Congratulations on these presets fella… I appreciate your work 
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Thanks for the compliments
Why do you think they aren’t suitable?
When you get a chance to play around with them, feel free to post some pics and comments so that I can get an idea of how they look on your screen in practice.
Remember you still have to adjust the Peak and Paper white brightness and for many of my presets 450 nits was enough for me.
Some of my miniLED presets use 270 for Paper White.
So you really have to experiment with your display to see how hard you can push the HDR brightness without the whites looking burnt and harsh and the colours clipping and losing detail.
The finer presets (or rather the higher TVL) have less of a darkening effect so you can try the ones that say Fine or the PVM-Edition, Pro Monitor or PC Monitor presets.
Also, all else being equal, Slot Mask is the darkest because of the additional black features of the slots, CyberTron (aka Aperture Grille) would be noticeably brighter (all else being equal) due to less black features and lastly, Shadow Mask will be the brightest because there are no dark features being drawn at all.
W420M started off as a Shadow Mask Preset Pack but I added some of my Near Field Slot Mask presets from my mainly Slot Mask NX preset pack as well.
My first, Megatron Preset Pack features mostly Aperture Grille presets.
I think if you play around enough you should be able to get things looking decently bright enough on your TV, especially if you’re going to be playing in a dark room at night. That’s for MegaTron though, there’s also my CRT-Royale Preset pack as well. I would like to think that that’s a decently bright preset pack and it doesn’t have the border.
There are a couple No Border Presets in my Mega Bezel preset pack as well. Do give them a try. They are relatively bright and they use Shadow Mask.
The only caveat with my CRT-Royale Preset pack is that the Mask is RGB with no option to switch to BGR. Hyllian created a modified BGR mask for CRT-Royale though so I can make a separate pack pointing to that version of the Mask or Add BGR Presets which point to that version to my existing Preset Pack.
Due to how the phosphors are emulated using an actual photo of a CRT Mask, there’s something special about the look of CRT-Royale which I only recently acknowledge again. I mean. I was impressed initially but I didn’t spend enough time needed to fully exploit all of the features of the Shader and use it properly. Well I recently took it for a spin and apart from some oversaturation in the reds it was a pleasing experience also, I figured out how to get other Mask types looking decent, like Slot Mask and Shadow Mask.
I initially thought that CRT-Royale wasn’t well suited to those Mask Types based on what I saw from others as well as my own initial tests. After my most recent play around, I now see that I was wrong about that. The trick was to experiment with the sampling mode a bit. So look out for those.
I’m just trying to find an android version of retroarch that supports HDR…will report back later…thanks.
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With your TV, you don’t have to worry about HDR too much. You can just toggle the Megatron HDR/SDR setting to SDR and increase the brightness/Backlight/Contrast of your screen if you don’t find one.
You can try this one though
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That’s the one I’m currently using… no hdr option showing. Initially I thought the option within retroarch might not be there if no HDR capability is present and so I went through checking that I can actually play hdr content.
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Okay, I recently started using that one on my mobile phone and Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor Presets load flawlessly. I hope you understand what I’m getting at.
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Yeah sorry m8… I ended up on a side quest with the hdr situation rather than shaders lol. Ok I’m now happy that hdr is enabled on the shield and that the tv is displaying hdr content. The base Royale shader found in retroarch crashes the shield and so any presets that reference that are a no go. I’ll have a look what Megatron miniLED 4K HDR game BFI Arcade Bright Shadow Mask Smooth Neo-GX Ultimate looks like
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I’ll try some sdr presets see how they look, and mess about with the brightness settings on the tv.
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This doesn’t look too shabby. Do yourself a favour and try the ones with “Old Skool 36in…” in the filenames. They’re my latest.
Try the Sharp presets as I’m basically switching over to them at the moment as opposed to the Smooth Presets.
They would be a lot easier on the Shield too since no SuperXBR. If you haven’t updated the pack you can do so now.
Imgbb preserves much more detail (well all of it) than imgur when uploaded and sharing.
Try the recommended Custom Aspect Ratio settings and/or set your Scaling to use Integer Scale, Underscale.
For some presets you might get some moiré patterns or scaling artifacts which can be resolved by selecting an optimal scale factor.
