Re: IIGS -> VGA: Success!

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Jim Maricondo replied:

>"Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote in message
>20020819044504.28100.00001679@mb-fi.aol.com">news:20020819044504.28100.00001679@mb-fi.aol.com...
<snip>
>> I am interested in whether you would prefer the display on a VGA display
>> to the display on the native Apple RGB monitor.  In other words, if I
>don't
>> care whether I use one display or the other, which looks better, and why?
<snip>
>I will upload instructions and a photo as soon as I find the time (hopefully
>very soon!).  The XRGB-2's output is quite crisp, however, I would still say
>the IIGS monitor is best!  (I would say the XRGB-2 is maybe 90-95% as good,
>and the XRGB-2plus maybe 80-85% as good.)  But to me, using a VGA display
>more than makes up for that 5%!  And I have a feeling though that the
>XRGB-2's output might be even closer to 100% if I were to try it with a real
>CRT, and not just my LCD (which is adding yet another ADC phase!)  It seems
>to me that it would be tough to find ANY device other than the AppleColor
>RGB Monitor that has the exact right dot pitch and output characteristics to
>make 640x200 dithered pixels look as good as they do on the IIGS.  Do you
>disagree?

No, I think that a CRT--which doesn't have discrete "dots"--will be much
more forgiving in displaying a digital video signal (that is, not people and
trees, etc.) than an LCD, which has discrete pixels and must decide
whether a dot edge is "in" this pixel or "out".  Tiny timing variations in
the video signal will cause marginal decisions of this sort to flip between
"in" and "out" and produce non-uniform edges.  (Now, if you could make
the timing variations be on the order of half a video dot and fast, then the
result would be a "dithered" display, which would be stable, but just a
little fuzzier.)

-michael

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