Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

[Cyber]

@Syh

I’d just test out a bunch of presets that @Cyber , @sonkun or @RetroCrisis have done.

Most of the CRT-Guest-Advanced stuff I’ve made was done via Mega Bezel so some of the parameters wouldn’t translate to identical looks when using standalone Guest due to the effects of the other included shaders in Mega Bezel’s shader pipeline, however Sonkun has done a lot of stuff using CRT-Guest-Advanced and also more recently Retro Crisis. With that said you can load one of my Mega Bezel presets using Guest Advanced and some of the settings might apply but you’re probably better off starting with stock or one of Retro Crisis. You can use my Slot Mask and Scanline settings though. I’d say just go for it and don’t be intimidated. There’s a lot of help available once you don’t decide to go it completely alone.

For the most part many of the parameters have the side effect of enhancing the brightness in not so accurate ways but all you have to do is turn them off/lower them and crank the Mask Strength to 1.00.

GSL Scanline Type - 2 gives opaque scanline gaps. Mask 6, Mask 10 and Mask 12/13 are the RGB Masks. Then from there you can morph them into your Slot Mask or Shadow Mask using the parameters below which have gone through some evolution in order to make things a lot easier than before.

But I digress, that’s enough off topic for now.

@Dennis1

The RGB slotmask should be as good as with Megatron and as far as I remember trying Guest’s shaders in the past, I have never achieved the same fidelity.

If you provide some labelled zoomed in shots of the masks that you’re trying to reproduce, I should be able to recreate them. I think I did it before or at least shared a screenshot when someone had made a similar comment.

[Dennis1]

Just a quick note, if I use the Aperture Grille mask with 240p content and scanlines, I like to use the red vertical deconvergence set @ default -14. This is very important, as the mask really shines with this setting. All red lines of the mask are shifted slightly upwards, which gives a very authentic look.

I am not sure, what can be improved with the Megatron shader and Lilium’s inverse tonemapping anymore, as it looks almost perfect now in my eyes from seating distance. Where I see slight improvements for the future is when the OLED’s get RGB instead of RGBW subpixels and 8K for more detailed masks. But I am not sure if this will ever happen.

I am so happy, that MajorPainTheCactus programmed the shader for us, can’t be thankful enough for this Gem. I hope that people can try Lilium’s inverse tonemapping and some horizontal Blur shaders out, as this is the cherry on top and makes the shader complete in my eyes.

[Dennis1]

With Horizontal Blur:

Without:

With the additional Blur shader the image looks much better and smoother, less pixelated and digital I would say. The phosphors are more rounded and ellipse-shaped like it should be.

[FinalBoss]

Tem como disponibilizar esse shader ?

[Cyber]

@FinalBoss

Tem como disponibilizar esse shader ?

Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

Thank you Cyber, I will also take a look at CRT Guest and Super XBR. The Gaussian Blur shader works perfectly already and matches the look of my CRT. Do you mean by zipping and sharing to make a preset pack? I don’t know if this is easy, as this is a Reshade setup and not Retroarch and also there is more stuff to it than just a preset in Reshade, which I will explain now. First you need a HDR capable display, if possible an LG OLED, because I already tried it with a Philips Mini-LED monitor and…

Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

Some more pictures: [20240623_123311-min] [1] 20240623_123439-min|666x500 [20240623_123442-min] [20240623_123446-min] I also like to spice it up with some chromatic abberation shaders It gives an additional blur, but different than the GaussianBlur filter. The image and Slotmask blends together even more. But be sure to use a chromatic abberation filter on top within Reshade, above Gaussian Blur. You can also use Megatron to add chromatic abberation, but the shader fro…

Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

First, here are some screenshots of the 2D preset. What you can see in the color bars and greyscale is, that there is no clipping. First I was worried, that the SDR to HDR tm and dynamic tm of the LG will cause clipping, but thankfully there is none. [20240623_194841-min] [20240623_194902-min] ! Here a comparison to a JVC D-series (not mine): [2x7lxszldtw61] And a Sony Trinitron (not mine): [Sony] 20240623_195036-min|666x500 [20240623_195156-min] [20240623_195226-min] [Slotmask close-min] [Sl…

[Dennis1]

I still can’t believe how similar the picture on the OLED with 8K @ 800 TVL setting and the CRT looks with content above 240p without scanlines (i.e. PS2, Dreamcast, Gamecube etc.)

The slotmask appears a bit coarser on a 55 inch TV in comparison to a 27 inch CRT, but it is not very noticable yet. I would’t go any lower with the TVL setting though, as this is the treshold in my opinion.

CRT:

OLED:

CRT close:

OLED close:

[Jamirus]

Makes sense if you’re using the 8K setting like that on 4k, because it results in a 6 pixel mask = 360 TVL.

