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...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @01:26AM (9 children)
Color CRTs have either stripes or triads of phosphor dots, so it low-pass filters all the
edges you'd see on an LCD.
These people piss their pants over vinyl records too.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @01:42AM
Shut the fuck up, you old turd. Gamers don't value knowledge.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:50AM (4 children)
And focus.
And convergence.
No, I do not wanna go back to CRT's.
I finally tossed the last of my multisyncs. Every one of em were blurred...so much so it didn't make much difference whether I have my glasses on or not.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:41AM (1 child)
And literal boat anchor.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:08AM
Plus the 150W+ they would use.
You can get the same effect with higher res and a 'CRT' filter on most things. Aliasing and ghosting is what they are seeing. It does look good. But not very 'sharp' (contrast, color accuracy).
Also many LCD panels have fairly poor color gamut at about 6 bits per channel. The problem is the 8 to 10bit ones are pricey. Whereas a CRT has a pretty wide range per triad pixel being analog. LCDs also have a nasty issue with blacks. Due to light leakage. This causes blacks to look grey/muddy. Better lighting in the device helps a lot.
(Score: 2) by hwertz on Saturday October 12 2019, @06:10AM
Honestly your CRTs must have been real cheap specimens; mine all had convergence adjustments on them; usually I never had to adjust it, and in the few I did adjusting it kept them nice and sharp.
That said.. my last two CRTs went within the last year or two. One I kept using daily until it got too dim; the other I only powered up like once or twice a month (hooked up to a home file server). I kept it there mainly because (as a 21" CRT) it weighed like 150 lbs. and I simply didn't feel like lugging it away when it still worked. It would not power up after a good thunderstorm came through.
Do I miss them? Not really. My CRTs had a good picture, but my LCD monitors do too.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:50PM
Yeah fuck those automobiles and their constant need for oil and brake pads...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday October 12 2019, @06:43AM
resolution independent would have been a better def, anyway you are empirically proven wrong by just connecting to an old CRT and watching a DVD or a game at reduced res. The usual American style rationalization, your facts are right but insufficient to determine an outcome.
I used a crt and a minimal old debian to play cube 2 sauerbraten and MAME.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @09:44AM (1 child)
If your "+5" isn't you upvoting yourself from a bunch of sockpuppet accounts, I despair of tech "knowledge" of Soylentils. :(
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Saturday October 12 2019, @12:49PM
Indeed, there seems to be a lot of brainwashed consumertardism in the comments here.
The ONLY real disadvantage to CRTs are the size and the weight.
An office building full of 9,000 CRTs running 8 hours a day or more would waste a lot of power. But for a gamer who likely has a video card setup that requires 16x integrated nuclear reactors just to power it, running a CRT for a little while is just a drop in the bucket.
The whole x-ray thing is just FUD for idiots that can't comprehend scale. Hey, your bananas are radioactive, call a hazmat team! It is a well known fact that people can drown in water, so everyone should stay away from glasses of water! Idiots.
Earlier color CRTs had poor dot pitch, but many of the later ones were razor sharp. It is unfortunate a lot of people missed out on those. Anyone who has not seen one should see some of the monochrome computer monitors, such as the first Macintosh or vector games like Asteroids or Battlezone, in person. Those can't even compare to LCD screens.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @01:40AM (22 children)
First of all, games are like gambling and tobacco, but if I were foolish enough to indulge...
I lived in that era. I remember what it was really like. CRTs are hot, bulky, heavy, and dusty. They shoot X-rays at you. They give off a high-pitched whine that tortures people with young ears. The blur is directional, so for example the vertical and horizontal lines of the "+" symbol are not the same darkness.
I remember getting headaches because the text on my screen would wiggle. I eventually figured out that this happened when the laundry equipment was running. Imagine everything on the screen vibrating by a pixel or two, except they weren't really pixels because it was analog.
I gladly spent $2500, equivalent to $3700 in 2019 dollars, to get a glorious 22" 1600x1024 LCD with a digital connector. Visitors would gawk at it like it was science fiction fantasy.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:58AM (11 children)
Uh, no they don't. At least not enough to be concerned about. If you are that paranoid about that sort of thing, you probably never step outside or fly on an airplane.
The better ones from the late 1990s and 200x's usually didn't unless there was a malfunction. It seems like you probably had some cheap third rate CRT monitor, and that was unfortunate.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:13AM (5 children)
Yes, they do. You can prove the existence of the x-rays by using math, which is not a neutral subject.
