Problem with Madcatz Gun

[Pingfa]

I bought two Madcatz guns for Dreamcast from two different (experienced) sellers. Neither of them work properly. Both are very inaccurate (lucky if I land a shot at point blank even!) and I generally have to shoot many times before it registers.
I've tried turning the contrast and such up, but to no avail.

Any ideas?

[Snickerd00dle]

they're Madcatz, there is your problem

[bacteria]

MadCatz stuff is good stuff.

If your television is LCD or plasma - a light gun will not work (for any system); only work old CRT televisions.

[Breetai]

bacteria pretty much said what I was thinking:

light guns ONLY work on older CRTs. If you're using a flat screen of ANY kind (plasma, LCD or flat CRT), it won't work.

Any ideas?

Yup. You didn't properly research before buying. Try your guns on a regular old tube TV and be amazed that your guns work just fine.

There's also the fact that the official Sega lightguns for the DC only work in Japan... but yours are 3rd party, so afaik they should be fine.

[Hatta]

If you're using a flat screen of ANY kind (plasma, LCD or flat CRT), it won't work.

Light guns will work on a flat screen CRT.

[Breetai]

If you're using a flat screen of ANY kind (plasma, LCD or flat CRT), it won't work.

Light guns will work on a flat screen CRT.

They don't on mine. But, mine is a flat screen HD-CRT. Maybe that's the reason?

[Hobie-wan]

If you're using a flat screen of ANY kind (plasma, LCD or flat CRT), it won't work.

Light guns will work on a flat screen CRT.

They don't on mine. But, mine is a flat screen HD-CRT. Maybe that's the reason?

Most of the older light guns rely on tracking the draw position on the screen and the interlacing of the odd/even 30 FPS. So being HD there's no interlacing for the screen draw.

[Pingfa]

Thank you all for the quick replies.

I'm aware that Light Guns won't work on most flat screen or HD televisions. The one I was using is neither flat screen nor HD. Although it is a big TV.
It does work on my small TV, though.

Can anyone here tell me why the guns don't work properly with my big TV?

[Hobie-wan]

Maybe there's too much lag due to the size of the TV and its messing with the timing of registering a shot.

[Scooter]

Maybe there's too much lag due to the size of the TV and its messing with the timing of registering a shot.

I almost bought a wide, flat screen CRT HDTV for my gaming but it wouldn't work with my lightguns so I passed. Afterwards I did a little research and found that the TV has interpretive filters which slightly delay the picture thus messing up the timing required for lightguns to work. There is no way to turn off such filtering on most such TVs so they simply won't work with lightguns.