I... must.. resist... the xgb...mini...

This thread will be used to tell the story of someone that got obsessed for getting the best possible image on retro consoles, my story with CRTs since I've started to get interested in retro stuff.


I've started to create my game room in 2007, that time I had a 29" LG CRT flat screen but it didn't had many inputs.
So I've swapped it with my wife's sister TV another 29" LG CRT with 5 inputs so I could hook all my consoles to it.

Than I started getting those manual switches for composite video.
Few months later I got to know S-Video. So I bought selector boxes from USA (since no one makes s-video switches here in Brazil) and replaces every console I own with an s-video output.
A great change.

My uncle, that lives 500km from me, said he wanted to get rid of his old TV. A Gradient TV of 37 inches (very uncommon here) (the tube inside is JVC). So I went to his house and grabbed the TV. Paying for gas and everything. But this TV only had s-video on it...

And I wasn't satisfied yet. People kept talking about RGB, calling it "glorious RGB".

So I found a guy on a city 300km from mine selling a 38 inches Sony CRT TV. It had component input and I would be able to use a RGB to Component converter.
I've rented a car (because mine would never fit this tv) drove, bought the TV, returned home. When I was taking this huge tv from the car with the help of a friend, my arm didn't resisted and the TV sit on a iron pin on the truck. This destroyed the sound system of the tv.

Took me some time learning how to solder really small stuff and the help of people that work with electronic stuff. People treat you really bad now days if you say you want to repair a CRT.
The TV was working again and I was using a generic RGB to component converter. That one that is sold on ebay that has no sound output.
This converter is now with L_Oliveira, I believe I gave it to him as a Christmas gift. I wasn't satisfied with the picture yet.

I got the most expensive RGB to component converter on the market, the JS-Technology one. Payed 100 GBP for it.
But the image had noise on it, the sound had noise on it.

So I started digging for original cables for each console. It took some time and a lot of money. Thanks for people like GaijinPunch that helped me getting the japanese cables.
The final problem now would be using switches.
I tried several and kept reading about the Hama ones.

Founded a guy Poland that would sell me four of this to hook everything up.

So after a few years I had everything hooked up.

And this wasn't there. It wasn't RGB. The converters generated some kind of noise. I remember posting here the image of the Sonic leafs with a shadow that shouldn't be there.

And the only way to get RGB here would be using an arcade monitor but the tube sizes were too small.
So I've found someone selling arcade monitor chassis for 38 inches tubes. I hooked one to my JVC 37 inches tube.
It didn't work. I've swapped horizontal with vertical and it damaged the monitor chassis. The tube were still working.

It was another $150 blow away.
A friend of mine gave me another one for testing.

While all this was happening a saw on a TV repair shop near my house the Sony 40 inches HD CRT that I've posted pictures here.
It had the famous 6 blinks codes. It still turned on the first time I tried here in my house.
Since my friends left my town my only way to get it would be paying a company to get it for me and deliver it at my house.
$50 for three people to grab it. Yes it was a gift.

Took it here, started to do the most common method of fixing the problem with this TV. Swapping the MCZ3001D IC.
Ordered the IC and sockets. $30 for both.
It arrived, did the job and now 3 lights blinking. As I kept reading online about this it would be something I screw up here.
Or it would be the IC. Ordered 4 more from ebay.

It arrived and it didn't worked. Took the board to a shop so he could check my work with the service manual and see were the problem was. No problem found and charged me $15 for his time. Fair enough.

After all that I found a guy on ebay that had the entire D board for sale $100 but as many sellers do now they don't take questions for possible buyers. The only way to buy his board would be using HopShopGo services.
It would be my first time, they don't tell how much your box will weight.
It arrived at HopShopGo and the shipping would be $150 because they don't tell you but they use DHL.
It arrived in Brazil and the taxes would sum up $70.

So I had the board in my hands, when I opened the box the seller tricked me and shipped the DZ board, that would not match me television.
Paypal claim opened and I won withing a few hours. Got my $100 back. Still $200+ dollars lost.

So the TV is sitting here, dead.

Back to the JVC tube. I hooked the arcade monitor to it. It worked I was finally getting RGB!
But I didn't know that arcade monitor boards expect a different level of signal. According to a few sources scart output 0.7vpp and arcade monitors expect 3.5-5vpp.
And I wasn't able at all to calibrate the picture because of that.
I ended up having washed out blacks or too dark details, low grey scales here.

