SilverWook said:
A nice sentiment, but when was the last time you saw a tv repair shop? Even replacement CRT's for vintage arcade games are drying up. The technology to make them will be lost in a few more years, if not already.
The Ms. Pac Man machine at my local movie theater looks weird with an 16:9 LCD panel mounted in the cabinet.
It was a little sad when I saw one of those Sony CRT HD sets sitting on curb destined for the scrap heap a while back.
Any classic arcade machine with a digital display = blasphemy. And I'm my own TV repair shop. When I got my Super Punch-Out arcade machine in 2006, its original Sanyo 20-Z2AW CRT monitors were in sad shape. One of them had a cracked flyback transformer, which was arcing, and both of their tubes had severe screen-burn. They both needed all of their electrolytic capacitors changed too (the Nintendo/Sanyo chassis is the biggest pain for doing a "cap kit"). I've done the "cap kit", replaced the flyback transformers (new reproductions are being made, and they work perfectly), and found like-new burn-free 510UTB22 tubes from some otherwise dead Nintendo/Sanyo 20-EZV monitors (I've since revived those monitors as well, albeit with the old tubes sporting Punch-Out screen-burn swapped onto their chassis).
My other arcade machines (Ikari Warriors, Missile Command, Street Fighter II) all have Happ Vision Pro monitors (standard 15 kHz RGB CRT arcade monitors; the same as they originally came with), which I bought new around 2007/2008, which was around the last time that you could still get them new. They are still like new, since I don't use them anywhere near as much as they would be used in a commercial arcade. The Missile Command came with its original numbers-matching Electrohome G07 monitor (a legendary arcade monitor), and it still works fine. It has severe screen burn though, so until I can find a new or like new tube for it, the Happ Vision Pro is going to stay in there.
Harmy said:
CRTs make my eyes bleed...
Here's a photograph of the video displayed by a Barco 909 (CRT projector) on a 12-foot screen:
http://i.imgur.com/4A6G6c6.jpg
Baronlando said:
MaximRecoil said:
If the GOUT had been released by an OT.com forum member in 2006 instead of by Lucasfilm, it would have set this place on fire, and said forum member would have been an instant OT.com "celebrity".
But why? It was essentially the same laserdisc we had for 13 years up to that point.
Not exactly. LaserDisc = 425 lines of composite video (1 channel), while DVD = 480 lines of component video (3-channel, YPbPr). On top of that, component video has enough bandwidth to support 480 lines (and more, though 480 is the most you get from NTSC DVDs) of progressive scan (~30 kHz rather than ~15 kHz), meaning 480p is possible rather than 480i.
Prior to the GOUT we only had the LaserDiscs, which were stuck at 425i composite video, or LaserDisc-to-DVD transfers, which were inherently worse than the LaserDiscs themselves, due to inevitable loss in the transfer and encoding process. The GOUT took those masters which were used to make the 1993 and 1995 LaserDiscs and transferred them directly to DVD (a higher quality format than LaserDisc).