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Upscalers, CRTs, PVMs & RGB: Retro gaming done right!

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BONKERS

BONKERS

Member
Khaz said:
http://www.piratehearts.com/blog/2014/03/28/crt-simulation/





That's bloody disgusting. You're not emulating an ideal CRT here mate, you're emulating a broken CRT fed with lousy RF. It's criminal. Devs have such a distorted view of what a CRT looks like and waste hours/money on creating ugly, blinding filters that no one will ever use more than a couple of seconds.
Click to expand...

It doesn't look bad TBH aside from the ghosting.
And it's FAR CRY from being anywhere near the quality of RF

If it wasn't for that. I'd use it.

The ghosting is different than the light trails that many CRTs have. (That are kind of like ghosting but behave differently)


CRTs are more than just scanlines. If anyone here has skewed opinions it is you guys.
 
D.Lo

D.Lo

Member
At least his screens are correctly adjusted to 4:3.

It annoys me that almost everywhere, even awesome sites like HG101, use straight emulator dumps for NES screenshots with no aspect ratio adjustment.

It's really easy to do a quick 640x480 adjustment and add a semi-transparent scalene filter in photoshop, like this:

rollergames-031.png

Doesn't get you all the way to the original CRT look but at least the image is framed correctly.
 
B

BTails

Member
Part 2 of my "Modern game characters looking for PVMs":

kCCX2fd.jpg
Click to expand...

Here, Ripley examines a small CRT aboard Sevastopol Station in Alien: Isolation on PS4. Seriously, overtime I see a CRT now, I think of this thread!
 
Randomizer

Randomizer

Member
BTails said:
Part 2 of my "Modern game characters looking for PVMs":

Here, Ripley examines a small CRT aboard Sevastopol Station in Alien: Isolation on PS4. Seriously, overtime I see a CRT now, I think of this thread!
Click to expand...

Hahah me too. Since getting into RGB on CRT's I've even had dreams about finding them and going to old arcades filled with them lol.
 
S

SegaShack

Member
B

BTails

Member
Randomizer said:
Hahah me too. Since getting into RGB on CRT's I've even had dreams about finding them and going to old arcades filled with them lol.
Click to expand...

Too bad I'm not allowed to have one in the house (Too Ugly).

Also, I love how my autocorrect was totally fine with "Sevastopol", but "everytime" became "overtime".
 
K

Kadmac25

Member
So I got sick of dealing with my 20" Emerson CRT tv that is horrible quality. I picked up a Sony Trinitron KV-27FS12 on Craigslist and I have to say, the quality is much better.

I went into the Service Menu to tidy up the image dimensions but its still not perfect. Before with my Emerson, the s-video didn't provide that much of a boost for my SNES. On the Trinitron, the s-video makes a huge difference. Also, the vertical line is pretty much gone on this new TV. The only game I've seen it with is FF6. The Emerson had the vertical line all the time.

I miss the smaller 20" size since 27" is huge on the Trinitron. Very heavy. I thought about getting an RGB converter box to Component to clean up the image more. I do miss the razer sharpness of emulation but of course, there are trade offs with emulation.

Man, I think the only way I can get a clear, clean un-wavy image is just to buy the Framemeister. Save space by getting rid of the CRT and still have the response time of a CRT.

Decisions, decisions.
 
K

Khaz

Member
Kadmac25 said:
I thought about getting an RGB converter box to Component to clean up the image more.
Click to expand...

Do it. You won't regret it.

Kadmac25 said:
Man, I think the only way I can get a clear, clean un-wavy image is just to buy the Framemeister. Save space by getting rid of the CRT and still have the response time of a CRT.

Decisions, decisions.
Click to expand...

Nope. You will have a very pretty picture, and possibly have less delay than the internal scaler of your TV, but it will still lag behind a CRT. Nothing has the response time of a CRT.
 
I

InfiniteNine

Rolling Girl
480p from my PS2 on my framemeister doesn't look too hot. I was testing with Star Ocean 3 with has a couple of resolution options 480i/480i Widescreen, 480p/480p Widescreen and it seems a bit cleared with the interlaced signal.
 
