Why wont my NES zapper gun read my friends 40" LCT tv?

[sao123]

Why wont my NES zapper gun read my friends 40" LCT tv?
I thought that the lense was supposed to pick up the white blocks which appear in duck hunt when you pull the trigger... it doesnt pick up anything.

I'm stumped because the gun work on other TV's...

 

[Trogdor91]

I've heard the reason before but not sure why off the top of my head.
FWIW, my dreamcast gun doesnt work with my plasma 🙁

 

[Slick5150]

This explains why probably better than I can:

"It?s commonly known that the traditional light gun technology doesn?t work on anything but cathode ray tube televisions (and light bulbs if you were a worthless NES cheater). Old school light guns, like the NES Zapper, worked like this: you pull the trigger and the screen goes momentarily black at which point the Zapper begins detecting what is happening. Then the screen is flashed white to let the console know where the Zapper is pointed. If you remember back to your childhood this is why when playing Duck Hunt the screen flashed each time you pull the trigger. Basically a CRT TV draws the screen from left to right and top to bottom. As the pixels come back in order the light gun detects exactly where you were pointing to determine if you got the shot. Unfortunately this setup does not work with LCD or plasma screens, which draw the whole screen at once. "

Newer light guns (including Namco's new one they just showed off for Time Crisis 4) work differently and can work with any TV/monitor. They basically use a Wii like setup and use IR emitters to give the gun orientation to the TV.

 

[RaiderJ]

Semi-related is how some NES games, such as Blaster Master, used the interlaced refreshing of an old CRT for graphical effects. I believe the refreshing of every other line was used to help blend/dither different colors together.