Looking at math as "neutral" subject really harmed my heart. As a young adult, I began wanting mathematical "proof" of God's existence. I'd been taught, ever so subtly, to trust _math_ and _man_, rather than realizing that math's very existence testified to a Creator.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:19AM
Sounds like you took one too many x-ray photons in the brain. Better get that checked out.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday October 12 2019, @05:55AM (1 child)
Oh good grief, mathematical Platonism? I thought that died out after people finished the 100-level philosophy courses and put the bong down...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @12:22PM
Nobody puts the bong /down/ after the 100-level philosophy courses. Unless they're picking a needle up...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:00PM
Then clearly the problem is that you exist in a universe where such math is possible. Better move to one where that isn't so.
Anything other problems the internet can fix while you're still here?
(Score: 3, Informative) by toddestan on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:02PM
What little xrays come from a CRT usually come out of the back. All that leaded glass (remember how heavy they are) protects you while viewing from the front. The later ones even more so, as to make a flat CRT the glass has to be even thicker.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:15AM (4 children)
OMG, some guy just admitted CRTs do in fact shoot x-rays at us! Teach the controversy!
(Score: 2, Informative) by RandomFactor on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:42AM (3 children)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2787304/ [nih.gov]
https://emfacademy.com/computer-monitor-radiation-everything-you-need-to-know/ [emfacademy.com]
In summary, yes CRTs, particularly those manufactured prior to around 2001, leaked Xrays and potentially enough to cause actual harm. I remember monitors being sold as low emission for a while in the early 2000s. Of course, once companies figured out LCD monitors paid for themselves in power savings they went away in relatively short order.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Saturday October 12 2019, @12:11PM
You are sure these are not just FUD pieces designed to sell LCD monitors?
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday October 13 2019, @12:13AM (1 child)
A cousin of mine worked for a lab in which they tested the radiation emitted by products the company was designing. I'm not privy to information about exactly what products he was testing, but he worked in a division that was working on the about to explode (not literally of course) home and business PC market. Anyway, we shared an apartment. I worked evenings, so I was home during the day. I listened to college radio stations of which we lived at the farthest extent of their range. He would frequently come home for lunch, and as soon as he walked in the door reception for the radio stations was obliterated by static. Reception would resume when he went back to work. Thankfully, he only worked in that department a short time, but I have to wonder what damage it did to him.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 13 2019, @07:33AM
Whatever it was it wasn't x-rays. They are not persistent. You could x-ray someone into a puddle of goo on the floor and as soon as you turned off the machine the radio would work fine. If he was doing neutron analysis and emitting that much induced radiation he is either dead or a superhero now.
Did his vehicle have an electric fan that started up after he turned off the engine? Small electric motors are great static generators.
Or maybe he just didn't like your choice of station and built a little static generator.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bot on Saturday October 12 2019, @06:51AM (3 children)
lol I got CRTs from 7 to 21 inches of all kinds, shit, almost trinitron and trinitron, green phosphors, mono, color, never one interference with electrical motors nearby. Small kitchen maybe?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday October 13 2019, @03:28AM (2 children)
My first color CRT did not like my color TV very much, and they perforce shared a shelf. I had to put a chunk of sheet steel between 'em to stop the rainbow glowies on the CRT.
However, didn't bother the Herc mono CRT at all, and it was right below the TV.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Sunday October 13 2019, @09:02AM (1 child)
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.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday October 13 2019, @02:54PM
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.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @09:54AM
While having never spent maybe $100 on an UPS, or even $10 on a stabilizer, and exposing your supposed stupid-monkey purchase to the same electricity spikes? I claim bullshit.
And sockpuppetry as the source of "+4".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Saturday October 12 2019, @11:04AM (4 children)
A lot depends on the CRT quality, which in turn depended on the price you were willing to pay. I used top-of-the-line Viewsonics for many years. No vibration, incredibly sharp, I could run at 2048x1536 resolution - which was almost unheard of in the day.
Today's LCD panels? A fraction of the price, and they are at least as good. Sure, you have to set them to your preferences (brightness, contract, temperature, etc.), but you had to do the same with the CRTs.
