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[jigglet]

Younger people who never played on a CRT don't know what they are missing and this is kind of a blessing.

Not just younger people, all people. I spent most my life playing on CRT's but it's been so long I've forgotten how good they were.

 

[Hoddi]

Not just younger people, all people. I spent most my life playing on CRT's but it's been so long I've forgotten how good they were.

For real. I switched out my PC CRT for an LCD back in 2007 and thought the added sharpness was obviously very striking. I thought it was an upgrade overall but I still kept the CRT in storage for a few years and didn't really think much of it.

Anyway, I wanted to get rid of the CRT some years later but decided to plug it in one last time. And the difference in motion was absolutely jaw dropping.

 

[Celcius]

For real. I switched out my PC CRT for an LCD back in 2007 and thought the added sharpness was obviously very striking. I thought it was an upgrade overall but I still kept the CRT in storage for a few years and didn't really think much of it.

Anyway, I wanted to get rid of the CRT some years later but decided to plug it in one last time. And the difference in motion was absolutely jaw dropping.

Did you keep the CRT or throw it out as planned?

 

[Hoddi]

Did you keep the CRT or throw it out as planned?

This was way back around 2009 so I ended up just throwing it away. I still regret it but I've since become a big stickler for motion resolution. I bought a plasma back in 2010 that I'm still using and I've also managed to snag a few CRTs since then.

 

[Ywap]

I truly despise the motion handling (sample and hold) on Led displays. Aweful, aweful tech for moving pictures so i still use a crt for my pc. I'm on a mission to never have to use an led display and i think i might succeed since the 27" oled:s are about to arrive soon.

Yes, oled:s are sample and hold too but they are very close to crt:s at 60hz with bfi imo. I use one for gamepad games myself

 

[KuraiShidosha]

The thing that cracks me up the most about CRT vs LCD is how these companies have you buying better graphics cards and processors and higher and higher refresh rate monitors, chasing framerates that are not only unattainable most of the time, but also cause game breaking bugs if you do manage to reach them, and all the while if you just bought a 60hz CRT from the start instead you could have avoided needing to spend thousands of dollars on hardware and just enjoy buttery smooth 60 fps with the best motion clarity on the market without game breaking bugs and without the struggle of trying to reach 144+ fps. It's the biggest swindle I think in consumer market history. Entire market tricked into buying shit they don't need. Amazing.

 

[01011001]

The thing that cracks me up the most about CRT vs LCD is how these companies have you buying better graphics cards and processors and higher and higher refresh rate monitors, chasing framerates that are not only unattainable most of the time, but also cause game breaking bugs if you do manage to reach them, and all the while if you just bought a 60hz CRT from the start instead you could have avoided needing to spend thousands of dollars on hardware and just enjoy buttery smooth 60 fps with the best motion clarity on the market without game breaking bugs and without the struggle of trying to reach 144+ fps. It's the biggest swindle I think in consumer market history. Entire market tricked into buying shit they don't need. Amazing.

wow, what a bunch of nonsense right there...

The thing that cracks me up the most about CRT vs LCD is how these companies have you buying better graphics cards and processors and higher and higher refresh rate monitors, chasing framerates that are not only unattainable most of the time, but also cause game breaking bugs if you do manage to reach them,

there are no game braking bugs in modern, well made games, when running 144+fps. and it also isn't all too hard to reach more than 100fps on a modern PC if you aren't stupid enough to just max everything out instead of choosing sensible settings

and all the while if you just bought a 60hz CRT from the start instead you could have avoided needing to spend thousands of dollars on hardware and just enjoy buttery smooth 60 fps with the best motion clarity on the market

a good modern screen with BFI have similar motion clarity as a CRT. see my Dell monitor (which isn't high end or even that new anymore) doing the UFO test:

this isn't even an OLED, which have even better pixel response. in person the motion of this looks basically flawless. you can't really see any blur during motion. it's hard to capture this, for the image above I had to film my screen at 240fps on my phone and then look for a screenshot that wasn't out of sync with the monitor's BFI
hence the pretty bad image quality of the screenshot.

but even with the issues I had capturing it, in the shot you clearly see the important details on it
here's how it's supposed to look on a static image:

in my slow-mo image above you can see all the individual white dots on the UFO itself,
and you can see the black dots of the eyes being where they belong and in the shape they are supposed to be in.

you can see slight color bleed on the right black line of the alien's torso, and that's about the worst motion artifact I get here.

without game breaking bugs and without the struggle of trying to reach 144+ fps. It's the biggest swindle I think in consumer market history. Entire market tricked into buying shit they don't need. Amazing.

you never played anything at 120+ fps I presume. because 120+ fps looks way smoother than any 60hz CRT.
there are 160hz CRTs, not sure how smooth one of those would look but 60hz on anything is not as good as high framerates on a modern Monitor
and then if you play anything at half the refresh of your CRT you will get a really ugly double image, which looks somewhat like this:

meaning, if you play a 30 fps game on a 60hz CRT it will look like that 1/2 Hz example above.
so 30fps will look even more blurred on a CRT than on a modern OLED.


