Don't be a twit.   This isn't a philosophy debate.


If you don't want to trust the opinion of people who are probably more knowledgable than you about how high technology manufacture and distribution works, then don't.  That is your prerogative.



https://www.avforums.com/threads/...
This is a post from a few years back, but there is no practical reason, at all, to believe that the trend does not remain (or that diversity may even be less, due to the economic situation that transpired since that time).

There is a ton of cross-brand commonality in the source-manufacturers of actual LCD dsiplay modules.

Can you not see the problem with this as an argument, though?

I could post 20 different TVs with the same ratio and you could just always claim that the panels were made by the same manufacturer.

I fully accept what you're saying - but more direct evidence is needed.

No, more direct evidence is not needed to accept what is most probable as the simplest explanation, and just leaving it at that.

We are just trying to draw reasonable conclusions about something that is effectively unknowable (due to manufacturer confidentiality and trade secret).



Given the fact that there is no "standard" that dictates how these TVs crop, stretch, size pixels, etc, the most plausible explanation is a common manufacturer of the "raw materials" that build up the products.

Many industries and products work this way, so it isn't hard to believe that is what you are seeing here (especially since we know that this goes on for LCD panel modules, historically).




Unless you are going to go on a pilgrimage to manufacturing facilities in China, you will never know with certainty.

Just to reiterate what Bunnyboy has, quite correctly, pointed out MULTIPLE times in this thread: there is no "standard", hence there is no accepted "right way" to do it.

"Most common" is irrelevant, since just because something is more common or is more frequently used, does not make it objectively better or more technically correct.  Since CRT TV's effectively all had different "solutions", even historically there is no "right answer".  

I actually wouldn't be, at all, surprised to find out that the reason Nestopia shares the same behavior is that the original programmer had a monitor/LCD-TV manufactured by one of the same manufacturers you've already looked at.


You are getting up our ass about defensible facts, when the reality is, how this stuff is displayed is entirely subjective within certain bounds.

You're going off conjecture based on a sample of handful of TV's. Stating crap like "this is the most common method" is only going to fool those who are clueless. You have some sort of complex that you must be right, or "partially" right for some reason. Just because you want there to be a definitive result doesn't mean there will be one. Step into the world of technology for more than a few days of "research on google", and you'll have a much better grasp on how these things work and how they're and manufactured.

The only common numbers between all sets is they base things off of the same aspect ratio (at least the majority), and what may look good for NES may not look good for other consoles that use different resolutions. I really don't understand what's so difficult about this at all, aside from you trying to get people to agree with you on something you've been researching for a week or 2.

There is a definitely a sample-size problem with his argument

What is that saying?  "The plural of anecdote is not statistic"?

Judging from a sampling I've done just now, in my pants, I can conclude without a doubt that all penises are supposed to curve slightly to the left. If yours does not, then it's incorrect. Does anyone need photographic proof or will you just agree with me?

Is that actual left or stage left or nautical left? I might need a doctor!

Quit looking in the mirror and it will be right Plus, mine is straight, so everyones should be straight. If not, grab some textbooks and flatten that ish out

You're coming off like an arrogant ass. I said several posts back that I accepted that there wasn't a single standard and that I was just interested in finding out what was common, like a range of variability. That seems like a valid research question to me.

This is the question I've been trying to ask for the past several posts. I'm asking about the range of variability. Sorry if that wasn't clear before.

It would also be interesting to see what Nintendo does on the virtual console versions of SMB, and if there is a standard being applied accross all their games there.

You should play clash at demonhead.  it changes amount of tiles used per section, so it's not even consistent through the whole game.  I'm assuming different people designed the levels

Virtual Console on Wii U crops the top 8 pixels and then fills the 4:3 area. That's the way Nintendo has decided to display these games on an LCD/Plasma, so that's what I'm going to do

Then you get junk pixels on most side scrolling game if you dont crop a little off the sides.

If you want it the "correct" way, you'd do it the same way I have my inputs mapped: per game.  A frontend like Mamewah would be able to handle that.

That sounds like a lot of work I haven't heard of Mamewah, does it work with Retroarch?

edit: upon closer inspection, it looks like Virtual Console Wii is doing something weird, it's cropping the top 8 and bottom 4 it looks like, but then it trims the 4:3 area to a slightly smaller area so that when the image is stretched it fills the 4:3 area at the original 4:3 ratio. It's a really weird way to emulate overscan and it's actually pretty awful IMO.

