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[DynamiteCop!]

I just picked up another CRT for my game room (Sony KV-20FS120) and its working but it has some convergence issues. I already made adjustments on the twist circuit dials which brought the colors closer together but it requires more so the rings need to be adjusted.

I've adjusted convergence rings before however these rings have what appears to be factory epoxy/glue on them keeping the three separate rings together.

Does anyone have experience removing this epoxy/glue and knows a simple way to get it off without damaging anything?

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

If they're glued, then it means they haven't moved, which means you shouldn't mess with them. Do you have magnetic convergence strips? Those are probably your only option other than chiseling out the old glue and hoping for the best.

Rubbing alcohol or mineral spirits (paint thinner) should be enough to loosen the glue. If the rings have any rubber on them I'd avoid using acetone.

 

[DynamiteCop!]

If they're glued, then it means they haven't moved, which means you shouldn't mess with them. Do you have magnetic convergence strips? Those are probably your only option other than chiseling out the old glue and hoping for the best.

Rubbing alcohol or mineral spirits (paint thinner) should be enough to loosen the glue. If the rings have any rubber on them I'd avoid using acetone.

I've seen the strips but I do not currently have any which is why I was hoping to mess with the rings. From what I've seen strips work good for cleaning up corners and edges, for fine tuning individual trouble spots more or less.

What I'm seeing image wise is a total screen divergence. If I mess with the two circuit dials I can get either the top or the bottom into perfect convergence but not both at the same time, also I don't have any geometry issues. My plan more or less was to get both the top and bottom into the same level of divergence so the whole screen is consistent and then tune with the rings so it all comes together.

I know these rings are pretty brittle which is why I was looking for a safe way to separate the glue without breaking something. I have 90% Isopropyl Alcohol and an exacto knife which I'll give a try. These CRT's are too nice to just throw out and hope for a good one so I'm going to try my best to get it into tip top shape.

Thank you!

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Best of luck to you! The rings themselves are pretty durable so I wouldn't worry too much about breaking something there. Think about it: without the glue they would've been screwed and/or wedged together.

 

[DynamiteCop!]

Best of luck to you! The rings themselves are pretty durable so I wouldn't worry too much about breaking something there. Think about it: without the glue they would've been screwed and/or wedged together.

Well after about an hour of getting them unstuck, tweaking the rings and messing with the circuit knobs I got it all dialed in, it's back to 100%.

Thanks again for the help, alcohol worked for loosening things up!

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Well after about an hour of getting them unstuck, tweaking the rings and messing with the circuit knobs I got it all dialed in, it's back to 100%.

Thanks again for the help, alcohol worked for loosening things up!

Whew! Very glad to hear it. Hopefully the beaut' has many more years of gaming ahead of it.

 

[Horsemama1956]

What do you have hooked up to the TV? I actually just got this same set basically new in box the other day. Only have the Wii right now though with VC and emulators.

For $20 seems like a great little TV. Curious how Dreamcast, PS2 etc look on it.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

I’ve done this myself, but for the opposite purpose of messing up a CRT for art reasons. Long live the tube!

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

I’ve done this myself, but for the opposite purpose of messing up a CRT for art reasons. Long live the tube!

This sounds interesting. Have any pics to share? If not, no big deal.

 

[DynamiteCop!]

What do you have hooked up to the TV? I actually just got this same set basically new in box the other day. Only have the Wii right now though with VC and emulators.

For $20 seems like a great little TV. Curious how Dreamcast, PS2 etc look on it.

PlayStation, Genesis CDX, NES, SNES and a GameCube.

Everything looks fine on it, I'm calibrating it right now with a PS3 hooked up running AVS HD.

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

I'd hope the AR glasses with light field eventually reach the quality to replicate all possible displays

 

[Cato]

I'd hope the AR glasses with light field eventually reach the quality to replicate all possible displays

The, IMHO, two main reasons CRT are super superior to flat TVs are

1, latency
2, "fuzzy" pixels making low res art look good.

