8 ms·

People Who Hunt Down Old TVs

131 points by tmendez 1y ago

wrs 1y ago
Wow, do I feel old right now.
queenkjuul 1y ago
I'm not really a CRT fan tbh but my neighbor was throwing away a working 24" Sony Trinitron and you don't just let one of those hit the dumpster lol Hooked up my spare PS2 and got a light gun for it. Wish i had a way to play duck hunt though.
- RajT88 1y ago
  I have a 32" Sony something or other. One of the very last ones - HDMI port and does 1080i or 720p. What a find! 30 dollars, and about killed myself getting it in the house. The plan is to have all the light gun systems hooked up to it. Being able to get 1080i out of a PS2 while having the light gun work is a challenge I have not yet surmounted.
  - toast0 1y ago
    Unfortunately, you might have trouble with light gun games. Some of the HDMI CRTs do some video processing that adds video delay. :( If you're US based, you would probably use component video (YPbPr) to connect to your 1080i display; you can hook a ps2 light gun to the Y cable (usually green) and it should work if everything else is cool.
    - RajT88 1y ago
      Thanks for the tip! I was not very far down this rabbit hole yet.
  - queenkjuul 1y ago
    Most games won't work right if you force 1080i (which you can do using OPL) but the light gun will work with component signals just use the green plug as has been mentioned. Gran Turismo 4 will output 1080i correctly, I've done that before, but the internal horizonal resolution is very low, so i actually prefer to play in 480p on my LCD, ymmv There's Pelican brand wireless light guns NOS on eBay that work with both PS1 and PS2 games that I've so far had good luck with
IG_Semmelweiss 1y ago
i have a 55" panasonic LCD. no apps or wifi.From 2003. Still works. We have roku, which at some point in the last 4 years, it went rogue and auto updated itself for who knows what telemetry . We almost never use it now. I plug my laptop via HDMI and the possibilities are still there.
- neilv 1y ago
  My Sony Bravia XBR6 from 2008 is perfectly fine for my living room screen. (I even programmed an old Sony remote to kludge sending theequivalent of the PS5 controller logo button, for the PS5 that the TV is plugged into, for streaming and gaming. And found the trick to get the TV to go to standby when the PS5's HDMI signal disappears, which isn't a standard feature, though waking is.) I'll probably only upgrade if I relocate cross-country, and have Bay Area levels of money to spend on a much more expensive non-'smart' setup.
- Aloha 1y ago
  At that age, are you sure its not plasma?
- M95D 1y ago
  > i have a 55" panasonic LCD. no apps or wifi.From 2003. Still works. Most probably a plasma, not LCD. LCDs from that time had extremely bad colors. If you're looking for an upgrade, try to find a Panasonic Viera VT/ST/GT50 or *60, but check for burn-in before you buy. > I plug my laptop via HDMI and the possibilities are still there. If the TV has HDMI CEC, then get yourself a RaspberryPi 4 (lowest memory model is enough) and LibreELEC. You'll thank me later.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 1y ago
    Thank you for this! And thinking about it, yes its a plasma after all :)
- qingcharles 1y ago
  How insanely expensive was that display? I bought a 40" plasma around 2001 and it cost as much as a used car.
andrewstuart 1y ago
Guilty. I just love analog TVs.