C

catabarez

Member
Just RGB modded my N64! It's my first mod and I'm glad it was a fairly simple one because I thought I was gonna break it lol. It doesn't look that much better than s-video but I thought it would be fun to do.
 
J

JLynn

Member
Khaz said:
http://www.piratehearts.com/blog/2014/03/28/crt-simulation/





That's bloody disgusting. You're not emulating an ideal CRT here mate, you're emulating a broken CRT fed with lousy RF. It's criminal. Devs have such a distorted view of what a CRT looks like and waste hours/money on creating ugly, blinding filters that no one will ever use more than a couple of seconds.
Click to expand...

This is breaking my heart. Like the dude who cleaned out a DK Game & Watch not knowing it was autographed by Miyamoto.
 
BONKERS

BONKERS

Member
D.Lo said:
At least his screens are correctly adjusted to 4:3.

It annoys me that almost everywhere, even awesome sites like HG101, use straight emulator dumps for NES screenshots with no aspect ratio adjustment.

It's really easy to do a quick 640x480 adjustment and add a semi-transparent scalene filter in photoshop, like this:

rollergames-031.png

Doesn't get you all the way to the original CRT look but at least the image is framed correctly.
Click to expand...
This is true.
 
J

JLynn

Member
NormalFish said:
Wow that's super upsetting...
Click to expand...

Not upsetting as a commenter who claims to collect G&W devices not knowing who Miyamoto is. I'm like "How the hell you collect Nintendo stuff and don't know who Miyamoto is? Would it kill ya to Wiki his name?!"

But I digress. I'm sorry.
 
P

Peltz

Member
JLynn said:
This is breaking my heart. Like the dude who cleaned out a DK Game & Watch not knowing it was autographed by Miyamoto.
Click to expand...
Hmmm...
DSC00283.JPG
Click to expand...

That looks like a forgery of Miyamoto's signature. The T on Miyamoto's actual signature crosses the two "eyes" to create eyelids. If the eyes have any breaks in the signature then they always occur at the top, but here there are breaks clearly at the bottom of the eyes. The "M" and the "i" are also always connected. But, here there was a break. The Y is also completely wrong as well. It's missing the top left branch completely.

Comparisons:

onm-miyamoto.png
Click to expand...

ONM-cover.jpg
Click to expand...

article_img.jpg
Click to expand...

Notice that the bottom of the eyes are always done in one fluid motion.

I'm certain that nothing of value was lost and this guy did not erase an authentic signature.
 
alf717

alf717

Member
Got my hands on Sony XBR-30xbr910. The picture needs calibration at least I think it does. What happens is when I tested the Wii Menu the screen bounces. This happen worst when the screen has a lot of white on it. Colors look OK but the text seems a tab bit faded as well almost like it is a little blurry. If anyone knows of a service mode I can access or can help in any way please LMK.
 
D

dhonk

Member
Got the SNES to Gamecube controller made by Raphnet today. Has the latest firmware apparently, purported as low latency!

But yeah, if theres input lag I cant detect it. Feels very good to play Gameboy games with this thing. Combined with Gameboy Interface Low Latency? Gameboy bliss on the big screen.... I might make a video review soon.
 
B

Bodacious

Banned
dhonk said:
Got the SNES to Gamecube controller made by Raphnet today. Has the latest firmware apparently, purported as low latency!

But yeah, if theres input lag I cant detect it. Feels very good to play Gameboy games with this thing. Combined with Gameboy Interface Low Latency? Gameboy bliss on the big screen.... I might make a video review soon.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the initial impressions. If you make that video review I'll watch.
 
S

speedlolita

Member
Game consoles on top of PVM. Is this generally okay?

I've had a step down converter and my soldering iron base on this before and it made the screen wobble, although those both have large transformers in them so...
 
G

geniusbits

Member
How about PC games? Are there CRT PC monitors that can be connected to modern computer video outputs? If you were playing, say, CS:GO would the frame or 2 less display lag be a speed advantage?
 
