Flat Tube OR no Flat Tube
- Thread starter kc
- Start date
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galfordo
Guest
generally, yeah, they're much better for reducing glare. I think that's the main reason to get one.
I'm going to try to be brief as I can. If you want to know more about what's behind the problems and such with various televisions, I'd be happy to explain. But in the interests of brevity, I'll just tell you what you need to know.
I assume you're talking about televisions, with a picture tube, also known as a cathode ray tube.
I'm going to use a term called "geometry". This is the shape of the image displayed on a screen. Good geometry would mean that you could display a perfect grid on the screen. Bad geometry would mean that grid would have wavy lines throughout, and some squares would be larger than others
You want good geometry. It's especially important for videogames, because that means all those polygonal lines and all those horizontal fighting game lifebars will be straight.
If you're going to get a regular, non-flat television, pretty much any name brand is okay. Toshiba, JVC, and Samsung are nice, and Sony's is a touch above. The geometry is decent out of the box for all of them. It can be tweaked, but usually only through the service menu, accessed through a special remote/TV button code.
If you're going to get a flat television, things get more complicated. Bad flat TVs will have fuzzy corners and awful geometry. Good ones won't. Bad and good often fluctuates between television sizes. The area around 22" to 32" is usually the worst. Sometimes, these problems can't even be fixed from the service menu. Even if they can, it requires a LOT of work with convergence controls.... At that point, you might as well pay for a professional calibration.
So how do you find out what's good and bad? Well, you'll need some kind of test image. Or you could put that service code into the TV at the store, and mess with the screen. But that's usually a recipe for getting kicked out.
A good test image would a grid, preferably a touch smaller than the full size of the screen. This is because TVs come with "overscan", where the image is displayed larger than the size of the tube. This hides the real edges of the picture, so you can't see the geometry problems. A smaller image lets you see edges, to check for curved lines.
It's actually a fun thing to do, getting your image displayed on all the TVs in the store. You'd be amazed at how bad the edges of some TV images are. But getting the store to cooperate can be a pain. You'll probably need to be very, very nice to a salesperson.
There's one more thing I should mention, and that's HDTV, as it pertains to videogames.
You may be tempted by the pretty, oft-widescreen HDTV displays. But there's a problem. All videogames, with the exception of a few for XBOX and Gamecube, display at a rate commonly called 480i, which we've been using for a long time. It means a lot of things, but it's mostly referring to the 480 lines of resolution displayed on a normal television. There's actually 525, but 45 of them are just used to give time for the TV to get ready for the next frame. Anyways, that's been the standard, for a while.
Here's the trick: HDTV ONLY displays at 480p or 1080i. When you give it a videogame, it converts that 480i signal into something it can use. TV companies would like you to think that's just plain awesome, converting to a better signal.
But it's not. It can cause a lot of problems, and it can make older games look pretty ugly. The bottom line is, any conversion you do is only as good as the circuitry doing the conversion. And I haven't seen good circuitry yet. But I'm a bit picky.
So if you're going to buy a TV for videogames, I strongly recommend avoiding and HDTV, because 99% of videogames are not designed specifically for it.
That's about it. If I were going to recommend a TV for you to buy, for a regular TV, I'd go with a Toshiba or a Sony, whatever size you prefer.
If you were going to get a flat TV, well... you have to be very careful. I'd get a Sony, but not just any Sony. Recently, they changed around their product line, so it can be confusing.
I'd get a WEGA, but I'd get the top-of-the-line one. There's three levels of each size of WEGA now, and the most expensive one is basically what used to be the XBR line. The three models actually look physically different. The difference is more than superficial, though... the cheapest one has horrible geometry, whereas the expensive one has better circuitry, and therefore, a better picture.
The nice thing about the WEGA line is that they all have a 16:9 widescreen mode, where it actually blanks out part of the screen on its own. This tricks DVD players into thinking you have a widescreen TV. Should trick the XBOX too, which might be fun for Ninja Gaiden.