Founded the project TIM made for amplifying RGB from SCART input. That costs $100+
Ordered his board.
In the meanwhile I putted my supergun to work. So I could check on Jamma boards signals and check the information by myself.
The image were a lot better but still the problems persisted. It was a pain to calibrate it.

Right now, I'm waiting for Tim's board to arrive.
And I'm waiting for all the riot in Brazil to stop so I can take that huge 40 inches CRT tube to the capital so the guy from EletroCyan (the former arcade monitor industry here) can assemble me an arcade monitor to work with this huge tube.
It's a one shot, there's no guarantee that taking the tube there would make it work. The guy said he already made HD CRTs to work and made that Sony 38 inches I own to work but never worked out the huge beast that is the 40 inches model.

Since I've faced it all, expended tons of money I'm lettings this CRT love to the past.
It's too hard to work to the top of CRT. It's too hard to get RGB outside Europe.

I'm facing myself towards the XRGB Mini and a LED television. Looking at this as the last resource with a sad face. As this would end up felling more like an emulator, like those people that make pinball tables with 3 LCD tvs.
That would be awesome but wouldn't be it.

CRT is an ungrateful love.

 

Sorry bro but i cant help it.... LOL!!!!

I think RGB is overrated. The biggest step up in my opinion is from Composite to S-video. The subsequent gain from S-video to Component and to RGB is not as significant. Also, image is better and sharper in S-Video on my low-hour 2006 CRT TV than RGB on my older PVM. So quality of the TV and the tube is more important than the signal itself.

Also, what does pure RGB in a brand new tube would get you? Sharper image?
In other words, blockier pixels.
Part of the reason I like CRT is that they can help smooth everything out a bit and make it less pixelated.
I am even playing some low res DOS games in S-video out instead of a computer monitor just to have it look smoother.

Imo you let yourself go OCD with the whole "image quality thing" and now you are going to settle for a LCD and completely missing the point of having a CRT?

Well, hope you find the display of your dream one day

 

The main problem I had with S-Video was that there were static diagonal lines throughout the picture (most noticeably on red) which I found annoying. The same lines are visible on composite, however they are in motion. RGB eliminates this, displaying solid colour and a clean picture so I can understand your obsession with getting RGB signals (I've never heard of anyone using component for standard def outputs unless it's a specialised CRT montor). I just thank the gods the European television standards committees went with SCART RGB instead of settling for S-Video as what seemingly happened in the states.

 

^Id rather have s-video and 60hz than RGB and 50hz. I can see the freaking screen flash in 50 hz, it is unbearable.

 

These are good points.

Personally, if it weren't for my lucky PVM-2950QM score, I'd probably have settled on S-Video.

In fact, even now, a couple of my consoles (namely my PAL N64 and 3DO) still use S-Video, and they looks pretty nice.

Edit: Heck, on my PVM, even composite signals (such as from Famicom, or when I was testing Neo-Geo CD) are nice and crisp.

 

They're mainly a states thing yes. Proper standard def component CRTs do not, have not, and will not accept 480p.
I'd be surprised if an EDTV is quite the same experience.

 

I just hope when I get an arcade driver board for my 20" Toshiba flat screen CRT from 2002 that I don't have the same hell...

 

The quality of the display is not more important than the signal. They're both equally important. With a crappy display, you're going to get a crappy image regardless of the signal. With a crappy signal, you're going to get a crappy image regardless of the display. An ideal situation is to have a good display and a good signal. That's the best way to maximize image quality. Kind of obvious, but there you have it. Also, you can't properly assess the quality of an RGB source without seeing it on a high quality display. A high quality RGB signal on an high quality display is still much better than S-Video on the same display. The video output of different consoles and different cables also varies quite a bit.

The point I'm trying to make is that, to assess the image quality of different video sources, you need a reference quality display. That's the point of those displays - being able to hold the display's image quality constant (at a very high level of fidelity) in order to assess the input in an unencumbered way. It's the same thing with audio production - you can't properly assess the audio quality of a recording unless you have reference quality speakers/headphones. I'm no expert on the subject, but that's the way I see it.

It's true that you do end up getting blockier pixels, but I think that's a good thing. If you're using a CRT, there will still be a slight "glow" to each pixel. It's hard to describe, but a good RGB image on a CRT can be both very sharp and still smooth in a way that an LCD is not capable of producing. Sharpness is not the only benefit of RGB - there are many kinds of image artifacts, such as color bleeding and banding, that RGB eliminates. RGB colors also tend to be brighter and more saturated.

