CRT TV for NES?

[nothingnew]

So the Television that I've been using for my NES needs is dying (flickering/color loss). I'll be using a smaller CRT for now, but it's definitely not nearly as nice.

What I'd like to know is are there LCD's (maybe plasma, but they run too big for where I need it) that have 0 ms. This is critical to me since I play games that take absolutely precise timing in order to play correctly e.g. Battletoads, Punch Out!

In short, do I need a CRT to get 0ms or are there alternatives?

[Bregalad]

I can play Battletoads just fine with my LCD, and it is a standard Samsung one my dad bought about 1 year ago.

You just had to find an option so that it blends colors together, if you don't it will look ugly as every artifact on color changes will be very noticeable.

The only issue is flickering graphics - the TV "belive" it's interlaced and display horizontal lines instead of displaying a flickering image. That actually makes sprite cycling looks better in some games, but for example the airship's shadow in Final Fantasy III is made of horizontal dashes instead of a flickering solid shadow.

Hironically, it's a couple of "modern" PS2 games that suffers the most from the CRT->LCD transition.

[Memblers]

I had heard something like there being a fixed delay when converting to the newer display format, is that true (and/or noticeable)?

Fighting Mike Tyson is hard enough as it is without any display lag. My only LCD is my PC monitor, so I don't know. My only complaint with my LCD is that scrolling game backgrounds look like crap on it whenever you move. It has a 5ms response time though, I'm sure faster ones look better.

[tepples]

When converting composite, S-Video, or interlaced component to progressive video, a smart upscaler delays the signal by a few fields to determine whether to bob (interpolate between lines), weave (hold half the scanlines from the past field), use a weighted combination of the two, or hold and weave, on each part of the image. Bob is better for fast motion, while weave is better for still images, and hold and weave is better for originally-progressive sources such as film. Some CRT TVs, especially early HDTV monitors, are designed for 480p and 1080i scan rates and convert 480i to 480p.

Converting progressive video, on the other hand, can in theory be done immediately as soon as the following scanline has been read, for less than 1 ms latency. (The "5 ms" is the time to go from black to white, or light gray to dark gray, or blue to yellow, etc.) But the upscalers in most HDTVs are designed for antenna TV, analog cable, digital cable, satellite TV, DVD players, and post-Dreamcast video game consoles, not classic 240p consoles, so they don't have a special mode for 240p input.

PC-based emulators don't race the beam. Instead, they render a whole frame and send it to the display, lagging it by one field. In general, the total emulation lag is competitive with DTV upscaling lag.

[Dwedit]

I hate the Interlacing artifacts introduced by Plasma TVs. It destroys the "earthquake" effects used by some games, such as Secret of Mana.

The NES and SNES were designed to have a glorious 240p image, not the 480i that new TVs give it.

[tepples]

Just to quantify this: I measured the video lag on my Magnavox SDTV and my Vizio HDTV using a 60 fps camcorder and a ROM that I banged out in a few minutes that turns the backdrop color white while A is held.


Button-to-video lag at 1/30 speed

SDTV: nice and immediate
HDTV: four fields (~67 ms) lag

[zzo38]

I find that LCD computer monitors generally have less lag than LCD TV sets, but computer monitors don't generally have composite input. However, if it is known being connected to NES/Famicom, then it might be possible to make some that converts in real-time into the picture which is being displayed perfectly without interlacing artifacts and so on.

(In fact, I don't have a LCD TV. I use a LCD computer monitor (connected to a VCR/DVD combination, which also includes tuning) as a TV screen; devices can be connected to the composite input of the VCR, although it has a lot of lag so it isn't suitable for games; Wii games can connect directly to the monitor and run with no lag.)

[koitsu]

I find that LCD computer monitors generally have less lag than LCD TV sets, but computer monitors don't generally have composite input.

Note for readers: most mainstream brands of LCD computer monitors that do offer component input have utterly atrocious input lag. This is caused by use of certain video decoding chips that handle different crap (deinterlacing, brightness/contrast, stupid HDCP nonsense, etc. -- they're usually called "preprocessing" or "postprocessing" chips). Dell, for example, is notorious for this issue. For other brands, some offer different "modes" you can put them into, and quite often the "Game" mode disables use of the pre/postprocessing chip to greatly decrease input lag -- the trade off is that certain visual adjustments can no longer be made while in that mode.

