Late 90s HDTVs

[Blades]

For some sets, maybe, but that's definitely not a true statement if it's an HD CRT, rear projection or otherwise.

Got any references? Or even one?

[Baloo]

I only say that because I'd love the CRT look for my Mini consoles, but still have a TV where you I can hook up a newer streaming device like my NVidia Shield, alongside the Retro Minis. I'm surprised there's nothing out there with shaders as good as the ones in Retroarch yet, because I think that's the biggest appeal.

So anyone got any recommendations for models of CRT TVs then? I'm hearing 480i display with component inputs. I know about the Sony PVMs, but they don't seem very practical for watching or playing anything being as small as they are. Outside of the video editing grade stuff, I haven't heard much outside of the word "Trinitron" let alone which Trinitron exactly to buy. I'll take anything with an HDMI port on the back that looks good for retro games to be honest.

[gamevet]

I do know that Sony did make a 27” Wega that is an HD CRT.

https://www.crutchfield.com/S-nnpW0H...V-27HS420.html

[Blades]

I only say that because I'd love the CRT look for my Mini consoles, but still have a TV where you I can hook up a newer streaming device like my NVidia Shield, alongside the Retro Minis. I'm surprised there's nothing out there with shaders as good as the ones in Retroarch yet, because I think that's the biggest appeal.

So anyone got any recommendations for models of CRT TVs then? I'm hearing 480i display with component inputs. I know about the Sony PVMs, but they don't seem very practical for watching or playing anything being as small as they are. Outside of the video editing grade stuff, I haven't heard much outside of the word "Trinitron" let alone which Trinitron exactly to buy. I'll take anything with an HDMI port on the back that looks good for retro games to be honest.

Is this for a mini console aka a modern source? Since the signal is a regular HDMI signal, any HDMI-enabled HD CRT will do if you must have CRT. Sony made a lot of these. Just search 'Sony HD CRT HDMI.' You'll get one for free if you look. Be warned that your latency issues either will not change or might even worsen, because those old HD CRTs ran the same processing flat panels did, and they are all so old some of them were slower than a modern panel.

By the way, the reason HD CRTs do not support 240p proper is because implementing the 15KHz hsync circuitry is very difficult alongside the HD resolutions and brings marginal benefit, and because 1080i resolution balances out to about 540p, which is very close to 480p. Thus, there is no reason to spend money on implementing proper 480i. A lot of HD CRTs didn't even display 480p proper, they upscaled everything to 1080i to keep costs down.

That said, they will not look bad. In fact, like gamevet said, I suspect the added crispness of HD with regular CRT softness is excellent for the mini consoles.

If it is a 480i display with component inputs, that will of course not work for the HDMI-only Minis.

[gamevet]

My SNES Classic has lag on my Samsung LCD, while I didn’t notice any lag with the HD CRT. I had a bitch of a time pulling off moves for Street Fighter 2 on the LCD. I was using that Super Fighter wireless pas though. It probably has some latency.

[Leynos]

TG16 Mini had some lag on some games. Mainly Lords of Thunder

[Baloo]

So is there really a way to fix the input lag on these older systems aside from buying the original ones and playing on a CRT TV? Very frustrating if you can't. I noticed considerable input lag on Sonic the Hedgehog on the Genesis Mini.

[gamevet]

Emulation on a PC.

[turboxray]

Got any references? Or even one?

Yo it's been like 10-17 years haha. There were plenty of forums, discussions, and reports on all this crap. I personally had experience with HD CRTs from 2002 up to 2012, and own HD CRTs that displayed 240p content in 60 frames (not fields). So whatever that anecdotal evidence is worth. I was a videophile, and amatuer video/film engineer, TV calibration junky. This stuff was more than just a hobby for me. Also, PS2 had games that would output 240p over component (some of the MM collection games) and that was a point of contention about which TVs supported it.. and there were HD CRTs that supported it.