I am not sure AR or VR will meet this anytime soon. (EDIT: like in the next 20 years, or practically ever)

 

[Shotpun]

The, IMHO, two main reasons CRT are super superior to flat TVs are

1, latency
2, "fuzzy" pixels making low res art look good.

I am not sure AR or VR will meet this anytime soon. (EDIT: like in the next 20 years, or practically ever)

3. Support for light guns.

 

[Chozofication_]

The, IMHO, two main reasons CRT are super superior to flat TVs are

1, latency
2, "fuzzy" pixels making low res art look good.

I am not sure AR or VR will meet this anytime soon. (EDIT: like in the next 20 years, or practically ever)

Eh. Latency on a good hdtv is 20ms you won't notice that.

Plus we have good scalers like the retrotink 2 that are lagless. I see no reason for a crt anymore other than novelty.

Also as for light gun games the Wii provides plenty for me

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

The, IMHO, two main reasons CRT are super superior to flat TVs are

1, latency
2, "fuzzy" pixels making low res art look good.

I am not sure AR or VR will meet this anytime soon. (EDIT: like in the next 20 years, or practically ever)

ID HOPE OUR ACTUAL REAL LIVES ARE ACTUALLY NOT EVEN MORE TRAGIC THAN THE SYMPSONS THEYVE DONE EVERYTHING THERE

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

THERE ARE INFINITELY MANY EPISODES OF THE SIMPSONS STILL TO AIR

 

[cireza]

I see no reason for a crt anymore other than novelty.

Any console that outputs 240p will have a much better picture on a good CRT. You can use an HD TV and plug some expensive tools to generate scanlines or whatever, it still won't be as good as a good CRT.

CRT also have zero movement blur, which is a common issue, and a big one, on LCD panels. Whatever is scrolling or moving on a LCD panel will get blurry, and impossible to see clearly. On a CRT TV, even in games that have fast scrolling, you can look at what is scrolling, and it will be perfectly sharp, and won't destroy your eyes and brain because you somehow can't focus on it.

Also CRT TVs do not have active display, they take into account the capability of your brain and eyes to retain the picture. This is how they are designed, only displaying the picture line by line. The result is a picture that is much less aggressive to the eye than a LCD panel which is 100% of time lighten.

If you have an OLED, maybe that you don't have the movement blur problem anymore (never tried an OLED screen, they are only way too big and expensive). And still, I would have to resort to whatever tool to take the RGB input and convert it in something clean, which would be an exact multiple of the native resolution of the console, apply good quality scanlines etc... All of this is going to cost a shitload of money, require a lot of tweaking for a result that won't even be better than my CRT for 240p sources.

 

[nkarafo]

3. Support for light guns.

4. No ghosting/blurring of pixels during movement/better motion resolution.

Even fancy 144hz+ monitors with blur reduction capabilities can't be as crystal clear as a CRT during scrolling.

If you have an OLED, maybe that you don't have the movement blur problem anymore

They still have it.

In order for a modern panel to come close to a CRT it has to have certain blur reduction features (and a very high refresh rate). And even then the result isn't the exact same and some times you even get all kinds of artifacts. There are some other solutions like black frame insertion, which i have tested on my monitor. It works but it makes the picture too dark and kills all the colors.

 

[cireza]

They still have it.

Yeah, that was my guess anyway. And OLED are still lighten 100% of the time.

You need to use features like backlight strobbing and such to "mimic" CRT, but the results are sub par most of the time (dark picture, duplicated picture, intense flickering), and if you are displaying an old console, the refresh rate of the output is 60Hz anyway, so you can't use some of these features to their full extent depending on the TV.

 

[nkarafo]

and if you are displaying an old console, the refresh rate of the output is 60Hz anyway, so you can't use some of these features to their full extent depending on the TV.