None of this is hearsay -- it's fact. I speak from personal experience predominantly using Dell-based LCDs over the years. For example my current LCD is a Dell 2407WFP, which is notorious for its utterly atrocious input lag -- I've simply gotten used to it. I should note I have tried upgrading to a newer, less power-hungry (i.e. LED backlit) monitor twice, and the quality problems with those monitors were mindboggling (and many of which many customers experienced/complained about). I stick with what I have because it works and doesn't fuck with me. There are just too many panel types, and now it's getting even more stupid with different kinds of anti-glare (AG) coatings. For example, the Dell U2412M pisses me off to no end -- it suffers from strange viewing angle issues when combined with infamous "IPS glow" (Google the term to see what I'm talking about), even in a lit room (result is a washed out picture at the edges of the screen, particularly where the Windows taskbar is located). For me, it was bad enough that I couldn't even read the clock in the bottom right of my taskbar. Who tolerates this shit?!?!

For classic console gaming, I use my little 13" Sony Wega CRT. Likewise I cannot use my Dell monitor's component input with my "slim Playstation 2" -- major visual artefacts occur constantly and the picture looks like complete and total shit, while using the classic (non-slim) Playstation 2 works just fine.

My general advice is to avoid buying a PC LCD to use as a console gaming monitor, instead buy an actual LCD TV or get a small CRT like I did. Otherwise if you MUST get a PC LCD with component + composite + etc. inputs, make sure you read a review of the monitor and its input lag. If the review site doesn't provide such, avoid the monitor and send the site feedback telling them to get their shit together.

[Drag]

I heard that the way to reduce input lag is to send the LCD a picture at native resolution. So to get the best results, it would hypothetically be better to plug the game console into an external upscaler, then send that to your HDTV. The best part would be that you're interpreting a 240p signal yourself, instead of leaving it to the television to interpret as 480i.

I don't see why such upscalers wouldn't be easy to make/manufacture.

[tepples]

I don't see why [240p to HDTV] upscalers wouldn't be easy to make/manufacture.

That might not be perfect for at least four reasons:

1. A lot of "720p" TVs don't expect a picture at the panel's native resolution of 1360-something by 768 pixels. Instead, they expect a picture at 1280 by 720 pixels to upscale.
2. Even when a panel gets a signal in its own native resolution, it often upscales anyway because it assumes the video was authored with overscan. The first HDTVs were CRT HDTVs that needed overscan.
3. Deinterlacing and upscaling are not the only processes that an LCD HDTV applies to the incoming video signal. Noise reduction, sharpening, and color correction are also commonly done.
4. Upscalers designed for 240p sources exist, but they're expensive because they lack economies of scale. There aren't a lot of people who still game on a retro console, can obtain an LCD TV with a good "game mode" but not a CRT TV, and are lag sensitive.

[lidnariq]

Assuming that the TV has no lag from a VGA input (which isn't a given, but I'm hopeful), you could build your own genlocked NTSC upscaler for about $15 in parts. You could probably buy a few developer's samples (FPGA plus high speed ADC) and do it for a little cheaper than what I've been able to find for prepackaged commercial upscalers. It will be a little more expensive if you want HDMI/DVI out or want more than 15bpp color. It'll also be more expensive if you need any kind of conversion of timebase (e.g. TV objects to the NES's 60.1 Hz refresh rate), because then you'll need to store two entire frames at a time and drop one periodically. And it'll be more expensive if you want it to do anything more than pretend 480i content is 240p.

AliExpress does show a few cheapo composite-to-HDMI upscalers(?) for ≈$35.

[zzo38]

I find that LCD computer monitors generally have less lag than LCD TV sets, but computer monitors don't generally have composite input.

Note for readers: most mainstream brands of LCD computer monitors that do offer component input have utterly atrocious input lag....

Note that I have never seen a LCD computer monitor with composite or component input; thanks for telling me this. The one I have can connect directly to the Wii with no lag (there is lag when connecting to LCD TV screens), and the computer monitor also seems to just work generally much better than a TV screen for many things. An external converter might help, though; I have been trying to order one but for some reason cannot manage to do so. This computer monitor even has audio (both input and output, and internal speakers, although the internal speakers are no good), and will accept the audio signal from the HDMI port (it won't accept audio from a DVI port, though).

(Note: If the VCR is connected to both the CRT TV and the computer monitor simultaneously, then, if the RF passthrough is off (the "TV/VCR" switch is on "VCR") then both pictures are equally lagged. If the "TV/VCR" switch is on "TV", then the VCR is outputting only to the LCD computer monitor, and the RF input is passed through to the TV, and the picture appears earlier on the TV than on the LCD. There is lag in the VCR, but not in the computer monitor.)