Can a complete regular TV work in an arcade monitor?

squall280

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Can a complete regular TV work in an arcade monitor?

Probably been asked a million times but i couldn't find a definitive anwser.
 
i'll check the link. i meant like put a whole tv tube and chassis in a arcade cabinet. i didn;t mean use just a tube or just a chassis. i'll explain my situation to you tomorrow morning haha.
 
only way you could accomplish this is by using a TV encoder, like JROK's.

it will look nasty, btw... though the S-video isn't quite so bad, it will never look as good as a real video game monitor though.
 
But if you lilve in Europe, the answer is YES ! Very simple using SCART.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=77370.0

You can do something similar with component. Any NTSC TV will happily accept 15khz scanrates through the component input, but you have to do some level conversion, colorspace conversion, and composite the sync signal on top of the green. Pretty simple circuit to build actually, as it can be done completely without logic. Should produce a very good picture since you're not actually removing anything from the signal. Google around.

Also worth noting some NA-sold TVs are just slight variants of international models where they just left off the SCART connector and some supporting circuitry... if you're feeling adventurous, you could find one of these sets and repopulate the SCART area, and just solder wires to where the SCART header would go.

And then there's an arcane trick involving finding where the colorspace deconversion for a given input happens, pulling out that input and converter circuitry, and feeding the rest of the chassis RGB directly... it's a highly TV-specific process though, and you can't do it to some sets because they're too integrated.
 
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Also, it's possible to hack a TV chassis to take RGB - I've done it, but it's ugly and hard to get a good picture out of without a lot of messing around. Most sets will lock onto a composite sync signal if you feed it into the composite video input (or somewhere after the IF stages). Then you can cut off the Red, Green and Blue video amplifiers and feed your arcade video there, after biasing it properly.

It's possible to get a kind-of-OK picture out of it. But TV's tend to overscan, so things like the high score and such get cut off.

In short, it's possible, but it's generally not worth it. Fun project to play with though.

-Ian
 
The only part of a TV you could use in an arcade monitor would be the tube. In SOME cases.

The boards, yoke, frame, etc, would all need to come from a donor arcade chassis.

Much cheaper endeavor to find an arcade monitor, unless you already have the aforementioned parts laying around.
 
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