That's right. My monitor is 240hz and it's pretty good when it displays 120/240fps content. Like, when i'm browsing the internet, i can use smooth scrolling on my browser and still be able to read text as it moves, without feeling like i'm drunk. Still not as clear as a CRT since there's still a bit of ghosting, especially when it's black text against a white background. This is why i now try to use dark/night themes as the text is almost perfectly clear with those.

I also play with Visual Pinball a lot lately and when it runs at 120fps/120hz there's a world of difference. The ball looks very sharp when it moves around the screen and you never miss it. It's so good that i can't play those games at 60fps anymore.

Retro games that are locked to 60fps though? There is no difference playing them on this monitor or a crappy old 60hz LCD. They are a blurry mess. Now, RetroArch has a black frame insertion option. If i use 120hz and enable it, 60hz content becomes magically crystal clear. But, like i said, it kills the colors completely to a point where it's just doesn't worth it. I only use it to demonstrate to others who don't remember how much better CRTs were, just to ruin it for them

 

[cireza]

It is indeed extremely easy to demonstrate the problem. In my "gaming" room I have both a CRT and a LCD TV side by side. I simply need to turn both on with a 240p pixel game with scrolling, and the result are obvious.

This is also true with 480i games, even though you have flickering on CRT. Still, the movement is crystal clear. For example you can compare Metroid Prime 2 on GC/RGB to Metroid Prime 3 on Wii (with the awful component cable to plug it to the LCD). Worst blur ever. This was the shit I had to deal with when I made the jump to HD TVs, and honestly, I could not understand back then what was happening and why everyone was happy with HD TVs.

At one point, I almost thought that I was going to dump my HD TV and plug my 360 back to my CRT with the RGB cable...

 

[Chozofication_]

Any console that outputs 240p will have a much better picture on a good CRT. You can use an HD TV and plug some expensive tools to generate scanlines or whatever, it still won't be as good as a good CRT.

CRT also have zero movement blur, which is a common issue, and a big one, on LCD panels. Whatever is scrolling or moving on a LCD panel will get blurry, and impossible to see clearly. On a CRT TV, even in games that have fast scrolling, you can look at what is scrolling, and it will be perfectly sharp, and won't destroy your eyes and brain because you somehow can't focus on it.

Also CRT TVs do not have active display, they take into account the capability of your brain and eyes to retain the picture. This is how they are designed, only displaying the picture line by line. The result is a picture that is much less aggressive to the eye than a LCD panel which is 100% of time lighten.

If you have an OLED, maybe that you don't have the movement blur problem anymore (never tried an OLED screen, they are only way too big and expensive). And still, I would have to resort to whatever tool to take the RGB input and convert it in something clean, which would be an exact multiple of the native resolution of the console, apply good quality scanlines etc... All of this is going to cost a shitload of money, require a lot of tweaking for a result that won't even be better than my CRT for 240p sources.

Maybe you have a point with older pixel art games but that's not my style anyway, the oldest console I have is n64 which games don't rely on crt scanlines. I find fake scanlines on hdtv to be disgusting.

And the detail lost from crt blur on GameCube and up is an out and out inferior image. You would have to REALLY hate aliasing to prefer crt at that point.

Blur is also greatly reduced on today's top lcds and isn't much an issue either. I maintain that for me crt would just be a novelty. I do not game on junk lcds I have a great set, but I have seen lcds with the ghosting problem being very apparent.

 

[Pagusas]

I can tell you from the production and engineering side, we are all so happy the days of CRT’s are long gone. For every plus you had with CRT’s there were 100 negatives. So many problems were solved abandoning that abhorrent tech. But I do agree there is nothing better for playing classic games on than the device types they were made to be played on.

Convergence and geometry issues were always the bane of my existence. Shadow mask blooming made my heart fill with hate. Thinking back how happy I was with my 36” Wega makes me almost laugh. A 36” tv these days is basically a computer monitor or children’s room screen.

 

[nkarafo]

Blur is also greatly reduced on today's top lcds and isn't much an issue either.

This is false.

