What do you put behind the playfield Tv?

[greencity]

I have a Bally cabinet, 40" LED that fits nicely but I have a big gap in the back of the playfield where you see down in the cabinet. What goes there? I seen one table with a backboard and lights but most videos seem to have too much reflection to tell what they did. Is it just a cutout black bezel to hide the guts under the playfield or should my tv reach the whole cabinet backing flush?

I am also wondering the exact level of the playfield tv, is it completely level? How far down and from what point at the cab do I start the mount rail?

[mjrhp]

I have a Bally cabinet, 40" LED that fits nicely but I have a big gap in the back of the playfield where you see down in the cabinet. What goes there? I seen one table with a backboard and lights but most videos seem to have too much reflection to tell what they did. Is it just a cutout black bezel to hide the guts under the playfield or should my tv reach the whole cabinet backing flush?

I think most people these days are putting a panel with 5 LED flashers there. Here's what mine looks like:

I built this from a piece of plywood cut to size, with decal artwork (same type as on the sides of the cab). The domes are standard pinball flasher domes, with 350mA RGB LEDs underneath. (They're extremely bright - a very nice effect.)

I am also wondering the exact level of the playfield tv, is it completely level? How far down and from what point at the cab do I start the mount rail?

A perennial question. The consensus seems to be that it's just a matter of personal taste and what works for the particular monitor in terms of viewing angle. Some monitors need to be tilted up more to avoid washing out from being viewed off-axis. Most current 1080p LCDs have very wide viewing angles so it's probably not an issue if you have a newer TV. I personally have my playfield TV arranged to mimic a real pinball playfield - it's about 2" from the glass at the front and 4" at the back. I know that sounds like it slopes *down* toward the back, but this is a standard WPC-style cabinet, so the side walls slope up toward the back even more steeply than the playfield.

[greencity]

Thanks , I will make something similar then. Can you tell me how far of a gap in the front you have for your playfield from your lockdown bar and what you put there?

[mjrhp]

Thanks , I will make something similar then. Can you tell me how far of a gap in the front you have for your playfield from your lockdown bar and what you put there?

I built another piece designed to resemble a real pinball machine apron. It's about 4-1/2" to cover the space between the lock bar and the front of the TV - this space is what's needed to fit the plunger and flipper buttons, which are vertically at about the same level as the front of the TV. Here are a few pictures - the front and side views are with the playfield slightly lifted to give you an idea of how it's mounted.

The little triangular openings are for holding in the instruction cards (which I haven't made yet). These will hold traditional pinball-style cards with operating instructions on the left and a "Free Play" pricing card on the right.

The top surface (the visible part) is a sheet of 2mm clear acrylic (plexi) laser-cut (ponoko.com) to size and with the triangular openings. I can send you the SVG template if you're interested in going the same route. That's covered with a custom-printed decal, and mounted with velcro on a plywood base that connects to the TV platform (which means the apron swings up and out of the way with the TV when I need to access the cab interior for service). The acrylic top isn't really necessary - plywood would also work just fine - but I figured the plexi would look more authentic (or at least more finished/professional). It has a perfectly smooth finish for the decal art, so it looks fairly similar to a real machine's painted metal apron, plus it made it easy to get precise cuts for the instruction card holders.

I was a little concerned during the planning stage that having any sort of physical apron would be suboptimal, because the virtual tables themselves have on-screen aprons. But I didn't have much choice because of the vertical placement of the plunger, so I went ahead and built it like this. It turns out to be just fine - most of the virtual tables show only the top half or so of the table's own apron on-screen, so the final geometry works out to be pretty close to a real machine's. The flippers on most tables would actually be a little too close to the front of the cabinet without a physical apron - not that that would be a problem, but at least this makes a virtue of a necessity in my case.