I threw away all my CRTs years ago, along with my vinyl records. Technology progresses.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:58PM
I wonder how many low back disk herniations have been avoided by the move away from CRTs and vinyl. I got rid of my records in 1992 in preparation for a cross country move. In the mid 2000s I got rid of the CRTs. In both cases, I saved an enormous amount of dead weight and would never go back. I think the nostalgia for this stuff, comes largely (not completely of course) from people who didn't have to live with these things on a daily basis.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:42PM (1 child)
You know one thing that CRTs excelled at compared to today's LCD? They had knobs. It was a lot easier to adjust. Otherwise, I'm totally with you. I prefer LCDs overall.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday October 13 2019, @02:57PM
Knobs. KNOBS! Geez yes. Gimme a damn knob, or button, enough with the crappy onscreen controls already!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday October 13 2019, @03:31AM
I also became a ViewSonic bigot -- sharper picture and better color. Never had one that would do 2048x1536, tho -- do you remember which model?
My eyes still find a CRT more restful, but anymore it's not worth the space or the bother, so ... flatscreens.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Saturday October 12 2019, @01:45AM (7 children)
LCDs give much better resolution, which makes it easier to see the other guy and start shooting before he does the same. Not to mention they're a lot bigger and weigh a lot less than CRTs.
CSB: Back in, jeez, '97? I was a consultant and went to work for, jeez, General Instrument? They were big in HDTV, satellite TV, and MPEG. They had an HDTV that I think was maybe 36" diagonal. It was on a cart, weighed something like 800 lbs, and took it's own power outlet. It cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Now I'm watching Jeapardy on a 55" flatscreen I paid maybe $400 for .
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @09:54AM
"Jeez" "jeez" "jeez"
"I'm a faggot white boy"
"I oppose men marrying female children"
"Jeez" "Jeez" "jeez"
"#canclestallman"
"Jeez"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @10:35AM (4 children)
> LCDs give much better resolution
What? Once I had the dough my Sony Trinitrons were 2400x1600 and in the late aughts I got a secondhand Sony that was 3200x2400, and included connections on the back for some kind of professional visual graphics, which looked like the old locking network plugs.
I got headaches from the whine of CRTs running under 80Hz or 85Hz, and I think I had to upgrade my video card to handle the big one. That thing must've weighed 40kg. It bowed the first cheap table I had it on. I used a colour calibration tool (had some friends who did graphic design and borrowed one a few times) and it didn't meaningfully drift. That thing was a total delight, and I'm sad I had to get rid of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViewSonic [wikipedia.org] lists
I can't find a single 3200x2400 LCD, and to get 1600 vertical I have to go to 5k HD, and pay literally thousands. Ridiculous.
So, no, LCDs do not give better resolution,
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:53PM (1 child)
I still toy with the idea of picking up an IBM T221 LCD. So much vertical real estate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by toddestan on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:27PM
I toyed with the idea for years, but never pulled the trigger. Partly because the refresh rate was low - which is fine for what it was built for, but not good for gaming or video. The other reason is to get the resolution back when it was built, it actually acts as several smaller monitors - to your PC it looks like several separate monitors (with actual separate physical connections) and you span your desktop across them and the screen stitches it all together. The original monitors actually came with their own special graphics card to do all of this, which as you might imagine is AGP. Though since the cables running to the monitor are just a bunch of DVI connections you can make more modern graphics cards work with it. Maybe it's not as big of a problem but I'm guessing many games wouldn't play nice with that.
I also considered buying an IBM T210, which was a much more conventional screen sporting a 21" 4:3 size, 2048x1536 resolution, and can be driven by most any graphics card with a DVI port. But these screens seem to very rare on the second-hand market (much more rare than the T220/T221), long out of production, and I never found the right one.
Eventually I bought a 4K monitor instead. Still doesn't have the resolution of the T220/T221 but it's close
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 13 2019, @12:39AM
Sure, but there's a zillion 3840x2160 LCDs, that's 20% wider and 10% shorter, so still 8% more pixels.
WQXGA is 2560x1600, but to be fair QHD (2560x1440) has replaced them; I don't think you can buy a new WQXGA monitor any more, so we'll say it doesn't count.
"4k" is 3840x2160, that's way over 1600, and absolutely ubiquitous.
Oh [amazon.com], really? [amazon.com]
8% more pixels than even your cadillac CRT, and you can find prices like this any time. i.e. you don't have to catch when someone is dumping obsolete tech for pennies on the dollar.
