Looking for comments on CRT monitors/TVs for news story

[KyleOrl]

Hi all,

My name is Kyle Orland. I'm a writer for ArsTechnica.com currently working on a story about the slow march towards obsolescence for CRT monitors/TVs, which no one seems to care about except for retro gamers. I'm looking for some personal stories from the Racketboy community about your use of CRT monitors, including responses to the following questions:

* Why CRT is superior to LCD for retro gaming?
* What do you look for in a CRT monitor/TV for gaming?
* How difficult is it to find a good gaming CRT these days?
* Are you making plans for the day when CRTs will be impossible to find/hard to repair? Hoarding TVs, perhaps?
* Have you tried emulators with CRT filters? Do they work well enough for you?

Any posts in response here could be used (with attribution) in my story, unless you say otherwise. Thanks in advance for your help.

-Kyle Orland
Senior Gaming Editor, ArsTechnica.com
[email protected]

[CRTGAMER]

Hi all,

My name is Kyle Orland. I'm a writer for ArsTechnica.com currently working on a story about the slow march towards obsolescence for CRT monitors/TVs, which no one seems to care about except for retro gamers. I'm looking for some personal stories from the Racketboy community about your use of CRT monitors, including responses to the following questions:

* Why CRT is superior to LCD for retro gaming?

No scaling issues with the tube for non HD signals. SVideo connections for older consoles.

* What do you look for in a CRT monitor/TV for gaming?

HD CRT with a 4:3 screen. Prefer the Sony HD Wega due to the picture quality, the flatness of the tube. It also houses a surround sound speaker due to its large enclosure to accomodate the CRT, impossible on LCDs.

* How difficult is it to find a good gaming CRT these days?

Not too difficult but only as used models in thrift stores or swap meet. HD CRTs in the 4:3 format are difficult to find since they had a short production of only a few years.

* Are you making plans for the day when CRTs will be impossible to find/hard to repair? Hoarding TVs, perhaps?

I keep an identical backup HD 4:3 CRT in the bedroom and a spare set of power supply chips.

* Have you tried emulators with CRT filters? Do they work well enough for you?

Yes the scanlines in Mame.

Any posts in response here could be used (with attribution) in my story, unless you say otherwise. Thanks in advance for your help.

-Kyle Orland
Senior Gaming Editor, ArsTechnica.com
[email protected]

Agree, CRTs are no longer available as new product due to the popularity of lighter LCDs, LEDs and Plasmas. From the sellers perspective also a gain, the CRT is just too heavy. When the HD CRT came out it almost doubled the weight of a comparable sized non HD CRT. Marketing the CRT was just not cost affective due to shipping weight and store shelf space, even though it has the superiority for non HD signals.

New flatscreens are great for HD, but have dot crawl issues for non HD signals. Plasmas seem to be a good though not exact replacement for the CRT.

[AppleQueso]

* Why CRT is superior to LCD for retro gaming?
Retro games were designed for CRT displays, simple as that. It's all about the way CRTs process and display the low resolution signals that these old systems put out.

There are ways to get scanlines and great CRT-like picture out of old games on HDTVs, but they usually involve costly scalers and the like. Buying a CRT is far more cost effective in most situations.

* What do you look for in a CRT monitor/TV for gaming?
Personally, when I'm looking for a CRT, I just try and find something that has at least S-Video. Component and/or 480p is just a nice bonus.

HD CRTs are neat, but personally I find they're not really worth it unless you absolutely refuse to have a dual TV setup with your modern consoles. They're a bit more expensive, they're much heavier, they're a bit harder to find, etc.

* How difficult is it to find a good gaming CRT these days?
Not too hard. HDTV adoption has been a bit on the slow side, so you still constantly find people getting rid of sometimes rather nice CRTs at garage sales, etc. Usually for dirt cheap.

* Are you making plans for the day when CRTs will be impossible to find/hard to repair? Hoarding TVs, perhaps?
I'm not really worried. I've stumbled onto plenty of 40+ year old black and white TVs over the years that still work just as reliably as they did when they were new, so I don't really expect CRTs that are much younger to suddenly be hard to find. The ideal gaming CRTs will have been made around the late 90s/early 2000s, when the technology more or less reached its peak before being replaced by LCD, Plasma, etc. TVs that old aren't likely to be breaking down en masse any time soon.

Of course, you run into problems sometimes though, so it's never a bad thing to learn how to fix minor issues.

* Have you tried emulators with CRT filters? Do they work well enough for you?
A lot of them look really nice. Thing is, though, is you just can't replicate the feeling of using a game's original hardware with emulators. It's not really about nostalgia though, I think its more about purity. Original hardware, original controllers, original carts/discs.

[ChuChu Flamingo]

* Why CRT is superior to LCD for retro gaming?

Standard Definition CRT's are superior to flat panel high definition tvs (plasma, lcd, dlp, and HD CRT) is that they don't have a fixed resolution. Their highest resolution is dependent upon the maximum horizontal frequency. Not only do these flat panels have to upscale 15Khz to 33Khz(IIRC) but they have to upscale the video game to 1080p. What happens when you blow up a tiny picture on a computer? It doesn't look good.

These games were designed for CRTS as some developers even used perks of CRT to create more colors, such an example is Sega Genesis.

* What do you look for in a CRT monitor/TV for gaming?

S-video at the very least, Component preferred. If you're in Europe you can find SCART RGB. The best CRTS are usually ones from around mid 1990's from Panasonic, Sony, Mitsubishi, and Toshiba. Other great models but were made for the professional market are Sony PVM and any of the multisync NEC XM29/37 models.

