Crt monitor, what can I expect?

RetroArch Additions Shaders
#1

I am kinda excited now because a friend at work will bring me a vga crt monitor tomorow. So I have some questions. The monitor is a 17" and the back says 69khz and max 120hz. Thats bassicly all I know, oh… tco 95 wathever that ever meant I dont know.

I usualy prefer sharp lines like a bvm but lately I have played with lottes to make it look more like a consumer tv wich I also like alot. I have a non hdr old lcd 42" tv. Here are some questions.

Should I connect it with a vga to hdr adapter?

Will 240p(wich I suppose it will handle…?) look more like a bvm or a consumer tv?

Should I maybe use a higher resolution and still use a crt shader?

Will I get way better dynamic range than I am used to with a 15 year old lcd tv you think?

For the first time, I can’t wait to get back to work! :slight_smile:

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Need shaders for CRT monitor?
#2

there are several ways to skin that particular cat. 1.) “true” 240p running at doubled refresh rate, 2.) 480p with tvout-tweaks plus interlacing shader, 3.) high res with a CRT shader with mask disabled.

I would recommend trying #2 first, as it’s relatively easy to do and will get you very close in appearance to #1 without all the driver/modeline fuss. If you decide that you don’t want the sharp BVM look anymore, running at a high res (preferably 1600x1200) with a CRT shader with the mask disabled will look very good, as well, and can make a more consumer-style appearance.

You can probably connect to it with a cheap HDMI-to-VGA adapter like they use for Raspberry Pis.

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#3

Thank you. I will experiment some tomorow and get back on how it goes. I just hope right now that it actually still works, since it has been tucked away for a very, very long time.

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#4

I have not yet tried (due to lack of time) the 240p option that hunterk told you, I will tell you how I use it.

In general I have it at 1024x768, 3D games in that same resolution look excellent, in 2D games the shaders look “pretty good”. Keep in mind that the saders vary a lot depending on the resolution of the monitor and the resolution of the emulator.

But I have tried other options …

In 2D games, if you want to see the perfect shaders, use the maximum resolution that the monitor gives you, in mine 1600x1200. The scaling of the lines is impeccable.

In 3d games, I set the monitor to 640x480, leave the emulator with its native resolution and apply a shader, some look ugly, but most look “glory”.

Monitors will always look much sharper than BVMs, just by setting the appropriate shader or adjusting the blur.

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#5

Thanx for your reply.

I have now tried different settings including 240p, wich looks bright and yet with nice scanlines! It do look good, but maybe not that much better than my regular tv that it’s enough to have it around. I don’t know. I would want to try some more, however it seems to sadly be broken. Every now and then (10 - 30 seconds between, sometimes 3-5 seconds between) the image goes black and the returns in 2 seconds. It might be the cheap vga to hdmi adapter I bought, I don’t know.I should try it with a vga to dvi adapter maybe.

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#6

I do not know that fault, it may be due to the HDMI port. lower the frequency to 60Hz.

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#7

I have tried every hz and resolution. The hdmi port works with my regular tv and projector. I am gonna try a vga to dvi adapter but I doubt thats gonna solve it.

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#8

Works fine with a dvi-d to vga converter! :slight_smile: Now on to some testing

Oh and the title of this thread should end with expect, not except.

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#9

Ok I have one question about running it in 240p. Snes and so on seems to look great. But I have seen in both N64 games and Ps1 games that it seems like text gets squashed. Like in FFVII, the menu text doesnt look as it should. Certain pixels seem to be missing. Whats up with that?

And also, shouldn’t 240p take up the whole screen? I get black bars at the side on 16 and 8 bit games. And one step up verticaly will make the image too wide.

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#10

Hard to say without knowing what exactly you feed your monitor and how. I believe that the FFVII menu for instance uses a higher resolution (i.e. not 320x) than the rest of the game, so maybe that’s a cause for error. 240p can mean a lot of things, it’s rather inprecise.

As for adjusting the picture, what do you mean by “one step up”? In the RA scaling settings? I would think your monitor should have a menu where you can adjust the size somewhat, maybe also things like sharpness etc. When my Samsung monitor was still in good condition, my eyes melt because of the scanlines in 240p, only turning sharpness down made the picture good at viewing distance for retrogames.