(Score: 4, Touché) by maxwell demon on Sunday October 13 2019, @09:13AM
Actually, to get 1600 vertical, you can just take a Full HD monitor and put it sideways. Of course you'll get less horizontal pixels, but you didn't specify those.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Saturday October 12 2019, @11:42PM
I actually owned a Zenith 36" HDTV that was the largest CRT I've ever seen. I'm not going to exaggerate with some bullshit number like you did, but it really did weigh 120 lbs. I know this because I couldn't really move it myself, given it's size and weight. I remember trying, and it was extremely awkward and likely to tip forward onto it's face.
I read on the back, where it said in fairly large print: "120 lbs".
Anyway, something about CRTs that people maybe don't remember is the incredible depth needed for a large screen, and when you're talking about a 36" screen, the damn thing needed to be a long way from the wall which made my entertainment center look a little odd.
In 2001 or 2002 when I bought it, it had a far better picture than the LCD TVs on display at the time and actually cost less. Within about 5 years it was clear that it's time had come and gone. I'm glad that it is no longer mine.
I had to move it twice, but I left it when we sold the house it was in about 10 years ago.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Saturday October 12 2019, @01:53AM (5 children)
I don't really miss CRT. They got real hot, the last one I owned was probably 40-45kg in weight, they were getting hard to fit on the desk (now I can just push the desk up against the wall while previously in the CRT-era the gap between desk and wall just grew whenever you got a new monitor). Now I get to have 32", 5-6kg, about 4cm in depth and it consumes like 40-45w.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:05AM (3 children)
I think the successor technology will be short throw laser projectors.
https://www.projectorcentral.com/best-ultra-short-throw-projectors.htm [projectorcentral.com]
http://www.lgnewsroom.com/2018/12/new-cinebeam-laser-4k-projector-from-lg-with-ultra-short-throw-technology-debuts-at-ces-2019/ [lgnewsroom.com]
"Short throw" allows you to put it relatively close to the wall it will project on, eliminating some of the annoyance associated with traditional projectors or letting you project a huge image.
Laser projectors are brighter, display better colors, are suitable for high dynamic range, and could last at least an order of magnitude longer than bulb-based projectors.
Hz could be comparable to CRT. There are at least 120 Hz laser projectors and the CRT monitor in the TFA video was 165 Hz.
I'm not sure if there are any motion blur considerations with the projectors. It's possible that the laser projector has all or a lot of the advantages of a CRT monitor.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:39PM (1 child)
I'm guessing the most common successor technology for LCDs with be OLEDs. OLEDs are already present in some higher end smartphones, and there's a handful of OLED desktop displays on the market now. Eventually they should become more common and cheaper as the technology matures further and production ramps up. It will be interesting to see how they are marketed, as I've always considered the move by marketers to call LED-backlit LCDs as "LED monitors" a move meant to intentionally confuse people.
For very large screens and projectors I could see the short throw lasers becoming an attractive option. But I just don't see it being used for the 24"-ish screen I'm going to have on my office PC.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:53PM
OLED burn-in is too stupid. I consider it DOA. OLED could be used for flexible displays, but MicroLED [wikipedia.org] makes more sense as a direct successor to LCD.
Laser projector as a successor to CRT could make sense since they are both beaming photons. Not everyone would want to move from LCD to a laser projector, but it offers some interesting advantages. Short throw makes it more convenient to work with, and it could occupy the position where a TV was.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @09:29PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-emission_display [wikipedia.org] the well known response of phosphor (the system is like many tiny CRTs) with the flatness of LCD (tiny tiny CRTs). SED version also going nowhere. We are stuck with OLED... they go to crap fast, so they can sell more, and even more if the use requires good colors. PROFIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @05:36AM
Indeed, the savings on power consumption alone since I finally 'retired with extreme prejudice' my CRT displays made me wish I'd done it a couple of years earlier, but I tend to run things until they terminally fail. Economic factors alone meant they had to go, but it still pained me to retire fully functional displays, as no-one wanted them and we didn't have the storage, we had the trainees@work strip them into their component parts for recycling.
Ah, now while *I* don't miss them, especially the heat, at home, however, the older cats still mourn their demise...there's nothing so pathetic as a fully grown Tom cat looking forlornly at the spot formerly occupied by my primary CRT monitor, but which, in his eyes, was *his* massive heated bed..and had been for years.
And there's nothing so funny as said cat trying to figure out how to curl up on top of the LCD replacement...funny, up to the point the stupid big bugger sent the thing flying off the desk when he lost his balance...