Finally, modern screens use less energy in both production and use,
they can be made way bigger and lighter,
they are WAY brighter,
and they of course can have way higher image quality.

imagine thinking it would be better to still have TVs that barely reach more than 30" screen size, and if they were bigger you could basically not move them without multiple people, and even then it would be a gigantic hassle.

 

[Esppiral]

The only thing I don't miss about old CRTs y the high pitch sound they produce, I may be in the minority here but ai couldn't stop hearing it and it drove me crazy, other than that, yeah they were far superior than the shit we have today.

 

[nkarafo]

The only thing I don't miss about old CRTs y the high pitch sound they produce, I may be in the minority here but ai couldn't stop hearing it and it drove me crazy, other than that, yeah they were far superior than the shit we have today.

I remember the older TV we had did this and was very noticeable. But the CRT i'm using now (a Sony Trinitron) is pretty silent. That or i'm just old and can't hear this frequency anymore, lol.

 

[Darak]

The problem with CRT, in my opinion, was always text clarity and eye fatigue. They were far from ideal for productivity. Higher resolutions often required lower refresh rates and introduced flickering (in a 1600x1200 monitor the optimal setting was often 1024x768@60Hz or even 800x600@75Hz or 90Hz)... which was unfortunate, because some CRTs were capable of really high pixel density (1600 lines in a 19 or 21 inches monitor, for example) but using them in that setting was a headache.

I remember having to use external filters (which would darken the image a ton) and rest my eyes after a while. In comparison, text looked great and was a lot more readable even in the first crappy TFTs which had tons of ghosting and issues.

 

[Lethal01]

Took a while to set up but I now got a pc that can easily output to all 3

 

[nkarafo]

Took a while to set up but I now got a pc that can easily output to all 3

How do you output to the big CRT TV?

 

[Lethal01]

How do you output to the big CRT TV?

and extra radeon hd 5000 for a VGA output into this thing https://www.ebay.com/itm/174166352619 to do proper VGA to component.

 

[H4ze]

Picture I took a few days ago. This Trinitron will survive all of us. CRT 4 life Baby!

 

[cortadew]

I truly despise the motion handling (sample and hold) on Led displays. Aweful, aweful tech for moving pictures so i still use a crt for my pc. I'm on a mission to never have to use an led display and i think i might succeed since the 27" oled:s are about to arrive soon.

Yes, oled:s are sample and hold too but they are very close to crt:s at 60hz with bfi imo. I use one for gamepad games myself

I have a crt too but I returned to my lcd, the crt hurts my eyes, the geommetry is never good enough, and it's not sharp enough, also the black levels are shit on day light, on night time they are similar to an oled (still inferior). The motion handling is very good but the phospor decay makes some objects to have a trail in movement.

So I mostly use it for 240p and 480p games which look spectacular obviously.

 

[Ywap]

I have a crt too but I returned to my lcd, the crt hurts my eyes, the geommetry is never good enough, and it's not sharp enough, also the black levels are shit on day light, on night time they are similar to an oled (still inferior). The motion handling is very good but the phospor decay makes some objects to have a trail in movement.

So I mostly use it for 240p and 480p games which look spectacular obviously.

I really think it´s individual. Personally i can´t stand motion blur, i get so annoyed that i can´t focus on the game i´m playing.

I bought an 165hz Asus LED as a second display some years back because it had ELMB from 80hz and upwards. But i ended up giving it to a friend since i had no use for it. Even at 120hz (with ELMB disabled though) the motion blur was clearly visable. And the blacks on that (TN) panel....... Jebuz (And we haven´t even started talking about the ghosting yet )

Yeah, for us motion handling/black level freaks OLED:s are godsends imo

 

[cortadew]

I really think it´s individual. Personally i can´t stand motion blur, i get so annoyed that i can´t focus on the game i´m playing.

I bought an 165hz Asus LED as a second display some years back because it had ELMB from 80hz and upwards. But i ended up giving it to a friend since i had no use for it. Even at 120hz (with ELMB disabled though) the motion blur was clearly visable. And the blacks on that (TN) panel....... Jebuz

Yeah, for us motion handling/black level freaks OLED:s are godsends imo

I actually agree with you, my crt is not a high end one, because I have seen the fw900 and it looks way better than my crt lol, no phospor decay and 120 hz on a crt is the smoothest experience ever.

Also pixel art games look the best on them, I think pvms, bvms are a bit too expensivr where I live but a modded to RGB sony wega can deliver a sensational picture for a few bucks.

 

[Marvel14]

This post hurt my feelings. Yesterday I talked myself out of getting this 27" Toshiba CRT with s-video off craigslist for $25. They're huge, they're heavy, I don't have anywhere to put it, I accumulate too much stuff, be more minimalist, blah blah.

And then you come in here with this soul-crushing wall of text, god dammit...

