Retro gaming on hi-def sets

[RadarScope1]

So I'm looking to get a hi-def television soon. Any retro game freaks with HDTVs care to school me about the pitfalls of playing old games on new TVs? I am well aware that I won't get a "pure" picture on anything other than a CRT set, but what else should I know? I just want the games to be playable, even if they don't look quite the same. Are there any settings or devices I can use to help? Is there a difference between plasma and LCD in this regard? Does s-video perform better than composite when there's a choice?

I did some basic googling and there's just not much info on this out there, besides "use a CRT." Maybe this could turn into a topic for a post on Racket's blog.

[lordofduct]

is a repeat topic...

unless you're a FREAK about video, it won't really matter, cause you probably wouldn't be asking.

Because S-vid is so common now, use it when available. And on the bizarre chance your HDTV has RGB/SCART... use that. (VGA doesn't count).

When looking for LCD and Plasma (I don't know WHY anyone would buy plasma) make sure you check the A/D conversion speed of it. These TVs are fully digital and have to perform an Analogue to Digital converters which cause a slight delay... some of which are crappy and the delay is to long. This is an issue when playing games like a Fighter or Sh-mup where 1 millisecond is the difference between life and death.

Make sure the widescreen tv has a setting to play in 4:3. Older games look really bad stretched across the entire screen. I tried Sonic CD that way and it was bad.

If you want a large screen TV... get DLP, it's awesome.


Other then that the image will be slightly blocky. Like you full screened an emulator. Though the blockiness will be kinda hazy and blurry (because TVs don't have the great detail of a monitor, no need, no text to read... they are designed more for colour and the sort).




In the end my full suggestion is to really spend your time though. It's all personal taste. Go there, play with all the TVs... shit if the salesman is cool he might even let you hook up a simple console (like maybe a Nomad or GP2X with their video outputs). Take your time, think hard about it. If he isn't cool, make sure they have basic cable hooked up to it at least and surf the channels. Basic cable is still at the resolution close to retro consoles so it should be comparable. And always go home afterward and sit on it for a minute and even research your choices online.

You don't want to go and by some Sonyasungishiba or some crap and get it home, get a ton of dead pixels in one year flat and just after the warranty just to find out everyone and their brother online had this same issue.

And I will say, X-mas season is the worst time to do it... salesman are pushy and just want to get your sale done. They'll feed you any one liner. Like 60hz refresh rates on Digital TVs... mmmhrmmm, yes cause digital information oscillates? That's just techno jibberish, NTSC "analogue" signals HAVE to have a 60hz refresh rate...

[RadarScope1]

Thanks. All I really care about is that there's no flicker. I can live with the pixels looking a bit different than on a CRT. And believe me, I won't be stretching anything. I hate that!

I am strongly leaning to plasma. I can read all day long about this refresh rate or that contrast ratio, but ultimately my eyes are the ultimate test. I know a lot of people like the bright, crisp look of LCD but to me it just seems to burn my retnas. I like the deeper, truer colors of the plasmas. It seems like response time and lag is much less of an issue on plasmas as well, from what I've read.

Tell me why you wouldn't go with plasma, lordofduct. I want to weigh ever pro and con.

[lordofduct]

As I said in my post it's all personal taste. And my dislike of plasma is completely my aesthetic reasoning.

Unproven tech... errr, bad choice of words. I'll just avoid my techno talk about it.

Nice colours and all, but sucks when creating black. LCD has a problem with this as well, but it doesn't bother me as bad. Though I only use LCD for my PC. My televisions are always DLP or CRT... the colours on both are superb IMO.

plasma redraw is awful. You can call it refresh, or whatever you want to call it because despite it's "fast refresh rate" it suffers somehwere. To me I just call it BLLUUUURRRRRR. I always notice in high speed scenes that the objects moving get this blurry effect around them.

price... I'm a cheap skate. My DLP 50 inch screen cost me 880 US Dollars... the same size plasma would of been 5 times that (at time of purchase).

phosphor burn in - CRT suffers from it as well... an especially big concern seeing as I play a lot of retro consoles with repetitive images.

[MrPopo]

I'll second the "get s-video" suggestion. Most TVs support it, and it really makes a big difference over the composite connection. One thing I've seen is that my LG 37" LCD does funky things when it has a Genesis on it, and ends up inserting scan lines (vert and horz), which makes games like Phantasy Star's menus look horrible. But that's the only console I've had issues with.

