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updated 10 th January 2K5
Monitor
I thought long and hard about this one the display for my machine. I wanted a massive display to start with and obviously an arcade monitor is the best bet as it comes with no casing. This allows you to build a cabinet around it and still make it small enough to fit through a door (we'll doors in the UK anyway).
The only trouble with Arcade monitors is they aren't cheap and to be honest their a bit scary looking, lot's of unprotected components. So I wasn't too keen on this.
I looked into 21" CRT's I found a couple of good ones by SAMSUMG. This would have been great I could display any Resolution no messing about but the pictures are too perfect you don't get the scanlines and it doesn't look real. I had the same thoughts about using TFT monitor like I have on my normal PC. The graphics are too sharp and adding scanline effects is too uniform on these types of monitors.
I decided on balance to go for a TV making my cabinet wide enough 24" internally to accomodate an arcade monitor in the future. The major problem with TV's is they are in a package that is a lot wider than the tube. Which means I was restricted to a small screen. I found a reasonably cheap £170 Sanyo 21" TV with S-Video through a Scart socket (Sanyo CE21DN9 21" COLOUR TV) . I hooked this up to my MSI FX5200 via a decent S-Video to Scart cable and was reasonably pleased with the results.
Click the TV for a larger picture, not the marble madness screen is a mock up.
The main advantage of using a TV is that it is easy to hook any consoles to it. And I did start thinking of this when I was making my monitor decision.
I may at some point replace the TV with a proper Arcade monitor but for now I'm sticking with the TV.
See the construction page and other photo's for some real screenshots. I will do some close ups at some point. There is colour blead but I've tweeked it as much as I can. I may try and build an RGB cable from my VGA but I don't want to kill the TV.