Anyways, that's what I'd get...
...if I was made of money. But I'm not. And I'm not really an expert on this, either. I'm just a fool that went buying flat TVs a while ago, and had to return, like, 3 of them, because I didn't do my research. Did you know CRT televisions are very, very heavy? -_-
If you need any more help, I'll try my best. I'm sure the rest of the board's gonna pipe up here soon, too.
- Ven
I assume you're talking about televisions, with a picture tube, also known as a cathode ray tube.
I'm going to use a term called "geometry". This is the shape of the image displayed on a screen. Good geometry would mean that you could display a perfect grid on the screen. Bad geometry would mean that grid would have wavy lines throughout, and some squares would be larger than others
You want good geometry. It's especially important for videogames, because that means all those polygonal lines and all those horizontal fighting game lifebars will be straight.
If you're going to get a regular, non-flat television, pretty much any name brand is okay. Toshiba, JVC, and Samsung are nice, and Sony's is a touch above. The geometry is decent out of the box for all of them. It can be tweaked, but usually only through the service menu, accessed through a special remote/TV button code.
If you're going to get a flat television, things get more complicated. Bad flat TVs will have fuzzy corners and awful geometry. Good ones won't. Bad and good often fluctuates between television sizes. The area around 22" to 32" is usually the worst. Sometimes, these problems can't even be fixed from the service menu. Even if they can, it requires a LOT of work with convergence controls.... At that point, you might as well pay for a professional calibration.
So how do you find out what's good and bad? Well, you'll need some kind of test image. Or you could put that service code into the TV at the store, and mess with the screen. But that's usually a recipe for getting kicked out.
A good test image would a grid, preferably a touch smaller than the full size of the screen. This is because TVs come with "overscan", where the image is displayed larger than the size of the tube. This hides the real edges of the picture, so you can't see the geometry problems. A smaller image lets you see edges, to check for curved lines.
It's actually a fun thing to do, getting your image displayed on all the TVs in the store. You'd be amazed at how bad the edges of some TV images are. But getting the store to cooperate can be a pain. You'll probably need to be very, very nice to a salesperson.
There's one more thing I should mention, and that's HDTV, as it pertains to videogames.
You may be tempted by the pretty, oft-widescreen HDTV displays. But there's a problem. All videogames, with the exception of a few for XBOX and Gamecube, display at a rate commonly called 480i, which we've been using for a long time. It means a lot of things, but it's mostly referring to the 480 lines of resolution displayed on a normal television. There's actually 525, but 45 of them are just used to give time for the TV to get ready for the next frame. Anyways, that's been the standard, for a while.
Here's the trick: HDTV ONLY displays at 480p or 1080i. When you give it a videogame, it converts that 480i signal into something it can use. TV companies would like you to think that's just plain awesome, converting to a better signal.
But it's not. It can cause a lot of problems, and it can make older games look pretty ugly. The bottom line is, any conversion you do is only as good as the circuitry doing the conversion. And I haven't seen good circuitry yet. But I'm a bit picky.
So if you're going to buy a TV for videogames, I strongly recommend avoiding and HDTV, because 99% of videogames are not designed specifically for it.
That's about it. If I were going to recommend a TV for you to buy, for a regular TV, I'd go with a Toshiba or a Sony, whatever size you prefer.
If you were going to get a flat TV, well... you have to be very careful. I'd get a Sony, but not just any Sony. Recently, they changed around their product line, so it can be confusing.
I'd get a WEGA, but I'd get the top-of-the-line one. There's three levels of each size of WEGA now, and the most expensive one is basically what used to be the XBR line. The three models actually look physically different. The difference is more than superficial, though... the cheapest one has horrible geometry, whereas the expensive one has better circuitry, and therefore, a better picture.
The nice thing about the WEGA line is that they all have a 16:9 widescreen mode, where it actually blanks out part of the screen on its own. This tricks DVD players into thinking you have a widescreen TV. Should trick the XBOX too, which might be fun for Ninja Gaiden.
