Any CRT I should look out for/buy?

[lllllllllllllllllllllllll]

Hey guys tomorrow I am planning on going to various Thrift Shops to find a CRT I can use for Melee, I just wanted to know if there any certain CRT's that I should say away from/buy. Before this I have been using a Coby 22" TV with a 8ms Refresh Rate... so I will hope this will solve my problems, lol. : D

Thanks For the Help,
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[Elyssa Xey Hexen]

A single frame in melee is 17 milliseconds.

I have few criteria for a CRT. No busted out or hard to reach buttons which therefore require the usage of a remote to access. Preferable lightweight, but depends upon the screen size. Generally, I think 17 inch diagonal is pretty ideal playing size for four people around a TV. In which case the weight is about right. Flat screen is preferred over the arching screen front since its just nicer to look at at all angles in my opinion given the tight quarters for doubles sometimes.

 

[-Philip Coast Philip-]

Um... lllllllllllllllllllllllll:

Yeah, what Xeylode said: 17"-20" is good, lighter weight is nice, and one that doesn't need remotes, it has buttons. Also, it's easier if the tv accepts yellow and white RCA inputs in the back (flat-screen CRTs usually have these). Some tvs are only coaxial.

Xeylode:

You may know this, but as a reminder, the 8ms refresh rate lllllllllllllllllllllllll (lol) is referring to has to do with ghosting effects, after the image has already been displayed (which is local to LCDs). The 17ms per frame is just how long until a new image is displayed. Latency in LCDs (etc.) is usually referred to as response time. This response time is normally measured with a video resolution and framerate that is the same or at least comparable to the native resolution of the LCD, which melee's is not, creating even more lag. That's why the 17ms time is important for melee, because when LCDs take melee's video, they have lagged anywhere between 50 and 500ms, though that number can be made almost perfect now.

As a technical side note, crts made before around '96-'98 give or take should play or feel different than later tvs, in that they're a hair faster. sweden's got my back on this, apparently. Technology, and such. Not necessarily a good thing, but I prefer them.

 

[Twitchy]

You may know this, but as a reminder, the 8ms refresh rate lllllllllllllllllllllllll (lol) is referring to has to do with ghosting effects, after the image has already been displayed (which is local to LCDs). The 17ms per frame is just how long until a new image is displayed. Latency in LCDs (etc.) is usually referred to as response time. This response time is normally measured with a video resolution and framerate that is the same or at least comparable to the native resolution of the LCD, which melee's is not, creating even more lag. That's why the 17ms time is important for melee, because when LCDs take melee's video, they have lagged anywhere between 50 and 500ms, though that number can be made almost perfect now.

I have an old CRT computer monitor from the 90's that runs at an 85hz refresh rate. Would that be a better choice than a 60hz LCD monitor when playing something like Dolphin netplay?

 

[The_Burn]

I have an old CRT computer monitor from the 90's that runs at an 85hz refresh rate. Would that be a better choice than a 60hz LCD monitor when playing something like Dolphin netplay?

I believe (and correct me someone if I'm wrong) but dolphin doesn't need to translate the output from composite to digital so the only delay should come from the monitor and a lot of monitors have less than 20 ms, so it shouldn't make too much of a difference

There's a website called display lag that should give you a good idea of the lag your monitor has as refresh rate doesn't correlate to input-to-display lag (you can't get more then 60 frames per second)

 

[-Philip Coast Philip-]

I have an old CRT computer monitor from the 90's that runs at an 85hz refresh rate. Would that be a better choice than a 60hz LCD monitor when playing something like Dolphin netplay?

The refresh rate doesn't matter here. What The_Burn said is essentially true, and you can check your individual model on a couple sites to see your overall display lag time, more or less.

(Oddly, this is actual refresh rate (measured in Hz), while the refresh rate the op was referring to is referred to as (pixel) response time (measured in ms), which is what I was mentioning in the first part of my post, but then subtly switched to talking about the collective 'display lag' (which is technically separate from response time, ha). The language has traditionally been fuzzy, actually.)

Hope I'm not being too technical here, but, while the refresh rate on a CRT won't really matter, higher refresh rate LCD monitors have an interplay between the speed at which you're getting updated frames (e.g. 60hz vs 120hz) and the amount of additional lag that is created from all that processing. Also, there's a visual difference as well, since additional frames must be created when the source video is only 60fps, again creating additional processing that must happen somewhere.

 

[Twitchy]

Hope I'm not being too technical here, but, while the refresh rate on a CRT won't really matter, higher refresh rate LCD monitors have an interplay between the speed at which you're getting updated frames (e.g. 60hz vs 120hz) and the amount of additional lag that is created from all that processing. Also, there's a visual difference as well, since additional frames must be created when the source video is only 60fps, again creating additional processing that must happen somewhere.

Ah okay, I see. I come from the competitive FPS community where you need every frame per second you can get, haha. I remember all the older CSS players using big CRT monitors for the higher refresh rate advantage over LCD's. I failed to realize that Melee only runs at 60fps.

Does anyone know if it accepts inputs at a different rate? I know some older N64 games like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask run at 20fps but accept inputs at 60fps, making it possible to buffer inputs during unpause lag.

 

[-Philip Coast Philip-]

Ah okay, I see. I come from the competitive FPS community where you need every frame per second you can get, haha. I remember all the older CSS players using big CRT monitors for the higher refresh rate advantage over LCD's. I failed to realize that Melee only runs at 60fps.

Does anyone know if it accepts inputs at a different rate? I know some older N64 games like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask run at 20fps but accept inputs at 60fps, making it possible to buffer inputs during unpause lag.

Yeah, thus the interplay between the higher framerates and refresh rate and such, heh. There may be an additional factor here too, but anyway.

You're asking whether Dolphin accepts inputs at a faster rate than Melee outputs video (60fps)? It sounds like the answer is yes, from your example, but I can't say for sure. Of course the game can accept, register, or buffer an input within the timeframe of a frame itself, since some moves are frame-specific (e.g. SWD), but exactly how fast that is, or at which point you can enter inputs, I don't know.