NES games don't fill the entire CRT screen? (left side)

[flojocabron]

I remember something like this too when playing Atari 2600 games on older tvs too.

some games looked different on some tv's. Some had shifted to one side on one tv than another.

I guess its just the TV's.

I do remember older tvs that had little knobs on the back that could adujst this. I never messed with them when I was a kid.

Some older tvs had either plastic moulding around the glass tube that would cover the edges of the CRT. Just on the edge. Not al tvs had this. So maybe they (company) had to take this into account.

I think it's just another aspect of classic gaming.

[Hobie-wan]

I wonder if this was a much less "non-issue" with rounded TV sets, as the area I'm now seeing would have been "hidden" by the curve, or even the screen bezel.

Yeah, the TV Safe area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area

[racketboy]

Using the service menus of Sanyo, Sony, and Toshiba CRTs I've owned I've been able to find happy mediums for various consoles using the geometry adjustments. Some NES games use an insane ammount of Overscan (it's expected to be cut off by the edges of the screen, and/or the bezel) and it shows garbage but as newer devices (DVD players, etc) came out they started using the overscan area to get more detail out of the inferior connections used in CRTs. Newer CRTs started including the overscan as part of their regular picture so the DVD picture wasn't cut-off with their factory default settings.

I use PS2 and Nintendo as calibration refrences. I load a PS2 game with screen adjustments in it's options menu to show the entire (small for a console) picture, then swap the video out for NES, and pop in Super Mario Bros to see how much more it uses. I then try to make the PS2 picture a little smaller than the cutoff for the picture so the PS2 picture isn't noticably letterboxed or showing too-much black. If you're just using the screen for NES you can include the entire picture perfectly, but several games will have garbage or preloaded tiles from the other edge of the picture in that overscan area.

If you list your CRT's model number (on a tag on the back) I can get you the command codes on the remote to allow you to adjust the geometry if it's possible on your screen. I can usually find a proper PDF service manual too. You'll be able to adjust the width, height, and picture placement at the least, probably much more as well.

Don't hate me for bumping a really old thread, but Anapan, did/do you have a way to save certain presets for different consoles?

I'm just getting back into getting a nice CRT in my gaming rotation, so digging more into these topics

Thanks!

[Ziggy]

Presets on CRTs? That would be nice! But I've never heard of such a thing. Newer scalers like the Framemeister or RetroTINK will have profiles you can load that are console specific. But I've never heard of such a thing on a CRT. Like Anapan said on the first page (10 years ago LOL) just find a happy medium and live with it. This might mean that adjusting the screen so it doesn't clip the HUD on one game might make something visible in another game that's undesirable.

BUT! Whatever you do, if you're going to tinker in the service menu be sure to WRITE DOWN all of the factory settings FIRST before you change anything! The secret service menu is full of settings used to calibrate that specific screen at the factory, meaning those settings are specific to your screen alone. There is no "reset to default" option, nor can you ask someone with the same model TV for their settings.

[racketboy]

Going back to his post, I must had interpreted that a bit optimistically, I guess.
Re-reading I can understand a bit better.

But excellent notes about taking notes.
I have a old DOS PC experience that is along those lines that I'm hoping to post about in its own thread soon. I'm kinda stuck

[SpaceBooger]

Presets on CRTs? That would be nice! But I've never heard of such a thing. Newer scalers like the Framemeister or RetroTINK will have profiles you can load that are console specific. But I've never heard of such a thing on a CRT. Like Anapan said on the first page (10 years ago LOL) just find a happy medium and live with it. This might mean that adjusting the screen so it doesn't clip the HUD on one game might make something visible in another game that's undesirable.

BUT! Whatever you do, if you're going to tinker in the service menu be sure to WRITE DOWN all of the factory settings FIRST before you change anything! The secret service menu is full of settings used to calibrate that specific screen at the factory, meaning those settings are specific to your screen alone. There is no "reset to default" option, nor can you ask someone with the same model TV for their settings.

I can not reiterate this enough. My WEGA was bending in the corner and not even/equal on the sides so I messed with it. I never wrote anything down after messing it up so bad I had to get rid of it. I do love my JVC and like it better, curved screen for light gun games, but it was a sad way to lose a great TV.

[racketboy]

Oh man -- that's rough. Sorry to hear that.

In case anyone's curious, I just posted about the DOS machine's drive config being lost because I didn't think to mark down BIOS settings before changing the battery.
http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... 17&t=53847

[Ziggy]

So I've read the "write down your settings" tip countless times before I ever went into the secret menu on a TV. I figured, psh, I'll just tweak a minor setting or two and see how it works then revert it back to the starting values. Well, it's not a very intuitive menu (it's not like the end user menu, it's just text overlayed on the screen) and I found it really easy to forget your starting values from even a minute ago. So don't be like me and think if you're gonna just tweak two settings for the overscan that you don't have to bother writing anything down. Just do yourself a favor and write down the values immediately after accessing the secret menu for the first time!

Here's a tip: If you don't have a laptop or whatever, or you don't want to hand write everything down, you can use your phone to take a video of the screen as you scroll through all of the settings in the menu. That will capture all of your default values. This is what I did for myself, then I later transposed the values on my computer.