..next monitor was wall mounted, and I rigged up an old SGI CRT monitor, electronics gutted and fitted with a heating pad to keep the moggies happy.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Saturday October 12 2019, @01:56AM (1 child)
Not true!! There are a fixed quantity of color phosphor dots on the front of the screen. Three dots- red, green, and blue, form a pixel. They do look best at their native resolutions, and most adapt to alternate resolutions better than LCD / OLED, and I'm not sure why.
Most CRT monitors are analog- no digital digitizing processing aliasing anti-aliasing upconverting downconverting etc. Just raw electrons and phosphor.
CRTs can have display problems due to magnetic fields. Internal degaussing coil should neutralize most of it unless there's an ongoing external magnetic field. Also, they use magnets and electronic adjustments to cause proper "convergence"- where the electron beams land on the correct dots. IE, the red beam can hit some of the blue phosphor, etc., and the net result is color blotches, rainbows, blurring, etc. But most later CRT monitors are pretty stable. They can be fixed if something gets out of alignment.
Also, the screen is quite tough and strong, unlike LCD.
I still have several CRT monitors, a couple I use fairly often. I have one Sony 21" 2048 x something, and it looks great at any resolution.
I was getting ready to pitch a few of my CRTs and now I think I'll see if there's a market. Thanks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @08:59AM
Except for the size and heat issue, takes care of all the nits picked on CRTs.
3 tube CRT, no shadow mask since each tube is a solid expanse of phosphor with it's own lens.
X-ray a non issue unless you're staring right at the tub.
Mid 90s vintage high end projectors (NEC of course) can do 1080P at 70hz or better, ours was on a 120" screen.
So what if you need to tweak the convergence every 6 months or so..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:03AM (5 children)
Is someone even manufacturing crt-monitors today?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:09AM (4 children)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8BVTHxc4LM [youtube.com]
Video in TFA used the Sony FW900 from 2003.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:53AM (3 children)
yes, but that is not what i wanted to know. is there some company out there still making them to fill some niche market, which probably isnt gaming related.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:04AM (2 children)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube#21st_century_usage [wikipedia.org]
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1080821-any-place-to-buy-new-crt-monitors/ [neowin.net]
https://www.thomaselectronics.com/faq/ [thomaselectronics.com]
If CRT desktop monitors aren't dead, they're close to it.
But I bet somebody with enough money or a Kickstarter could go to that Thomas Electronics company and get a "modern" CRT made, with all the new ports and maybe some design enhancements. Judging by TFA, there would be a slight demand for it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Funny) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:02PM
Just market them as “videophile equipment” and I'm sure you'll find a market. It's a tube, after all!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday October 12 2019, @05:00PM
I'm guessing what few are still produced are for things like the top picture in the last link - highly specialized things like the avionics display in an aircraft. Given the high cost and expense of certifying something like an avionics package along with requirements from things like the military/government for supplying the exact same thing for decades unchanged, it's probably easier to keep producing CRT-based equipment designed 20 years ago rather than going to all the trouble of redesigning it around something else.
The big problem I would see for standard CRT monitors/televisions is that you would have to compete with the used market, where the retail value of most any CRT, including what were very expensive CRTs in their day, hovers around $0. It kind of pained me to see things like high end, perfectly functional Sony Trinitron CRTs getting binned, but no one wanted them and you really couldn't even give them away. I squirreled away a few myself, though I don't really know what I am going to do with them and they just take up space. My latest graphics card can't even drive them without some kind of Displayport to VGA adapter which I don't have.
At some point the used supply will dry up. That may already be happening, as I see less CRTs entering the waste stream nowadays. Most people who were going to replace their CRTs have done so by now, and the ones getting thrown out now are more likely to have been owned by someone who held onto them and eventually had something go wrong with them which is the case for some others who have posted here. So eventually, maybe there will be a small market for people who want a "retro" CRT for some reason or another.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:06AM (6 children)
I used CRTs as long as it was reasonably practical, but newer GPUs generally don't have VGA support any more (even over the DVI port) so you would have to build an adapter circuit (which wouldn't be that hard, but a lot harder than just connecting a plug). My 2012 Radeon 7950 had VGA, my 2017 RX580 does not.
