Over the past few years I've owned at least one decent example of each of the main types of flat panels, and in each case I've been disappointed at some aspect the image quality, particularly when it comes to the blurriness of motion in games. I've also heard anecdotes of people dragging now-ancient CRT monitors out and being amazed even compared to the latest gaming flat panels. Then I caught the above video. I think Digital Foundry are generally pretty reliable, so it's really had me really thinking.
The last generation of Trinitron monitors were excellent, but they aren't cheap these days because of the demand from retro gamers. You won't find the monitor featured in the video for less than £1000.
There have been huge advances in LCD panel technology in the past few years. It used to be the case that you had to compromise between colour accuracy and refresh rates, but there are now plenty of affordable IPS monitors with >120Hz refresh rates. With backlight strobing turned on, you'll get basically zero motion blur at the cost of some brightness; you'll also get zero tearing thanks to adaptive sync. Mid-priced monitors are moving from 1080p to 1440p or ultrawide and if cost is no object you can have all of the above plus 4K.
IMO there has never been a better time to be in the market for a monitor.
>>23319 >The last generation of Trinitron monitors were excellent, but they aren't cheap these days because of the demand from retro gamers.
If you mean retro PC gamers then yeah, I suppose. I can say for sure that very few retro console gamers are using PC CRT monitors, though. Scan rate conversion from the old SD signal is a surprisingly complicated affair, much more of an arse than any layman would intuit.
Trinitron tellies do sell for good money these days though, especially the PVM and equivalent broadcast monitors that are equipped with RGB SCART. If you stumble across something like the attached in good condition (decent geometry and convergence, and no burn-in), in an old video production office or school cupboard, you can expect to sell it on for >£400. I've seen the little 9" ones go for over a hundred if the seller is known and trusted.
Of course as more wear out and die, and can't get replaced, the prices will keep rising, which is a bit depressing if you're into your old console games. A mate of mine went to Cambodia recently, though, and sent me a photo of boxed CRTs that are still sold in markets there. I did a bit of digging and it turns out that, remarkably, some factories are still open, and that their product is still just barely cheaper than the lowest end of flat panels. It does make me wonder whether there's any potential for a cottage market to develop, in which small numbers of new CRTs are made for enthusiast gamers, albeit at exorbitant prices.
>If you mean retro PC gamers then yeah, I suppose. I can say for sure that very few retro console gamers are using PC CRT monitors, though.
PC and arcade. The MAME cabinet lads have been snapping up high-quality CRT monitors for years.
>It does make me wonder whether there's any potential for a cottage market to develop, in which small numbers of new CRTs are made for enthusiast gamers, albeit at exorbitant prices.
Probably not. It's just about plausible from a financial perspective (a group of enthusiasts rescued the Polaroid film factory when they went bankrupt), but it'd be legally difficult in the EU due to the massive amounts of lead in a CRT tube. You could probably make replacement tubes for arcade cabinets, but new CRT tellies or monitors are verboten.
I used to have a CRT back at my parent's place, I had it hooked up to a softmodded Wii as an all-in-one retro games emulator with RGB output, it looked great.
I'd love to get another at some point, but sadly they've become a bit of a meme as of late, and it's drastically inflated the prices on good condition sets. Lots of those typical sort are buying whatever they can get their hands on, without really knowing what the benefits of a CRT are and if they need one, simply because some YouTuber told them a CRT is the only way to experience Earthbound.
I don't know if old VGA CRTs are still more reasonably priced, but I'd love to make a beige box Windows XP PC using what would have been cutting edge hardware in the pre-Crysis era.
>it'd be legally difficult in the EU due to the massive amounts of lead in a CRT tube
Is the same true across the pond? I'm actually pretty surprised there's no veteran TV repairmen from back in the day making a moderate profit out of refurbishing old sets, at least.
>>23319 >The last generation of Trinitron monitors were excellent
Almost every generation of Trinitron was excellent younglad. I have lost count of the number of them I have had because of growing up during the CRT period. They were broadcast quality at the time.
