Will new technology kill your old games?

[fox099]

if you buy a quality HDTV, you will really have no problem. quality entails a top tier brand, like panasonic, samsung, sony, etc. while some older consoles dont look next-gen, these will still produce a quality picture. one of my hopes is that soon tvs will have the ability to have aa for inputs, so the rough edges of older games can be smoothed out.

[elvis]

Interesting. Here in the U.S. crt tvs are becoming hard to find. Even when you go into wal-mart all they've got is lcds. You can find a couple for sale online but places like Best Buy and Circuit City have also completely wiped out their stock of crts. Just started happening en masse in the last 6 months or so. I don't know how HD content is catching up in Australia or everywhere else but we've got the whole dtv transition happening in febuary and they're really pushing new tvs on everyone, "Get a new tv now!. . . or you can buy one of these converter boxes if you refuse to submit to new technology you old fart"

I think for Australia it's entirely due to our proximity to south-east Asia where most of the CRTs are still being made. We have a lot of warehouse style cheapo shops that are packed with $100-$200 low def CRTs.

Bigger electrical retailers are all LCD/Plasma of course, but there's certainly no shortage of CRTs here.

Locally in my city we also have a biannual "council cleanup" where you can dump large household throwouts on your front footpath, and the council will come and take them away for free (in a bid to reduce household clutter for our annual storm season I believe). About a year back myself and a friend who sells arcade cabinets went around with a van and picked up a whole bunch of CRTs (well over 100 by the end of the day) to store in a warehouse of his. From there we get Jomac chassis, restore the monitors, and sell them off for a small profit. It's a nice cheap way for local arcade and console players to get good quality RGB CRT monitors, and it means less of these lead-lined CRT tubes ending up in landfill. Win-win.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

my only real gripe w/ LCD and Plasma tv's are they are widescreen. I cannot stand widescreen, its just not natural for me. I would jump on an HD 4:3 set

[elvis]

I would jump on an HD 4:3 set

21" PC monitors are pretty cheap to come by. I just gave away 3 last week (kept 2 for myself, plus the one I've got in one of my cabinets).

I've seen quite a few 4:3 TVs up over the 27" range also that can handle 640x480. If you get a hold of a 15KHz 29" CRT from a "candy" arcade cabinet you can get a monitor repair place to knock up a multi frequency chassis for it to cover 15/24/31KHz (and often higher - most will happily got to 1024x768@60Hz).

The problem of course with CRTs is that at high resolution, 60Hz refresh appears to flicker quite badly. But with that said, 27" and up running 640x480 native hooked up to a GameCube or Dreamcast looks amazing.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

I would jump on an HD 4:3 set

21" PC monitors are pretty cheap to come by. I just gave away 3 last week (kept 2 for myself, plus the one I've got in one of my cabinets).

I've seen quite a few 4:3 TVs up over the 27" range also that can handle 640x480. If you get a hold of a 15KHz 29" CRT from a "candy" arcade cabinet you can get a monitor repair place to knock up a multi frequency chassis for it to cover 15/24/31KHz (and often higher - most will happily got to 1024x768@60Hz).

The problem of course with CRTs is that at high resolution, 60Hz refresh appears to flicker quite badly. But with that said, 27" and up running 640x480 native hooked up to a GameCube or Dreamcast looks amazing.

you know I just hooked my PS3 up to the CRT i have (as well as the computer 21 or 24" 1024x768 suprisingly!) and i must say, unless you get really annoyed at how almost every game is in a wide aspect, i dont really see the reason to upgrade to HD. I didnt miss the cracks on the ground or the million pieces of dirt on the windsheild, it was all there, just less, obvious and distracting. Another thing that I really think we should have worked out before HD was makeup. Nothings better than seeing a horribly ugly actress w/ a closeup in HD right. Seriously, do YOU want to look at the zits, dried cracked skin, and bloody lips? I didnt think so...

[elvis]

I think you'll like this article:
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/not_powerful_enough/

I work with a few film and TV folk, and they share a similar opinion.

[marurun]

I thought the timing delay issues were due to DLP display technology, not upscaling, though I suppose a TV with a really crappy upscaler might introduce a little lag.

Yeah, in the US CRTs are nearly extinct. It's sad. CRTs have better color contrast and definition and can better handle varied resolutions. I kinda wish computer CRT production had been steered to HDTV production. The high quality Japanese and Korean manufacturers, at least, have all stopped production of CRTs, leaving CRT manufacture to the lesser quality manufacturers.

If I could, for the same price as an LCD TV, buy a CRT HDTV, I would do so in a heartbeat (assuming it wasn't a total crap model, naturally).

[neist]

I've actually had these fears for a while, which is why I'm trying to stockpile a few decent regular definition tube TVs.

Hopefully they'll last long enough where I won't care anymore.

[RadarScope1]

I have been bitching about and lamenting over this very thing in several threads for the last month or so. I am also upgrading to an HD set. It's actually sitting in box in my place right now but I can't set it up until my new stand gets here in about three weeks.

I have a 1080p top-tier Panasonic plasma. I took my NES and Genesis to Best Buy before getting my tv to see what they looked like on the Panasonic. However, I played on the mid tier set (it was all they had on the floor) and I wasn't able to mess with the settings. I don't even know if the guy had it set to 480i. Once I get my TV hooked up and can mess with the settings I'm going to report back extensively here on the forum. I'm holding out hope that my SNES will look at least playable because of the s-vid connection, but we'll see. The NES and Genny looked pretty rubbish during my test, but I can tell you there was NO lag that I could detect. My lag test was mashing the B button while blasting through SMB level 1-1. I think plasmas are supposed to be much better for lag because they work more like CRTs, whereas LCDs are like monitors and have to do more upscaling. I've heard a lot of the lag/picture quality depends on the quality of the upscaling tech in your TV, hence the incentive to buy a top tier brand.

But yeah, it's depressing that there's now this bright dividing line in tv tech. If you don't upgrade, you can't get the most out of the current consoles, not to mention HD tv and Blu-Ray. If you do upgrade, you cannot properly play your old consoles which is something I've spent no small amount of money on over the years. I plan to put much of my NES, Genesis and SNES stuff in a back room with a small CRT, but even then I won't have space for it all. But honestly, I do not want to spread shit around like this. I want one TV to rule them all.