I can't stand HD CRTs for retro games The HD CRTs all have the same problem as other flat panels, which is input lag and screen fidelity. They do look better than most flat panels when it comes to scaling, but that isn't saying much.

Same goes for SD CRTs made near the end years of CRT manufacturing (around 2000 and up). One reason is that the build quality on them isn't good and they sometimes don't display 240p right and try to deinterlace it.

* How difficult is it to find a good gaming CRT these days?

Well if you care about fidelity it is. Finding a CRT with S-video can be moderately hard, while finding one with component depends upon your luck.

* Are you making plans for the day when CRTs will be impossible to find/hard to repair? Hoarding TVs, perhaps?

I only have one backup, a 20 inch Emerson equipped with Svideo. My current setup right now is a 20'' CRT and Nanao MS9 RGB monitor.


* Have you tried emulators with CRT filters? Do they work well enough for you?

I have tried the scan line emulator and I feel it is too thick at times.

[equalsign]

I have an HD, widescreen CRT TV. That thing is 30 inches and 142 lbs! Anyways, I'm hoping that by the time CRTs become really difficult to find technology like the XRGB-3 will be more affordable. If you have more questions, CRTGAMER really does know alot about CRT TVs.

[flojocabron]

CRT tvs are quite available where I live. There are two fleamarkets near me, and being on the border with Mexico stuff comes quite often.

Most of the merch that arrives in calexico (where I live) comes from farther up north. Most of it from LA and some from the bay area.

Maybe you should check the migration ( ) of TVs from one part of the country to another?! Not just the trip to the recycling centers. They surely have moved somewhere these past 10 years.

TV's (and other older electronics) still come down here, because people from mexico come across the border to buy various old viable technology.

Being on the border means you can still get analog signals from Mexicali. There is DTV south of the border, but most everyone still watches regular tv with bunny ears.

I am not (at least not yet) a hardcore crt person. I am fine with any old tv and having S-video is a plus. I have some consoles with RF still.

I think also something important is to check and see if a TV can function properly with or without its original remote. From what I've read here and seen before. Some fancy tvs have to be fine tuned and they definitely need the remote. Some universal remotes can be used with them, but it severly limits them.

I still have 3 regular tv's in my home, and I have seen those early huge CRT HD tvs, But their bigness does make it a turn off. I wouldn't mind having one if I had the space.

I'm not one to solder or mod my systems to use with more modern TVs. I try to play them the way they are made. If composite is available then its good too.

I did try once to use a samsung lcd tv with my atari 2600, but it was messing up. So back to the classic crt.

I'm sure theres plenty of CRT tvs all over the US. Its been (STILL) the dominant form of entertainment for the past 60+ years. I can still see plenty of tvs in the attics and basements to keep us busy for another 60 years.

[CRTGAMER]

I think also something important is to check and see if a TV can function properly with or without its original remote. From what I've read here and seen before. Some fancy TVs have to be fine tuned and they definitely need the remote. Some universal remotes can be used with them, but it severly limits them.

A good point. Sometimes a menu or special feature of a TV cannot be accessed with a universal remote. The HD WEGAs for example have two coaxial inputs. I use one for cable analog channels and the other for an Atari 5200. There is no way to select the coaxial inputs without the unique ANT Button on the Remote.

[AppleQueso]

Holy crap, I just remembered.

LIGHT GUNS.

They don't even work with HDTVs, not even HD CRTs. Using an SD CRT is an absolute MUST if you want to play any retro light gun game.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Holy crap, I just remembered.

LIGHT GUNS.

They don't even work with HDTVs, not even HD CRTs. Using an SD CRT is an absolute MUST if you want to play any retro light gun game.

I haven't had a chance to try but I've been told my HDCRT (WEGA XBR-960) will in fact work with light guns. When/if I get the chance I'll definitely test it out.

Otherwise that statement holds pretty much true.

[fastbilly1]

They don't even work with HDTVs, not even HD CRTs.

It depends on the HD CRT. You are right that the majority are incompatible, but there are some that do work. I have pinged a buddy of mine who had a 27 inch HD CRT that we use to play House of the Dead 1 on to ask the model - I know it was an early Toshiba.

For me CRTs simply offer a richer experience. Now that might be partially nostalgia talking, but the hum of the tubes and the warmth of the screen as it crackles to life, is just part of the experience. Playing retro games on a CRT is like seeing an old movie on film in the theater. Sure you can get a different, and some would say better, experience with newer technology. But when you hear that monitor warm up, or that film start spinning, it transports you to a different world.

I have about ten (10) CRTs in my house right now: two are tvs, the rest are computer monitors that were too good to pass on (One is an Amiga monitor I have had forever the others came from when a friend of the family upgraded their editing suite from Rasterops to Apple Displays and it is really hard to say no free monitors that were 3k a pop a couple years prior). That said I do not see myself hording CRTs for the future, but I will try to have atleast one working one around.

Edit:
To answer the questions I missed:
1. See above
2. Honestly, I just make sure it takes composite inputs and I can calibrate the colors decently. I will make an exception if I ever come across a working Predicta Princess or Meteor though.
3. Not really. I passed on two (2) Sony Wega HD CRTs last week at a Goodwill. They wanted $150 per, which is more than I was willing to pay. Well that and they are 200 pounds...
4. See above
5. I have tried scanline filters, but they more annoy me than anything. Like Chuchu Flamingo said, they are typically too big.