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Thread: Add Scanlines to HDTVs with New Device

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    Default Add Scanlines to HDTVs with New Device

    http://retro.nintendolife.com/news/2...n_of_scanlines

    http://arcadeforge.de/?page_id=745

    It's hard to believe but there you have it. Someone has created a device that, through VGA, adds scanlines to LCD tvs. Needless to say this has my interest piqued.

    Here's a video of it in action. The second it supports composite, s-video, component jacks, etc, this looks like an instant buy for me.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzPqw...layer_embedded

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    Unclear from the links,

    will this only create a visual "simulation" of real scan lines, or will this actually allow the use of light guns on modern flat screens?
    "And the book says: 'We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'"


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    Looks like a complete waste of money if it doesn't allow for light guns (which I very much doubt it does). Firstly, who in their right mind would want a worse picture? Second, even if you were that off the wall, run an emulator on your PC, and output it to the big screen. Most newer PC's can, most emulators have the option to add scanlines or similar effects.

    Third, the reason old guns don't work on HDTV's is not lack of scanlines, it's the entire process for displaying the video. LCD's use progressive scan, CRT's used interlacing. Now for instance, you can set your cable STB to output 480i, but your HDTV actually then deinterlaces that signal. It's automatic, you can't turn it off, otherwise you'd get no picture at all. So even if this device somehow interlaced the picture, your TV is just going to convert it to progressive scan. Even beyond that, there's an issue of timing as well. The flicker rate would have to be close to what CRT's used, as well.

    I personally think it's impossible to get original guns to work. It is however very possible to make a new gun that works on an LCD, perhaps with sensors, and then communicates with the console. The drawback is that you'd need a new gun per console (NES, SMS, SNES, GEN, PS1, PS2, etc.). Or the manufacturer would have to program code to talk to each of those consoles into the gun, and then build an adapter that would fit each of those consoles, like a Radioshack power supply with multiple, swappable connectors.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Greg2600 View Post
    Looks like a complete waste of money if it doesn't allow for light guns (which I very much doubt it does). Firstly, who in their right mind would want a worse picture? Second, even if you were that off the wall, run an emulator on your PC, and output it to the big screen. Most newer PC's can, most emulators have the option to add scanlines or similar effects.

    Third, the reason old guns don't work on HDTV's is not lack of scanlines, it's the entire process for displaying the video. LCD's use progressive scan, CRT's used interlacing. Now for instance, you can set your cable STB to output 480i, but your HDTV actually then deinterlaces that signal. It's automatic, you can't turn it off, otherwise you'd get no picture at all. So even if this device somehow interlaced the picture, your TV is just going to convert it to progressive scan. Even beyond that, there's an issue of timing as well. The flicker rate would have to be close to what CRT's used, as well.

    I personally think it's impossible to get original guns to work. It is however very possible to make a new gun that works on an LCD, perhaps with sensors, and then communicates with the console. The drawback is that you'd need a new gun per console (NES, SMS, SNES, GEN, PS1, PS2, etc.). Or the manufacturer would have to program code to talk to each of those consoles into the gun, and then build an adapter that would fit each of those consoles, like a Radioshack power supply with multiple, swappable connectors.
    Ah, I thought the scanlines worked in some way with the monitor's interlacing.

    I do know that there are a lot of arcade enthusiasts that like the authenticity of scanlines, however, as you stated, MAME and other emulators can simulate that just fine.

    I guess that this would only be a must-have if you have a supergun setup on a modern flat-screen that didn't display scan lines?
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    Check out this link: http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=4422.0

    The OP posts a link to the SLG3000, and the next poster points out a much cheaper DIY solution. Worth a look, if scanlines on plasma monitors are your thing.

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    Frankie, actually after further reading I'm not 100% positive it won't work in theory. By "adding the scan lines," the assumption is you're forcing I'd hope every second line of the image to be blank. That's what interlaced video does. However, you'd have to switch from say odd lines shown to even lines shown in the next frame, to be correct/accurate. So I guess technically this "might' achieve actual interlacing effect. Now if it does, there's still the question of whether the refresh rate on HDTV's is too high for the old guns/3D glasses.

    I did a weird test where I loaded SMS Missile Defense 3D into Fusion and turned scanlines to 100%, then simultaneously switched on my SMS, which has MD 3D built in. I got it so that both the emulator and the real game were almost totally in sync. Turned scanlines up in Fusion, nothing, turned my LCD brightness/contrast all the way up, nothing. Now I am running 60 mhz rate on my monitor, which is the proper USA NTSC rate, but it's not interlaced. Oddly this monitor can do interlaced, but it's at a much lower rate of 30.
    Last edited by Greg2600; 04-16-2011 at 04:26 PM.
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    I thought it was the difference in the screen refresh process why lightguns couldn't work. I don't know how it works, but I asked someone I figured would know and...

    This is what I was told: A CRT refreshes left to right from top to bottom, line by line in sections, but an LCD refreshes the entire screen at once... So, a Lightgun can't tell where you are hitting or not because there is no dark to light change for a hit which a CRT is capable of, but an LCD isn't because of the refresh method difference.

    If that is true, then this device would have to chop up the entire screen refresh and emulate the CRT method refreshing the entire screen, but withholding image data... If you have a slow refresh LCD, that result could look utterly terrible.
    Last edited by Icarus Moonsight; 04-16-2011 at 04:45 PM.