Remember all Megatron presets can be switched between SDR and HDR mode.
So coming to think of it, the main advantage for you of running the presets in HDR mode instead of SDR mode is that in HDR mode you can control the brightness of the TV via the paper white and peak brightness values, while in SDR mode you’d have to mess with the TV’s brightness/Backlight/Contrast controls.
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Also try, 36in Arcade Slot Mask Sharp Advanced CAR6x8x or CAR7x8x Fine which is a higher TVL version of the Old Skool 36in Arcade presets.
These are presets that I would like to use in a possible arcade restoration project.
I just have to figure out a proper end to end solution that balances price to performance and is as compact and turnkey as possible.
I’ve seen some dying arcades and it’s really disheartening to see some of the contraptions that the well meaning but uninitiated have thrown together to allow people to just “play a game”, rather than enjoy these treasures in a way that truly honours they historical value and ethos.
I’m thinking Raspberry Pi 5 for the foundation and it’s really awesome that that can provide excellent CRT output as well but I really have no experience with those.
I was originally ruling out the MiSTer due to cost but then the new MiSTer Pi is here. However, that can’t run these shaders.
So it might have to be Raspberry Pi 5 or a cheap miniPC, or something with an APU on a microATX board.
I would like to be able to run the latency as low as possible. I’m familiar with using Run-Ahead/Pre-Emptive Frames and Frame Delay but I know there are some folks who go even further with things like Hard GPU Sync and stuff like that.
Then comes the display. Have to find something that can do these shader presets justice, so it needs to be very bright and preferably RGB Subpixel Layout. I would like fast response and smooth motion so maybe IPS might be preferred over something VA which are mostly BGR. Not sure if I’ll be able to get something cheap that can also be bright enough to run these shaders properly while also being bright enough to run BFI.
There’s the new CRT Beam Simulator but so far I haven’t been able to set it up properly yet.
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Sorry I’m just off to work so I can’t give a detailed reply… but I have to say I have preemptive frames on using only the cores that support that. I honestly think it makes the world of difference (more than I thought it would tbh).
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Coincidentally I’ve been giving thought to my own arcade setup… on the main tv in the front room (which I’ll never be allowed to use for an arcade lol) I rotated 1941 using a shader full screen. It made me think 
… imagine wall mounting a 65” tv to a swivel mount so you play vertical or horizontal games… I don’t think I’ve seen that done on such a large scale!
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Hmmm…just imagine…
Me neither, but I have definitely seen it done with a 55" though and it’s quite impressive for arcade use. That produces a 36in ~4:3 or 3:4 screen if using my Custom Aspect Ratio settings with my 36in Arcade presets.
Looks amazing when standing or sitting at typical arcade game playing distances.
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Excellent stuff!! Love it! 
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Hi hi @Cyber how can we convert any of your megabezel shaders to pure no-border or reflection variants? I know your newer shaders are just screen-only, but I’m a favourite of a few specific megabezel ones and want to maximize screen real estate and avoid OLED burnin.
I looked under Shader Paramaters but couldn’t figure out what to turn off/modify.
Much thanks!
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Ty for all your hard work, incredible update!
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No problem. My Mega Bezel Preset Pack is now vintage by modern standards but that certainly doesn’t mean the presets are obsolete or irrelevant.
This is a question that has been asked and answered many times before but rather than just search the thread for you, I’ll see if I can find a more modern and elegant solution eventually.
It would help if you can share which preset/presets you would like to convert so that I can see if there’s already a Mega Bezel base preset which I can show you how to replace the existing base preset with, that contains all of the other shader functionality.
The old way of doing this is just to set the graphics brightness all the way to 0 and to replace the preset with one from the No Reflections folder.
I do have a few presets which already have no border, have you tried those?
You can try this in the meantime:
You might still suffer from eventual uneven wear due to the scanlines and scanline gaps but that might take a very long time to manifest and notice.
Even if you avoid using the frame/bezel/background, there will still be uneven wear if you display mostly 4:3 content on a 16:9 OLED display.
Despite all of this, users are being steered towards OLED for the ultimate CRT Shader experience.
I rather take my chances with miniLED plus OLED cannot reproduce all subpixel Masks and TVLs accurately, only a small subset but ignorance is bliss I guess.