It hurt mine because it focuses on CRT and not the criminal lack of an HD remaster for the Switch.

 

[DanEON]

I still have my N64 and CRT in my gaming room.

 

[6502]

Running your fingers through the static on the screen.... high pitch whine, the "Thunk!"... just turning a crt on and off was a joy.

 

[Ywap]

I actually agree with you, my crt is not a high end one, because I have seen the fw900 and it looks way better than my crt lol, no phospor decay and 120 hz on a crt is the smoothest experience ever.

Also pixel art games look the best on them, I think pvms, bvms are a bit too expensivr where I live but a modded to RGB sony wega can deliver a sensational picture for a few bucks.

I haven´t seen the fw900. I had a chance to get one a long time ago and i could´t regret it more that i didn´t buy it

I bought 2 used Philips 202p40 that i´m using now. I can´t speak for the quality but the first one have been using have served me very well. It can only do 2048 x 1536 at 60hz so i mostly use 1600 x 1200 at 70hz or 80hz due to the decreased input lag.

 

[fart town usa]

Yea, trinitron/crt gaming is awesome.

I booted up the Saturn the other night and played a bit of Bomberman and Street Fighter Zero 2. Gorgeous stuff.

It's crazy how good old games look on proper screens when not using an RF switch. It's painful to think back at how good it could have been for my eyes in the 90s but I had no clue, lol. Also, alot of those CRTs that came in elaborate wood designs only allowed for RF so most of the time we didn't have a choice.

 

[TonyK]

Motion is my only complaint with oled technology. Sure, my LG CX looks incredible but when a 30fps starts moving...

I never had those problems during the CRT era. In fact, I didn't know anything about framerate until LCDs arrived.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

I actually agree with you, my crt is not a high end one, because I have seen the fw900 and it looks way better than my crt lol, no phospor decay and 120 hz on a crt is the smoothest experience ever.

Also pixel art games look the best on them, I think pvms, bvms are a bit too expensivr where I live but a modded to RGB sony wega can deliver a sensational picture for a few bucks.

i owned an fw900 for 5+ years. 100% had phosphor decay/trailing.

quickly moving a white mouse against a black background turned it into a comet.
noticeable in games too. e.g., bright crosshairs in a dark scene.

 

[cortadew]

i owned an fw900 for 5+ years. 100% had phosphor decay/trailing.

quickly moving a white mouse against a black background turned it into a comet.
noticeable in games too. e.g., bright crosshairs in a dark scene.

Yes phospor decay is inevitable, but a fw900 can last longer than a conventional vga crt

 

[cortadew]

Motion is my only complaint with oled technology. Sure, my LG CX looks incredible but when a 30fps starts moving...

I never had those problems during the CRT era. In fact, I didn't know anything about framerate until LCDs arrived.

Crt are not sample and hold but they have the phosphor decay problem which makes moving objects to leave an annoying trail.

 

[Thaedolus]

The thing that cracks me up the most about CRT vs LCD is how these companies have you buying better graphics cards and processors and higher and higher refresh rate monitors, chasing framerates that are not only unattainable most of the time, but also cause game breaking bugs if you do manage to reach them, and all the while if you just bought a 60hz CRT from the start instead you could have avoided needing to spend thousands of dollars on hardware and just enjoy buttery smooth 60 fps with the best motion clarity on the market without game breaking bugs and without the struggle of trying to reach 144+ fps. It's the biggest swindle I think in consumer market history. Entire market tricked into buying shit they don't need. Amazing.

I’m never getting rid of my CRT for my old consoles but this is a lot of nonsense. You can’t get a 65” CRT like my OLED that runs 4K @120hz with VRR and HDR.

Just because CRT does some things better than modern panels, all the other benefits don’t become moot

 

[Type_Raver]

So i'e decided to go a different route...

snip..

Instead, i have installed the Homebrew on my old Wii, which is working really well, as well composite cables allow. I cant find my original component cables so ive had to order a 3rd party replacement. Nonetheless, NES and SNES look and run so well, though n64 (using F-zero X as the use case) has frame dips/stutters which is quite noticeable. Maybe theres some tweaks i can perform in, but what annoys me more so is that Wii64 doesnt offer the finer Video options like the other two aforementioned console emu's do. (EG: I want to choose NTSC 480i).

Follow up...

I stuck with the Wii homebrew for SNES gaming; ripped the games off my SNES mini and copied them over to the Wii SD card.
However for all else, i built a PC from my older parts and got a 2nd hand AMD R9 380x to get 240p (15Khz) output; which works great! Lots of tinkering to get it going but n64 games play smoothly and look great using mupen64plus.

 

[Shake Your Rump]

If I can see this effect in these photos on my flat screen, why can't these effects be faked (in a good way, people always complain about the fake crt filters)?

Ironically, the image you see there is faked. It’s from the game running through a RetroTink 5x scaler using a CRT effects mask.

And yes, other than the motion handling, we currently have access to scanlines and filters that approach reality. Once 4K HDR scalers are available, there will be no looking back.