CRT Televisions are still being thrown out!

[ZEUSDAZ]

I bought my 28" widescreen Panasonic CRT back in 2002 and It's a beauty, only needed 1 repair and I'll keep having it repaired if it means running my retro games through it as opposed to playing them through these new LCD/LED tv's, you cannot beat original 80's / 90's hardware running games through a CRT tv

[Mikerochip]

Originally Posted by LongLifeA1200

It's amazing to still see CRT Televisions (some in excellent condition & quality) on the side of the road these days. They need to be rescued.

Not every CRT is useful though, or even half decent quality. Nevermind good quality.



Many many CRTs I've seen are a complete POS with god awwful image quality, when new, and have nothing other than composite & RF inputs.


Especially the ones sold at the end of the CRT market, ie the lesser or no name brands.


But even some of the bigger names were selling crappy quality stuff.
Just because they had scart, doesn't mean they had RGB scart.


I don't know if they were shit because they were cheap, or they were cheap because they were shit.


Either way, they sold bucketfuls. (My friend was in TV/DVD/VCR retail at the time)


Agreed, good CRT's, with a low number of hours are worth saving, but, the amount of people with the skills to repair, refurbish or even upgrade (add RGB inputs etc) older/worn out ones seems to be diminishing rapidly.


And, if they can't be returned to a good working state, why save them?


Obviously you can only check, if you can rescue them though

[RuySan]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

I couldn't disagree more, but this argument actually works, since there is no point discussing taste, so - fair enough.

But the rest is similar to the other non-arguments. Reliability? I wouldn't be surprised if their longevity was actually way bigger than that of modern screens, and the fact that CRTs are practically free. That besides the serious other issues, such as burn-in in OLEDs . Kilowatts? Yep, they consume a little bit more energy but that's not anybody would ever really consider as an important thing.

Overall, it's each to its own of course, I've stopped trying to promote CRTs many years ago - if people want to use the arguably worse displays, IQ/authenticity wise, then so be it. I just find most arguments used to rationalize that decision quite illogical.

I get the lust for CRTs. One year ago i was even planning to get a MISTer+CRT setup for myself, but last summer, at my parent's house, I played a bit with my old Amiga and a Sega Master system connected to a CRT and the sweet nostalgia went away for a while. And the eye strain is definitely one of the biggest cons for me, and so is the space.

And nowadays good IPS panels are way better than LCDs from 10-15 years ago. My Dell monitor colours are a thing of beauty. I was playing Metal Slug X last night, and marvelled at how gorgeous the game is. I don't think those purples in the cave popped out as much when I still had my CRT monitor (I only switched to LCD in 2009).

[lesta_smsc]

I will say it again, but this 28" CRT gives a very sharp and bright display. Everything that I've played through it has been incredible: MAME (via emluation), PS2 (RGB), Amiga (RGB and emulation) including TV out from a laptop (not the greatest as composite out but still looks fantastic).

Granted, there are some CRTs that really look like they have gone past their shelf-life but someo thers are pretty crisp in their image quality. Unfortunately, CRT wasn't a 'standard' hence why the likes of Trinitrons giving some excellent picture quality.

I think 14" CRTs are relatively portable and not too space consuming so for those playing fairly close up it is worthwhile - but for me, I want to be able to relive the arcade experience and having this nice 28" screen is just that! Progressive scan i.e. 240p image is WOW! lol

[Pierre]

4 years ago I rescued a SONY TRINITRON KV-XA29M31 CRT TV including remote, from a nature strip (I checked with the property owner first, they were getting rid of the TV as they had bought an LCD TV and had no room for the SONY). It has a 29 inch 4:3 tube, component video, S-video and composite inputs, and a beautiful picture and stereo sound but it is a beast that weighs in at 51 kg. The property owner helped me get it into the boot of the car due to the weight. Wife was not happy, "What are you going to do with THAT? More electronic clutter!" she said. Sadly she has no appreciation of retro computing and aspect ratios.

[AmigaHope]

The real key is the dot pitch of the phosphors. The larger the display, the better an image you can get with a worse dot pitch. Cheap large TVs did have geometry problems sometimes, but a decent one can give great results.

The nice thing about later digitally-controlled CRT TVs is that they usually had easier ways to mod in RGB video -- for instance the menu overlay is often an RGB signal on the board that you can hijack to add an RGB input (with a toggle to show the menu). Sometimes the tuner output is RGB and can be hijacked too.

[fxgogo]

Originally Posted by Foebane

...and will never consider that 4K or HDR crap that you have. I mean, WHY? ...

I feel you on the 4K standard. That was definitely pushed on us by the manufacturers. HDR is quite awesome though. Having more colour depth helps to create a more believable image representation.

The only reason I want 4K and above is to recreate a believable aperture grill effect for my CRT shaders.

[penarthur66]

I still have the Sony 14" trinitron I bought to use with my original A500+ back in 1991.
For some reason I has convinced that it had RGB on the scart input but when I made up a cable it was composite only

Sadly I sold the Amiga + Roctec HDD years ago for tens of pounds.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a 2nd hand LCD TV for £20 so I can stand it on top of my "new" A500 I've just bought.

I don't really play games, so the LCD works much better, especially in interlace mode when it is rock solid, the CRT is soo fuzzy and flickery it's unusable.