emh68 1y ago
Sometimes I think about the bizarre path computer technology took. For instance, long-term storage. It would stand to reason that we'd invent some kind of big electrical array, and that's the best we could hope for. But hard drive technology (which relies on crazy materials technology for the platter and magnets, crazy high-precision encoders, and crazy physics like floating a tiny spring over the air bubble created by the spinning platter) came in and blew all other technology away. And, likewise, we had liquid crystal technology since the 70s, and probably could have invented it sooner, but no need, because Cathode Ray Tube technology appeared (a mini particle accelerator in your home! Plus the advanced materials science to bore the precision electron beam holes in the screen grid, the phosphor coating, the unusual deflection coil winding topology, and leaded glass to reduce x-ray expose for the viewers) and made all other forms of display unattractive by comparison. It's amazing how far CRT technology got, given its disconnect from other technologies. The sophistication of the factories that created late-model "flat-screen" CRTs is truly impressive. The switch to LCDs/LEDs was in a lot of ways a step back. Sure, we don't have huge 40lb boxes on our desks, but we lost the ultra-fast refresh rate enabled by the electron beam, not to mention the internal glow that made computers magical (maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, like people in the 80s who swore that vinyl records "sounded better"). Someday, maybe given advances in robotics and automation, I hope to start a retro CRT manufacturing company. The problems, such as the unavailability of the entire supply chain (can't even buy an electron gun, it would have to be made from scratch) and environmental restrictions (lead glass probably makes the EPA perk up and notice).
- mrandish 1y ago
  > like people in the 80s who swore that vinyl records "sounded better" I'm not one of those people who ever thought vinyl sounded better than a properly recorded and mastered digital version and I've always believed a high-bandwidth digital audio signal chain can recreate the "warmth" and other artifacts of tube compressors well beyond the threshold of human perception, however a broadcast-quality, high-definition CRT being fed a pristine hi-def analog RGB signal can still create some visuals which current flat screens can't. This is only controversial because most people have never seen that kind of CRT because they were incredibly rare. I got to see one of the broadcast production CRTs made to support NHK's analog high-definition video format in the 90s directly connected to HD broadcast studio cameras and the image quality was simply sensational. It was so much better than even the best consumer CRT TVs, that it was simply another thing entirely. Of course, it cost $40,000 and only a few dozen were ever made but it was only that expensive because these were prototypes made years before digital hi-def would be standardized and begin mass production. In fact, I think if it was A/B compared next to a current high-end consumer flat screen, a lot of people would say that CRT looks more pleasing and overall better. For natural imagery a CRT could render the full fidelity and sharpness of a 1080 image but without that over-crisp 'edginess' today's high-end flat screens get. And those "cathode rays" can render uniquely rich and deep colors vs diodes and crystals. Of course, for synthetic images like computer interfaces and high-dpi text, a flat screen can be better but for natural imagery, we lost something which hasn't yet been replaced. I'd love to see an ultra high-end CRT like that designed to display modern uncompressed 4K 12-bit HDR digital video.
303uru 1y ago
I’ve hunted down a couple old school big screen TVs, the fresnel lenses are awesome toys, you can melt just about anything using them as solar collectors.
retrac 1y ago
I think some younger people might have never really seen a CRT. And they're positively rare now. I encountered a CRT TV in the hospital waiting room recently and was a bit startled to see one. So for those only passingly familiar, if you get the opportunity, spend a bit of time experimenting with it visually. Jiggle your eyes, look away suddenly, and then back, and try oblique angles. Maybe you'll see what they mean about "you just can't recreate that glow". It's hard to describe but the image is completely ephemeral. All display technologies involve sleight-of-hand that exploits visual illusion and persistence of vision to some degree, but the CRT is maybe the most illusory of the major technologies. It's almost entirely due to persistence of vision. With colour TV and fast phosphors the majority of the light energy is released within a few milliseconds of the spot being hit by the beam. If you had eyes that worked at electronic speeds, you would see a single point drawing the raster pattern while varying in brightness. A bit of TEMPEST trivia: The instantaneous luminosity of a CRT is all you need to reconstruct the image. Even if it's reflected off a wall or through a translucent curtain. You need high bandwidth, at least a few megahertz, but a photodiode is all that's necessary. The resulting signal even has the horizontal and vertical blanking periods right where they should be. Only minor processing (even by old school analog standards) is required to produce something that can be piped right into another CRT to recreate the image. I'd bet it could be done entirely in DSP these days.
- Waterluvian 1y ago
  Also don’t forget to rub your palm across the screen to collect the fuzzies that built up.
  - black_knight 1y ago
    Ah, I can feel it from just reading your comment! That’s a feeling I haven’t felt in a while!