Admittedly, it can become an obsession. In fact, in order to really get anywhere with it, you have to be slightly obsessed with it. Plenty of people are obsessed with videogames, though - and that doesn't seem to be an issue here. People make entire careers out of this kind of stuff, reason being that it's complicated and there are a lot of benefits to it. One downside is that, once you start setting really high expectations for yourself, anything less will seem really disappointing. Such is life.

 

The simple version is NTSC sucks.
That I can tell much of this traces back to America and Japan (two countries most central to console games in the era) failing to adopt RGB regularly for consumer TVs.

But off-hand I don't have pictures of how RGB is supposed to look on a large TV with official support.

 

RGB is over rated?????? Wash your mouth out with bleach!. RGB blows away svideo which blows away composite. A framemeister on a good he screen using RGB will look amazing. It won't look like a pc emulator at all. Just ask anyone who has bought one from me. I know I keep going on about the Framemeister but thats only because they really are that good.

 

That's the beauty of SCART, it plays any signal in colour (PAL, SECAM, NTSC) in 60Hz, I agree with you on that one. I can't stand 50hz ether, hence why I use 60hz across the board on all my consoles and have over the years where possible.

Agreed, enough said. Anyone with a pair of eyes should be able to see that...

 

yup, being a pc gamer i didnt like my refresh rate on CRT monitors set below 70/75hz even 60hz annoyed me.

had a beast of a 21" CRT at one stage what done 1600x1200 @85hz loved it.

 

SD component video existed - it was generally referred to as "YUV" (or sometimes 4:2:2 YUV) to distinguish it from RGB component video - but it was only available on expensive devices like the Betacam SP decks and even a high end edit facility might only have one YUV capable suite. I'm pretty sure that until the advent of consumer HD I had never seen a domestic TV with (YCrCb / YUV) component inputs.

You can thank the French for the fact that Euro TVs have SCART connectors - they made them mandatory for new TVs back in 1980 and since they had to put them in for the French market anyway and it seemed like an OK solution they were quickly adopted in the rest of Europe. I have even seen a couple of US TVs with something that looked like a SCART socket on them, but I don't know if they were wired exactly the same (the label was "EIA Multiport", IIRC).

 

You might have a point. While exceptionally common here, most SD component TVs were made during the transition toward HD.

 

I use S video on my model 1 Sega Genesis with my Toshiba set and it looks like crap. I use RGB on my model 2 Sega Genesis with a PSOne screen and it looks awesome. Tell me how RGB is overrated now and I tell you that you're full of shit.

 

To be really precise, the first TVs I ever saw with YPbPr inputs were the 480p EDTV ones - simply because both composite and Y/C (SVideo) have a hard chroma bandwidth limitation imposed by the color subcarrier - and with 480 lines @60Hz you simply need more bandwidth than it can supply. Because all the signals in component video are baseband it doesn't suffer from this sort of limitation and you can design the circuits to supply as much bandwidth as you like.

 

Haha, I knew it ws the french who initially introduced SCART as I looked up the acronym and still to this day I cannot pronounce it... ( Syndicat des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radiorécepteurs et Téléviseurs) lol

A bit like Anti-Aliasing, I still pronounce that AIL-ising which is supposedly incorrect, but that's how I first read it and I and everyone I know pronounces it that way.

 

wow this thread grew more than I expected )

I agree with the common knowledge, the difference from s-video to composite is huge and the difference from s-video to rgb is big. There's difference but the biggest you will see is on s-video.

Even with my entire story of frustration there's a bright side on it. I was able to see it all. I went on everything on every console. From RF to RGB.
I think that I'll try to take that 40 inches CRT tv to São Paulo and see if the guy can come up with an chassis for it. if that doesn't work, I'll go the xrgb mini route.
I'm really tired of it all.

I've announced my 38 inches sony crt for sale here. It hurts to see it go but I don't have much space anymore.
I think I'll take a few pictures of my room and a few pictures of the tvs working. The 38 inches CRT via component (rgb converted) and the experimental RGB 37 inches monitor later today.

 

would be great to see the pictures Fandongos, although its hard to get a good picture of CRT screens working, i tried with my recent addition sony trinitron non came out well but maybe you have a better camera than me lol

 

I have an iphone camera LOL