Original Stand-up Arcade Machine Monitors

[bdwilcox]

Does anyone know what type of display the original stand-up arcade machine monitors were? Plasma? CRT? I ask because I've never seen displays as rich, bright, and detailed as the monitors in those old arcade machines. The colors were as saturated, the blacks as deep, and the contrast as popping as you could get. (BTW, by old arcade machine I mean Donkey Kong and forward.)

[The Swamp]

Those were CRTs. The games you mentioned were long before plasma and LCD screens.

[bdwilcox]

Plasmas have been around since the 60's and full color plasmas since the early 80's.

But if the tubes were CRTs what made them so sharp and intense compared to regular CRTs? Did they have a different coating or tube technology? Did they use masks and filters that consumer CRTs didn't?

[UberGerbil]

They were CRTs, and not particularly special ones. Anything else would've been too expensive. But they tended to have the color saturation, brightness, and contrast turned up into ranges that would not have worked for most other purposes (like TV). I don't know what you mean by "detailed" though -- they generally were very low res, around 256x256 (PacMan was 224 x 288 IIRC; Donkey Kong was 224 × 256). The pixels were clearly visible, though perhaps their very size along with the solid colors contributed to your impression. The only arcade games of that era that used something "different" were the Asteroids / Battlezone / Tempest / Major Havoc / etc range of vector graphic games, which still used CRTs (B&W in the early ones with a color overlay) but didn't use bitmapped graphics.

[bdwilcox]

By detailed, I mean the pixels were very sharp, without bloom, and didn't bleed into each other the way that consumer CRTs allowed. The colors were pure and the blacks incredibly rich. I didn't mean detailed as in hi-resolution, I meant detailed as in purity of what was being presented.

[SNM]

A lot of older games actually used color filters of various types rather than relying on the monitor to produce it. Donkey Kong might have been after that, though.

[Glorious]

By detailed, I mean the pixels were very sharp, without bloom, and didn't bleed into each other the way that consumer CRTs allowed. The colors were pure and the blacks incredibly rich. I didn't mean detailed as in hi-resolution, I meant detailed as in purity of what was being presented.

There wasn't anything special about arcade monitors, what was special was the interface. In other words, it wasn't the display technology, it was the signal format. Arcade machines typically used the JAMMA standard, which uses RGB with composite sync.

Compared to Composite video(what's carried by the RCA single yellow connector), or, gasp!, the infamous RF switch, the color reproduction, luminance, and clarity of RGB with composite sync is vastly superior. It also wouldn't surprise me if arcade machines also had higher quality CRTs in them than the average home TV, if only because the duty cycle was heavier.

But the real difference is in the signal format, Composite simply doesn't look as good because it can't carry nearly as much information. And since, at least here in the US, people were pretty much all using Composite or RF switches for their consoles until HD TV rolled around, arcade machines always looked way, way better. Plus a lot of home consoles simply didn't have the power or features to look as good as some arcade games even with the same connection.

If you're wondering why broadcast TV and movies on your TV never looked quite as good either, well, since NTSC and VHS are both based on a composite signal there was no way they'd ever look as good because you can't recreate information you never had.

Now that I think about your specific example, Donkey Kong, I remember that it predates the original JAMMA standard. I'm not particularly familiar with really early arcade games, but I'm all but certain it was still using RGB + composite sync. Like most trade organizations, JAMMA mostly consolidated and standardized what was already there.