7 replies to this topic

[atarilovesyou]

I've heard that the newer (well, all non-tube) tv's have trouble with the older game systems. I just hooked up my Nes to my 55 inch LED tv. The picture looks pretty fantastic, none of the pixelization I had heard about. When the games scroll, however, it's noticeably choppy in parts.

My biggest beef is the 'latency', or the fact that it takes a split second for the inputs of the controls to translate onto the screen. Is this normal? I noticed it immediately while playing some Lifeforce. I'm going through a bunch of them right now just to see if this is 'normal'...so far, it is.

Anybody else have issue with this? I've got my trust 27 inch tube tv for my old school systems, but it's a shame I can't use my huge tv...the picture and colors are really quite crisp after all.

Maybe a way to make my tv more old school game friendly? I'm currently using AV outputs, maybe should I try coaxial? I've heard that older plasma tv's had higher refresh rates and hence were more gamer friendly, but the risk of burn-in was higher than on LCD tvs. I've had no issues with my PS2, though.

Is this just an unfortunate side effect for old school systems?

[MagitekAngel]

I would not play games on a plasma screen - persistent on-screen objects like life bars and score counts can and will burn in to the screen over time. When using a modern TV, go with LCD.
The lag you describe is a universal problem with modern TVs, but the newer ones are getting better. For the most part it doesn't bother me - emulators tend to lag on me worse than my 32" LCD.

[chrisbid]

some sets are better than others, but its not exactly a feature electronic stores are going to tout (or even know about). the best thing to do is when TV shopping, bring along a cheap jak's plug and play and test out the latency of the composite inputs.

[ToddUGA]

If your set has it, make sure to enable game mode. Game mode turns off a lot of the unnecessary picture processing done by the set that causes lag.

[atarilovesyou]

Sure enough, after a bunch of menu digging, there is a 'game mode' on my LED tv. The picture isn't as 'crisp', but hell, it still looks a lot better than most of my old tube tvs! So at least now, the games are definitely playable. Lots of background static noise on some games, but I can live with it. Were it not for this game mode option, there'd be no way I'd even bother playing on it...funny thing is that I can't say I noticed such a difference with my PS2 on it. Maybe because it's a 'newer' system, but even that's over a decade old.

Wonder how my 2600 would look on my LED?...lol.

[ToddUGA]

Glad you got it working.

[SeberHusky]

The only problem with old games on new TV's is.....light guns.
If you want to play Duck Hunt...you're SOL. You'll have to play TV Hunt and get yourself a good old 1980's CRT TV.

[Galeforcerm]

I always buy the fastest refreshing tv i can buy with new tvs. Some are 5-8ms or slower which causes ghosting even when im watching tv. I think my current one is 2ms. Sometimes its hard to find the refresh rate for a tv, I think they leave it off the box on the slower ones on purpose.