S

speedlolita

Member
geniusbits said:
How about PC games? Are there CRT PC monitors that can be connected to modern computer video outputs? If you were playing, say, CS:GO would the frame or 2 less display lag be a speed advantage?
Click to expand...

Um, literally any PC CRT will connect to a modern PC. You'll need a passive DVI to VGA adaptor depending on your GPU but most video cards come with these in the box.

And yes, playing on a CRT will give you an advantage. I used to do really well in CSS using a CRT on public servers.
 
N

NormalFish

Banned
There's some video comparing a CRT and an LCD monitor for TF2 that shows the 'advantage' pretty clearly, but I'm not sure what the title would be. Think I saw it via reddit like 2 years ago.
 
B

brainpann

Member
Hey gaf- maybe you can help me out.

Last night, I went to mess around with my Saturn, which is hooked up to a Bandridge 6 way scart adapter that goes to my XRGB mini, and all I got was a messed up screen. Its blurry with weird colors and you can only vaguely make out what is going on. The weirder part is that I would only get that screen if my headphones were plugged into the Bandridge adapter. If they weren't, the mini would say "no input". The other ting I notice is that the little red led on the Bandridge adapter doesn't come on with the Saturn, but every other system it does. I checked that nothing was loose and that all the connections were good and everything seemed solid. I tried out all my other systems that are connected to the adapter, and they all worked perfectly fine. Unfortunately, The adapter is in a place that makes it difficult to swap sockets, but Ill try that tonight. However, I did connect the Saturn directly to the XRGB and it worked fine.

I've never had this issue before and was wondering if anyone has an idea? Given that every other socket works fine, I can only assume the socket the Saturn is connected to is the culprit, however I wont really know until I try switching out sockets between systems. Could the 5v line on that socket be messed up, hence the led on the Bandridge not coming on and also causing the Saturn not to sync correctly?
 
G

geniusbits

Member
speedlolita said:
Um, literally any PC CRT will connect to a modern PC. You'll need a passive DVI to VGA adaptor depending on your GPU but most video cards come with these in the box.
Click to expand...
So modern boards have DVI out in addition to HDMI? This must look silly but I literally haven't bought a PC in >7 years.
 
K

Khaz

Member
Yeah, you have to check the outputs for VGA or DVI. Analogue video output is not as ubiquitous as before, a large minority of PC and cards only have HDMI nowadays.
 
G

geniusbits

Member
Ok got it. Is there a resource for "best CRT PC monitors" or somewhere to start? I had this great 19" Dell monitor that did 100 frames, but it was curved glass.
 
S

speedlolita

Member
There are some crackers out there. I used to have a Mitsubishi Diamondtron 930SB. Crazy image quality and was capable of wicked fast refresh rates.

The likes of Sony and Iiyama do some really nice monitors too.
 
S

SegaShack

Member
speedlolita said:
Game consoles on top of PVM. Is this generally okay?

I've had a step down converter and my soldering iron base on this before and it made the screen wobble, although those both have large transformers in them so...
Click to expand...
Yes it's fine. These TVs were made to be stacked on top of each other.
 
B

Balb

Member
Sorry if this has been answered a few times already, but how much better is RGB on the N64 specifically compared to S-Video? Saw a couple of YouTube videos and they seem comparable, though that may be because of YouTube compression.
 
S

Seth

Member
Are there any recommendations on cheaper HD upscalers? VGA to HDMI specifically. I see some on amazon with decent reviews for around $30. Will that be fine fine? What will i really be missing with a more expensive one?
 
M

Mega

Banned
I'm in the process of obtaining a 1chip SNES and a good Genesis model 2, plus an AV Famicom which will have to wait for a future RGB mod. I understand both 16-bit systems natively support RGB. They will be connected to a PVM-14L5 that's also on its way.

I want to be certain. What cables should I get for each (Scart)? And is there a recommended box for connecting multiple systems so I don't have to keep swapping consoles from the monitor's one set of RGB plugs? Thanks.
 
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