Hey guys,
I am considering purchasing a LCD monitor for one of my rooms to play my Dreamcast on..CRT is out of the question because it just won't fit in with the room. I however have a few questions concerning monitors..
Will I be able to play my N64 and Saturn on one of these monitors? If so, how will the picture look?
Widescreen or Standard?
How many inches?
Any things to look out for when shopping for a monitor?
Any specific suggestions (link if you can) for a monitor that will suit my interests? I would most likely only be playing Dreamcast, N64, Saturn, and possibly the Gameboy Player of my Gamecube on this monitor.
Sorry for all the questions guys, but I want to make sure I don't mess anything up.
Thanks,
Lonescope
LCD Monitor Questions
If you're talking LCD monitor as in computer monitor... your entering a world of hurt if you want to get some of those consoles on there. Where to start... okay.
Super Fast Video Primer. An LCD screen is made of millions of little pixels. Each pixel consists of 3 parts each with it's own color - red, green and blue. Those three will make up all the colors that screen can display. RGB. Under normal circumstances, what you're doing is hooking up a game system to a tv with whatever wire you choose. That wire conveys that picture data in a way the tv can understand. Tv displays it. Games are played.
On to the problem. Most of the game systems prior to the current generation were designed to be hooked up to a traditional TV. So it's only designed to convey a specific signal at a specific speed. That specific speed, 15khz (15,000 cycles per second), is the main issue. There's a couple smaller hurdles, but the big one is most of those consoles only know how to output a picture at 15khz.
The reason it's a problem is most modern computer monitors will only display a signal of 31khz and higher. Attempting to hook up a 15khz signal to a 31khz monitor will most likely result in a high pitched squeel as your monitor descends into madness and dies.
And when I say 'modern' computer monitor. I mean like, the past 15 years or so. And that's when the stopped making them. They haven't been popular since like the Amiga days. Late 80's early 90's stuff. So any LCD monitor you get is pretty much guarenteed to not support 15khz.
Your Dreamcast will work because Sega was very forward thinking by giving the Dreamcast the ability to output a 31khz VGA signal. The VGA box just tells the machine 'okay, crank it up'.
With the exception of your Gamecube (and not easily, I might add) none of those other systems will display a signal at a speed fast enough for a modern monitor.
In order to get a 15khz signal to 31khz, you need an expensive piece of kit called an 'upscanner'. The most commonly used for gamers is the XRGB series. They hover in the $200-$300 range. While pricey, other upscanners easily run in the $10,000 range. So it's not really expensive for what it does.
Now, assuming you're willing to address that hurdle... your next problem is that your monitor will, if you remember me saying the console gets the signal to the 'tv', pretty much not like any of the standard methods of getting a signal from the console. The monitor wants RGB data. It wants RGB a Horizontal Sync and a Vertical Sync - RGBHV
The only way to get that out of some of these consoles is by buying a connector that's not used in North America. It's called a SCART cable. It's this big honkin 21 pin connector that has all the data the monitor would want.
You run a SCART cable (Japanese style SCART, there's two kinds don'cha know) to an XRGB and the XRGB will output an RGBHV signal at 31khz, commonly known as "VGA". This is something your LCD can use. You need BOTH to have a signal in RGBs (the SCART cable does that for you) and the signal must run at 31khz (the XRGB takes the SCART signal and out puts it at the proper speed).
Ready for more fun?
Guess what? Your Gamecube, assuming it's a US model... won't output SCART. Even if you ask nicely. A European one will, but a US one won't. So you would then need to buy a Nintendo component or dterminal cable - which are expensive because they're rate - hack open the cable, add a resistor so that you can trick your Gamecube into simultaneously outputting video at 31khz AND at RGB, because normally it doesn't want to do both at the same time. The plus side is, you can plug this directly into the monitor and bypass the XRGB all together.
Hacking open an expensive cable sound like no fun?
I'm just getting warmed up!
Guess what else?! Your N64? Won't output SCART either!! You hook up a Super Nintendo SCART cable, then... open up the N64. Remove like 20 screws, take out the heat sink, locate the video chip, heat up the pins of the video chip, solder wires to the video chip, run those wires along the length of the N64 motherboard and eventually connect them up to the multi-connector at the back of the N64. Screw up and you might kill your console.
Good times.
