CRT madness!

MrVestek

I feel like this will be appreciated here:

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeQeSpb9/

Jack burton

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122002559#Comment_122002559

Only saw this now. I'm in Waterford so would gladly pick it up and see if I can get it sorted out

Doge

This got me right in the feels watching this, but he has good taste! A super Famicom and a little portable CRT. We should ask him to host the next Beers, any excuse to visit Japan! 😜

https://youtu.be/G8M9uCpDqfg

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122203745#Comment_122203745

Ah jaysus haha, right in the feels too.

There are unfortunately a lot of lonely dudes in Japan. A lot of them don't really have friends and definitely don't go near western tourists, it's actually really frustrating if you're into meeting people while away.

I did a bit of a group tour for a few days while I was there in October and ended up befriending the tour guide, dude my own age who grew up in 90s Japanese arcades. Immediately hit it off.

After the trip was over we ended up just sticking with him and getting up to all kinds of antics. Was really amazing tbh. Experiences you wouldn't have there in a million years normally as a westerner in Japan just off the plane.

Still keep in touch now and send packages back and forth full of bits and pieces. I do get the impression though that he's really lonely. There can be something extremely isolating with the culture if you don't tow the line, become a salaryman or are in any way not the status quo.

Doge

Ah that sounds like a lovely experience o1s1n!

You must have got the proper Japan experience rather than a touristy one!

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122206776#Comment_122206776

It was unbelievably lucky to be honest! There's a real culture of not wanting to bother people so nobody really engages with folks they don't know. Couple that with the language barrier and you can get a bit lonely as a tourist. A lot of the time you actually feel a like you're being put in the 'gaijin corner' away from the regulars in restaurants and bars.

To go from that to suddenly having a nice Japanese person with great English to talk to, and not only that but really eager to bring us to places well away from tourist traps was pretty magical.

As to be expected, he absolutely massacred me in every Street Fighter 2 game we played (and I'd been bloody practicing my CE game before going away!)

o1s1n

I've played about a bit before with Netflix and YouTube on a CRT with with a 360 and it worked great for 4:3 content without black bars.

Occurred to me this evening to see if the 360 would pick up my NAS - it does!

Seems to not like a lot of the modern video file formats but a lot of my older stuff in 4:3 streams great.

Having a hard time photographing it but the picture is razor sharp. Definitely a bit of an interesting use for any 360s lying about.

Actually this seems more apt! My CRT is extremely forgiving to these crappy VHS transfers.

MrVestek

I've done something similar with an RGB-Pi scart adapter and Kodi.

Streaming stuff to a CRT is a bit surreal but fun at the same thing.

Even stuff that looks pixelated when upscaled to 1080p / 4k on modern TVs looks perfect on the crt.

Was only watching adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Married with Children on the CRT a few weeks ago.

o1s1n

Yeah it's amazing how forgiving a CRT is to low resolution videos.

I'm absolutely loving being able to chuck on an episode of GamesMaster while playing arcade games on the two cabinets, really adds something to the experience.

Was there much to setting up the Pi to do that? Might look into that actually, would be nice to get some additional video types working with it and not being constrained by what the 360 supports.

Robert Nairac

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122203745#Comment_122203745

I love his videos. The title of every video starts with "I am 50 years old Japanese man" 😂

CiDeRmAn

Streaming content from PC to the arcade cab isn't ideal, and it doesn't always scale quite right, but ithe CRT looks more authentic than a flat panel, every time.

The test game I've been using, Devil Blade Reboot, looks less saturated on the CRT but it does feel better with the large CRT and arcade controls

Spotting old TVs on Daft - Looks like a 40-inch Toshiba RP CRT.

https://www.daft.ie/for-sale/detached-house-glebe-house-woodenbridge-co-wicklow/5598785

Getting priorities right.

https://www.daft.ie/for-sale/detached-house-benmore-ballyduff-co-kerry/5662436

CiDeRmAn

You grab the telly, I'll take the little ghettoblaster!

geotrig

anyone every have a daysha 😂 Tv ,I thought at 1st reading the blurb it was an april fools ,Fair play to him though!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS51Ep46G1U

o1s1n

That was really interesting, never heard of that operation at all.

Crazy that they were importing the tubes from the UK to assemble the TVs here and then exporting the TVs back to London. Wonder did they ever get any contracts to sell in Ireland in the end?

Looks like a Beovision LX2802.

https://www.essexlive.news/news/property/gallery/essex-manor-house-needs-renovating-8107668

Doge

Mental:

https://youtu.be/irHI_2WdQXc

Steve X2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122644480#Comment_122644480

Well that was traumatic to watch.

KeRbDoG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122645810#Comment_122645810

Needs more cowbell hotglue :D

o1s1n

I spent a good few hours playing Final Fantasy IX last night on my old 14 inch PYE CRT over RF and you know what? The picture quality was leagues ahead of where I thought it would be.

There's some dot crawl on red colours (which I only noticed due to the red on the Playstation boot logo) but other than that, it's actually not nearly as bad as I was expecting. In fact I'd put it on par with composite I've seen out of some other consoles.

If I remember correctly, I think the PS1 was known for having a really good RF modulator?