CRTs have one remaining quality advantage which is that they do not have any motion blur. It does not matter how fast the LCD transition time is, they will always have motion blur as long as they use always-on backlight. Motion blur is caused by seeing two images at once. CRTs only ever display pixels from one frame or another - never a blurred pixel that is half frame A, half frame B. But if LCDs would shut off the backlight while the pixels transition they would eliminate this problem (but they'd need a much more powerful backlight, it's not a simple problem, and yes, at low refresh rates this would cause eyestrain from flicker, just like CRTs). Because of the potential for flicker, this should only happen in games, so it will probably only be a feature on the high end gaming monitors.
But LCDs do have plenty of advantages themselves. All modern GPUs have enough performance to reach at least 1080p resolution, so flexible resolutions are no longer meaningful. Yes, older games don't necessarily have the right resolution, but this is a problem that can be solved in software, even at the driver level, by upscaling. Gaming monitors no longer have significant display lag. In fact, today's gaming LCDs might have less lag in practice than CRTs did. This is because, while an LCD will always have about half a frame of display lag, the CPU is always a couple of frames ahead of the GPU's video output (four is typical, two is the practical minimum). Increasing the frame rate lowers the effective lag in the driver and GPU by reducing how much real time those few frames of lag represent.
Another advantage for LCDs is that they don't have to run at a fixed refresh rate. CRTs can change their refresh rate of course, but it takes a couple of seconds to do it. LCDs have Freesync (or the inferior proprietary licensed version G-sync) which allows them to update the display whenever data is ready. CRTs had only the choice of v-sync, which cost a frame of lag, and no v-sync, which caused frame tearing.
As far as image quality goes, both have advantages. CRTs have better black depth and color uniformity. LCDs have perfect geometry and focus. I call this a wash, but there's room for personal preference here.
I loved CRTs, still have a few for my retrocomputers, and used them on my main PC long after most people had switched. But there's really no technological reason to stay with them any more.
The only thing I ask is that if you have a good quality CRT, don't recycle it. Give it to a retrocomputing enthusiast, especially if it's a monitor for a specific older system (Apple II, C64, Amiga, early Mac, etc.).
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:14AM
> if you have a good quality CRT, don't recycle it. Give it to a retrocomputing enthusiast,
About 10 years ago we replaced an old 25" Trinitron TV. I was about to put out with the trash, but put on Craiglist instead for $25. It went right away to a retro gamer--it seems that they've been around for some time.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:19AM (1 child)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8BVTHxc4LM [youtube.com]
I recall the video (watched it earlier today) claiming no tearing with CRT technology or maybe just the Sony FW900, which they described as having a refresh rate up to 165 Hz (also might not be accurate [cnet.com]).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:24AM
The FW900 was a phenomenal piece of equipment (and very expensive, when it was new and even now, relatively speaking). But 165Hz at full resolution wasn't possible.
People who don't understand how CRTs work sometimes look at the maximum resolution and the maximum refresh rate and assume you can use both at once, but you can't. You are limited by the analog bandwidth of the monitor and the horizontal frequency of the electron beam. Analog bandwidth isn't a hard limit, but it does represent the maximum performance before image quality will degrade. You can turn a crisp image at 60Hz into a blurry one at 100Hz, even if the resolution is the same. Horizontal frequency (the maximum rate of scanlines the beam can generate), on the other hand, is usually a hard limit, the monitor won't sync more than a percent or two above that.
The FW900 manual doesn't sspecify a bandwidth, but it lists a mode with 380MHz, let's round up to 400. That's very good. At 1920x1200 resolution that's about 120Hz. However, it would be limited by its H-frequency to about 100Hz. It does imply that you could squeeze a little more resolution out of it without losing much image quality. The monitor lists a mode of 2304x1440@80Hz (it's 16x10 aspect ratio rather than today's typical 16x9) using the maximum 120kHz H-frequency, which is probably the best tradeoff of resolution, refresh rate and quality.
Today's LCDs can easily do 1080p at 120Hz, and 4K@120Hz or 1080p@240Hz are available.
Of course this is a monitor from 2003. If CRTs were still being made for PC monitors, they'd probably have adopted today's high speed data link connections, eliminating analog bandwidth, but the horizontal frequency would still be a problem - this is still analog circuitry at that point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:30AM
For 5-10 dollars extra you can get a female HDMI to male DVI-D adapter to plug onto the DVI-D port on a modern GPU (unless it is displayport) and connect it that way.
I've sued these to do dual/triple head VGA monitors off a GT630 card. Works great.
Point is: The adapters are still out there. Some of them are even really cheap (Thanks Chinese entrepeneurs/clone makers!)