    - asdff 1y ago
      How about the smell?
natas 1y ago
you may enjoy this. My daughter is 10 years old, couple of months ago we went to an airbnb which had a crt tv and some vhs tapes. she looks at a vhs tape and asks, what is this? She had a look on her face like if she had just found a dinosaur egg.
jader201 1y ago
I’ve got a 27” CRT right next to my 65” LG OLED C9 (which is starting to feel ancient, too). It sits in a cabinet that currently holds an NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, and PS2. It doesn’t get a ton of playtime, but when my now 21- and 18-year-old sons were young, I’d play on them quite a bit (they were already retro even then), and as they got older, they would too. My oldest is particularly fond of the retro consoles and playing on the CRT, so he’ll hop on it when he gets the itch for something retro. I feel like there’s a charm that will never fade, not only with retro consoles, but also playing them on a CRT. I’ll never get rid of our CRT. My oldest son wouldn’t let me, even if I wanted to.
mahirsaid 1y ago
one of the best for shooter games because of the high refresh rate. There is virtually no lag for quick scoping or fast playing. there is very little computing happening inside.
WalterBright 1y ago
Those aren't old TVs. When I was a kid, I'd go to the TV repair shops and take old "unrepairable" vacuum tube TVs (no transistors!) off their hands. At home I tried to fix them. I had no idea how to fix them. But I had a lot of fun trying. One of the fun things was to randomly swap around the vacuum tubes and see what would happen. Very entertaining! I used to have a box full of scavenged tubes. Sadly, I eventually tossed them out, never realizing how valuable they'd be in a few years. My mom was convinced I was going to electrocute myself, and finally made me get rid of the sets.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  Oh, I did understand what resistors, capacitors (then called condensers), and inductors did, but how they worked together to make a TV work utterly baffled me. I couldn't understand how the vacuum tubes worked, either. I didn't know anyone who had any idea how electronics worked.
- voldacar 1y ago
  Most TV tubes aren't too valuable. Now if your TV was made by telefunken, that might be a different story
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    I do prefer tubes that have the funk.
- alnwlsn 1y ago
  Your mom was probably thinking along the right lines haha. But don't worry, TV tubes are practically worthless. I've been to swap meets for an antique radio club in my area. Sometimes, there will be a few boxes of tubes from TV sets there (400-500 tubes) and people literally can't give them away. Tubes from audio equipment are the only ones people are after.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    Thanks! I didn't know that.
cesaref 1y ago
Back in the 80s, as the home computer revolution got going, computers were typically wired up to small, cheap, portable TVs as a display device. These TVs used shadow masks, and the computer video output was typically modulated to a TV signal, and the TV was 'tuned' to the computer. All of this added large amounts of blur and distortion even before the signal was displayed on the TV. By the mid 80s, it was maybe more typical to buy a dedicated CRT monitor, and the computer connected via composite, or maybe even an RGB feed to the monitor, allowing higher resolution and much improved quality. For the well healed, this route also led to the holy grail, a trinitron tube! At each of these changes, the aesthetic of the display technology changed, but probably the best memories come from the original blurry stuff as the magical moment of actually getting something out of a home computer.
- qingcharles 1y ago
  For a long time my only "monitor" when I was a kid was a 12" B+W TV for my ZX Spectrum. For the day of my birthday when I got it I was allowed to hook it up to the family 14" color TV, but after that it was back to the B+W for the next couple of years! (funnily enough, when I finally got a PC years later, the only monitor I could afford was a Philips monochrome VGA -- I guess they now sell for multiples of the original retail price? https://www.ebay.com/itm/176945464730 https://www.ebay.com/itm/176945464730)
reactordev 1y ago
I’ve been searching for years for the old CRT Viewsonic Mac monitor that used RGB inputs. (Might have been CMYK). You plug in the DIP head to the video out and you attach each individual connectors to the color connectors on the back. The thing was massive, easily over 24”. Beige plastic that we all love. Growing up my dad was a Mac guy and he had all kinds of Apple stuff. The weird page sized monitor, performa 600, trackball mouse, ergonomic keyboard. Granted my father was in software and this was the early 90s but it would _definitely_ define my initial passion for computers. I’ve been looking for this monitor so that I can restore his setup. I have his Performa, peripherals, and restored those. I just need that giant monitor he used to use. My father passed away last year. My world has been different ever since.