Closest I can get with RA is 4:3 with overscan visible, so I guess that's what I'll do.

Junk pixels are part of the experience.

RF noise would be part of the experience.  Seeing junk pixels just means you tweaked something beyond what they expected.

I'm too lazy to figure things out per game. I might just create a few different settings - no cropping, crop top 8, crop top and bottom 8, etc - and change between them as needed.

SMB 1 for example looks like it's supposed to be in 4:3 with no cropping, but SMB3 definitely looks like at least the bottom 8 - 16 should be cropped since there is a big black bar at the bottom of the title screen. I think SMB2 is also supposed to be uncropped since there is a border around the character select screen that gets cut off otherwise.

The borders were there for padding, incase someones tv cut off too much, they didn't want to put anything important there. 

Castlevania 3 is weird, there is garbage in the top ~10 pixels. I think cropping 8 actually makes it look worse than cropping 0 because it turns it into a thin line that is somehow more distracting. I had to make sure original NES did the same thing when testing the AVS.

The junk pixels are just the NES being an NES. It's like complaining it's not capable of widescreen.

Thoese junked pixels were areas the developers didnt expect you do see.  Might as well play with a debugger running.   It's more like complaining about not having to blow into carts when I've cleaned a system, because that's not how we did it back in the day.

I like the way the original Wii crops/stretches NES games (not sure if it's universal or just NES games). They crop the bottom 4, top 12, and stretch to fill 4:3.

Wii U VC is doing something horrible. It also crops the bottom 4 and top 12 but then instead of stretching the remaining image to fill the 4:3 area, they trim the 4:3 area down to a slightly smaller 4:3 area so that when the image is stretched it retains the same pixel dimensions as an unaltered 4:3 image with all the overscan displayed. To me this just looks really wrong. If there's overscan missing at the top and bottom then the image needs to be vertically stretched accordingly. Not only is it wrong because no CRT could ever look like that, it results in awful letterboxing. Why did they have to implement this horrible cropping method? And why is the color palette so dark? So far I like VC on the Wii a lot better than the Wii U.

Also, why can't Nintendo implement a simple scanline option for those that prefer them?

Retroarch 1.0.0.3 will have overscan options so that it will be easy to crop the amount you want and resize it to 4:3. For now, I figured out I can emulate the same pixel dimensions as in old Wii VC by setting the video aspect ratio in RA to 1.2 (6/5) and leaving overscan on.

Few things that need mentioning........

1. XRGB Mini Framemeister = 24ms of lag (minimum)

2. XRGB-3 = 1-2ms of lag (VGA out, 480p, B0 mode only)

3. Emulators are laggy in nature. I cannot give the precise reason as to why due to leaving them behind so long ago and forgetting about their intricacies, BUT they are naturally laggy. BSNES is like 4-6 frames for most people. And its considered "accurate" (my SNES console isn't that laggy, so perhaps BSNES is not so accurate?)

4. Space concerns are not an issues for CRT-displays. Did everyone suddenly move into tiny houses? Before flat-panel displays, EVERYONE had CRT's....even gigantic ones like Rear-Projection CRT's. Seriously, space is not an entirely "honest" excuse. Go to the Goodwill or any thrift store with a compact DVD player and the Avia DVD, upload a cross-hatch pattern on their CRT's. Check the geometry, and make sure the picture comes up within 30 seconds of powering that sucker on. If all checks out, then buy it and enjoy. These retro games were designed originally on 13-20 inch monitors, so that's your best option, and there is loads of space for that (and don't worry about using composite/RF.......many or most old games prior to the N64 were designed with that signal in mind, hence the dithering that some games use/abuse).

5. And arch_8ngel is spot on regarding "detectable lag" vs. "gameplay destroying lag". Seriously, what you detect, and what actually affects your gameplay is two different things. You might not "feel" it during generic tests, BUT......play something demanding, like the Clinger Winger stage on Battletoads, and add 2+ frames of lag, and then tell me that you don't notice it with a straight face. You can't unless your a fantastic liar.

Hope this helps. Don't want to argue, just want to add some helpful information for anyone who may be confused.