[Turran]

I got a really nice Trinitron 32" TV a few years back to use with my consoles. After a few minutes I remembered why I hate them with the flicker. Gave me a headache I had not felt for years.

Same with my Pentium 3 machine that has a Samsung 17". Even at 85hz I get a headake from it.

Some things are better left for dead IMO. At least for me which seems to be sensitive to it, and always have been since I remembered the headache I used to constantly have =)

Can't beat the color and sharpness though. Kinda sad that the technology was abandoned and we are still not up to the same standard with current day flatscreens in a way.

[zipper]

I did have 34" Trinitron, 100 Hz. It was huge improvement over the older ones - but huge it was really, almost 200 pounds...

[SquawkBox]

@Turran
On a CRT monitor, if you decrease the bit count e.q. from 32 (True Color) to 16-bit (High Color), you may notice it contributes to reducing the eyestrain after a short while. Just a small trick I was using before TFT monitors became the norm. That and anti-glaring filters, I know, I know, old and cumbersome tech.
Also, I remember our moms used to tell us to maintain a viewing distance with the CRT TV's we used to game on. Maybe you could try sitting a little further back from the screen.

[Nobby_UK]

I still have my BEKO 26 inch WS connected to my 1200
and its 26 inch (non-WS) predecessor under my desk

[Daedalus]

I'm not sure how the bit count in itself changes the effect of the flicker, other than perhaps allowing the graphics card itself to output at a higher refresh rate... The thing with CRTs is that they always have a native refresh rate, which is typically the highest rate they're specced to run at. The further you go below that spec, the worse the flicker. Commodore monitors, for example, were all PAL/NTSC compatible, which meant the phosphors were intended for 60Hz use, resulting in a pronounced flicker when used with a 50Hz PAL machine. And many CRT TVs were the same, being capable of 60Hz running even though they were PAL models.
Especially later on, PC monitors could do very high refresh rates like 140 or 150Hz, yet most PC graphics cards could only produce output at 100Hz or below without resorting to very low resolutions. So running a 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 desktop invariably resulted in flickering, even at 75 or 85Hz.

[itdoesntmatter]

I have a spare CRT if anyone needs one in East Sussex. It was 100hz, which meant my 3D Master System and Famicom games wouldnt work on it, so I bought a 50hz one.
My other half wants it taken to the dump but I'm holding out for some gamer to need it.

[BomberMillz]

Touching on what Daedalus said, Iyama/Aydin made the Ranger monitor in 15 and 21" long persistence phosphor versions for the Amiga range (Commodore had the same unit rebadged as a 1505LP, which I actually own). The problem being, the Amiga was designed to really use interlace and standard TV video modes, so flicker was part of the deal, unless you could get a monitor like the above (or a flicker fixer). Generally, around 1992, the smaller 14-15" screens would max out at 800x600 or 1024x768 interlaced.

Ive even tried going down the TFT 15khz monitor route, with a NEC Multisync 1990FXp, but its impractical because it (shockingly) cannot do interlace modes.

My daily driver ATM is a Dell 27 widescreen which takes CVid from the Amiga and hence interlace along with all other modes, but with a slight hit to clarity.

@itdoesntmatter: where abouts are you? Im going down to Selsey in a week or two. If you can get anywhere near there... anyway, PM me!

[SquawkBox]

Let's put it that way, provided you're willing to give that dusty CRT monitor you have stored a second chance, decreasing the bit count intermittently when you don't need True Color (typically when the monitor is idle, emulating retro stuff etc.) *might* help reducing the eyestrain. I am not implying that it will reduce the flickering. Simply put, it worked for me (by then, I never bothered changing default refresh rate), it may work for you. Headaches causes are much more complex to investigate, I am not debating the merits of this trick in regards to such ailment.

[CFou!]

Originally Posted by RuySan

7 years ago me and my dad left a 32'' Trinitron next to the bin (but on a clean space so it could be picked up).

The image had been turning orange for a while until it completely stopped working. The TV didn't last 10 min next to the bin. Someone snatched it up fast. If it was an easy fix it's a TV of immense value. It was a backbreaking process of taking that fat mammoth to the bin.

I rescued a CRT screen that I found in a recycling center a few years ago.
The cathode ray tube is now in my homemade arcade cabinet

[saimon69]

I still have that Philips 30PW850h in the garage, my SIL want to sell it for 50$ but a lesser offer should be good too,in Santa Clarita, PM me

[kremiso]

still searching in vain for an lcd (20-25") for native retrogaming (not only Amiga) with an image quality closer to the better crt models

[SquawkBox]

Found out about a rather intriguing inprint located on a caravan 10'' CRT TV (just showing the picture, I don't own this particular TV set) :

It's the Tokaï LTV-2566PS. Ok, look closely. What do you notice at the bottom left of the case (despite the low res) ? Yup, Activision logo . I have no idea why Tokaï would stick the Activision logo onto one of their TV set, doesn't make much sense to me . I don't think it's a fake btw, the seller did send me another picture when I asked her to (also just asked her about the presence of the logo, but very unlikely she has a single clue about it).

I know for a fact VIC Tokaï did produce a few games during the 80's, so maybe Tokaï bosses during this period were secret admirers of the creators of Pitfall! and of so many classics for the VCS. My guess is they assumed it wasn't such a risky move after all to "borrow" the logo of another company and stick it on a very standardized product.


EDIT : She was kind enough to let me know it's not a sticker nor a decal that was added later