Super Fast Video Primer. An LCD screen is made of millions of little pixels. Each pixel consists of 3 parts each with it's own color - red, green and blue. Those three will make up all the colors that screen can display. RGB. Under normal circumstances, what you're doing is hooking up a game system to a tv with whatever wire you choose. That wire conveys that picture data in a way the tv can understand. Tv displays it. Games are played.
On to the problem. Most of the game systems prior to the current generation were designed to be hooked up to a traditional TV. So it's only designed to convey a specific signal at a specific speed. That specific speed, 15khz (15,000 cycles per second), is the main issue. There's a couple smaller hurdles, but the big one is most of those consoles only know how to output a picture at 15khz.
The reason it's a problem is most modern computer monitors will only display a signal of 31khz and higher. Attempting to hook up a 15khz signal to a 31khz monitor will most likely result in a high pitched squeel as your monitor descends into madness and dies.
And when I say 'modern' computer monitor. I mean like, the past 15 years or so. And that's when the stopped making them. They haven't been popular since like the Amiga days. Late 80's early 90's stuff. So any LCD monitor you get is pretty much guarenteed to not support 15khz.
Your Dreamcast will work because Sega was very forward thinking by giving the Dreamcast the ability to output a 31khz VGA signal. The VGA box just tells the machine 'okay, crank it up'.
With the exception of your Gamecube (and not easily, I might add) none of those other systems will display a signal at a speed fast enough for a modern monitor.
In order to get a 15khz signal to 31khz, you need an expensive piece of kit called an 'upscanner'. The most commonly used for gamers is the XRGB series. They hover in the $200-$300 range. While pricey, other upscanners easily run in the $10,000 range. So it's not really expensive for what it does.
Now, assuming you're willing to address that hurdle... your next problem is that your monitor will, if you remember me saying the console gets the signal to the 'tv', pretty much not like any of the standard methods of getting a signal from the console. The monitor wants RGB data. It wants RGB a Horizontal Sync and a Vertical Sync - RGBHV
The only way to get that out of some of these consoles is by buying a connector that's not used in North America. It's called a SCART cable. It's this big honkin 21 pin connector that has all the data the monitor would want.
You run a SCART cable (Japanese style SCART, there's two kinds don'cha know) to an XRGB and the XRGB will output an RGBHV signal at 31khz, commonly known as "VGA". This is something your LCD can use. You need BOTH to have a signal in RGBs (the SCART cable does that for you) and the signal must run at 31khz (the XRGB takes the SCART signal and out puts it at the proper speed).
Ready for more fun?
Guess what? Your Gamecube, assuming it's a US model... won't output SCART. Even if you ask nicely. A European one will, but a US one won't. So you would then need to buy a Nintendo component or dterminal cable - which are expensive because they're rate - hack open the cable, add a resistor so that you can trick your Gamecube into simultaneously outputting video at 31khz AND at RGB, because normally it doesn't want to do both at the same time. The plus side is, you can plug this directly into the monitor and bypass the XRGB all together.
Hacking open an expensive cable sound like no fun?
I'm just getting warmed up!
Guess what else?! Your N64? Won't output SCART either!! You hook up a Super Nintendo SCART cable, then... open up the N64. Remove like 20 screws, take out the heat sink, locate the video chip, heat up the pins of the video chip, solder wires to the video chip, run those wires along the length of the N64 motherboard and eventually connect them up to the multi-connector at the back of the N64. Screw up and you might kill your console.
Good times.
Excellent post, NotBlaine. Very funny too, I was actually laughing while reading it. I've been looking around on the internet while waiting for replies and found some sort of N64/Gamecube VGA Box, but I shouldn't even bother posting it, because I'm sure you would have mentioned it by now if it was somewhat legit. Oh why not, I'll post it anyway, so you can tell me why it's no good. 
http://cgi.ebay.com/PC-VGA-Box-High-Res ... dZViewItem
I've read some of your previous posts in other threads and have noticed that you are a huge CRT monitor fan.. Say, I wanted the absolute best picture possible on each of the aforementioned consoles in my previous post. Which kind of monitor would you recommend for this and where would I go about finding one of these monitors?