If you really want to you can have any mix and match of hardware you want, if you have the money and patience and testing for the right chain of adapters. I use such chains every day. You can took if it beats your alternatives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:53AM (1 child)
Weird you think that VGA is not doable on modern cards without significant effort. DisplayPort to VGA adapters are readily available and cheap.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 13 2019, @10:47AM
To address both of the above responses :
HDMI doesn't have any provision for analog signals. You can't go from a passive HDMI/DVI adapter, to a passive DVI/VGA adapter, and have it work. The analog pins won't be connected to anything.
DisplayPort to VFA adapters exist, but they're no good. They're intended for driving VGA-based projectors from laptops with no VGA output. None of them have the resolution or refresh rate for driving a CRT desktop monitor with any kind of acceptable quality. Most are locked to 60Hz.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by EJ on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:10AM (13 children)
Was this site invaded by Slashdot? Why am I reading this garbage?
(Score: 5, Touché) by takyon on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:19AM
Well, you clicked on it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:51AM (4 children)
Well we know this site was invaded by alt-right trolls so I don't have the same question regarding your posts.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:08AM
Anyone who doesn’t orange man bad is a troll!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:12AM (2 children)
Does anybody here identify as alt-right or do you get to determine that?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:45PM (1 child)
better alt right than ctrl left
but ultimately I prefer to escape socialism. Give me direct democracy and use money as a means of exchange, not control.
Account abandoned.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @07:50PM
^ lol
"rather be a racist dipshit than someone who wants equality"
snowflakes gotta snowflake
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:07AM (3 children)
No, LSD has HIGHER resolution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:13AM (2 children)
More motion blur than CRT. But it's 10/10 motion blur.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:21PM (1 child)
plus, tuner is whack, wrong colors and lots of artifacts...
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @02:55AM
Wouldn't have it any other way :wink:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:28AM (2 children)
For some strange reason the site has put aside its core mission of reporting whatever lunacy the extremists are up to lately in favor of a story about technology. Weird, but ok as a diversion, I guess.
(Score: 3, Touché) by EJ on Saturday October 12 2019, @05:01AM (1 child)
If it was an intelligent story about technology, then I might agree with you.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Saturday October 12 2019, @09:43AM
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:43AM (9 children)
Haven't played games in ages, but I use a CRT because LCD monitors are just too damn bright. Sure, there may be some out there that have better brightness control and black levels, but I've never noticed them in any stores. With a CRT I never even notice vitreous floaters, but with a LCD they get annoying.
Also, a monitor with true black levels is the only genuine way to experience DOOM. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @03:30AM
Stores turn the brightness up to 100000x what anyone would ever actually want to use. It "makes the colors pop", by which they mean "gives everyone a headache." CRTs do still have somewhat better black levels, but you can turn the brightness down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @04:15AM (4 children)
Almost all monitors have an adjustment for that. You may want a warmer color. Plus turn down the brightness slightly. At night I turn mine down a bit. Then during the day I turn it back up.
I got rid of a 35 inch trinatron set. The thing weighed 200+ pounds and consumed 120W in standby. 200+ while running. My new set uses .5mw in standby and 65W while running. My power bill noticed it in the first month. That thing paid for itself years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @11:24AM (2 children)
What is the price of electricity that you notice a difference with such a small power difference as that?
Or do you never run airconditioning either? Don't run a heater or get all your heat from a non-electric source?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 12 2019, @02:04PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @07:07PM
I used to watch my power bill quite closely. Yes a 5-10 dollar average drop was noticeable. All you have to do is keep an eye on it drop it in excel and graph it. I had ~20 dollar drop once from getting a new computer. All of that old stuff was neat at the time. But at this point why would I use old junk I sold off/gave away years ago? Pretty much any of my new equipment blows away the old stuff. Unless I find some old equipment that cost 10k+ in the day for a good deal. But I have a rule. I do not take other peoples old junk anymore.
Idle and standby are good numbers to keep an eye on. Some of those old sets would have a heater on the tube to keep them warm. So that way at any moment you could turn it on and it would work right away. Instead of waiting the 2-5 mins for the warm up. They looked amazing years ago. But put any of that equipment I used to own next to my current setup and the current setup is leaps and bounds better at 1/8th the power. Even some of the new stuff does this. So it is worth looking at. Especially if it is something you only use once and awhile.
