Congrats Ho

[lgolem]

you know you and Daniel should do your little buisness plan now that PPP is just sitting off in storage..you could make some slight money off of it...lol

[Ho]

Actually, PPP is spoken for. It has been for quite awhile.

Besides, PPP is pretty niche. I wouldn't imagine it would be much of a revenue generator in most markets.

[lgolem]

True...AND daniel doesn't have much room left anyways..lol.

[Riot]

Yeah I think PPP would make negative $2000.

[BakaOrochi]

Ah yes, Twinkle, I didn't know that was PS1-based though, mostly because I don't really read Sys16.

System16 is known to have inaccurate information about some hardware, as the only people that sometimes give the guy information are people who don't know what they're talking about. Thus, I tend not to pull information from that site when it comes to anything Bemani-related.

[Ho]

True. In fact, I actually submitted a correction to System 16. He had PPP 2nd Mix listed on Firebeat hardware, but it's actually Viper-based. He changed his listings accordingly.

But in this case, I will vouch for the data on Twinkle. There are several Sony chips on the mainboard that match Playstation parts including the CPU.

[Ho]

Also, I must personally call blastemphy for using a LCD screen on that setup cause I have never seen one that can properly deinterlace standard definition signals, but I will admit to being preferential towards my Sony CRT.

I know this has already been responded to by others (well, at least MonMotha), but I wanted to share my own thoughts on the matter.

First of all, let me assure you that I put a significant amount of time and research into choosing a TV for the cabinet. I must admit that I actually slightly prefer the look of plasma over LCD and CRT over either of the other two--mostly due to the deep blacks and higher contrast ratio plasma and CRT are able to achieve.

I made the decision that I wanted to match the size of the original 40" LCD rear-projection monitor Konami was using when the cabinet I bought was produced. I admit that part of this decision was driven simply by the "cool factor" of having a really big screen in that cabinet.

Also, the original dimensions of the cabinet were designed with a 40" screen in mind. Therefore, the note scroll is placed more directly in front of you when you are standing at the controls on either side. On a smaller sized display, you have to look more toward the center as the scroll is offset from your direct line-of-sight.



If you look at those two pictures, you'll see what I'm talking about. On 7th Style (the old monitor), the picture begins right above the handles on either side of the vertical console with the LED display and effector controls. On 10th Style (the new monitor), you can see that the picture begins a few inches inside of those handles and there's a huge bezel that fills the otherwise empty space.

16:9 CRTs max out 34" (at least those commonly found in stores), so that technology was eliminated from my search--not because I don't like it, but because it didn't meet my established size criteria. I also didn't want to have to try and build or obtain one of the giant monitor bezels that they're using on the newer cabinets.

I went to the store and tested several different models for lag since that's arguably the most important consideration for a IIDX monitor. CRT had virtually no lag.

DLP had 3-4 frames of lag. That's consistent with the DLP I have at home. I love the DLP picture for TV and movies, but the lag makes it almost completely useless for IIDX.

Both plasma and LCD had about 1-1.5 frames of lag. I was actually kind of surprised and impressed at how much faster LCD has gotten since the last time I really looked at it. I can remember a time when I didn't like LCD for general TV viewing--nevermind IIDX.

I ended up choosing LCD over plasma because I was concerned about burn-in given that IIDX has a lot of static displays. I know that plasma has gotten a lot better about preventing burn-in, but I chose no risk over a lowered risk. MonMotha also reminded me that plasma has higher power consumption and more heat dissipation.

However, I have to admit that I am currently second guessing myself just a little...

I really do like the higher contrast and deep blacks of CRT and plasma. The LCD I have, while good, still looks a little "milky" by comparison. Combine this with the fact that we have a plasma display in one of our conference rooms here at work. It's nearly 4 years old now and generally displays very static Windows desktop images most of the time.

It has probably had more hours of service than I'm likely to put on a monitor in the same amount of time, and it is not exhibiting any burn-in problems. If newer monitors are even better at burn-in protection, my burn-in concerns may be more paranoia than actual issue.

EDIT: One final note...Now that I've played some on the monitor, timing doesn't seem to be too much of an issue in terms of lag. I admit that my Just Great count is down somewhat, but I think at least some of that can be attributed to the single high speed setting on 4th Style AC.

If I'm having problems adjusting to the monitor, it's probably more the adjustment of being ~2 ft. from a 40" 16:9 screen vs. 3-4 ft. from a 27" 4:3 screen. It's a "big" adjustment!

[BakaOrochi]

I've actually heard that lag issues can vary with monitors to connection types.

This was from a IIDX forum quite a while ago, and I know squat about lag issues for IIDX arcade and monitor types.

[Ho]

That would certainly be possible...

If you're feeding it an interlaced signal, it will need to deinterlace it as well as scale it to fit the size of the screen. If you feed it a progressive signal, it would only need to do the latter.

For the purposes of my lag tests at the store, I fed the candidates an interlaced signal. I wanted to know the worst case scenario. Plus, that matches what I'd be feeding it should I ever decide to play CS versions on that monitor (which I fully intend to do).

[sam]

i'm not too versed on the upgrade mechanics of IIDX but i have happy sky




just saying

and yes lag time varies. you want a CRT with IIDX because there's no timing mechanism within the game itself it relies on the straight 60hz signal from a crt. LCDs, DLPs and Plasmas all have delay problems.

you should look into an EDTV display. There's no need for HDTV as the signal that is fed from IIDX is a 640x480 p signal. the resolution change from SDTV>EDTV looks much better than SDTV>HDTV

[Ho]

Believe me, I considered all that already.