Thanks,
Lonescope
http://cgi.ebay.com/PC-VGA-Box-High-Res ... dZViewItem
I've read some of your previous posts in other threads and have noticed that you are a huge CRT monitor fan.. Say, I wanted the absolute best picture possible on each of the aforementioned consoles in my previous post. Which kind of monitor would you recommend for this and where would I go about finding one of these monitors?
Thanks,
Lonescope
Those VGA adapters are all over the place for a variety of systems. They work. I mean, you'll be playing your game on the LCD but...
Chain is only as strong as the weakest link, yeah? It's a cliché but it's really true. Pull on a chain and it's gonna break where it's weakest.
Another analogy I'm building towards is the commonly known Rollercoaster Concept - that being, without being dragged up the hill by a chain, the first hill of any rollercoaster has to be the tallest. Because of the laws of thermodynamics, you'll never have enough kinetic energy to go make it up a hill that was higher than the one you just came down.
The third one is, you can't unscramble an egg.
Those three clichés are my way of conveying that once damage is done, it can't be undone. Let's look, shall we?
Usually those VGA boxes come in two flavors. Flavor 1 is the one you found, plug into a console and play. Flavor 2 is, here's a box plug in an s-video cable and play. Like this one here.
In both cases you've taken a signal and chopped it up to work with an s-video cable. The console took raw RGB data and sync data, combined the two, extracted the luminance data and chrominance data and transmitted it out.
Those VGA boxes are now working with an S-Video signal. It then does the reverse. The problem is, the picture isn't going to look any better than S-Video because it's coming from S-Video. It can't go back up the hill. You can't unscramble the signal and get the original. And your picture now will only look as good as S-Video, the weakest link in this chain. If you were to run composite (standard yellow rca plug) video to that VGA box, then it'll only look as good as composite! ...at best. If you get a chincy VGA box, then you'll even lose quality from what you started with.
That's why they're so cheap. They're not really designed to do as good a job as an XRGB because... frankly... it's not possible with what you're feeding it.
So, it does work. I mean, if you were a college student. All you had was a computer monitor, you have no money, you have no TV and you just wanna play games - yeah, it does what it's designed to do. But if you have a TV with an S-Video input, your game will look... at worst... the same as that VGA box, and probably even better.
I do dig the CRT. When dealing with LCDs you have what is known as Native Resolution. If you have a laptop, lower your screen resolution from what it's normally set at and you'll notice the picture looses it's sharp edge.
That's because the pixels in an LCD is designed to run optimally at one resolution. So picture an imaginary LCD screen that 20 pixels wide by 20 pixels tall. Got it?
Okay. You have 400 little pixels you can turn on and off and any color you want. Now lets say we start feeding it pictures that are 15 x 15, but we still wanna use all 400 pixels. Well, you can't do it 1 for 1. Each of the 400 pixels is now displaying just a small part of that 15 x 15 image. Some of the pixels are kinda on the border between two pixels so it has to be a kinda soft hybrid of the two.
Point being, you now have to really try and get everything to fit right.
That's because our imaginary screen has a native resolution of 20x20 and depending on the quality of the video processor inside of the screen, your results can go from good to furry crap.
CRTs don't have a native resolution - not in the same way as an LCD. And usually you don't see any real video issues at whatever resolution you run. So my Dreamcast (running at 640x480) looks as good as my 360 (running at 1280x1024). That is to say, it looks like it should. Not that it's trying to shoe-horn an image into the wrong resolution.
As for what to look for, they're not really making CRTs anymore. Not like they used to. A good LCD or Plasma can be as good as a CRT, provided it does a good job of scaling the image.
Second hand and thrift shops are a good place to look around. Sony Trinitron CRTs are always good. I have a Samsung that's been a great monitor for years. If you're buying used, what's most important is the screen has no burn in, the colors look vibrant and even.
I guess, within reason (because the Sony PVM monitors are kick ass - they're also like $15,000), if the sky was the limit I'd go with something like:
from Arcade Shop. 29 inch, tri mode arcade monitor. NO CASE! Just Monitor and raw exposed wires. (I'd just build a box around it to keep my friends from poking around in there. The voltage in a CRT is lethal. No joke. Not to be fucked with).
It's about $400, but what's sexy about it is...
Remember that whole XRGB talk you and I had? Remember the biggest hurdle? Let's flashback...