I find it hilarious and obvious that it will come back into niche fashion - the fuckers took up so much space/heat/power and whistle ever so silently that it will never get too much traction I suspect, but I applaud every bit of this.
Can't wait to get back to amber on black in text mode FTW.
That depends on the state, but definitely not in California. Repairing old TVs is fine anywhere, the problem is with making new tubes. Generally the cost of repair is prohibitive even for serious enthusiasts and high-end gear - even relatively simple repairs require a huge amount of highly skilled labour.
AFAIK there's one CRT manufacturer left in the US, Thomas Electronics, who make replacement tubes for military hardware. It's worth spending thousands or tens of thousands for a new CRT if it keeps a fighter jet or a SAM system working.
I don't think the benefits outweigh the costs here. Just because everyone was using them in the 90s doesn't mean that in 2020 this isn't the equivalent of setting up a NASA rocket platform in your garden in order to commute to work.
>>23329 I think that has more to do with UK streets not having had their layout updated since before the English Civil War and US streets being seventy-eight miles to the nearest Haul-o'-Foods and almost as wide.
>>23327 The glass itself has to be loaded with lead to keep the viewers from getting dosed with x-rays every time they watch.
The glass is completely safe when it's whole, but making it is really nasty. There's not really anything else that you can mix into glass that's dense enough to block x-rays.
Having a big glass screen is also the other obstacle to small-scale manufacturing. You need a huge capitol investment to make the equipment capable of forming 20-40" wide glass vacuum tubes and there's really no way around that.
>>23332 If you want CRT goodness but no lead, you can always bend the light with a mirror and let the x-rays slam into an absorber. Sure, it's not the same face-on shape you're used to, but lead isn't _essential_, just really handy.
(I've got some CRT projectors with an astonishing amount of lead sheet inside. <checks>. Hmm, 35kV acceleration voltage, plenty for a healthy tan. )
I guess this is as good a place as any to post about this thing. It’s a Dreamcast console and 14” CRT TV all-in-one unit, the Divers 2000 CX-1. It also came with a web cam, mic, and keyboard. Everything you needed to surf the information superhighway and jack in to cyberspace, as long as you didn’t mind doing so over the internal 56K modem, paying per minute, and limiting yourself to simple websites that its custom web browser could cope with.
>>23337 Released at the turn of the century, peak dot-com boom, its manufacturers had some rather unrealistic ideas regarding the appropriate price for a machine of this kind. By this point, TVs of this size weren’t worth much (I once got one thrown in for free along with an eighth of soap bar), and there were increasing numbers of them knocking around as people gradually upgraded to widescreens. Into this market, this machine launched at the equivalent of £600 - more like a grand in today’s money, and four times the cost of a Dreamcast on its own. The Dreamcast itself wasn’t around for long, and this machine never made it out of Japan.
>>23338 There were also some curious design choices. The Dreamcast was capable of 640x480 VGA (and looks bloody lovely hooked up to an old PC monitor, briefly getting back on topic). It’s not that surprising that they went with a cheaper TV screen, but the choice to internally hook it up via composite rather than RGB is inexplicable; that’s literally just throwing image quality away. I’ve seen a few over the years with damaged cases, so I suspect the manufacturer cheaped out on the plastic.
>>23339 MIDI in and out ports are included, fuck knows why.
Good luck funding one today. Even smashed up they go for thousands of pounds. I do love that late 90s/early 00s vintage “blobject” design, though. Simpler times.
>>23341 >When did you pick it up?
Nah, these are just photos found elsewhere. I did look seriously into buying one a long time ago, back when they were still around for £400 or so, but the shipping was astronomical. Wish I'd paid it now, of course.
Here's a bonus Sega obscurity, from a few years earlier: a shitty Aiwa boombox, that inexplicably included a Megadrive and Mega CD. I've always thought it looked a bit like a rice cooker. Yours for £2,500 on ebay.
>>23345 Ah, Space Channel 5. At a time when advertisers and brands were ditching Michael Jackson en masse (in the wake of the paedo accusations), Sega of Japan decided you should be dancing with him.
