The amazing difference between a 1084S and LCD screens...

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

This is one opinion, and it's YOUR opinion. Amiga Lores games on an 4K UHD TV is horrible (i tried that with my A1200), unless you emulate and use some nice CRT shaders.

Yes, I emulate, but I don't use any fancy shaders, if any at all. Just let the pure RGB pixels show through.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Yes, I emulate, but I don't use any fancy shaders, if any at all. Just let the pure RGB pixels show through.

Which look blocky and horrible without scanlines

[donnie]

Originally Posted by iddqd

Just wondering how a Sony PVM compares to an 1084 when using it for Amiga stuff? It seems like the PVMs are mainly used for TV console gaming systems.

I have not seen an 1084, i had an philips one growing up, i remember it being very sharp, but thats 30 years ago. Pvms are like 50hz sony trinitron consumer tvs, only slightly better pq, and much better build quality with more options.


But a sony trinitron consumer tv is pretty good when it has rgb hooked up to it.

One of the reason i think pvms are so popular in (mostly) American retrogaming circles. Is because they never had an rgb standard there. The only thing they had until late 90s where svideo. The difference between rgb and svhs on a crt is huuuuge. Buy the time the got component. Most tvs where already flatpanels or crt with digital filters.

Where as us here in europe could buy any half decent consumer and get pristine rgb quality.


One thing that seems cool about 1084 is that you can change screen size?! which seems handy when alot of amiga games only occupy part of the screen.

[donnie]

Anyway. Comparing flatpanels with crts.

Flatpanels are great......when absolutely nothing is moving. When something moves, everything becomes blurry.For a small example. Just drag your mouse cursor across your flatpanel screen, how much of it can you see? Not much.

When i do the same on my pvm, its almost as solid and visible as it is when its standing still.

[Retro-Nerd]

You would need a real 100 Hz flatpanel and black frame insertion. Then the blurry movements stops. Only in emulation though.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Jack Burton

I just realised that my CRT displays vertical scanlines !
Here's a HAM6 pic on my A600 on which we can see the vertical scanlines on the left (since the pic is a bit blurry on the right).

Back than everyone was saying "go for Trinitron" (what your monitor seems to be), because of the brighter picture, less distortion and the absence of visible scanlines!

It was generally considered as the more expensive but better option.

"Sony started developing the Trinitron for computer monitor use in the late 1970s. Demand was high, so high that there were examples of third party companies removing Trinitron tubes from televisions to use as monitors."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitron

I went with a much cheaper monitor, but the scanlines were nowhere as visible as in some of the pictures posted in this thread. I guess I adjusted the sharpness to a point, were the lines would not bother me, but text was still crisp ...
(oh... and I used a flicker fixer ... that would probably eliminate most of the effect anyways)

Sure: CRTs give you some kind of "build in" antialiasing, which is nice and on LCDs things are too blocky ... but most shaders/filters just overdo it with artificial scanlines for my taste.

[donnie]

On my 20 inch pvm, there are no visible scanlines when im playing pal games.

Scanlines are only visible in ntsc.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Scanlines SUCK,

True, but they are necessary to accurately reproduce the original look of retro games, which were designed around them. Scanlines make the picture darker and increase color contrast. Without them the image on an LCD screen tends to look flat and washed out.

I used to hate CRTs for all their faults, and never thought I would go back to using them. But now I have several. Trying to get all my retro machines looking correct on LCD was just too much hassle.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Scanlines make the picture darker and increase color contrast. Without them the image on an LCD screen tends to look flat and washed out.

I used to hate CRTs for all their faults, and never thought I would go back to using them. But now I have several. Trying to get all my retro machines looking correct on LCD was just too much hassle.

Maybe it's down to emulation of retro hardware in Windows, but I've had no problems. However, I can understand that users of real hardware would have problems if they're using LCD panels with their Amiga 500s (for example) - I've seen YouTube videos of the displays that do look very messy and drained of colour.

[donnie]

[iddqd]

@Donnie, very nice.

Do you have similar image running C64 or Amiga?

[Retro-Nerd]

Nice monitors, but i don't like the dark scanlines. Trinitron ftw.

[Lord Aga]

OMG, I'm stuck at this exact location in FOTAQ. Suggestions people

[Jack Burton]

Originally Posted by commodorejohn

That's not scanline separation, that's the aperture grille that separates the color elements in each pixel. In a Trinitron-style CRT, the red, green, and blue phosphors are lined up as vertical bars right next to each other; thus, in a heavily blue/green field like you're displaying in the upper-left corner, the red element will be at low intensity and on a sufficiently coarse grid may be noticable in its absence.

Anyway, yes, CRTs are vastly superior in picture quality to LCDs at anything other than native resolution, and even there LCDs mostly win out on non-picture aspects like footprint and power consumption.

OK, thanks for the explanations. Yes my CRT is a Sony Trinitron TV.

Originally Posted by iddqd

Just wondering how a Sony PVM compares to an 1084 when using it for Amiga stuff? It seems like the PVMs are mainly used for TV console gaming systems.

I've a Sony PVM (14M4E) and frankly I prefer the 1084. The image on the PVM is sharper, too much for my taste at least, whereas it is soften on the 1084, like a kind of natural antialiasing, but still sharp enough for pixel art which is what I use my Amiga for.

However, the problem with 1084s is their fragility. I broke 3 since 1993. OTOH, Sony PVMs look indestructible (and weight a lot !).

[iddqd]

OK, thanks for info.

So there's no problem with flickering text on a PVM? I've seen issues with this, but maybe that was a bad PVM.

[donnie]

480i flickers. 240p is stable.

[Jack Burton]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Back than everyone was saying "go for Trinitron" (what your monitor seems to be), because of the brighter picture, less distortion and the absence of visible scanlines!

Thanks for the infos Gorf.
Yes my monitor is in fact a Trinitron TV. And it's true that scanlines are almost invisible. If we look closely we can see dots instead like you can see here with this HAM6 pic.


Anyway my PVM has scanline... go figure !

[donnie]

Originally Posted by iddqd

@Donnie, very nice.

Do you have similar image running C64 or Amiga?

No, those pics are from retrogameboards, which is mostly an american board, where amiga was not that popular.

[Jack Burton]

Originally Posted by iddqd

OK, thanks for info.

So there's no problem with flickering text on a PVM? I've seen issues with this, but maybe that was a bad PVM.

Interlaced modes are often problematic with text, especially if there's a lot of contrast like white text on black/dark screen, it will flicker a lot.

Like donnie wrote, there's no problem with non-interlaced screen modes (240p).

[donnie]

I tried to take some of my own pics with my ipad. ..