Well that monitor? That monitor supports 15khz as well as 31khz. Which means I could plug my Dreamcast straight in. I could plug my Super Nintendo (modifying a SCART cable, just to get the pins I needed) straight in. It ceases to become a problem other than getting the cable the console needs...
You could seriously just buy... say... an arcade Street Fighter III board or Marvel vs Capcom 2 arcade board or a plethora of arcade boards and just plug it straight in.
That said, although I drool heavily, the reason I don't buy it is because for the money I'd just buy an XRGB upscanner and then I could plug my Tetris Plus 2 arcade board into a big ol' TV.
But, yeah, if money was no object (again, barring a Sony PVM) I'd get me one of those.
Realisitcally, you can probably get a good monitor from a used computer shop for $50 and it'll serve you right.[/img]
Chain is only as strong as the weakest link, yeah? It's a cliché but it's really true. Pull on a chain and it's gonna break where it's weakest.
Another analogy I'm building towards is the commonly known Rollercoaster Concept - that being, without being dragged up the hill by a chain, the first hill of any rollercoaster has to be the tallest. Because of the laws of thermodynamics, you'll never have enough kinetic energy to go make it up a hill that was higher than the one you just came down.
The third one is, you can't unscramble an egg.
Those three clichés are my way of conveying that once damage is done, it can't be undone. Let's look, shall we?
Usually those VGA boxes come in two flavors. Flavor 1 is the one you found, plug into a console and play. Flavor 2 is, here's a box plug in an s-video cable and play. Like this one here.
In both cases you've taken a signal and chopped it up to work with an s-video cable. The console took raw RGB data and sync data, combined the two, extracted the luminance data and chrominance data and transmitted it out.
Those VGA boxes are now working with an S-Video signal. It then does the reverse. The problem is, the picture isn't going to look any better than S-Video because it's coming from S-Video. It can't go back up the hill. You can't unscramble the signal and get the original. And your picture now will only look as good as S-Video, the weakest link in this chain. If you were to run composite (standard yellow rca plug) video to that VGA box, then it'll only look as good as composite! ...at best. If you get a chincy VGA box, then you'll even lose quality from what you started with.
That's why they're so cheap. They're not really designed to do as good a job as an XRGB because... frankly... it's not possible with what you're feeding it.
So, it does work. I mean, if you were a college student. All you had was a computer monitor, you have no money, you have no TV and you just wanna play games - yeah, it does what it's designed to do. But if you have a TV with an S-Video input, your game will look... at worst... the same as that VGA box, and probably even better.
I do dig the CRT. When dealing with LCDs you have what is known as Native Resolution. If you have a laptop, lower your screen resolution from what it's normally set at and you'll notice the picture looses it's sharp edge.
That's because the pixels in an LCD is designed to run optimally at one resolution. So picture an imaginary LCD screen that 20 pixels wide by 20 pixels tall. Got it?
Okay. You have 400 little pixels you can turn on and off and any color you want. Now lets say we start feeding it pictures that are 15 x 15, but we still wanna use all 400 pixels. Well, you can't do it 1 for 1. Each of the 400 pixels is now displaying just a small part of that 15 x 15 image. Some of the pixels are kinda on the border between two pixels so it has to be a kinda soft hybrid of the two.
Point being, you now have to really try and get everything to fit right.
That's because our imaginary screen has a native resolution of 20x20 and depending on the quality of the video processor inside of the screen, your results can go from good to furry crap.
CRTs don't have a native resolution - not in the same way as an LCD. And usually you don't see any real video issues at whatever resolution you run. So my Dreamcast (running at 640x480) looks as good as my 360 (running at 1280x1024). That is to say, it looks like it should. Not that it's trying to shoe-horn an image into the wrong resolution.
As for what to look for, they're not really making CRTs anymore. Not like they used to. A good LCD or Plasma can be as good as a CRT, provided it does a good job of scaling the image.
Second hand and thrift shops are a good place to look around. Sony Trinitron CRTs are always good. I have a Samsung that's been a great monitor for years. If you're buying used, what's most important is the screen has no burn in, the colors look vibrant and even.
I guess, within reason (because the Sony PVM monitors are kick ass - they're also like $15,000), if the sky was the limit I'd go with something like:
from Arcade Shop. 29 inch, tri mode arcade monitor. NO CASE! Just Monitor and raw exposed wires. (I'd just build a box around it to keep my friends from poking around in there. The voltage in a CRT is lethal. No joke. Not to be fucked with).It's about $400, but what's sexy about it is...
