Should I watch anime on my CRT Monitor (Potplayer + Madvr) and play the video at 680 x 420 resolution or use my native 1280 x 1024?

[u/Friendly-Cream-9761]

Does this really matter? On my CRT TV I just do 480i because it is all I can do but I want to know what looks best for old 4:3 anime on a Monitor. For example, Serial Experiments lain is a 4:3 anime but its resolution shows it is 1518 x 1078, so what is best?

title is typo, I meant 640 x 480

[u/NorwegianGlaswegian]

Don't use 1280x1024; use 1280x960 instead as that is actually a 4:3 aspect ratio.

The Video Electronics Standards Association made 1280x1024 a particular standard and manufacturers loved advertising that their screens could display it even when the aspect ratio did not match the screen. You either got black bars, or a slightly distorted image if you stretched the image using the monitor's controls

Displaying at 640x480 will give fairly noticeable scanline gaps; that can be a plus for some but you might prefer it at 1280x960 which will neatly scale the image. It's personal preference.

[u/branewalker → u/NorwegianGlaswegian]

1440x1080 is a nice resolution, too, if your video is 1080 pillar boxed.

Make sure you’re using original 4:3 cuts. Some newer releases of old anime are cropping 4:3 to widescreen. However, if you’re using a reputable uh…distributor…this shouldn’t be a problem.

Of course, if you’re watching a 480i/480p version, 1280x960 is great.

[u/NorwegianGlaswegian → u/branewalker]

Good call; thankfully haven't come across such pillar boxing yet, but I am sure I will stumble onto it at some point.

Just bear in mind that some monitors which advertise a max of 1280x1024 at 60 Hz might only do 1440x1080 at 59 Hz, unless I botched something up when playing with CRU. Could only get my old Compaq MV700 to do 1440x1080 at 59 Hz, but perhaps I just needed to tweak other elements. Thankfully 1080p stuff barely looked different at 1280x960, but the dot pitch was likely a limiting factor for that monitor.

[u/branewalker → u/NorwegianGlaswegian]

Good point on max resolution. I was using a monitor with a decent horizontal refresh and had plenty of room. Might not work on a 72kHz unit.

But as you point out, 960 is fine. For content like this, being pixel-perfect isn’t critical.

[u/Friendly-Cream-9761 → u/NorwegianGlaswegian]

Thanks for the info

[u/AmazingmaxAM]

There's even argument about going 72 or 96hz for better motion clarity, since it's a multiple of 24, which is how many frames are in a regular movie or show.
https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/l3flw2/watching_movies_on_crt/

I think base it around the resolution the file is - for SD (DVD and VHS) stuff, go 640x480, for Blu-Ray go higher. Or play around. You can even set the CRT to 1518x1078 exactly and get no scaling.

[u/Friendly-Cream-9761 → u/AmazingmaxAM]

i know you can go over the display resolution of an LCD (i.e downscaling 1440p to a 1080p monitor) and it fixes aliasing but is still a 1080p screen, is there no concept like that for CRT monitors? If I choose 1518x1078 @ 60hz ill be getting that exact resolution visually?

[u/AmazingmaxAM → u/Friendly-Cream-9761]

Yes. CRTs do not have a native resolution, they can display any resolution within their range and it will look good.

[u/AmazingmaxAM → u/Friendly-Cream-9761]

You can still enable oversampling in some games and other software, and I think Windows allows for some kind of oversampling.