indivision ECS vs 1084

[Damion]

Im interested in the 50/60 hz motion on it, if its fully smooth as with a TV.

On a CRT monitor the 50/60Hz modes are synced and perfectly smooth (pinball, etc), but depending on the monitor, 50Hz can sting the eyes after a while. No 100/120Hz modes, at least not on the MKI Indivision 1200 I had. The ribbon cable did negatively affect image quality a little bit.

No problem on the few LCD monitors I have that support 50Hz, with a bit of the usual LCD smearing (better or worse depending on the LCD). Also, you'll likely have to tweak the monitor settings and may or may not get an acceptable image.

For old games and demos, I ended up with a few Sony RGB broadcast monitors, and couldn't be happier.

[Damion]

yeah i hate LCD's with a passion, they look like crud.

Yeah, generally no good for old games (IMHO). I have an older 15" Eizo LCD that works pretty well with an Indi/PIV scandoubler, no frameskip, but you still get the smearing with fast 50Hz scrolling.

iv got an old Sony e500 CRT i plan on using.

Should work great. The scandoubled display is kind of nice, for some games I prefer it over the obvious scanlines of a 1084/15kHz monitor. The only problem is the shorter phosphor persistence on the hi-res Trinitrons - at 50Hz they produce quite a bit more flicker than a 1084 would. I recall Jens mentioning the possibility of 100/120Hz synced screenmodes for the Indi ECS, but don't know if they made it into the design. Maybe someone else can confirm.

[Damion]

Well, there's a huge difference between a 1084, and an expensive Trinitron/Diamondtron or Sony broadcast CRT. For 15kHz gaming, there's simply no comparison against an LCD. The contrast, resolution scaling, lack of motion blur and lag, etc, is all pretty easily noticeable.

For modern gaming/PC/movies, I'll take a good LCD any day. I can still see the blur, but the better monitors (using an Eizo Foris 2332 here) are definitely "good enough" for gaming. Black levels still aren't so hot, but even so, there's no way I'd want a CRT for my PC. :-)

[Damion]

CRTs (by this I mean high-end ones) are still the reference for contrast, and lack of input lag and motion blur. Look at the LCD tests on prad.de for example. In addition, non-native screenmodes (Amiga games) are, at least when fullscreen, scaled on LCDs, which annoys some people. Granted, not everyone is sensitive to these issues, or cares. LCD can definitely still "look good" without beating CRT in every category.

Then you get into the strengths/weaknesses and tradeoffs of different LCD panel types. IIRC, Samsung cPVA of a few years back had black levels close to or better than CRT, but the pixel response was very slow. There's still no single perfect LCD tech.