I plugged "dithering CRT" into a search engine and it spat out this handy comparison, scanlines on right create a transparency effect:
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source w/ a bunch of TL;DR:
https://blizzz.ovh/rgb/gaming_crt.html
That's not scanlines though. Transparency was done in several different ways exploiting the way CRT or the signal works, there's some very clever tricks they used and some that are just annoying on any modern display.
Here's a cool one and the write-up is at least worth scrolling through.
You're 100% right about scanlines. The only people who like them are people who are desperately tying to go back to their childhood and think that if every last tiny detail is just right, they'll be able to be happy again. They think that the reason they're unhappy is because the balance of the universe is upset, and naturally that balance was absolutely perfect right around the time they were 8-12 years old. What a coincidence. If we just return the universe to the state it was in during their childhood, they'll feel the same happiness and wonder they did when they were ten. Right? That's how it works, right?
And yes, it does feel very similar to the way Twitter genderspecials think that the reason they're never happy is because they haven't found the correct combination of genders and sexualities, like some form of fucked up alchemy. They can never admit it's because of their lifestyle or outlook. No, if they simply combine demisexual with femme genderqueer and add a dash of two-spirit as a reagent, then they'll finally be happy. They're sure of it. They were sure of the last combination, but now they're really sure.
For the most part I don't get the feeling that they're people trying to relive their youth, they're people trying to get "the real experience" and it's some weird ideal that never existed. The line "I can't even see the scanlines" was what made me associate it with troons and their unrealistic expectation of what it means to be a woman.
I'm not shitting on any poster here, I like everyone, it's just that the thought have been rattling around for a while and I couldn't quite place all the specific gear fixation and unrealistic expectations to achieve something that people experienced naturally.
So here's something I discovered today: I always knew the GBA's sound hardware was quite a bit worse than the SNES', but I've never heard a song mauled this badly in its port:
The GBA didn't have sound hardware like the SNES did, instead it had to be done via the CPU. The ARM CPU was roughly on the level of a 386 but
with an extended instruction set that made it able to do things in hardware the 386 couldn't. It's not a nice comparison but you know... That's why music improved on the GBA over time, they had to write their own music players in software and make sure it used as little as possible when it came to CPU resources.
The N64 was similar to the GBA, as was the Gamecube and probably their hardware after that. The only reason the SNES wasn't like that was Sony.
I didn't even know scanlines existed until I found them in ZSNES' filters, and when I found out they're intended to make the games look more like they would when played on a CRT TV, I was just confused. And to this day, I've never seen a CRT filter that actually looks like a CRT I ever used. It's like everyone else grew up playing their games on shitty TVs from the 1970s that never got turned off.
The only thing I ever insist on is that old console games are stretched to 4:3. That's it, no filters, just the proper aspect ratio.
Not scanlines but the grille/shadow mask could be seen when sitting close to the TV or some monitors. No one is interested in emulating that despite it actually being a realistic thing.
Razor 1911 had demo using it as a shader thing and that actually made me remember. It's 64KB in size, everyone can download and run it.
