Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday October 12 2019, @01:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the for-some-values-of-phenomenal dept.

We Played Modern Games on a CRT Monitor - and the Results are Phenomenal :

It's true. Running modern games on a vintage CRT monitor produces absolutely outstanding results - subjectively superior to anything from the LCD era, up to and including the latest OLED displays. Best suited for PC players, getting an optimal CRT set-up isn't easy, and prices vary dramatically, but the results can be simply phenomenal.

The advantages of CRT technology over modern flat panels are well-documented. CRTs do not operate from a fixed pixel grid in the way an LCD does - instead three 'guns' beam light directly onto the tube. So there's no upscaling blur and no need to run at any specific native resolution as such. On lower resolutions, you may notice 'scan lines' more readily, but the fact is that even lower resolution game outputs like 1024x768 or 1280x960 can look wonderful. Of course, higher-end CRTs can input and process higher resolutions, but the main takeaway here is that liberation from a set native resolution is a gamechanger - why spend so many GPU resources on the amount of pixels drawn when you can concentrate on quality instead without having to worry about upscale blurring?

Are there any Soylentils here who still use a CRT for gaming? If I could just find a CRT with a 65-inch diagonal, and a table that could support the weight...


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Sunday October 13 2019, @09:02AM (1 child)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday October 13 2019, @09:02AM (#906576) Journal

    Magnetic fields change the trajectory of the electrons. With monochrome CRTs, that just causes a distortion of the image, and whatever fields came from your TV were probably small enough to make those distortions non-noticeable.

    Colour CRTs, however, have phosphors for different colours close to each other (close enough that their colours blend to a single mixed colour in your perception), thus already a slight distortion causes the electrons to hit the wrong phosphor, and thus causes very visible colour changes.

    I suspect the culprit were the speakers in your TV, as speakers contain permanent magnets. Since the speakers are typically on the side of the screen, it also gives a second reason why the mono CRT below the screen was less affected than the colour CRT on its side: On the side, the fields are stronger. Indeed, if it's a stereo TV, the fields of both speakers may even partially cancel out below, while they add up on the side.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Informative=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday October 13 2019, @02:54PM

    by Reziac (2489) on Sunday October 13 2019, @02:54PM (#906629) Homepage

    Good info, thanks. TV was old enough to not be stereo (1975ish, large 'portable'), and the speaker was on the far side away from the color CRT, under the controls (was actually closer to the mono CRT which was directly under that). But the TV had a pretty good speaker, so wouldn't be surprised if the magnet was big enough to have an influence. The color CRT was a 15" which at the time was still pretty newfangled in the consumer market.

    Without the metal barrier, the color CRT also 'whined' loud enough to notice.

    Didn't have much space so they had no choice but to be crammed together like that. Sheet metal to the rescue!

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.