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Hey Cyber. Hope you doing good. I came across your work from recent video by RetroCrisis on one of your shaders for miniLED screen and wanted to try it out after watching the video. I hopped onto this forum and after reading a bit i thought to go with “CyberLab Megatron NX W420M Death To Pixels 4K Shader Preset Pack 18-11-24” as i have a normal 4k IPS screen with no form of HDR. I should choose this version, right? Anyways, following the guide further, I downloaded the “CRT-Guest-Advanced-NTSC version 2024-02-29-release1” and pasted that as well. Loaded a game and selected a SDR preset “CyberLab Megatron NX W420M 4K SDR Game SNES S-Video Shadow Mask Ultra Smooth Ultimate CAR5x4x Advanced”.
All good so far. Where I lost track is on the line where you mention this " Instructions are in RetroArch under ‘Quick Menu->Shaders->Shader Parameters’ ". Where am i look for what to change? In Shader Parameters I see a bunch of numbers outside and within closed brackets. Can i get some help?
Sorry if this is pretty simple and maybe am blind and not reading it properly.
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Hey, thanks for posting. I really appreciate this instead of folks not understanding the concepts involved in trying to have more realistic CRT emulation by utilizing the brightness of the screen, then immediately jumping to critism.
You’ve reached this far but you haven’t stated or described how things look. Feel free to share a pic.
Good for you that you’ve actually reached to the point of reading this! If I were to judge by the feedback alone, very few it seems read the instructions or browse the many posts for information, either that or they’re just very silent about it.
The instructions for how to setup Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor are actually on the left side of the Shader Parameters so I just tried to point users to it.
My presets have other shaders stacked on top of Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor, so those instructions might be buried a little lower down.
The instructions basically state that if you’re using an HDR Screen, go to RTINGS or another review site to get your display’s Peak Luminance Value and enter that in the Shader Parameters then set your Paper White Luminance Values to what looks like the white of a blank sheet of paper to you.
In reality, users should just set them to what looks good using their eyes and trial and error.
This only applies to HDR mode and displays.
The instructions also state that users of bright SDR screens should turn the brightness of their displays all the way up.
That’s all it says for SDR display users to do.
Of course you’ll also need to ensure that the preset is set to SDR mode.
Other things you can do are to ensure that the Display’s Subpixel Type matches that of your display.
You can also adjust the Display’s Resolution to match that of your Display, particularly if you’re trying to use a lower resolution screen but if you’re using a 4K screen don’t interfere with that.
The instructions to increase the brightness to the Max is a bit vague as not all TVs use a setting named “Brightness” to do so. On some TVs, “Brightness” just increases the black levels and ends up washing out the picture with little increase in actual Brightness.
On some TVs the Contrast settings actually does more to increase the brightness than the brightness setting.
Then you have the Backlight setting.
And you may also have to turn off your power saving.
I used Shadow Mask for those W240M presets because I had the limitation of using a TV that couldn’t display RGB 4:4:4 at 4K 60Hz. RGB 4:4:4 is a requirement for all subpixel accurate CRT Masks with the exception of certain very low TVL combinations and Shadow Mask/Lottes (rotated mask) patterns.
If your TV doesn’t have this limitation then feel free to use the other Mask Types and preset packs. With the others you would just have to switch them to SDR in the Shader Parameters.
Don’t expect colours to be very accurate in the W420M presets as I was running a kind of a hack job of a setup.
I actually used to watch HDR movies on that SDR TV so if you’re interested in my settings, I’d be happy to share.
Once you get things working, I can try to help you tweak the colour and stuff like that.
None of this is pretty simple actually, so it’s pretty understandable and encouraged for users to seek assistance. In order for this new generation and style of CRT-Shader Technology to really be ushered in, there needs to be a community of its own to take shape.
If enough people start sharing things like Peak and Paper White Luminance settings that worked for them then eventually that might make things easier for folks who come after.
Same goes for things like photos, videos and HDR screenshots and videos. You hardly see anything of the sort so people really don’t know what they’re missing out on and they don’t even know what they’re supposed to be aiming for because it’s so hard to communicate and share the final results.
Feel free to share your display/TV model so that I can do some research on it.
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