Screen Bend

[Ocelot85]

I have a problem with my TVs where when I'm in a game at a menu screen the screen bends inward or outward.

The game I'm playing at the moment has a boarder around the menu and when I navigate, the left side of the boarder moves inward a little and the right side moves inward a lot (almost an inch) which is very annoying. This happens mainly on games where the background is dark and the menu options are light (in this game they are yellow on a dark red background). The effect occurs at the same height as the highlighted menu. I'm not sure what the effect is called or how to fix it, so I ask you.

I've had to put up with this for years, but now that I'm using a bigger screen the effect is bigger too and much much more annoying.

[RGB32E]

I have a problem with my TVs where when I'm in a game at a menu screen the screen bends inward or outward.

The game I'm playing at the moment has a boarder around the menu and when I navigate, the left side of the boarder moves inward a little and the right side moves inward a lot (almost an inch) which is very annoying. This happens mainly on games where the background is dark and the menu options are light (in this game they are yellow on a dark red background). The effect occurs at the same height as the highlighted menu. I'm not sure what the effect is called or how to fix it, so I ask you.

I've had to put up with this for years, but now that I'm using a bigger screen the effect is bigger too and much much more annoying.

Are all of your TVs CRT based?  As CRTs age, it's easier to have this type of problem.  Scanlines with brighter information are wider than ones that are darker, and the TVs are having trouble compensating for this...  All CRTs face this problem, but can become more noticable over it's lifetime.    Time for a good fixed pixel display!

[Ocelot85]

Thanks for the info, very interesting!

Yes, all my TVs that have this problem are CRTs. Some have a very minimal amount of bend others have a lot of bend (you're right, these ones are old). The further the game brightness is turned down then less bendy the lines are, unfortunately the game gets too dark to see what's going on.
The main one I'm using is a mid 90's Scart TV, and I've noticed that the effect is minimal when using RGB but using my old beat up composite cable it looks awfully bendy. I would move on to an LCD screen but all my pre-7th generation consoles look like crap on LCD.

Does this screen bend effect also occur on CRT Computer Monitors? I've never noticed it myself but maybe it was because I wasn't looking for it. If computer monitors don't suffer this bending then I'll use one of those as soon as I can get hold of one that accepts 15 kHz horizontal refresh, until then I'll stick with my Scart.

[viletim]

In classical TV design,  the way the high voltage for the picture tube is regulated is fairly poor and causes mudulation by the beam current (more white = more load on the HV/HT). Computer monitors often seperate the high voltage and horizontal deflection which helps a lot in this regard. The only do this in multi-sync/multi-range monitors though. Good luck finding one that will sync to 15.7Khz!

On the TV front things aren't all bad. A good quality TV or pro monitor should regulate the HV supply properly and breathing should be un-noiticable.  RGB32E is correct in that this a often a fault (something that can be fixed) but it can also be a design flaw if the TV/Monior is cheap crap to begin with.