typical PC CRT, making the scanlines more visible.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common … pixel_array.jpg

jforrest1980 wrote:

I feel like windows 98 and prior is obviously a CRT operating system, but XP seems kind of split to me. Like the first half would be CRT, and the second half LCD.

I feel the same for Win98, but not so much for prior systems.
I used to play Windows 3.x and DOS games on a b/w LCD way back in the 90s, since that's what our notebook had. 😉
Gas plasma screens were also peroid correct hardware, I think. Portables used to have them.
My SLT 286 also had such a screen. Upgraded it to 4MB just to run Windows 3.1.. ^^

jarreboum wrote:

jforrest1980 wrote:

scanlines

VGA displays at worst 400 lines. On a 14" monitor like it was common when VGA was introduced, this definition is too high for the eye to see distinct scan lines. Hence PC gamers don't have the cult of the visible scan lines like console gamers have. Higher end monitors made to resolve up to 1200 lines have very thin scan lines and when you drop the definition to 400 they are clearly visible.

I'm using a 21" 1600x1200 CRT, and I'm currently playing NOLF at 640x480 on it. The scan lines are completely resolved and it does give a very interesting look to the game. The jaggies on the polygon edges aren't cool though. The 320x200 line-doubling is super visible on this display, and DOS games look weird, like too sharp. I think I like them better on my 17" CRT which has a much lower resolution.

Back in the 20th century, I played PC games on an old ~12" VGA monitor (IBM, very blurry) and NES/SNES games on a Commodore 1702.
Perhaps it was because I was too young, but I never really cared about such things like scanlines. I just enjoyed playing my games. ^^
Even if I had to play them on a b/w screen. Yup, we also had an old b/w TV set. Had a beautiful and very soft picture, without visible scanlines/CRT mask.
What bothered me was the 60Hz/72Hz VGA thing, though. That eye strain wasn't nice, often got headache and my eyes did hurt.
That's why I'm thankful that there are alternatives and I'm nolonger forced to use CRTs on PCs (but I'm free to use them whenever I want to).
LCDs perhaps aren't so romatic like CRTs, but at least they don't hurt (like some CRTs do at 50/60Hz). 😉

Edit: Small edits. That picture above looks gorgeous!