General Gaming Time To Go Back To CRT

[SimpleG]

 

[Xbob42]

This has always been the case. High-end CRTs (and even shitty ones) have amazing picture quality. But they're extremely heavy and extremely expensive.

[Mr.Vic20]

Yup, CRT is the stuff, but not cheap or light. OLEDs aren't bad though! 

[AbsolutSurgen]

I recognize a lot of the criticisms they have of LCD -- but I still think they are looking at CRT with rose colored glasses.  CRTs had geometry issues, were severely limited by screen size, had separate motion artifacts due to the nature of scan lines, were VERY expensive to manufacture, etc.  They were VERY good but not as perfect as they make them out to be.

 

I personally think that the last of the Plasmas (particularly the Pioneer Elites) were the best compromise.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I'm glad we have a few professional grade CRTs for our retro stuff at least. Simply heavenly to look at.

 

[Xbob42]

2 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I recognize a lot of the criticisms they have of LCD -- but I still think they are looking at CRT with rose colored glasses.

Uhh, they most certainly aren't. They're looking at CRTs with their current modern eyeballs on current modern games that they just happened to try out on a whim. That doesn't mean CRTs are perfect, but that was never the claim.

[AbsolutSurgen]

Just now, Xbob42 said:

Uhh, they most certainly aren't. They're looking at CRTs with their current modern eyeballs on current modern games that they just happened to try out on a whim.

Yes they are.  There are "lots of reasons" of why CRTs don't hold up.  They're just commenting on the advantages.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

@Ominous

[Dre801]

Not shocked.  Big, heavy, energy sucking CRT has always been better where it counts.

 

I still have one.  Gonna need to dig it out of the closet.  I remember when Samsung was working in ThinCRT; Would have been interesting to see how that would have turned out.

[Ghost_MH]

25 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Yes they are.  There are "lots of reasons" of why CRTs don't hold up.  They're just commenting on the advantages.

 

How does "Hey, we hooked a CRT up to a modern PC and think games on it look awesome" equal looking at CRT tech through rose tinted glasses?

[Spork3245]

My Sony GDM FW900 is superior to my Asus PG27UQ in many ways. The Asus beats it in brightness/contrast (especially with HDR enabled, obviously), but I miss having the CRT hooked up for a lot of reasons.

[Spork3245]

 

[IdeaOfEvil]

Modern consoles on modern tv screens are just fine, imo. And I'd rather invest in HDMI kits for older consoles than invest in a CRT monitor. The difference in visual clarity is so minor between the two that it then comes down to the physical space available in one's home to decide which one you should invest in, and I don't got a lot of extra space for a second tv setup

[Mr.Vic20]

But for real, my LG C9 crushes all of these! 

[AbsolutSurgen]

 

1 hour ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

How does "Hey, we hooked a CRT up to a modern PC and think games on it look awesome" equal looking at CRT tech through rose tinted glasses?

If that is all they had said in their video, I wouldn't have made my post.

[Xbob42]

1 hour ago, IdeaOfEvil said:

Modern consoles on modern tv screens are just fine, imo. And I'd rather invest in HDMI kits for older consoles than invest in a CRT monitor. The difference in visual clarity is so minor between the two that it then comes down to the physical space available in one's home to decide which one you should invest in, and I don't got a lot of extra space for a second tv setup

The point wasn't that everyone should rush out to buy an old ass CRT, that would be impractical and silly. It was simply showing how far any sort of LCD/LED tech has to go before even coming close to matching the motion clarity and flexible nature of CRTs, which suffer from 0 ghosting and look crystal clear no matter resolution, unlike LCDs which have native resolutions and therefore have to do a bunch of upscaling/downscaling bullshit just to come close (and failing) to match native resolution quality.

Given the nature of how we look at moving pictures constantly on these things, temporal resolution (i.e. clarity in motion) is one of the most important factors of screen technology, and where LCDs absolutely get their shit pushed in by CRTs. It's not even close. It's not even in the same ballpark. Maybe if you're an old man with some cataracts, but in that case you really don't give much of a shit about the tech to begin with so you're similarly not going to care about the difference between a $300 LCD and a $4,500 one, so your opinion on the quality of screen technology would be bizarre because "I dunno it looks fine" is the majority opinion no matter what the screen looks like. 

[Ominous]

I'm good with my LG OLED.  I think I'm OK being a peasant these days. 

[Jason]

24 minutes ago, Ominous said:

I think I'm OK being a peasant these days. 

 

Who are you and what have you done with Ominous?

[vaxick]

CRT's certainly have some big strengths over LCD's and OLED's to a lesser degree, but the whole display debate will be a wash once micro LED displays become affordable.  It's everything we wanted from OLED, but without its downsides.

