Anyone play old games on HD TVs?

[aqutalion]

So I might be getting a new TV. But I play a lot of older games (think PS1 and SNES), and haven't been too impressed by how they look on newer TVs. Does anyone here do the same, and can maybe recommend a model where they look decent, or at least not like crap?

[fireheart]

I still have a PS2 (think the "thick and bulky" model, back when they sold vertical stands for it and the disc drive was a tray that slid open) and lately I've been playing Final Fantasy X and X-2 on it (our TV is HD).

We use an LG flatscreen LCD TV and the quality is fine. Hell, I can even see up Yuna's nose if I want to
I'll be able to fully test things out in a few years time if I'm still at home (basically my parents rent TV's out on a cycle every few years. They have one up their half of the house and we have one down our end of the house. The one up their end is rent-to-buy. When they've paid it off (or close to), they then give us that TV and rent a newer model out )

[TheSHAD0W]

You may need to adjust the TV's settings to make sure the game will play in the old 4:3 proportions. Depending on the TV this will be called "pillar format".

[RetailWorkhorse]

I'll tell ya; Majora's Mask looks terrible on my HD telly. I nearly cried when I saw the Happy Mask Salesman.

Of course, I nearly cried when I saw him the first time ever because he is one scary dude.

I no longer fear Clowns, there is only HIM. O_O

[dendawg]

OP, assuming you're in North America, try seeing if your TV has a setting for 240i, or some similar resolution.

[lordlundar]

You're going to have to clarify. Is the "crap" a matter of stretching or is it a matter of being blurry.

If it's the former there should be settings to display in 4:3 mode which is the standard ratio for older TVs.

If it's the latter then you're effectively hosed. The blur is coming from the TV trying to display something out of it's default resolution. The larger the difference the more the blur as it tries to offset it. It was never an issue in the past because before flat panel TVs came out the resolution was standardized at 320x240. That is lower than any modern flat panel TV is.

[aqutalion]

You're going to have to clarify. Is the "crap" a matter of stretching or is it a matter of being blurry.

If it's the former there should be settings to display in 4:3 mode which is the standard ratio for older TVs.

If it's the latter then you're effectively hosed. The blur is coming from the TV trying to display something out of it's default resolution. The larger the difference the more the blur as it tries to offset it. It was never an issue in the past because before flat panel TVs came out the resolution was standardized at 320x240. That is lower than any modern flat panel TV is.

I was ineed talking about the blur. I was hoping there were some were it wasn't as noticable, or that could be set to lower resolution. But you're probably right and I'm hosed.

[Gizmo]

We play PS2 lego games (and other games) on our HD 72" projector screen TV.

Our system mostly still uses scarts so it goes PS2 to Scart switcher, scart switcher to HDMI Upscaler box, Upscaler to surround sound system, Surround sound to TV.

With that set up - especially the upscaler box makes it relatively good. It doesn't make Star Wars Lego look as good as our friends PS3 copy of LOTR Lego but it doesn't make me dizzy to play or show blur.

(Obviously I know nothing about US TV so this may not work there... I don't even know if US stuff uses scarts!)

[wolfie]

You're going to have to clarify. Is the "crap" a matter of stretching or is it a matter of being blurry.

If it's the former there should be settings to display in 4:3 mode which is the standard ratio for older TVs.

If it's the latter then you're effectively hosed. The blur is coming from the TV trying to display something out of it's default resolution. The larger the difference the more the blur as it tries to offset it. It was never an issue in the past because before flat panel TVs came out the resolution was standardized at 320x240. That is lower than any modern flat panel TV is.

Also, different flatscreens might handle "non-native" resolutions in different ways. If a 1080 pixel high screen takes a 480 pixel high image (maximum for a nominal 525 line NTSC screen) and fills the screen by having a group of 4 adjacent lines be turned into 2, 2, 2, 3 lines respectively, it'll be blurrier than if it leaves black bands top and bottom, and turns each pixel of the original into a 2x2 pixel block.

[aqutalion]

Also, different flatscreens might handle "non-native" resolutions in different ways. If a 1080 pixel high screen takes a 480 pixel high image (maximum for a nominal 525 line NTSC screen) and fills the screen by having a group of 4 adjacent lines be turned into 2, 2, 2, 3 lines respectively, it'll be blurrier than if it leaves black bands top and bottom, and turns each pixel of the original into a 2x2 pixel block.

The kind that leaves the black bands on top/bottom would be perfect. Do you know of any models that do this?

[wolfie]

The kind that leaves the black bands on top/bottom would be perfect. Do you know of any models that do this?

No - never used a flat screen (except laptops). Having a bit of an electronics background, I was speculating on why some units would show a "sub-native" picture decently, while on others it would be ugly. I know that on my previous laptop, if I set it to 800x600 it would be really ugly.

ETA: You might want to look for an HDTV that uses a scanning-type technology (look closely at a low-res display on a CRT and you'll see what I mean - a single pixel doesn't consist of exactly one RGB phosphor triad) instead of a pixel-type technology (such as LCD). Unfortunately, CRTs are goinghave gone the way of the dodo (and aren't flat anyway), and the only current technology I know of that MIGHT be scanning-type (where in low resolutions, it merely increases the spacing between sweeps, and horizontal pixels are based on how much of the sweep it "shines" the beam for) is plasma. If you have a portable version of the source (can you record the game you're playing on a PVR or a DVD-R?), you might want to bring that with you as a "sample of a hard-to-display image" when shopping for a TV.

[AdamAnt316]

I recently brought my Colecovision to a relative's house, so that one of my older cousins could relive the video gaming of his youth (he had a blast). I hooked it up to the flatscreen TV in the living room, and while most games looked fine, some of them were washed out for some reason. Generally, though, I play my classic video game systems on old-style CRT TVs, because they generally look better on them (and NES light gun games like Duck Hunt don't work on modern flatscreens due to relying on how CRT sets draw their images in order to function).

One thing you have to watch out for when playing vintage video games on modern TVs is lag. Basically, the modern flatscreen TVs have to convert the analog signals to digital for the LCD panel, which causes a small delay between the signal and what you see on the screen. That might not matter for live video (or modern systems using component or HDMI signals), but for older games requiring crackerjack timing, it can be noticeable (and distracting). There are some TVs which offer "gaming modes" which attempt to cut down on said lag, but I'm not sure if they're entirely successful.
-Adam

[lordlundar]

No - never used a flat screen (except laptops). Having a bit of an electronics background, I was speculating on why some units would show a "sub-native" picture decently, while on others it would be ugly. I know that on my previous laptop, if I set it to 800x600 it would be really ugly.

It's because of similar approaches to enlarging images that photo editing programs use. Some use a baseline expansion of a 1:x ratio (where x is the upper resolution) while others use an estimation algorithm similar to what you see with digital zoom on a digital camera. The former works great for video games (which is a pixel based medium) but not so hot for video. The latter is preferred for video (largely because it's just one more blur effect used to cover up the low framerates) but causes games to go blurry.