Maybe what you see are those "motion clarity" filters that LCDs tend to have. These filters improve the bluring a bit (still far from eliminating it). But these also add a ton of extra input lag, on top of the LCD panel lag.

Also, you don't have to compare them with low-res CRT TVs. A high-res CRT PC monitor doesn't have those blurry pixels and scan-lines you speak of.

 

[Chozofication_]

This is false.

Maybe what you see are those "motion clarity" filters that LCDs tend to have. These filters improve the bluring a bit (still far from eliminating it). But these also add a ton of extra input lag, on top of the LCD panel lag.

Also, you don't have to compare them with low-res CRT TVs. A high-res CRT PC monitor doesn't have those blurry pixels and scan-lines you speak of.

20 ms of lag is virtually nothing no matter how you slice it. The motion blur is not noticeable to me on my current set which has 20ms lag.

But older lcds like from 2010 I really used to notice the blur and they had *higher* lag. Way higher. An old Toshiba I had made me want to puke lol.

 

[nkarafo]

20 ms of lag is virtually nothing no matter how you slice it. The motion blur is not noticeable to me on my current set which has 20ms lag.

It's not noticeable to you because you don't remember how clear CRTs were.

I didn't say anything about 20ms lag. I said those filters add way more lag than this.

I have a 1ms PC monitor at 240hz. It's a 2018 DELL/Alienware TN panel. It sacrifices color quality for speed. And yet i can still see it's blurier than my dying CRT monitor. You will see the difference if someone demonstrates it to you. In a way you are lucky though. I wish i wasn't spoiled like that.

Edit: Do this test on your panel and then on a CRT. It's going to be pretty obvious: https://www.testufo.com/

Let me tell you my results. At 60fps the ufo is blurry, you can't make anything from it. At 120fps it's still blurry but you can tell what it is. At 240fps it's sharper but there's still some motion blur.

On my old CRT monitor, at 85fps, the ufo is as sharp as the still image in the banner of that page above. It's not even close.

 

[Chozofication_]

It's not noticeable to you because you don't remember how clear CRTs were.

I didn't say anything about 20ms lag. I said those filters add way more lag than this.

I have a 1ms PC monitor at 240hz. It's a 2018 DELL/Alienware TN panel. It sacrifices color quality for speed. And yet i can still see it's blurier than my dying CRT monitor. You will see the difference if someone demonstrates it to you. In a way you are lucky though.

You said the blur filters are the only thing that can reduce motion blur on LCD and that adds lag. Yet current sets have less blur AND lag, so your statement was wrong. How could a set with 80ms lag have worse blur than a 20ms one?

I'm not lucky I just don't look at numbers and tell myself I can notice a difference. Pc monitors have notoriously shitty color its not comparable to tvs.

If you've seen a set like the Sony x900e and tell me that LCD is still plagued by these issues like they were in the past I would say you're full of it. I've seen crts in the past year and was grossed by how dim and blurry they are. Image wise not motion blur, perhaps we're sensitive to different things and can leave it at that.

And comparing 60hz to 60hz unless you're a super weeb playing guilty gear or mushimesama on a professional level I'm going to wager you don't really notice 1 frame or less of lag.

 

[nkarafo]

You said the blur filters are the only thing that can reduce motion blur on LCD and that adds lag. Yet current sets have less blur AND lag, so your statement was wrong. How could a set with 80ms lag have worse blur than a 20ms one?

Ι didn't say that. I said some 144hz+ PC monitors have extra motion blur reduction options. These are NOT the same as the shitty clarity filters in normal TVs.

If you've seen a set like the Sony x900e and tell me that LCD is still plagued by these issues

I don't need to see that particular model. I own a 240hz PC monitor which is specially made for being as fast as possible. It's among the fastest you can get right now.

Is that Sony going to be better than older LCDs? Sure. Is it going to be close to a CRT? Not a chance.

And comparing 60hz to 60hz unless you're a super weeb playing guilty gear or mushimesama on a professional level I'm going to wager you don't really notice 1 frame or less of lag.