 

I used to own Sony's best widescreen CRT television and while I do miss it, I'd never want to go back to it.  The longer I owned it, the more I had to go into service menu to combat age related issues.  By the time I gave it up, the overscan was getting bad enough that text on the side of the screen was being cut off on widescreen games.

 

I got a Sony CRT TV for a few years ago for free I thought I'd hang onto for retro games, but I've honestly never used it.  The seldom time I do play a retro console, I just plug it into my video processor I have around mostly for times I want to watch a Laserdisc.  

[Kal-El814]

8 hours ago, Jason said:

Who are you and what have you done with Ominous?

He had sex.

[Nokt]

I didn’t watch the whole video, so they might have touched on this.

 

Its a bit misleading to say Control looks good on a CRT. This isn’t some CRT a ton of people had back in the day or that they gamed on or a CRT that you’d find for local pickup for free. This is a professional grade monitor, not only that it’s an extremely rare one that supported widescreen and high resolutions. There is a reason these are so hard to find. 

[Spork3245]

27 minutes ago, Nokt said:

I didn’t watch the whole video, so they might have touched on this.

 

Its a bit misleading to say Control looks good on a CRT. This isn’t some CRT a ton of people had back in the day or that they gamed on or a CRT that you’d find for local pickup for free. This is a professional grade monitor, not only that it’s an extremely rare one that supported widescreen and high resolutions. There is a reason these are so hard to find. 

 

I didn’t watch the video yet. What did they use? 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Every display technology has advantages and disadvantages.

CRTs can produce stunning images -- due to their great black levels and lack of motion artifacts.

However, there were also some disadvantages:

1)  They cost a lot to make -- according to google, the FW900 listed for over $2,500 over 15 years ago.  And given that CRTs were a fairly mature technology, I don't think the cost of making them was coming down

2)  They are very bulky relative to their screen size.  My 34" CRT HDTV was about 2 feet deep and weighed over 300 pounds

3)  Making of the tube above 34" wasn't really feasible due to the increased weight of the glass

4)  They had their own set of visual artifacts -- scan lines, moire interference patterns, geometry issues (I've never seen a CRT with perfect geometry, but maybe the FW900 can be set up with it?), eye strain (due to flickering), low sharpness on objects, etc.

 

Modern plasmas, were a dramatic improvement over CRTs (with almost all of the benefits, excluding the variable resolution) -- but giving a much better package size.  OLED TVs (such as the C9) I believe are in a similar boat (for various reasons).  And both can produce stunning images.

 

Monitors (for a variety of reasons) have given up some of the functionality -- probably because of the cost (a very good gaming monitor is $700, a @Spork3245 super-expensive one is still only $1,800) and LCD just doesn't suffer from the same problems in bright environments, and fits much better on a desk, etc.

 

3 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

I didn’t watch the video yet. What did they use? 

FW900

[Nokt]

20 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

I didn’t watch the video yet. What did they use? 

They answered above me but the FW900, same as the video you posted. 
 

Thing retailed for like $2200 in 99/2000 from what I can gather from a quick google search. 

[Bloodporne]

This video made me nostalgic as fuck...

[eggydoo]

I had one of those Sony's I bought from a friend cause he went full LCD when they first came out.  I still remember rolling it out to my car on his office chair cause it was so damn heavy.

Then when I plopped it on my desk, my desk buckled into a U shape but held it until the CRT finally died on me.  Good memories.

[Spork3245]

5 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Every display technology has advantages and disadvantages.

CRTs can produce stunning images -- due to their great black levels and lack of motion artifacts.

However, there were also some disadvantages:

1)  They cost a lot to make -- according to google, the FW900 listed for over $2,500 over 15 years ago.  And given that CRTs were a fairly mature technology, I don't think the cost of making them was coming down

2)  They are very bulky relative to their screen size.  My 34" CRT HDTV was about 2 feet deep and weighed over 300 pounds

3)  Making of the tube above 34" wasn't really feasible due to the increased weight of the glass

4)  They had their own set of visual artifacts -- scan lines, moire interference patterns, geometry issues (I've never seen a CRT with perfect geometry, but maybe the FW900 can be set up with it?), eye strain (due to flickering), low sharpness on objects, etc.

 

Modern plasmas, were a dramatic improvement over CRTs (with almost all of the benefits, excluding the variable resolution) -- but giving a much better package size.  OLED TVs (such as the C9) I believe are in a similar boat (for various reasons).  And both can produce stunning images.

