Scanlines on flatscreen tv or monitor?

Sorry if this has been asked a zillion times, but I can't find what I'm looking for.

I'm looking to replace my old television (one I use for old consoles) for something smaller, maybe a flatscreen or a monitor.
It's simply taking up too much space in the room I use in the appartment I recently moved into. But is it possible to get
scanlines on a flatscreen or monitor? I'm curious what other users are using for their systems?

Thanks in advance for any info!

You can get it with a Framemeister. But why would you want scanlines anyway?

The frameister is expensive. I believe you can add scanlines to a monitor using a scanline generator that is piggy backed on an RGB Converter. Something like this..http://arcadeforge.net/SLG3000:::3.html

I was looking into this as well but it got too complicated and never got around to buying one. Instead I found a middleground with REtron 5 hooked up to LCD. Yes its emulation but it gets the job done.

Too steep for my blood... Doesn't it look like crap without the scanlines? Dunno, I feel like they are part of playing old games.

I recently got the Frame Meister and experimented with the scan lines, but turned them off. I thought I'd like them better but didn't somehow. You're not missing out on too much I don't think.

I've just had a thought, and nearly dismissed it but it might be a goer: A frame of some sort with very fine wires / cotton placed over the TV?

A bit stupid sounding and not a serious suggestion by any means, but it's an interesting thought...

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Originally Posted by GelmiR

Too steep for my blood... Doesn't it look like crap without the scanlines? Dunno, I feel like they are part of playing old games.

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Personally, I think all that's needed is the right amount of blurring. Some like it as sharp as possible, but coming from someone that hasn't seen a 2D console hooked up to a CRT in some 18 years, that sharpness looks fucked up to me.

Me too... CRT is FTW. Retro Game in LCD tv's is not to me...

(Poor cel phone camera, my model 1 with svideo)
http://i.imgur.com/5q7whxL.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/JwIzHWh.jpg

With scanlines on a CRT you get slight bleeding into the scanlines which gives these sort-of rounded edges to brighter areas. It's a hard effect to really describe, but at the time I think sprite artists were probably taking advantage of this effect since it does make the sprites look more detailed, at least to my eye. Just adding black lines on a LCD/Plasma doesn't really reproduce the same effect. Blargg's NTSC filter looks pretty good, but that's only currently available for emulators.

Scanlines are not scanlines at all, in fact they are the complete absence of scanlines. Since the display is designed to display interlaced signals (all odd lines and then all even lines flipping back and forth at 59.94 times per second), old game systems had to work around this. In order to display a progressive picture on an interlaced display, it is told to stay on the odd lines instead of jump to the even lines. So you get 59.94 frames per second, all drawn on the odd lines (or 50 frames per second in PAL). The black lines you see are just the even lines which are being ignored by the electron gun. 240P is not an official spec in NTSC or PAL, it's a devious trick that just happens to work in order to allow game systems with limited bandwidth to display an acceptable picture. Qjimbo is right. There is some bloom into the black area with brighter parts of the image compared to darker parts. Sometimes you might not even see the black line depending on the amount of bloom in that area.

"Scanlines" can help when playing on non-CRT displays like an HDTV. But they get old quickly. They look fantastic on a CRT. But you can get used to not having them pretty quickly if playing on an HDTV.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cleeg

I recently got the Frame Meister and experimented with the scan lines, but turned them off. I thought I'd like them better but didn't somehow. You're not missing out on too much I don't think.

I've just had a thought, and nearly dismissed it but it might be a goer: A frame of some sort with very fine wires / cotton placed over the TV?

A bit stupid sounding and not a serious suggestion by any means, but it's an interesting thought...

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Qjimbo

With scanlines on a CRT you get slight bleeding into the scanlines which gives these sort-of rounded edges to brighter areas. It's a hard effect to really describe, but at the time I think sprite artists were probably taking advantage of this effect since it does make the sprites look more detailed, at least to my eye. Just adding black lines on a LCD/Plasma doesn't really reproduce the same effect. Blargg's NTSC filter looks pretty good, but that's only currently available for emulators.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Joe Redifer

... Qjimbo is right. There is some bloom into the black area with brighter parts of the image compared to darker parts. Sometimes you might not even see the black line depending on the amount of bloom in that area.

"Scanlines" can help when playing on non-CRT displays like an HDTV. But they get old quickly. They look fantastic on a CRT. But you can get used to not having them pretty quickly if playing on an HDTV.

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I've watched multiple videos showing off the capabilities of scanline generators like the Frame Meister. But each time I detected that something was amiss in terms of the picture especially when compared it to your standard CRT. Qjimbo's opening comment and Joe's explanation sums up my perception of devices the Frame Meister: The scanlines may mimic what a CRT can display but not as accurately.

I'm a huge fan of the Framemeister, but yeah, the best it can do is mimic a good CRT display, it will never quite match it.