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#11

Sorry for the lack of info. I give it the signal thru the dvid output into the vga on the monitor. What I mean with “one step up” was the scaling where you set integer. I play with x and y scaling set to 1, of course. Snes games are then smaller than the image and if I adjust the size to bigger on the monitor, it will be too big for example ps1 games. It doesnt really matter, I just tought when you play in 240p, every game from ps1 and before will be exactly the size of the screen with perfect text and so on. Like the ultimate resolution for retro. Don’t get me wrong, it looks amazing and I will play with it like that.

*Edit - I have now tried some modern games as well. Wow the new monitor technology is not even close to this 98 crt. The dynamics are higher, dark is darker bright is brighter. But what really strikes me as spectacular is the smooth motion. Since I have a gtx 1080ti, 85 fps in 1024x768 is achievable in any game, I guess. No blur whatsoever. Crystal clear image no matter the motion. Seriously, whata hell is up with the so called “hdr oled” tvs they sell nowadays?!

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#12

Sorry for the lack of info. I give it the signal thru the dvid output into the vga on the monitor.

It would be more interesting to know how you actually generate your signal in the first place, on what OS :smiley:

For example I generate my resolutions manually in Linux and Windows XP, but that’s out of fashion these days I guess.

It doesnt really matter, I just tought when you play in 240p, every game from ps1 and before will be exactly the size of the screen with perfect text and so on. Like the ultimate resolution for retro.

240p in this context just means you’re mimicking a (roughly) 60hz retro signal that uses active 240 lines in the vertical direction. Doesn’t tell you anything about horizontal res, can’t be used perfectly with anything that uses more lines, or different refresh rates. On a VGA CRT monitor you’ll usually need to double the refresh rate so it’s within the specs.

If you generate a 320x240 signal , that will probably be too wide for for a SNES because it will only use 256 active pixels horizontally most of the time. I write “probably”, because I guess you could make it so that SNES fit’s better I guess, but then content that actually uses 320 pixels won’t fit anymore of course.

This is one of the reasons superwide resolutions are recommended, so if you use 2560 pixels horizontally for example, you can fit 320 and 256 in, and scale accordingly in the RA settings. Resolutions that don’t fit cleanly can also easier be used the wider the res is, you get in a way more control.

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#13

A lot of games from that era used 480i(nterlaced) mode for menus and occasionally for gameplay. On a 240p modeline, this mode loses half of its resolution, resulting in half of the lines missing.

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#14

I just created a custom resolution of 320×240 in the Nvidia cntrl pan. It is on Windows 10.

Of course, if snes has a different x res than ps1 it would fit differently on 320×240. Well I really lile 320×240 becuse it gives both strong lines between the scanlines but the image is stilll very bright. And this is, as far as I know, not a special crt. Not like a trinitron or anything. Gee I wonder how that would look. But I cant imagine the image get much better than this, its as close to perfect as it can, I think.

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#15

That makes sense. I figured that if I use lottes without any shadow mask and just a set hard pix to -10, it blurs the image enough to make those texts readible but it still doesnt seem to alter anything else enough to be noticeable.

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#16

Twice now it has come like a crackling sound or like a buzz and it has flickered like a white light from the screen. It has not shut down or anything. Is this normal? I am already on the hunt for a backup monitor but who knows when I will find that.

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#17

When is it happening? It’s not unusual for them to make some noises and/or show garbage for a second while syncing to weird modelines.

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#18

I think both times it has happened when I game at 240p (not when starting the emu but in the middle of a session). He who gave it to me thinks it was bought around 01 or 02. It has not been used alot since his family is not so much indoors. I just wonder how long I can expect it to live.

I also wonder if anyone has experience with a crts final moment. It’s not gonna explode in my face?

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#19

Nowadays LCD monitors don’t stand a chance against older CRT monitors, i had an AOC 19" 1600*1200 and it was spectacular. Moving on to lcd was a huge downgrade. Games and emulators looked and moved better on that beast with an Athlon XP and Radeon X800 i had.

About the image just set it to 640*480 @60hz, and use interlaced shader. Or max resolution of the monitor, use something like guest.r shader and tweak it (no mask, subtle scanlines, max sharp, no afterglow etc).

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#20

Yes I game at 240p. I refer to my post before that. I am so worried that its gonna break down on me. I have heard that oled 4k with shaders are close to this image so … but those are kinda expensive. The image I have now is perfect, it cant get any better than this, that is impossible.

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