MAMEWorld Forums - Hardware - Re: Opinions on TV CRT for Arcade Cabinet

> Good day everyone,
>
> I'm considering building an arcade cabinet and thinking of going with an CRT TV for
> the more authentic look.
>
> I know I won't get pixel perfect reproduction but I had two questions hoping you can
> help as most web articles on the topic i found are quite old.
>
> Keeping in mind I'm in Canada (US TV standards)
>
> 1) What should i look for when looking for an CRT TV?
>
> 2) I found this TV (Don't mind the size) and wanted
>
> Thank you, to know if it would make a good one. Toshiba CN36X81

There is more to it than that, you need to consider the PC you'll be using as well.
It's been years since modern video cards had analog outputs so unless you're prepared to use an older video card, you'd need to use some kind of converter.
Ideally the TV should have component video inputs and then you could use one of those HDMI to Component converter/scaler things.

Using old school composite or S-video TV-out on an old video card will work, but it's usually very limited in terms of adjustments and available resolutions. What feels like a 100 years ago I had a Geforce 9800GTX+ that had component outputs via a breakout cable. I don't know how far you have to go back to get something like that. It was fine for MAME and other emulators on the living room TV. I drilled a hole in the wall and passed the cables through. Audio, video and a USB hub for gamepads

Picture quality from worst to best: Composite < S-Video < Component < RGB (broadcast equipment/real arcade monitor/European CRT)

The best possible solution is using a real 15Khz arcade monitor and an ArcadeVGA or an older, compatible (meaning, has VGA out and can sync at 15Khz) ATI or Nvidia card.

There is no performance penalty to using an older video card with MAME in this case since you won't be needing any of the cool things that MAME can do to simulate a CRT, plus you'll be running at really low resolutions.

S