Anyone here familiar with 50" arcade cabinets?

[GUTS]

A friend of mine just bought a 50 inch Time Crisis off ebay, right?  Well we get the thing all set up and I look at the guts and it's using S-Video for a video hook up, so I start to get suspicious.  I go around to the front and peel up the Plexiglas cover and the cabinet has a 50" Hitachi TV sitting in it.  So we email the guy and say "hey I can obviously tell the different between RGB like a real arcade monitor and S-video from some crappy old Hitachi TV."  He emails back and says that all 50" cabinets have TVs in them and not monitors.

So my question is, do any of you guys have experience with 50" cabinets?  Is this guy just lying to cover his ass or is that how they actually work?  I know some of you guys are pretty knowledgeable about arcade stuff so I figured this would be a good place to ask.  My friend is pissed because he paid about $1300 with shipping for this thing and the video quality is ass, plus the damn speakers don't work and it's got busted parts everywhere.  He'd love to file a paypal claim against this a$$hole but he needs to know he's in the right first.

[Michael Helgeson]

For the most part hes telling the truth. Pretty much all 50 inch large screen cabs use those ugly shite projection type tvs from Toshiba and Hitachi. There are a few 50 inch high res monitors,but those are typically made by Pioneer,are touch screen,and are for infromercial type cabs or whatever you call those things. BTW Namco even made a RGB to NTSC encoder,kinda like a jrok,for their cabs so thats prob what its using to send s-video to the tv.

In a way,you should be glad,because if something goes wrong with the monitor,you can prob take it to a normal shop to be worked on.
But,like I said,the image quality on those is crap,and always has been. They really only use them to be overwhelming on shooting games,or in racing and sim type games. Personally I perfer the 39 inch monitors or below. Much better video quality.

As for all the other things wrong,if the speakers are not working,and stuff is broken,and this stuff wasnt listed in the auction details,he should file for a refund if he doesnt want to fix the stuff,but it will be up to your friend to return it to the seller.

[SignOfZeta]

I don't have any experience with the big stuff like that, but I see no reason not to believe him since, as Helgeson just said, the video quality on stuff like that is almost universally horrible the day they install the machine into the arcade. Also, I've never even seen a 50" direct view RGB monitor. My word it would weigh half a ton and be too fragile to even move, not to mention amazingly expensive.

I really really hate the look of rear projection TVs. I'm so glad that era is over.

With a game that old though I'm sure that if you can figure how to enter the service mode you can get the picture to look better. At least check the convergence and black level with a test pattern.

[GUTS]

Alright cool, thanks guys, that's what I figured.  He wants to buy a House of the Dead also but I'll recommend he go with a 39" or smaller to avoid the shit picture problem, this Hitachi looks like total ass.

[Michael Helgeson]

I think the normal size cab model 2 stuff uses medium res monitors.They are a tad more expensive to have repaired or replaced then standard ones,so he needs to check it out for a couple of hours before paying.