Anyways, that's what I'd get...
...if I was made of money. But I'm not. And I'm not really an expert on this, either. I'm just a fool that went buying flat TVs a while ago, and had to return, like, 3 of them, because I didn't do my research. Did you know CRT televisions are very, very heavy? -_-
If you need any more help, I'll try my best. I'm sure the rest of the board's gonna pipe up here soon, too.
- Ven
ttooddddyy
PNG FTW,
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2001
- Posts
- 8,335
I really love my goldfish bowl, the question is do you really need wide screen. not for neo
It doesn't trick the device. It scales the image down using something similar to the way a PC video card does overlays. You can enable that mode for any display, and it will squish the image down to a 1.78:1 ratio. The reason that works for DVD's is because they are stored in that ratio on the DVD.
Yeah, so "trick" isn't exactly accurate. I just like using that word. So yeah, it just scans a smaller area, displaying somewhat abnormally. It's sort of a neat feature... hardly perfect, but fun.
And I don't know of many other displays that let you squish it down with just a function key. You'd have to toy with image size in the service menu to squish it down, which would be more trouble than it's worth.
Plus, it wouldn't be something the display was designed to do. You'd probably end up with a very bright image with convergence problems, and then you'd need to recalibrate.
So it's just a preset, but it's one that you can't create easily, if at all, on other TVs.
Incidentally, ratios versus one take longer for me to type. 16:9 is four characters, 1.78:1 is five. So are 1.85:1, 2.35:1. 1.33:1 is also five, versus 4:3, which is only three.
Plus, if you go to the store, they probably won't have an f'in clue what you're talking about if you drop your ratios to fractions over 1. You'd have to talk to an editor or someone in broadcast for them to have a clue.
Wouldn't kill you to be more polite. Might kill you if you're not.
- Ven
And I don't know of many other displays that let you squish it down with just a function key. You'd have to toy with image size in the service menu to squish it down, which would be more trouble than it's worth.
Plus, it wouldn't be something the display was designed to do. You'd probably end up with a very bright image with convergence problems, and then you'd need to recalibrate.
So it's just a preset, but it's one that you can't create easily, if at all, on other TVs.
Incidentally, ratios versus one take longer for me to type. 16:9 is four characters, 1.78:1 is five. So are 1.85:1, 2.35:1. 1.33:1 is also five, versus 4:3, which is only three.
Plus, if you go to the store, they probably won't have an f'in clue what you're talking about if you drop your ratios to fractions over 1. You'd have to talk to an editor or someone in broadcast for them to have a clue.
Wouldn't kill you to be more polite. Might kill you if you're not.
- Ven
Last edited:
Ven said:
Well, it's not really a preset. The TV still scans the entire CRT. The intrenal circuitry just squishes the image down during processing, then adds the black bars itself. So while you gain quality from sending the full signal over the cable, you can possibly lose quality by having more processing done to the image.
And Talen, the improvement comes from sending the raw 16x9 formatted video over the cable instead of the image squished down with added black bars.
It doesn't add black bars. It crams the 480 lines down, and doesn't even draw that area above and below. I've owned a WEGA, and I've seen it. No image in that area. Otherwise, there would be absolutely NO point to the mode.
But anything below 24" lacks the 16:9 squeeze. You're right, though, I believe there's a couple others with a 16:9/1.778:1 squeeze, and there's probably a few out there that just lay down their own black bars.
But the WEGA is actually a vertical resize, plus a gun recalibration.
Not saying all WEGAs are good, either. All the FS models are crap. They shouldn't be sold.
- Ven
But anything below 24" lacks the 16:9 squeeze. You're right, though, I believe there's a couple others with a 16:9/1.778:1 squeeze, and there's probably a few out there that just lay down their own black bars.
But the WEGA is actually a vertical resize, plus a gun recalibration.
Not saying all WEGAs are good, either. All the FS models are crap. They shouldn't be sold.
- Ven