What’s the first thing that a gamer realizes upon investing in a brand new HDTV and sitting down to enjoy some old school video games? That HDTV’s suck for playing old school video games. Well, that’s not completely fair. It’s not that the HDTV sucks… it’s that it’s too good. I recently bought a Samsung PN42B450. It’s a great tv, and I’m pleased with how it works with my PS3. It handles widescreen sources great. What I’m not pleased with: all new widescreen tv’s have grey pillar boxing. What is pillar boxing you ask? Well, these tv’s are widescreen. When a fullscreen source is supplied to the tv, the tv places bars on the sides of the image to fill up the screen without distorting the image. The problem with this, is that this static image on either side of your screen causes uneven burn in on the set. Over years, the tv will result in these box shapes to be faintly present when watching anything. TV manufacturers have thus decided that grey is better for your tv than black. Unfortunately, it is hideous on the eyes. Be aware that if you ware watching full screen tv, or a vcr, or an old school gaming system on a new tv, you can expect these pillar boxes. The reality, is that this burn in shouldn’t be much of an issue as long as the majority of your use is not 4:3. It would be nice if the manufacturers at least gave the option of black in the tv’s preferences. I’ve heard of some people out there that have attached curtains to their tv to cover up the hideous grey when watching tv at night.
Problema número deux: Resolution. The NES resolution is 256×224. That’s a pretty significant difference when upscaling to 720p. It means that the image ends up looking blurry, and can sometimes introduce buzzing little artifacts that make it difficult to look at. SNES and Sega Genesis also have this same resolution. Look forward to blurry, pillar boxed images on your old consoles on a new tv. Well… like most nerds, I could not simply accept this. While some gamers have gone so far as to modify their original systems to have better output. Others have modded their original consoles into modern computers with emulation abilities. I decided against either of these methods due to the time and money that would be involved. Though I *do* wish I had a NESPC.
And so I decided I would go to somewhat of a similar route. There’s been a fair bit of progress with miniature computers recently, and it would be about the same price and less time to simply pick up a pre-built mini computer specifically designed to sit near my tv. The system would be quiet, energy efficient, and while not be very powerful would at let me emulate old games at better resolution and without the grey pillar boxes. There’s a few of these that seemed like decent options such as the eeebox and the RevoAspire. But then it struck me. The new PS3 just came out. Sony eliminated the option to put linux on the PS3Slim. I have a fat PS3. Why pay $400 for a dedicated emulation gaming pc when I could take advantage of linux on the PS3?
And so, I’ve now got Yellow Dog Linux 6.1 running on my PS3 with various NES/SNES games running at a proper resolution and without the grey pillarboxes. The set-up could be far easier. People who make Linux distributions are masochists. But it does what I want it to do.