I'm In Favour Of Scanlines!


ste_167

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I think they look great. No sarcasm here.. it perfectly replicates the 'TV-screen look' and, in my eyes, this enhances the retro experience. I can understand why some people think that their GP2x is scanline-free, as it's a very subtle effect. Lovely!

My speaker volume is little low though, even on the highest setting. Is this normal?
 
I did actually mean scanlines. Good point!

Well, I like them anyway. There's something of a Redcar seafront arcade machine feel about them!

Cheers, OmarNawaz. I missed your reply at first.
 
I honestly could care less about scanlines. They are near-imperceptible and stick out to me about as much as they do on a classic GBA, DS, PocketPC or Laptop LCD screen.
 
icurafu posted on May 23 2006 at 06:57 AM said:
are you talking about scanlines or interlace?

I don't think TVs have had noticable scanlines since the 50s.


To my knowledge, scanlines are caused by interlace?

And scanlines are noticable on any black and white TV, not just ones form the 50s, I have a little 4" one that I bought from Hastings a few years ago, and it has them.

The arrangement of the colored illuminescents and the mesh kind of cancels out the effect on color TVs, but since B&W TVs have no mesh and consist of a solid layer of the stuff, it's just like projecting lines of electrons onto a screen.
 
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A scanline is a single line in a picture, caused by interlacing. An interlaced screen is updated in two passes, the first pass with odd-numbered lines, and the second pass with even-numbered lines. The GP2X's scanlines are overly obvious because they aren't updating with proper timing, i.e. when you look at the GP2X's screen, and then shake it up and down, your eyes should see distinction between the odd and even lines.
 
LCDs have the image you see drawn onto them multiple times per second, and the manner in which this happens dictates 'scanline' effects you can see. Pixels draw in rows called 'scanlines', which are usually invisible due to the rate at which these images are redrawn, much faster than the human eye can generally detect.

In the most typical case interlacing 'simulates' ~60 Frames Per Second being drawn to the LCD (abbreviated FPS as you probbaly knew) with approximately *30* FPS, drawing every OTHER vertical line of the next frame, instead of doing the whole thing at once. This is a feature, not a bug, and is used on TVs and DVDs et al to make ~29.97 FPS look like a full 60 FPS, which is more in line with the number of images the human eye can capture per second, providing smoother animation of the drawn images.

However, screen timing, programming glitches, LCD manufacture quality and style, and the way your eyes personally work, can affect whether this interlacing process produces the appearance of lines moving downwards on the display or 'old' lines from the prior frame as they are being redrawn. Some equipment and software combos are more prone to it (The GP2X's display) and some less (the GBA, most transflective PocketPC displays, TVs, etc.) and some people's eyes can pick up on it more than others. Mine don't readily pick up on it often.

I hope this is a decent explanation.
 
I personally hate the scanlines. I would love to get a mk2 version just to get rid of those. Hopefully someone will discover a fix for it soon.
 
I don't mind the scanlines. The only times I really notice them are when running around in Aladdin on drmd or when selecting a game to play in ScummVM.
 
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