Interlaced signal isn't just some half scanline that bumps the field slightly out of place.. it has EQ pulses in the vsync trace back lines that identifies the field order (else you wouldn't know what field order was what, and it would looked horrible if they were in the wrong order). 240p composite signals do not have this. It's soo trivial to detect this. A set doesn't have to be "480i" natively equiped to handle 240p in coming signal. Yeah, there were some crap cheap sets that would "upscale" everything to 1080i (or some 720p). But the key there is "hedging" the statement, because not all had that issue.

My Hitachi 57" HD CRT was 4:3 model, but the output was higher than the input signal. It could display 720p and 1080i in 4:3 without problem (there was no upscaling all to 720p or 1080i). And when in widescreen mode, the raster beam would only draw to the wide screen portion of the CRT mask; the top and bottom was never touched by the beam - no resolution loss. I did my research. I helped friends and family pick the best sets for their needs as well.

[Blades]

Lotta words. No references.

[gamevet]

A lot of the answers are people regurgitating the same thing that they'd heard everywhere else.

One thing is for certain, a CRT will always be faster than an LCD, because of pixel lag inherent with the technology.

[Barone]

Does anyone know if the HD CRTs are worth getting for retro gaming with the Sega Genesis and SNES Minis? I've been thinking about looking for one when coronavirus is over to hook these up because I hate the input lag on the new TVs, games just don't feel the same at all. At the same time though I can't move a 250 lb TV myself. What do you guys think is worth it to play the retro games on? The Polymega especially looks enticing.

I only say that because I'd love the CRT look for my Mini consoles, but still have a TV where you I can hook up a newer streaming device like my NVidia Shield, alongside the Retro Minis. I'm surprised there's nothing out there with shaders as good as the ones in Retroarch yet, because I think that's the biggest appeal.
So anyone got any recommendations for models of CRT TVs then? I'm hearing 480i display with component inputs. I know about the Sony PVMs, but they don't seem very practical for watching or playing anything being as small as they are. Outside of the video editing grade stuff, I haven't heard much outside of the word "Trinitron" let alone which Trinitron exactly to buy. I'll take anything with an HDMI port on the back that looks good for retro games to be honest.

Let me drop my two cents here:
- Mini consoles recent released such as the Mega Drive mini output digital signal through HDMI at 720p, without a analog output for audio out-of-the-box. Keep that in mind at all instances.
- For MD games, SNES games, etc. you're mostly looking for native 4:3 or 5:4 displays to actually give you a feeling closer to the original things.
- The more signal processing you need to make your source compatible with your display the more money you'll need to spend and the more lad you'll introduce.
- Complex shaders are out of question for most of the mini consoles released so for, with the PS one being an exception to some extent (because it has more powerful hardware). It doesn't matter if it looks great but you can keep up with 60/50 fps emulation.
- To use HD CRTs will require expensive converters to do it well and you'll lose of the greatest mini consoles advantages which is to be a nimble setup.

With all that said, this is what I have used with my Mega Drive mini:
- Cheap old 4:3 and 5:4 VGA LCD monitors.
- To connect to them I use one of those dirty cheap generic HDMI-to-VGA adapters which have P2 analog audio output (that solves the problem of connecting the minis to your Hi-Fi stereos, headphones, etc.).
- But what about the CRT look? The lightest shader you can use with RetroArch (and this is according to performance tests) is the NES mini CRT shader. This one the Mega Drive mini when running Project Lunar (which allows you to set 1.344 GHz as CPU clock) can use and still reach 60 fps with pretty much anything.
For arcade games which usually have some disgusting gamma ramp issues I like to combine it with the BSNES gamma ramp chader (this has to be set as pass #1 and the CRT filter as pass #2 on RetroArch). For old arcade games and Neo Geo games the Mega Drive mini can keep up with this combination.
- Keep in mind that you always want to use the CRT filters with integer scale set in the video options to avoid artifacts; and this will require you to manually re-adjust the base resolution when you change to a platform (or a game) with different resolution.
- Down side is that you'll be limited to more common screen sizes of the time such as 15/17/19/21 inches and not all of those monitors have a decent gamma ramp to begin with. In my area, the ones that I can find easily and which look good enough are the LG ones. I have used either a M1721A which accepts all kinds of analog inputs whose native resolution is 1280 x 1024 (5:4) or a L1530S (which surprisingly has the best color fidelity of the several other ones I tested) whose native resolution is 1024 x 768 (4:3) but when connected to mini using the generic VGA adapter it runs at the undocumented resolution of 960 x 720.

