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The Right Display for a DIY Arcade Machine

Monitors, LCD, or TVs… What’s the Best Choice?

Sorry for the infrequent posts lately. There have been two main factors that are currently keeping me from moving forward with the DIY Arcade Machine. The first being financial because the economy has been so crappy lately and the other biggest factor being the difficulty in finding a display.

Now normally this would not be an issue, but remember that for the first arcade machine I wanted to go with something compact to build a miniature arcade machine. Because of this I have been having a really hard time finding a small display.

Now I know I said my next post would incorporate some of the plans I have been working on so that people could use my designs to work off of if they wanted to. The only problem is without the display I can’t really work out any measurements on my designs.

So I wanted to post an article about what I have been running into with different considerations people should make when they are choosing a display for their arcade machine. So let’s take a look at the differences in CRT monitors, LCD monitors, TVs, and the pros and cons of each in deciding what is best for each individual project.

CRT Monitors

CRT Monitors are the standard boxy displays you find on older computers. CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube which is the technology that drives a CRT monitor. A CRT works by shooting electrons at the screen to create images. Because of the way CRT monitors work they were well known for having a faster response time than LCD monitors. This is no longer the case as LCD technology has improved quiet a bit in the past few years.

The benefits of using a CRT monitor would be that because most people are replacing them with LCDs you might be able to get one for free from someone if they are getting rid of it. They would be more “authentic” in their design to what is actually used in arcade machines and with older units it was not uncommon to find them in sizes smaller than 15”. (Which would be nice for a miniature design.)

The cons with some older CRT monitors are that older units may not display as high a resolution as newer monitors. This would affect your system more in Windows than while using your emulators as older gaming system utilized lower resolutions and the emulators run at these resolutions unless you change your display options in the settings. Another con is that older CRT monitors display fewer colors than new monitors, although once again older systems used fewer colors, so both these considerations would mainly be noticeable in Windows and not while your emulators are running.

The biggest con is that finding a new CRT monitor now a days is a difficult task and finding one smaller than 15” inches is next to impossible unless you are looking into a specialty monitor. A lot of these are used in medical or industrial applications and are outside of a reasonable price range. (Although these seem to have the best response times, color depths, and small size ranges.)

Another con with CRT monitors is their weight. Because a CRT is a giant glass tube, they usually weigh anywhere from 25-50 lbs adding to the overall weight of your system.

PROS

1. Fast response times
2. Good color depth
3. Varying sizes
4. Might be able to get one for free from Craigslist

CONS

1. Weight: They are heavy!
2. Specialized small CRTs are expensive
3. It’s hard to find “new” CRTs in stores
4. Older CRTs do not support higher resolutions and color depths.
5. Do not support DVI video connections.

LCD Monitors

LCD monitors are the standard display most people use as of this article. (2008). They have many advantages over CRT monitors because they are inexpensive, most have a great response time, the color depth is rich and vibrant, and they are light weight.

The only problem with an LCD monitor is finding sizes smaller than 17”. Because LCDs have become the norm and most consumers are looking for bigger and bigger displays a lot of manufacturers have stopped producing smaller units. Finding a 15” is very difficult and anything smaller is next to impossible.

I have come across a few smaller LCDs online, but once again these are used for specialty applications like displays in cars. Because of this they tend to use connections other than standard VGA or DVI that is commonly used for computer displays. They can also be fairly expensive because they are designed for special uses.

Cons with LCDs are mostly found in older units, and these are commonly response time, contrast ratio, and dead pixels. If the response time is low you will get something known as ghosting where you see trails on the display when objects are moving fast. This is a real bummer in games where it is most noticeable. A low contrast ratio affects how accurate your colors are display, and how true “blacks” are. With a low contrast ratio blacks can look more like grays and colors feel washed out.

Dead pixels can be a real drag because it is when pixels in the display actually burnout and display as black on a colored screen, or they get stuck on one color which can be very noticeable on black screens. I have an old LCD monitor that has 1 green pixel, and when Windows boots, it is all I can look at.

Overall I think an LCD would be a great option for my project because they are light weight, and support most current display standards. They usually cost about as much as a CRT would cost if you could find one (new), and it would free up space inside my arcade cabinet that would otherwise be taken up by a CRT display.

PROS

1. Light weight.
2. Support most modern video standards, resolutions, and color depths.
3. Newer LCDs feature great response times and contrast ratios.
4. Support for VGA and DVI connections.
5. Price is about the same as a new CRT.

CONS

1. Small LCDs utilize non-standard video connections.
2. Small LCDs are usually more expensive than a larger LCD display.
3. Older LCDs suffer from slow response times, and low contrast ratios.
4. Possibility of dead pixels.

TV’s

The last consideration I had made for the project was using a portable TV display. It is easy to find small tube TVs for relatively cheap, it would meet the size requirements I am shooting for, and I know they are available locally so I could save myself money on shipping.

There are several considerations to make with the idea of using a TV though. First off is that a TV display is usually a relatively low resolution. This means that while the emulators would play fine on the TV (since old video games were originally designed to be displayed at these resolutions anyway.) anything I did within Windows would look terrible.

Keep in mind that your operating system will be set to at least 1024 by 768. Some people might say “hey, you could always set it to 800 by 600” but we need to keep in mind all the display factors involved with the OS. 800 by 600 on a 7-10” screen is going to leave little if any room for icons on a desktop. Plus if we make a custom interface which I would like to do, you will also be limited in the room you have to work with. So because of the size of the display, the display requirements of the operating system, and various other considerations I have pretty much ruled out using a portable TV display.

There are two other brief considerations I want to mention regarding portable TVs. The first is the interface connection on this type of display. Most of these TVs use an RCA video connection if they do support video in. To use a display like this it would need to support video in. Most video cards that support video out via RCA do not output a signal until the operating system kicks in. This means that if we have the display hooked up to the PC we will not get video until the system has loaded into Windows. So if anything goes wrong during the POST and we need to troubleshoot the system we would be unable to do so unless we hooked up another display. (CRT or LCD)

The second consideration is that these types of displays have relatively poor color depth compared to LCD displays or CRTs. With older game systems this is not a problem because as I mentioned before these games were originally designed to be displayed on TVs. But this is another consideration for anything custom we want to do within the OS. Whether it is a custom boot screen, background, screen saver or interface. So we might put a lot of work into designing something really nice for our arcade machine only to have it look half ass because of limited color depth on a TV.

PROS

1. Light weight.
2. Inexpensive
3. Easy to find. Can be purchased locally to save on shipping.

CONS

1. Utilize non-standard PC video connections.
2. Limited video standards, resolutions, and color depths.
3. Usually display at best 800 by 600 with most being much lower.
4. May not have a video-in connection which is required for the project.

Conclusion

As you can see there are a lot of factors that go into choosing and then finding the proper display for a project like this. With a standard sized arcade machine finding a display would be relatively simple and I would already have what I need. But because I will be building a miniature arcade machine finding the perfect display has been a much harder undertaking than I originally expected.

I hope this article has given people some ideas for considerations to look at when they are planning their own arcade machine.