Actual CRT is probably like ~450. Because there is no inbetween, you end up with the mask being a bit coarser or finer (540 TVL).

[Dennis1]

Your calculation seems right Jamirus.

I would also sometimes like to use the 1000 TVL (540 TVL) setting of Megatron, but the disadvantage is, that it gets quiet a bit darker and somehow colors look different / not as correct as with 800 TVL (360 TVL).

Also it depends on the content. Everything below native 480p looks better with coarser masks in my opinion. Even if I would own a high TVL Sony PVM or BVM, I would not play anything below 480p on these I think.

[Cyber]

@Dennis1

I still can’t believe how similar the picture on the OLED with 8K @ 800 TVL setting and the CRT looks with content above 240p without scanlines (i.e. PS2, Dreamcast, Gamecube etc.)

Yes, it really is impressive!

The most glaring differences I can see between the two are that there’s a difference in Gamma, with the CRT being darker. Not sure if there are other colour/tint/whitepoint/phosphor/colourspace differences as well which will be seen once Gamma is matched/corrected.

Also, the shader seems to be blurring some of the fine details in the textures. Perhaps a more conservative application of blur might yield even closer results!

CRT

OLED

CRT

CRT

OLED

CRT

OLED

[Jamirus]

The scanlines and sharpness can look very distracting, on my old PC monitor (probably like 1000 TVL), it was helpful to have an extra control to regulate sharpness.

Part of the impression is down to the mask type too, really high TVL slot masks (like 700+) are just very untypical, there aren’t a lot of photos out there. Although the monitors aren’t that rare, if I had the room I probably could get a monitor in a rather short time span.

[Dennis1]

@Cyber

The most glaring differences I can see between the two are that there’s a difference in Gamma, with the CRT being darker

This is because the CRT has a slight “black crush” and I measured a Gamma of around 2.6 at the low end of the greyscale, which after 20 IRE flattens out to about 2.2. If I raise the brightness setting on the CRT and therefore Gamma a bit, the blacklevel gets destroyed and becomes a bit greyish. I am sure, if I play around with the flyback pots and other pots on the CRT chassis, I can dial that little “problem” in.

I also set up Gamma in Lilium’s inverse tonmapping shader from 2.2 to sRGB, as with 2.2 the OLED is still slightly too dark (black crush) in the shadows.

The CRT otherwise is calibrated as good as possible from my side to Rec709 and the Delta Errors of the greyscale and color checker measurements etc. are very low. Beside the difference in Gamma, colorwise the OLED and CRT look very similar, if not identical.

@Cyber

Also, the shader seems to be blurring some of the fine details in the textures. Perhaps a more conservative application of blur might yield even closer results!

I already dialed in the blur shader as low as possible and if I go any lower (or sharper), the coarseness ot the Slotmask and some color fringing of it becomes too apparant for my eyes. Also these are pictures from my phone and they can vary in sharpness from picture to picture and the focus is also never perfectly even across a single picture. The difference is really negligible to non existent from a viewing distance.

[Dennis1]

@Jamirus

The scanlines and sharpness can look very distracting, on my old PC monitor (probably like 1000 TVL), it was helpful to have an extra control to regulate sharpness.

Yep, high TVL monitors were not made for lowres content. But some people like 240p on BVM’s and that is okay as everybody has a different taste. I read somewhere, that it looks like an LCD watched through venetian blinds

@Jamirus

Part of the impression is down to the mask type too, really high TVL slot masks (like 700+) are just very untypical

True, they almost always were Dotmask or Aperture Grille as far as I know.

For lowres content Slotmasks look best to me. With the Megatron shader it depends. The slotmask with scanlines looks different than without scanlines (i.e. 2160 CRT_Height setting). It could have a bit more detail with scanline content, but that is because my TV is only 4K and not 8K.

With an 8K display I think “scanlined slotmasks” will look perfect with the shader. Currently I use the Aperture Grille for 2D stuff due to this reason, as it does not need the same detail as a slotmask.

[Cyber]

@Dennis1

almost always

I think these were Slot Mask, not sure if the TVL was 700+

https://www.a1used-computers.com/fiche-17inch+LG+Flatron+F700B+Flatscreen+CRT+++1280+x+1024+++Grey-52042.html#:~:text=LG%20Electronics%20Inc.&text=415mm%20(width)%20x%20415mm%20(,x%20435mm%20(depth)%20approx.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/comparison,440-21.html

[Cyber]

Advanced Auto HDR shader(Pumbo) vs Lilium's inverse tone mapping

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/comments/141sa9f/guide_improving_hdr_fidelity_on_windows_11/

GitHub - dylanraga/win11hdr-srgb-to-gamma2.2-icm: Transform Windows 11's...