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    Quote Originally Posted by wingzrow View Post
    Here's a video of it in action. The second it supports composite, s-video, component jacks, etc, this looks like an instant buy for me.
    Its doubtful it will ever have composite/svideo support added, as this was primarily designed to be fed from a line doubler like the XRGB, or a device that already outputs via vga (like a dreamcast, xbox 360, etc). Most game consoles can be output

    Quote Originally Posted by Greg2600 View Post
    Looks like a complete waste of money if it doesn't allow for light guns (which I very much doubt it does). Firstly, who in their right mind would want a worse picture?
    That's completely subjective; most people are using this on stuff that was originally displayed in 240p on a crt (15khz arcade games, early consoles). Many would say just straight upscaling them to 1080p on a modern LCD is the worse picture.

    some more info

    http://scanlines.hazard-city.de/
    Last edited by Zapf; 04-16-2011 at 07:22 PM.

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    Well like I said, my PC's LCD monitor has an interlaced mode, though at half the refresh rate as NTSC 60. Whether its interlaced in the exact same top/left to bottom/right direction as old TV's I don't know.
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    Lots of monitors support an interlaced video input, but they will be deinterlacing/scaling the image to the native rez, not retaining any scanlines. What these people are doing are taking a 240p (sometimes 480i) game output, upscaling it to (at least) 640x480, sending it through the scanline creator, and outputting that to the TV/Monitor, so that it will retain the classic tv/arcade look when used on a higher resolution display.

    Maybe I'm mistaken and you really do mean you have a monitor that will generate scanlines on a 240p signal after upscaling it to the lcd's native res - feel free to take pictures / send a product link.

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    I wonder though for emulation if you could have a faux scan line generator that would work with the light guns.

    Since in a nutshell, the main problem is that a modern display shows each individual pixel as always on rather than having an election gun turning it on 30 times a second. So you could conceivably write the emulator in such a way as to draw the picture on the screen 30 times a second and erase it 30 times a second but with the proper Z timing (draw then reach the end of the line and drop down and repeat) but then erase those pixels a millisecond later in the same Z pattern. That would mean you would be drawing the screen in a way that emulates the CRT way of drawing the screen which could possibly allow the light gun to read the screen the same way it does on a CRt.

    I have no idea if that is even remotely possibly but in theory it sounds like it would work If you wanted to have something like that for actual systems though, it would have to be a hardware device that does the same thing with inputs for composite/s-video.

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    Quote Originally Posted by bobotech View Post
    I wonder though for emulation if you could have a faux scan line generator that would work with the light guns.

    Since in a nutshell, the main problem is that a modern display shows each individual pixel as always on rather than having an election gun turning it on 30 times a second. So you could conceivably write the emulator in such a way as to draw the picture on the screen 30 times a second and erase it 30 times a second but with the proper Z timing (draw then reach the end of the line and drop down and repeat) but then erase those pixels a millisecond later in the same Z pattern. That would mean you would be drawing the screen in a way that emulates the CRT way of drawing the screen which could possibly allow the light gun to read the screen the same way it does on a CRt.

    I have no idea if that is even remotely possibly but in theory it sounds like it would work If you wanted to have something like that for actual systems though, it would have to be a hardware device that does the same thing with inputs for composite/s-video.
    Yes this is what I was getting at. By the way, I tried my Sega 3D glasses for SMS on an old CRT PC monitor, and it worked but not well at all. I think, unfortunately, it's a pipe dream.
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    I wonder if you can just change the gun. Still use a photocell, but one that reads color... Flash a X,Y gradient color chart that fills the screen for one refresh cycle and what color the photocell picks up dead center gives the general aim coordinates...

    Jeez, I think it's time for sleep.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Greg2600 View Post
    Yes this is what I was getting at. By the way, I tried my Sega 3D glasses for SMS on an old CRT PC monitor, and it worked but not well at all. I think, unfortunately, it's a pipe dream.
    My whole belief that this might work is because monitors and computers are so much faster than they used to be so the whole screen scraping should be totally invisible to the emulators. And since for all intents and purposes, each pixel stays light up for so much longer than they used to be able to, then the screen scraper should be able to turn it off and on at will without it effecting the operation of the emulator.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Greg2600 View Post
    Well like I said, my PC's LCD monitor has an interlaced mode, though at half the refresh rate as NTSC 60.
    Just to clarify, an interlaced NTSC CRT refreshes 60 fields per second, which is 30 complete frames per second (odd + even scanlines).

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    Anyone buy one of these? If so, what do you think?
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    Is there a possibility of these damaging your television or monitor? I'm curious if a long gaming session on a HD TV could possibly burn those scan lines into your television?

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    No. If they were bright white lines that were displaying all day, then you might be concerned. But they are the complete opposite.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Zapf View Post
    No. If they were bright white lines that were displaying all day, then you might be concerned. But they are the complete opposite.
    Exactly, in the black state you are completely fine. But I too am curious about this device, I really do miss playing sharp looking retro games instead of the blur-fest that is my HDTV.

    So I am assuming that I could just buy a composite/svideo to vga converter to play my classic systems with this? Has anyone bought one of these?

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    I'm pretty sure noone who currently has this is starting out with a composite signal. They are instead taking an RGB video signal out of their console, through an upscaler, into the slg. I seriously don't think its going to be worth the money if you start with poor quality video - it can cover up some problems with a lower quality upscaler, but not THAT much.

    Before investing in an SLG3000, you should:
    - Do a search on these forums and on google for getting an RGB signal out of your console, there have been several threads discussing it.
    - Get yourself an upscaler. The cheapest is the cga/vga upscaler you can get on ebay, though that will need to be modified to accept a SCART input. Plenty of tutorials and discussion on that on the shmups forum and other sites. http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic...=35423&start=0. There are other options available, heres some info on upscalers: http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/ . You only need to upscale to 640x480, your tv can handle the rest, and the scanlines applied to a 640x480 output look more authentic.

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