 

Monitors (for a variety of reasons) have given up some of the functionality -- probably because of the cost (a very good gaming monitor is $700, a @Spork3245 super-expensive one is still only $1,800) and LCD just doesn't suffer from the same problems in bright environments, and fits much better on a desk, etc.

 

FW900

 

4 hours ago, Nokt said:

They answered above me but the FW900, same as the video you posted. 
 

Thing retailed for like $2200 in 99/2000 from what I can gather from a quick google search. 

 

Yea, I have one. That video is mine  

I forget when I got mine, I want to say around 2004-2006...? It was freshly refurbed to put it at "like new" in terms of everything at the time of purchase, and it still works just fine today. I cannot remember what I paid for it, but I'm pretty sure it was in the $400-500 range.

 

Also, the IQ on my FW900 is/was superior to my VT50 Panny Plasma. My B7 OLED, however? That’s a closer call. However, that's also CRT monitor vs CRT TV.

[Spork3245]

 

  

[Spork3245]

JFC, so my YouTube video (the one I posted) has been getting a ton of hits since that DF video and I’ve been getting a lot of messages on Reddit (someone asked on YouTube if I’m willing to sell so I posted my Reddit name and told them to hit me up there) asking to sell. (Someone tried lowballing at $100 and I laughed them off  ) I REALLY don’t want to ship this, and when people realize it’s about $400-500 to freight ship this thing they back out after offering to handle all shipping stuff and having a company pick it up... so... I potentially have a guy driving up to NJ from friggen Texas to buy this thing from me. Holy shit  

[Spork3245]

On 9/25/2019 at 8:28 PM, Spork3245 said:

JFC, so my YouTube video (the one I posted) has been getting a ton of hits since that DF video and I’ve been getting a lot of messages on Reddit (someone asked on YouTube if I’m willing to sell so I posted my Reddit name and told them to hit me up there) asking to sell. (Someone tried lowballing at $100 and I laughed them off  ) I REALLY don’t want to ship this, and when people realize it’s about $400-500 to freight ship this thing they back out after offering to handle all shipping stuff and having a company pick it up... so... I potentially have a guy driving up to NJ from friggen Texas to buy this thing from me. Holy shit  

 

Guy from Texas got here this morning. Sold. First thing he said was “Man, I really underestimated that drive” (23+ hours)  

[Xbob42]

On 9/17/2019 at 5:44 AM, Nokt said:

Its a bit misleading to say Control looks good on a CRT. This isn’t some CRT a ton of people had back in the day or that they gamed on or a CRT that you’d find for local pickup for free. This is a professional grade monitor, not only that it’s an extremely rare one that supported widescreen and high resolutions. There is a reason these are so hard to find. 

The first guy was playing it on a CRT he got from a garage sale or something for like $10, and was saying it looked amazing on that. The second guy is the one who picked up a widescreen.

[DarkStar189]

My wife's dad bought this TV with the stand year's ago at release. Sony 34" XBR960. The tv by itself weighs about 195lbs. Not sure if the stand adds a lot of weight. The tv still looks good today but it was a bad egg from the start. It was repaired 3 times and l for the longest time it's had that issue where lines aren't straight. Not sure of the term, banding maybe? Like the stock ticker on CNN is curved looking instead of straight across.

I had to move it for them once, it was a damn nightmare. 

[Spork3245]

1 hour ago, DarkStar189 said:

My wife's dad bought this TV with the stand year's ago at release. Sony 34" XBR960. The tv by itself weighs about 195lbs. Not sure if the stand adds a lot of weight. The tv still looks good today but it was a bad egg from the start. It was repaired 3 times and l for the longest time it's had that issue where lines aren't straight. Not sure of the term, banding maybe? Like the stock ticker on CNN is curved looking instead of straight across.

I had to move it for them once, it was a damn nightmare. 

 

Yea, many Widescreen CRT TVs (*not monitors*) had geometry issues out of the box. IIRC, it was the most common issue for them (but the majority were fine). It was generally recommended that you either learn how to go into the “professional/factory” settings yourself (usually involved a special code) to manually adjust it, or to have someone professionally calibrate it.

[Nokt]

17 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

The first guy was playing it on a CRT he got from a garage sale or something for like $10, and was saying it looked amazing on that. The second guy is the one who picked up a widescreen.

Yeah I kind of skimmed the video so I had a feeling that they might have done a comparison with just a regular TV. I have my doubts that Control really looks that great on a regular CRT but to each their own.

[SaysWho?]

On 9/16/2019 at 11:37 PM, Ominous said:

I'm good with my LG OLED.  I think I'm OK being a peasant these days. 

 

On 9/17/2019 at 12:02 AM, Jason said:

 

Who are you and what have you done with Ominous?