Avalon, CA
-Big monitors/1080p video on backbox
-30FPS video
My notes on cost and reality:
When you're playing a pin you're about 4 feet away. If observing, usually further unless you're one of those kids who hang on to the side to see what the player is doing.
Putting the largest possible HD-TV or higher-res display in the back box may seem cool but you're probably wasting most of those pixels on folks with average vision. Your visual acuity determines what detail you perceive from a certain distance, a fact well-known to HD-TV installers.
Here's a handy spreadsheet that helps determine monitor/TV size and resolution for a specific viewing distance:
https://iraknol.wordpress.com/article/visual-acuity-advisor-what-size-hdtv-or-3ncxde0rz8dtk-11/
For a typical pinball display in the back box a 24" (diag) monitor at 1280x720 is good enough. Also interesting on this spreadsheet are recommended font sizes and character heights for your viewing distance.
24p or 30p?
When ripping DVD media, say for example you're making a Mad Max Fury Road pin and you want clips to embellish your game, practically all movie DVDs are 24p. If you try to play a 24p clip at 30p you'll encounter common rate-adaption issues (called pulldown in TV land) that can make your clips look blurry or choppy if you didn't rip correctly.
Most computer's media players support 24p which looks great, but not all monitors sync with 24p -- most are stuck at 60Hz...the side effect is an occasional line-tear in your picture.
You also might have a "wait on sync" configuration in your graphics setup which helps avoid tearing, but now your game display loop seems sluggish... there's always something!
So what?
If you're rolling your own media display you might uncover video stuff that we normally take for granted when watching all sorts of video on all sorts of devices. After messing with low-level video for a few months I have a better appreciation of VLC/QT and even lowly Windows Media Center!
-r.e.