@Dennis1, take a look at this:

@MajorPainTheCactus

I’ve actually had versions of this shader that had a non-zero black and I got a lot of complaints - you can change this by changing the gamma cutoff point in the shader arguments this should give you 90% of what youre seeing in the photo admittedly without the non zero ‘horizontal pixels’ of the slot mask but aperture grille will look perfect.

When looking at my PVM’s, the base black (because the black mask is interleaved with the slightly reflecting phosphors) is not of the level of the base black on my OLEDs so it is more accurate to have a non zero black.

Feel free to give it a try if you’re interested.

[JHorbach1]

@Dennis1

Those LG OLED’s have a feature which is very important to achieve a convincing bright and dynamic CRT look. The feature is called “dynamic tonemapping”, which you can switch on in the menu. If you don’t have a LG OLED I am not sure if other brands of TV’s and monitors have a similar setting. The 1400 nits Philips Mini-LED monitor for example hadn’t such a setting. Maybe MajorPainTheCactus can tell us if his Samsung QD-OLED has a similar feature.

When using this with RetroArch, do I need to enable HDR in the settings? I’ve tried to use it, the screen looks like the gamma is too high… My TV is a LG C1. I Double-checked the configurations.

[Cyber]

@JHorbach1

When using this with RetroArch, do I need to enable HDR in the settings?

Definitely not. This method used Reshade exclusively for the shader effects and SDR to HDR Tonemapping. You shouldn’t even have Video Shaders enabled in RetroArch. So you want RetroArch to be in regular SDR mode and also the Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor Shader in Reshade.

Feel free to ask more questions if you’re stuck again.

[Dennis1]

Cyber is right, in Retroarch HDR should not be enabled. Lilium’s inverse tonemapping takes care of this. In Retroarch and Reshade Megatron everything should be configured as SDR. Only make sure, that in Windows HDR is enabled and your display receives a HDR signal from the PC.

[western]

how are you having this working in duckstation, I was getting nowhere trying to get the hdr addon (either the original or lilium fork) to kick in in reshade on anything other than old pc games using dgvoodoo. no stand alone emulators. the one exception: in pcsx2, the lilium inverse tonemapping shader was recognizing hdr in the picture, even though the hdr addon wasn’t working, giving me the same old “turn on hdr if your monitor supports it” message. I assume with dosbox, xemu, and scummvm my problem was opengl, but dolphin, pcsx2 and duckstation are set to vulkan and it’s the same thing. trying the nvidia dxgi swapchain thing didn’t change anything except it stopped making the screen dim after quitting until I turned hdr off and back on.

[Dennis1]

This is how I set everything up and it works for me:

I also get the error message in Reshade at the addon tab, that HDR support is not enabled, but it works nonetheless and HDR is activated from Windows side and the TV running in HDR.

And it works the same way in Duckstation and PCSX2 if I choose DirectX 11 or 12 instead of Vulkan and install Reshade with the correct API. DXGI Swapchain is also not neccessary for me.

It is important to install “Reshade with full add-on support” (not the “normal” version) and then during installation select Lilium’s AutoHDR add-on and the inverse tonemapping shader, but i guess you did this correctly.

In some emulators like Flycast for example, I have to manually override the “CSP_Override” setting like in this picture to get it to work:

As you may notice, the screenshots are a bit blown out, but that is because Lilium’s inverse tm is doing its thing and I have not found a way to accurately capture screenshots with HDR and correctly present them here.

[Cyber]

@Dennis1

I have not found a way to accurately capture screenshots with HDR and correctly present them here.

Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

Wow! Now I’m looking forward! In the meantime, anyone ready for some HDR screenshots of Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor in action? You need to enable HDR in Windows 10 or 11 and use the photo viewer for this to look as intended. If HDR is not enabled, you’ll still see a good quality image but it won’t have the same brightness as what you see during gameplay with Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor running in HDR mode. https://mega.nz/file/FExXyKbQ#HBKrAf5FTLU8fng-bjOIXjMU6rlYm9etJu28RKEmAsw h…

@Azurfel

Special K can also take .jxr HDR screenshots of Retroarch with HDR shaders included.

CyberLab Death To Pixels Shader Preset Packs

Here are some screenshots (jxr for HDR) of my modified version (glass, 67% mask, no curvature) Public Best viewed with HDR + WCG

4K Vertical Overlay Community Contributions

So, it does capture it correctly as a .jxr file. And if I open it in Windows Photo it looks correct. But if I export the jxr file as a jpg or png, or open the jxr file in Chrome the luminance is off again. Do you do anything to tone map the files before you share them? EDIT: Nevermind, I found a little utility that can do it automatically, it can be set up to watch the capture folder and convert them all as they come through too, which is nice: https://github.com/brion/hdrfix [RetroArch Sc…