See here and here for pictures of the tests I did on both the TVs in my house as well as several from Circuit City and Best Buy in my quest to find one to go in the cabinet.

You are correct that CRTs exhibited virtually no lag whatsoever. From a timing perspective, they are the ideal choice for IIDX.

However, as I stated above, I wanted to match the 40" size of the original monitor for that cabinet. CRTs max out at 34". After testing many, many plasma and LCD monitors, I found that they all had a lag of about 1-1.5 frames (@ 30 fps). That's 1/30-1/20 of a second. Yes, that makes a difference in IIDX, but it is still small enough to easily compensate for while playing...unlike my DLP which lags 3-4 frames and turns me in to a good attacking noob.

I also looked at some EDTV displays. Old IIDX hardware and the PS2 both deliver a 480i signal. The EDTVs were no better at doing that than anything else...still 1-1.5 frames of lag.

Also, EDTVs have a very noticeable "screen door" effect due to the lower native resolution of the panel (especially at the ~2 ft. viewing distance of IIDX). I prefer the more solid look of a higher resolution panel--even though the image must be upscaled. The display time did not seem to be negatively (or perceptibly) impacted by such scaling.

Bottom line: Scalers, deinterlacers, and image processors have improved greatly recently. They're much better AND faster. There was definitely a time not long ago when I wouldn't have even considered LCD for this application and would have had extreme worries about plasma as well. Now, either seem relatively fit for the task based upon my testing.

[Amp Divorax]

Actually the CRTs used by Konami are not according to the people at Tokyo Game Action, they are in fact 36" Toshiba SDTVs. Also, the only inputs available from the machine are composite, S-Video, and SCART and none of them can carry a 480p signal. Given the fact that it is an actual PC though, I think it would be possible to use a VGA connection, but the one major issue is that it might run at 60 hz instead of 59.941 hz which was the intended refresh rate, and as a result the game will go offsync with the music.

Edit: The closest to such a TV I can find in this country is at http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 8084372830.

[Ho]

I don't doubt that 36" 16:9 CRTs are available, but I certainly have never seen one for sale in a store. Even so, I had decided that I wanted to match the 40" size of the older machines.

I have doubts that a 40" CRT (direct view) is available at all. The weight of such a thing would be ridiculous. The cost just to ship those suckers around through the supply chain would probably make them cost as much as their LCD and plasma counterparts. And if that were the case, I doubt enough people would be interested in them to make them a viable product.

But what you say about the Bemani PC hardware is interesting. They're still using a 480i RGB even though it's now being generated by a PC (for which a VGA signal would likely be easier an more natural). Hmm... If that's correct, I wonder if it's a legacy compatibility decision. That would certainly make upgrading older cabinets easier and might make it so that older songs and videos wouldn't need to be converted. Still, it seems a bit odd to me.

At any rate, I've been reevaluating my television decision for the past couple days. I'm considering exchanging the one I got for a different one. The one I got is fine, but the contrast ratio is somewhat lacking and it doesn't produce deep, rich blacks. The result is that the image is a little dull and doesn't represent the bold, sharp look of IIDX the way I'd like.

I've compiled a list of possible replacements. However, I'm still going to stick with the larger 40" size. As a result, all the potential candidates are still LCDs and plasmas. I'm kind of leaning toward plasma now though because I think it will be better able to deliver the high-contrast image I'm looking for. Burn-in is still somewhat of a concern, but I think I was giving it more weight than it deserved based upon the improved technology and my relatively light (compared to an arcade installation) usage patterns.

[Amp Divorax]

I can understand your POV on LCDs in that respect as it does give the old skool vibe now that I've seen the difference.

In terms of converting songs that is probably true since both Twinkle and PC use PCM audio. As for video though it looks like the older arcade releases were using MJPEG video whereas in 9th style both the console and arcade versions both started using MPEG-2. (Fun Fact: The AC version uses Cyberlink's PowerDVD video decoder)

[Ho]

I can understand your POV on LCDs in that respect as it does give the old skool vibe now that I've seen the difference.

Are you referring to the size difference?

As I've said before, the timing would be very slightly better on a CRT, but I just really like the impact of the sheer size that I can get with plasma or LCD. It just better fits the "deluxe" nature of the IIDX cabinet, in my opinion. There's just something magical about a game that has you standing 2 ft. from a 40" screen. 36" is big...but 40" is even bigger. And if IIDX is anything, it's BIG!

I can easily deal with a 1-1.5 frames of lag. Now, if it was going to be like DLP and lag by 3-4 frames...well, I'd have a CRT in there with no further discussion.

As for video though it looks like the older arcade releases were using MJPEG video whereas in 9th style both the console and arcade versions both started using MPEG-2.

Up through 8th Style, they just had a DVD/VCD player in the cabinet. 4th Style is using a VCD (which would actually be MPEG-1), but I believe newer (pre-9th) styles used a DVD (which would be MPEG-2). Basically, the video just comes off the DVD player, is fed to the Twinkle system unit, and the game graphics are overlaid on top of it before going on to the monitor. There's a serial connection between Twinkle and the DVD player for it to control what chapter is played.

Now, since it's PC-based, they just have the PC decode the videos and do all the compositing. It's got the processing muscle to do that whereas the old PSX-based hardware did not. They probably could have added decoder hardware back then, but since it was 1999 it was probably easier just to throw a DVD player in.