[ZenLogikos]

Most of what LoD said is good stuff, but the only thing that really matters, if you're talking about playing older consoles on an HDTV, is what he said about Analog --> Digital converters. All SD material will look similarly shitty on HD sets, no matter whether you go with composite, s-video, or component cables. Go with the best cable type you can of course, but because it will still look blocky regardless, the point worth thinking about is gameplay. As LoD said, lag can be an issue. I have not hooked up a prior generation console yet, but I can relate some relevant info about my 360. When I first got my 360 I was running it on a Sony Wega thru composite. No lag playing Pacman CE. I bought a 46" Sharp Aquos and hooked it up the same. LAG. Bought an HDMI cable. No lag.

Now, Sharp makes some of the best LCDs, but apparently their A/D converter ain't so great. I was aware of the input lag issue before buying an HDTV, but it is not the easiest spec to find. Browsing forums for posts from other owners is about the best I could find.

To be clear, this is separate from pixel response time, which IS usually listed (more often than input lag anyway). Any response time below 16ms is good for MOST people, however I'd recommend sticking to 8ms and below for better results. I haven't researched much since I bought my TV 10 months ago, but I'd imagine that is the norm now, so you should be fine in that regard. This issue can be tricky though, because the response time used to be measured by the pixel going from off->on->off (black to black), but now it's frequently listed as gray to gray. Nothing inherently wrong with that... just don't try to compare two numbers using different calculations!

You may also want to watch this dork explain some HDTV tech.

http://www.crutchfield.com/learn/learni ... video.html

It's from a year ago, but the information is still mostly accurate. Crutchfield has many other informative articles as well, and no, I don't work for them!

[d123456]

I wouldn't know why anyone would buy a lcd. Oh I know. they will say this:
-more lcd's are sold than plasma's
-plasma is a technology that is slowly disappearing alledgedly

Both of which means absolutely nothing to me
Anyway, plasma has better color, better contrast and deep black. lcd has dark gray.
I recommend a Panasonic (cheap) or Pioneer (expensiver)
Pioneer by the way makes the best screens period. (I'v been told and I believe it)
plasma vs lcd, there are pros and cons to both. I had lcd kind of hated it, bought 2 plasma's loving them. Check Avforums were these kind of topics are a daily routine.

For retro stuff I would suggest you get a (European) model with RGB scart and buy rgb scart cables for your retro consoles. Best image. Component is good too, but retro consoles don't have component.

[pixelbender]

Well I guess if you're in the US that SCART TV would work if you're ONLY going to use it for old games! (Which, of course, you should just have a separate CRT for)

I've had a 42" vizio for 2 years now with an LG plasma panel in it ($850 with 3 years warranty, at the time it was a steal). The problem is now the "name brands" are making cheaper tvs with crap quality and putting their name on it for Walmart, Kmart, etc. So be careful on that front no matter which you buy.

That being said, I still think plasma has the edge in terms of PQ, most definitely blacks. However, the "good" higher end LCDs have good blacks and are starting to come down in the price. For me the only negatives of plasma are 1)higher energy consumption and 2)burn-in. I don't care WHAT they say, all plasmas will have some sort of image retention. It hasn't mattered in the last two years, but as I drop cable and have to watch SD OTA with black bars on the side, I am worried.

[ZenLogikos]

I'm not a big fan of plasma, but fyi, burn-in and image retention are not the same thing. Burn-in is permanent, and while the possibility of it still exists, current sets are unlikely to ever suffer from it. Image retention is temporary and not harmful. It's a fact of life for plasmas, but it goes away fairly quickly with different images being displayed or the tv being off for a little while.

[RadarScope1]

I can live with the specter of IR. From what I understand, if you half-way know what you're doing, use common sense and are even somewhat anal about taking care of your stuff, it's not an issue. And you know what? I am an anal motherfucker when it comes to taking care of my stuff.

The Panasonics I'm looking at have a new feature that you can run. The screen goes all back and then a wide, bright white line runs back and forth across the screen like a virtual squee-gee and helps to quickly "burn off" IR. You can do the same thing by watching full-screen content for a while.

It all sounds very weird for someone like me who's never used a hd set before, but I can deal.