Not talking about input lag. Only motion blur. And yes, i'm comparing 60hz to 60hz. I was using my CRT monitor at 60hz for older scrolling games and the moving image was sharper than 60hz on whichever modern TV/monitor in existence. Even at 240hz you are still not getting the same clarity as a 60hz CRT. Technology simply isn't there yet with modern panels.

I said nothing about colors, contrasts, etc. I only talk about motion blur. If you prefer LCDs because they offer better resoloutions and colors that's fine. But don't tell me they don't suffer from motion blur in comparison to CRTs. Just do the test above on any panel and compare it with a CRT if you want to see it for yourself.

Again, i'm talkign about things that get blurred while they are moving. I hope we are in the same page here.

 

[Chozofication_]

nkarafo yes we are talking about the same thing. I'm not saying crts don't have better motion clarity I was just saying its no longer a massive issue on modern lcD's like it was. If you are super sensitive to it than ok I see where you come from.

On the 60hz vs 60hz I was talking about *input* lag so yes we weren't on the same page there lol. Input lag, colors and brightness (and uniformity) and just good enough motion clarity is what I prefer.

So yes I can agree this is more or less a difference in our preferences.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

And comparing 60hz to 60hz unless you're a super weeb playing guilty gear or mushimesama on a professional level I'm going to wager you don't really notice 1 frame or less of lag.

B-but what if I am a weeb who plays those games?

The display refresh rate of a panel display is not the input lag. Those are two separate things (often confused). While the monitor may even have 1ms of "lag", there is still lag from the control input to the computer to the monitor itself. This is where CRTs and original hardware shine, as the old consoles sent a direct analog signal to the electron gun to blast the image on the screen, one phosphor group at a time.

For modern games, this is hardly an issue (if at all). But for old games designed to directly control the electron gun, there is buffering (so to speak) that adds input lag. You can kinda-sorta get around this issue by using Runahead in RetroArch/ShmupArch but it is not a perfect solution either.

 

[nkarafo]

I agree that there have been many improvements on input lag when it comes to LCD panels. Like, the one i'm using now, the 1ms 240hz TN one, is impossible to tell the difference with the CRT. I can tell the difference from my 60hz IPS LCD TV though but sure, it's a 5 year old panel so i'm sure there are better ones. The difference actually is funny, when i use both panes as extended monitor. When i move a window from one panel to the other it feels like it's gaining or losing weight. It feels like i have direct control of the window on the fast panel but on the TV it feels like there's something else in between me and the window.

Motion clarity is a different issue though and a big concern of mine. I wasn't going to get a fast TN monitor if my CRT one wasn't on it's last legs. And still, even though i got one of the fastest money can buy right now, it still feels like a downgrade. A smaller downgrade than a regular 60hz IPS panel would be but a downgrade nonetheless. It's disappointing because i shouldn't have to deal with blurrier moving images on the fastest monitor money can buy, 20 years after my CRT monitor was bought. It's like motion clarity is technology's lowest priority, they fix so many things but this one is always there.

 

[nkarafo]

You can kinda-sorta get around this issue by using Runahead in RetroArch/ShmupArch but it is not a perfect solution either.

Run-ahead isn't perfect but in some cases it can be even better than the real thing. Like, sometimes games have some internal input lag that also exists on real hardware. SNES and SMW are the most famous example. Even on real hardware there is at least a 2 full frames of lag. You can eliminate that with run-ahead and it does feel amazing, as if you are playing a better version of the game.

Althought, yeah, it is a "janky" solution. Doesn't work well with all cores or games. And i wouldn't use more than 2 frames on any game. 1 Should be the maximum for most games anyway.

 

[Chozofication_]

DunDunDunpachi dude I LOVE cave shooters lol. But I don't play them well enough to notice such a tiny lag difference

My understanding was you have 2 sources of lag 1. The game which may be 60fps, 30 etc. Which affects controller latency. And 2. the display lag.