I always look back at particularly my PS1 gaming days wondering why oh why I never upgraded from an RF cable but after seeing this now for the first time in probably 25 years I can totally understand why.

Edit - just to say, I haven't lost my mind and decided to ditch RGB. I still have a PS2 connected in the main living room to an OLED and a PS1 connected to a PVM - this is purely a third 'low-fi' type Playstation setup 😁

geotrig

yeah I've connected a few consoles up testing them and the like and my atari has just always been on RFf and it isn't the worst for some.I think people get a bit carried away with themselves at times !

KeRbDoG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122675522#Comment_122675522

Need to remember, at the time you'd prob thought 'as Sony intended' and if you hadn't seen what it might have looked like via RGB/SCART - why would you have considered ditching the RF pack? Same with folks and the PS2 - just use the composite to SCART adapter cable thing - grand most folks though…until they saw the same console/game maybe on the display desk in Gamesworld using a RGB/SCART cable - BOOM! But then the cable would have cost as much as a budget/platium type game?

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122676293#Comment_122676293

Oh 100%! What's taken me aback a bit is that the RF I am seeing on this CRT is not nearly as bad as my memory has lead me to believe it to be.

I think something to add to the above too is that a lot of us were playing games on 14 inch CRTs back then. I know I was! Didn't actually start really playing games on big screens until I started collecting old consoles and getting into CRTs when they were obsolete and cheap.

14 inches seems to be a lot more forgiving to that signal quality.

I do think though that some of it boils down to the PS1 having a really good RF modulator. I'm interested in seeing how some other consoles hold up in comparison.

Yeah I think RGB cables back then for the PS1 were about 20 pounds. I would definitely have gone for the platinum game time and time again instead!

KeRbDoG

Was searching to see if there was info on the PS1 RF modulator, couldn't find anything from a quick search but random fact which I never knew about with early PS1s and an issue with certain US CRTs - Noted in a US EGM Feb'96 mag and on wikipedia;

Due to an engineering oversight, the PlayStation does not produce a proper signal on several older models of televisions, causing the display to flicker or bounce around the screen. Sony decided not to change the console design, since only a small percentage of PlayStation owners used such televisions, and instead gave consumers the option of sending their PlayStation unit to a Sony service centre to have an official modchip installed, allowing play on older televisions

Learn something new each day :)

The PS1 did have two types of RF modulators, the early models which it was connected directly to the composite sockets at the back of the console and a little 9V power connector and one which was inline from the AV Multi Out port.

o1s1n

Absolutely delighted with myself, convinced my sister to save the last CRT from my grandparents, a 27 inch Philips. 😂 it was about to go to the recycling centre.

Was in the front room and barely used so the picture is still nice and bright.

One niggle we're trying to work out at the moment - When you turn on a RGB source, Philips CRTs auto switch to AV1 and change the aspect ratio to 16:9. We're a bit goosed as we have no remote to change it back to 4:3.

So all RGB content currently looks like this. Squished 16:9 with overscan info displaying along the top.

She bought a universal remote but it doesn't have a button combination to change the aspect ratio.

I thought maybe we could get into a service menu, asked her to send along a photo of the back of the TV to see the model number and I could potentially figure out the button combination.

What in the feck 😐️ someone painted over the label with brown paint??? How? why?? so many questions!

I figured out by looking at the backs of some other Philips CRTs that the model number should be listed above the top barcode.

After much squinting I just couldn't figure it out at all. My sister is currently trying to see if she can scrape some of it off but apparently the paint is completely fused to the label.

In the meantime, without a model number, I did a bit of googling into scart auto switching. Turns out if pin 8 on scart has a signal going through it, it auto changes the aspect ratio on these Philips TVs.

So when the console is turned on, a signal is sent to pin 8 and it auto changes to 16:9.

Using that logic, if we disable pin 8, it should hopefully stay in 4:3. It won't auto connect to AV1 but that can be manually done with the new universal remote.

I think the best way to do this, rather than disconnecting pin 8 in all of her scart cables, is to get a single male to female scart extension cable, disconnect pin 8 and use that as a passthrough for everything… we shall see!

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122683161#Comment_122683161

That's really fascinating! I wonder what the modification looks like? be mad to pick up a random PS1 that has that inside.

Edit - it's funny you mention the two different RF modulators. When I got this new one in the post last week it went via the AV out socket. I could have sworn the one I had with my original PS1 had a little box with small pins that went directly to the composite sockets. Thought I was going mad.

KeRbDoG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122683270#Comment_122683270

Solidly, not going mad :D

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122683239#Comment_122683239

It's probably a Philips MD1.1E or MD1.2E chassis. Maybe a 28PT4503 or something similar.

If your phone has infra red you can use IRplus to load a Philips remote profile.

Otherwise the genuine Philips universal remotes that look like this are a good bet:

o1s1n

Managed to sort the forced 16:9 aspect ratio issue above without a remote.

Bought a cheapy multi scart box

Opened up the scart connector and cut the cable to pin 8.

And it worked! No more 16:9. RGB is now 4:3

Am hoping there are some pots on the chassis to do a bit of final image calibration.

There's some colour impurity going on the left side of the screen (should be able to sort that with a degaussing wand)

But overall, great to finally see games in 4:3!