@Socksfelloff made a good point. I probably should bring a console that has 240p test suite. I have HD retrovision cables for my SNES so I could see if there is any weirdness.
My wife got sick so I couldn’t get that tv I was trying to get this weekend.
OSSC OLED users ( @bodine1231) What scaling method have you been using for the OSSC? 3x, 4x, or 5x?
I use 5x on my HD and my LCD 4K but but have pluses and minuses. 4K TV’s color palette is so wide that most of the time the colors don’t match even if its calibrated well. My 4K shows reds a little more like magenta (sony issue). Anyway, I pulled out my older Samsung 1080p set and man, the SNES looked so good in 5x on that thing. I’ve never seen it look better on a fixed pixel set. It blows away my 4K. I really want to see what this looks like on a LG OLED and a Samsung 4K.
This is what I did when I bought my 29" Trinitron. I brought a Megadrive 2 with the Everdrive loaded with the 240p Test Suite to the guys house so that I could test for stuff. The scrolling tests make it easy to see if there is weird geometry problems, the colour bars can be useful too and of course the blinking cursor if you’re not sure if the model is 240p or 480p. But it should be easy to see the line doubling anyway.
I’ll be on the market for a new 21" CRT very soon. Mine is dying more and more, now there is a discoloured area that appears from time to time on the left side of the screen. It’s weird because sometimes it appears right at start up, sometimes it appears over time, and infrequently it never appears.
There are still plenty of CRT with Scart of that size in my country so now i’te more about deciding if I want a Trinitron or a traditional slot mask like I currently have. I like the softer image it produces, but I can see the high quality of the Sony TVs.
I use 4X with 100% scanline strength and 68% Hybrid. I find that with 5x the scanlines are way too thin,4x with the new update has the same thickness at 2x now and looks amazing. Colors look perfect on the OLED. I also set the OLED brightness to 100 and keep brightness at 50. The hybrid scanline option brightens up the image alot now.
Yeah, you can tell because it has the Memory Stick on the front. FV300 and FV310 also have front s-video.
I’ve got 2x 13" PVMs, one 13" Philips consumer CRT, and one 21" Philips consumer CRT (tube in that is shared with several vintage arcade cabinets).
As much as I like all that phosphor glow, I know I’ll flip them all in future - especially the PVM - when the prices get silly, before I have to deal with recapping and repairs. They just take up too much room.
Though my local TV guy is really good (ex-Philips, the 21" CRT was how I met him) but realistically he’s not going to be around as long as the CRTs.
I am totally fine with native resolution LCD panels, and I’ll be buying a spare panel for my 20" Philips 480p LCD. I can’t be doing with up-scalers but I’m intrigued by an Extron for downscaling.
I’m planning on replacing my Naomi’s 31khz CRT with a square 1080p LCD when I can no longer get it serviced.
Every time this thread is bumped, it’s a sad reminder of how we’re clinging onto these final CRT displays. Such a bummer.
I just had to get the PSU of my 640x480 LCD serviced so this isn’t just a problem with CRTs. Everything we have will eventually giver up.
It makes you realise that Emulation and FPGA efforts on current displays are the only real end game scenario.
As true as that may be, denial is the ultimate end game…
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CRTs are still going oddly strong in my area here. In fact it seems like CRTs are more plentiful now than they were a few years ago when I first got into gaming on them again.
I’ve actually had to donate several sets in the last few months since I just have no more room. As a byproduct I can be much more picky about what I take home and keep.
This reminds me I had to take a broken LCD panel and a TV/VCR combo my Dad had to the local electronics recycling building for the township. They had multiple Sony TVs wrapped up on palettes waiting to go to wherever it is they go. I watched all sorts of stuff get unloaded from the cars in front of me that might be totally amazing to Retro collectors. So much of this stuff is being destroyed.
That’s just the reality when a technology goes from the mainstream to niche, I guess.
For CRTs especially imagine how many were produced over their mainstream lifespan compared to the number of enthusiasts who care about them now.
It’s sad to think how many F310s, Megaviews, PVMs and BVMs are probably flattened into a landfill or recycled into junk somewhere.
I’m hoping that by the time my last spare shits the bed we’ll have low latency high resolution MLED displays and a MiSTer built on DE30-Nano that can to everything pre-HDMI. With that said I hope my D24 outlives me.
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Sickening.
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I don’t even want to think about it
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I don’t either but once my PVM20L2 dies I’ll probably just go back to flat panel. Hopefully by then there’s a 4K OSSC.
It’s a shame that a company like JVC, Sony or Toshiba will never make CRTs again.
They could bring back high quality, high TVL 24", 27" and 32" models and sell a couple million to the retro enthusiasts, but unfortunately they’re not interested in selling a couple million.
For sure, I’d say a couple million is pushing it and prices would be sky high. I just never see the investment into tooling up a new CRT factory happening, not to mention all the environmental issues.
In my heart I know CRTs are dead, but I just wish something was around that could replace their look and feel. OLEDs have caught up to the contrast/color of tubes, but motion and lag is still a widespread issue.
I would appreciate if TV manufacturers included more customizable, transparent, and capable scaling options though, sort of how console games are slowly beginning to allow more customization of their graphics settings. That alone would go a long way in making retro gaming more friendly.
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