I haven't noticed any additional controller latency on my consoles on lcd but again I don't play anything older than 64.

 

[cireza]

I was just saying its no longer a massive issue on modern lcD's

It is still a massive issue, even if it is nowhere near the joke it was when the first HD TVs launched.

You should do the ufo test. On a CRT, you would see the moving UFO as if it was not moving : everything would be perfectly crisp.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

DunDunDunpachi dude I LOVE cave shooters lol. But I don't play them well enough to notice such a tiny lag difference

My understanding was you have 2 sources of lag 1. The game which may be 60fps, 30 etc. Which affects controller latency. And 2. the display lag.

I haven't noticed any additional controller latency on my consoles on lcd but again I don't play anything older than 64.

As long as you don't notice, that's what matters.

However, I have no shame in banging the drum for CRTs. It would be one thing if these were super-expensive premium kit that cost 100s of bucks. But most of them are thrown out in the trash, so it's not like getting one is too difficult or costly. That said, I understand why people don't use them anymore.

 

[Chozofication_]

Micro led will get rid of motion blur issues we just have to wait 5 more years heh.

I think oled already does but personally I'm too used to the brightness of led.

 

[Chozofication_]

DunDunDunpachi

I was looking for a good Sony crt earlier this year but everyone is starting to charge too much for them and the ones being given away are always gone before I have the chance.

Eventually I decided I didn't want to sacrifice clarity and mostly wanted one for nostalgia so I went with the scaler option since I don't game on snes or genesis or whatever.

 

[dirthead]

Any console that outputs 240p will have a much better picture on a good CRT. You can use an HD TV and plug some expensive tools to generate scanlines or whatever, it still won't be as good as a good CRT.

CRT also have zero movement blur, which is a common issue, and a big one, on LCD panels. Whatever is scrolling or moving on a LCD panel will get blurry, and impossible to see clearly. On a CRT TV, even in games that have fast scrolling, you can look at what is scrolling, and it will be perfectly sharp, and won't destroy your eyes and brain because you somehow can't focus on it.

Also CRT TVs do not have active display, they take into account the capability of your brain and eyes to retain the picture. This is how they are designed, only displaying the picture line by line. The result is a picture that is much less aggressive to the eye than a LCD panel which is 100% of time lighten.

If you have an OLED, maybe that you don't have the movement blur problem anymore (never tried an OLED screen, they are only way too big and expensive). And still, I would have to resort to whatever tool to take the RGB input and convert it in something clean, which would be an exact multiple of the native resolution of the console, apply good quality scanlines etc... All of this is going to cost a shitload of money, require a lot of tweaking for a result that won't even be better than my CRT for 240p sources.

This is a misconception. CRTs have motion blur via phosphor decay too.

MicroLED/OLED/whatever do nothing to address motion blur.

There are only two ways out of motion blur: you flicker/strobe the display or you have a (currently impossible) incredibly high refresh rate. Mike Abrash has determined that you need around 1000hz to get a display with no persistence without flickering or strobing. It's just not there.

Any sample and hold display without flickering is going to have motion blur without absurdly high refresh rates. It's just the way it is.

Something else to chew on: G-Sync monitors have kind of mixed things up in terms of lag. While it's true that CRTs have lower latency, if you have a PC connected to them, you're still eating v-sync lag. Because G-Sync monitors don't have v-sync lag, they basically get a free -16ms lag modifier. So for certain emulation setups, amusingly, G-Sync LCDs can actually have less latency than CRTs overall.

The only thing really holding back display technology is consumer apathy/ignorance. The average mouth breather on the street isn't bothered by motion blur, input latency issues, or even notices/cares about things like the difference between 30fps and 60fps. This is the single biggest problem. If consumers were actually picky about these problems they would have been resolved literally decades ago.

 

[cireza]

CRTs have motion blur via phosphor decay too.

Motion blur on CRT is negligible compared to current HD displays. This is a simple fact. I don't really care about phosphor or whatever, I care about what my eyes see.