Remember that whole XRGB talk you and I had? Remember the biggest hurdle? Let's flashback...
AH! That's right, the 15khz issue...yeah!There's a couple smaller hurdles, but the big one is most of those consoles only know how to output a picture at 15khz.
Well that monitor? That monitor supports 15khz as well as 31khz. Which means I could plug my Dreamcast straight in. I could plug my Super Nintendo (modifying a SCART cable, just to get the pins I needed) straight in. It ceases to become a problem other than getting the cable the console needs...
You could seriously just buy... say... an arcade Street Fighter III board or Marvel vs Capcom 2 arcade board or a plethora of arcade boards and just plug it straight in.
That said, although I drool heavily, the reason I don't buy it is because for the money I'd just buy an XRGB upscanner and then I could plug my Tetris Plus 2 arcade board into a big ol' TV.
But, yeah, if money was no object (again, barring a Sony PVM) I'd get me one of those.
Realisitcally, you can probably get a good monitor from a used computer shop for $50 and it'll serve you right.[/img]
I thank you a great amount for your time and knowledge. I owe you a debt of gratitude for what you have done.
So, if you were me, what TV would you get for $500 that would get excellent picture quality on a Dreamcast, Saturn, N64, and possibly Gamecube without modding any of the cables? Is there anything decent I could get at Walmart, Target, Newegg, Circuit City, or Best Buy (etc), that would fit my needs? (Because I don't want to end up paying a $150 freight fee).
If all goes well, this should be my last question concerning this, because thanks to you I have a much better understanding about how TVs and cables work.
Thanks,
Lonescope
Edit: Nevermind, I've got a 1080i Widescreen Samsung CRT sitting in my garage with 2 S-Video inputs, 3 Composite inputs, 2 component inputs, and 1 HDMI input that should hold me over until I get a VGA TV. Thanks for all of your help.
So, if you were me, what TV would you get for $500 that would get excellent picture quality on a Dreamcast, Saturn, N64, and possibly Gamecube without modding any of the cables? Is there anything decent I could get at Walmart, Target, Newegg, Circuit City, or Best Buy (etc), that would fit my needs? (Because I don't want to end up paying a $150 freight fee).
If all goes well, this should be my last question concerning this, because thanks to you I have a much better understanding about how TVs and cables work.
Thanks,
Lonescope
Edit: Nevermind, I've got a 1080i Widescreen Samsung CRT sitting in my garage with 2 S-Video inputs, 3 Composite inputs, 2 component inputs, and 1 HDMI input that should hold me over until I get a VGA TV. Thanks for all of your help.
-
navratilova
- Newbie
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Wed Nov 19, 2008 2:13 am
Re: LCD Monitor Questions
Ok, how do you know when your LCD monitor is dying? I mean, are there any tell-tale signs that an LCD monitor is going on the fritz. The whole screen is kind of jumpy and you can kind of see it flickering really fast. Like what old CRT monitors used to look like when you saw them on TV. A line slowly makes it's way from the bottom to the top of the screen. This is what I'm experiencing, just the lines are moving a lot faster. Can you please help me?
Re: LCD Monitor Questions
Try turning up your refresh rate.
Re: LCD Monitor Questions
What kind of adapter do I need to buy to hook up my video game consoles to my lcd monitor? I have acer 24" lcd monitor. No speaker port only a hdmi port. I want to connect my xbox(original), wii, ps2, gamecube, etc. to it. What type adapter do I need to purchase in order play all my consoles using the monitor.
____________________
keyword research ~ keyword tool ~ keyword tracking ~ affiliate elite
____________________
keyword research ~ keyword tool ~ keyword tracking ~ affiliate elite
Re: LCD Monitor Questions
What are the important features to buy a 22 inch wide screen LCD monitor? I want to buy a 22 inch wide screen LCD monitor for viewing movies. My budget is $ 350. I want high quality picture. So what monitor do I buy?
___________________________
affiliateelite ~ affiliateelite.com ~ adgooroo ~ adgooroo.com
___________________________
affiliateelite ~ affiliateelite.com ~ adgooroo ~ adgooroo.com
Last edited by carolin on Sat Sep 12, 2009 6:59 am, edited 1 time in total.