Oh stay away from plasma screens. They look great but they have a short lifespan plus draw as much as an old trinitron TV would, sometimes more.
Just keep an eye on bits per pixel, grey scale transition, refresh rate, black levels, power usage, and you will get a good screen.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday October 12 2019, @05:11PM
Really crappy LCDs run the backlight at 100% brightness all the time, and the "brightness" control just adjusts how much light the LCD panel lets through. You are best to avoid these screens, though I can't recall a modern screen employing this trick - it was mostly some crappy CCFL screens from the 2000's doing stuff like that. Any decent screen lets you control the brightness of the backlight which is what you want. Some high end screens let you control the brightness of the backlight and the "brightness" of the panel.
Most every screen I've used, by default, comes with the brightness set to "burn your eyeballs out" setting by default. Especially now with LED backlights common. This looks good for a display model in a store (even more so with the glossy screen trend) but for home use I always tone it way down. I don't even pay attention to the brightness specifications on screens because I know even the dimmest ones are going still be way too bright.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Booga1 on Saturday October 12 2019, @06:25AM (2 children)
I run my current monitor(Dell U2713HM [tftcentral.co.uk]) at 29% brightness, 75% contrast. Anything higher starts getting either overly bright or unnatural looking contrast. It's got HDMI, Dual-link DVI-D, D-sub(VGA), DisplayPort, audio out, and four USB 3.0 ports [tftcentral.co.uk].
Being six years old, I am sure Dell has something better by now. Though, the VGA port is likely gone. I may not like anything else Dell makes, but the monitor was definitely worth it.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday October 12 2019, @05:25PM (1 child)
I sure hope that Dell has finally killed off the VGA port. To me, they are one of the big reasons that VGA has hung around so long. Even this year at work I've seen brand new Dell PCs and monitors with VGA ports. In 2019.
Lenovo is also guilty too, which is kind of odd because IBM was one of the few companies that seemed to be actively trying to kill off VGA - I remember IBM building P3/P4 systems with only DVI out only in the early 2000's and you needed to use an adapter for VGA.
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Saturday October 12 2019, @05:52PM
Looks like the VGA port is gone on all but the lowest end of the 27" monitors: Examples of 2560x1440 and 1920x1080 monitors [dell.com]
Another point against VGA is that it really can't handle the higher resolutions anyway, so there's not much point in adding them to 4k monitors at all. They've even dropped it off the 2560x1440 versions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @08:52AM (3 children)
Nope. CRT was horrible and it should stay dead. I still remember being able to detect whenever that piece of tech run in 60 Hz. If was painful. And people worked like it's normal. Ugh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @09:59AM (2 children)
Those claiming to notice 60 were few and far between (and with maybe half of them only imagining it).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @10:06AM
https://www.blurbusters.com/ [blurbusters.com]
Bullshit.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @10:43AM
I used to be able to tell when a TV was on with the sound off across a house. That whine was NOT imaginary. 70Hz, too. By 80Hz it wasn't really an issue, I think I could tell if one was powered up and had my head close but it never gave me headaches like the 60Hz ones did. The cheap flybacks had major phononic resonance.
(Score: 3, Funny) by theluggage on Saturday October 12 2019, @05:58PM (1 child)
Don't forget your vacuum tube sound-card*, or those explosions just won't have the right spectralocious frequencyations.
Plus an opto-mechanical mouse, of course - the fluff on the ball adds to the dynamicisity and interactologistics of the gameplay.
Didn't some 1980s computer magazine try distributing software on one of those floppy plastic 45rpm records stuck to the cover once (cheaper to mass produce than a cassette tape)? I'm sure the bits were a lot warmer.
(* they have been made... and I don't mean the USB sound card built into a fake vacuum tube).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 12 2019, @06:16PM
Hmmm, looks like a song title, walks like a song title...etc. etc.
(It's a boring evening, fires up DAW, fires up synths, plugs in guitars and bass, mikes up the Otamatone...now let's see if anything musical or funny comes out of it..)
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Saturday October 12 2019, @10:33PM
TFA seems to be chock full of BS. If you’re having a better subjective experience viewing a CRT, that’s fine, but the technical comparison is way off the mark. In fact, CRTs DO have a fixed pixel grid but this grid is in the form of the shadow mask and phosphor grid instead of individual LEDs. Maybe the blending effect of phosphor dots bleeding into their neighbors softens resolution issues, but that doesn’t make it better. In fact you can achieve this effect with signal processing.