OK, after all this crap I wrote, how does it look in action?
To me it looks really, really good and I like how practical the physical setup is.

Here's some crap recording made with my phone (you'll struggle to notice the scanlines in such recordings but they are there):

[Yharnamresident]

Yo it's been like 10-17 years haha. There were plenty of forums, discussions, and reports on all this crap. I personally had experience with HD CRTs from 2002 up to 2012, and own HD CRTs that displayed 240p content in 60 frames (not fields). So whatever that anecdotal evidence is worth. I was a videophile, and amatuer video/film engineer, TV calibration junky. This stuff was more than just a hobby for me. Also, PS2 had games that would output 240p over component (some of the MM collection games) and that was a point of contention about which TVs supported it.. and there were HD CRTs that supported it.

Interlaced signal isn't just some half scanline that bumps the field slightly out of place.. it has EQ pulses in the vsync trace back lines that identifies the field order (else you wouldn't know what field order was what, and it would looked horrible if they were in the wrong order). 240p composite signals do not have this. It's soo trivial to detect this. A set doesn't have to be "480i" natively equiped to handle 240p in coming signal. Yeah, there were some crap cheap sets that would "upscale" everything to 1080i (or some 720p). But the key there is "hedging" the statement, because not all had that issue.

My Hitachi 57" HD CRT was 4:3 model, but the output was higher than the input signal. It could display 720p and 1080i in 4:3 without problem (there was no upscaling all to 720p or 1080i). And when in widescreen mode, the raster beam would only draw to the wide screen portion of the CRT mask; the top and bottom was never touched by the beam - no resolution loss. I did my research. I helped friends and family pick the best sets for their needs as well.

Just so we're on the same page, you're debunking how Blades is saying HD CRTs will convert 240p to 480i, which is the same as a LCD or Plasma?

[Yharnamresident]

Our next TV won't have a lot of praise.

This is the Sony KW-34HD1. This was 34", 1080i and came out in 1999.





Why won't this TV have a lot of praise? Well this is one of those 1080i TVs that won't do 720p.

Then it would've been a good TV for PS2, GameCube and OG Xbox right? It gets worse. This TV won't do 480p either, which is horrible because Sony damn well knew the PS2 would be 480p capable.

And the last thing is this TV is only 34" yet weighs 200 lbs. I gotta be honest with you guys, the early Sony HDTVs don't seem like good products, I've never liked them. The ones from 1999-~2002.


My next post I will find one of the insanely elusive 1998 HDTVs.

[Blades]

I've heard the HD1 has a setting in the service menu for 480p.

Also, that was a $9k TV when a new car cost $12k.

KW34-HD1 Service Mode changes for 480P operation
Enter service mode:
With TV off, enter the following sequence on the remote (within 1
second of each other): "DISPLAY", "5", "VOL+", "POWER ON" - the
TV will power-up in service mode
Use the "2" key to cycle to the "OP" submenu of the service menu.
Once there, go to variable #1, "AFD", of the "OP" submenu. To get
there, use the #1 key and #4 key on the remote to go forward or
backward in the submenu.
Once to "AFD", change its value from 0 to 1. Do this using the #3
or #6 key (which increment or decrement the variable's value)
To write this into into memory: while in service mode in the OP
submenu, on the remote press MUTE or MUTING, then ENTER.
Notes:
If you enter the service mode with the TV set to the "HD" input,
and a 480P source connected to the HD input terminals, the
on-screen display will display "HD-No Sync" in the upper right hand
corner. When the AFD parameter is changed to "1", the display
changes to "HD-480P", and the video will appear. The 480P video appears to
be properly centered - implying that the KW34HD1 is properly
interpreting the bi-level sync.