- detritus 1y ago
  It'd've been RGB :) But you've now got me mulling over the implications of a CMYK-based subtractive colour process 'monitor'. I'm guessing the refresh rate wouldn't be too hot..!
  - pansa2 1y ago
    > It'd've been RGB :) Yeah, sounds like one of those CRT monitors that has separate BNC connectors for each of RGBHV.
    - reactordev 1y ago
      They were absolutely BNC connectors!
christkv 1y ago
Have a look at https://github.com/mausimus/ShaderGlass https://github.com/mausimus/ShaderGlass it seems promising an emulating the CRT. I don't run windows so have not testet it myself.
clemensnk 1y ago
My son who is 12 has gotten into collecting old Nintendo. Just the other day, I managed to find one of the consumer CRT holy grails on our local equivalent of Craigslist. A B&O MX4200. It's one of the last CRTs that B&O made from the mid 00s. It has an excellent picture, nice onscreen menus for calibrating the tube, and supports NTSC over composite so he can connect his early 80s Famicom that's been modded for composite out.
TechSquidTV 1y ago
I collect CRT TVs. I try to limit myself to only special ones. I own a clear RCA SecureView TV from a jail cell, and several Sony Professional Video Monitors. I started this hobby JUST as it started to become a little more popular. Terrible timing.
throw0101d 1y ago
If in the Toronto, Canada area, the television museum may be worth a visit: * https://mztv.com https://mztv.com Pre-WW2 televisions seem to be quite rare: > To put this special set in some context, there are more 18th century Stradivarius violins in existence than pre-World War II TVs and, to make it that bit rarer, this TV has only had two owners. “I’ve handled 38 pre-war tells and this is the finest and even comes with the original invoice,” said Bonhams specialist Laurence Fisher. “It cost a huge amount and the owner must have had wealth and means…It is a very rare thing and there are collectors who would love to have it.” * https://newsfeed.time.com/2011/04/05/do-not-adjust-your-set-oldest-working-television-to-be-sold-at-auction/ https://newsfeed.time.com/2011/04/05/do-not-adjust-your-set-...
- retrac 1y ago
  That museum looks exciting! > Pre-WW2 televisions seem to be quite rare Pre-war television was rare. Electronic television came to maturity during the Great Depression. Early TVs were horribly expensive and given the economic situation of the 1930s almost no one could afford them! The UK started regular TV broadcasts in 1936 and by 1939 there were about 20,000 televisions in the whole country. And that was much further along than France, Germany, or the USA. Most of those 20,000 were scrapped or sold during the war or they served as TVs faithfully into the 40s and even 50s, and then were retired. There are only a handful of working televisions of that vintage in the world.
Farbklex 1y ago
I host monthly retro gaming meetups and we use CRT TVs that we store at the local library. Luckily, more than enough are still given away for free here. Right now we have around 25. They're just surprisingly good when paired with a good signal and an old gaming console. I still would love to have a professional monitor but they are too pricey for me. I also need to get myself a CRT monitor.
bob1029 1y ago
My favorite TV of all time was a 65" Panasonic plasma. 4k OLED looks really good in dark scenes, but something about turning that plasma up to its full 800 watt+ vivid mode is a completely different universe. Practically unusable during the summer in Texas though. The efficiency is really bad and you essentially need a custom hvac solution if you want to put it in a proper "theater" room. The noises it made in high brightness scenes were also a bit distracting. It had to move a lot of power very quickly.
gwbas1c 1y ago
My first HD TV was a tube. The picture was flat, but it did have overscan. Compared to today's TVs, it was small. (~30") Even though there were some aspects of the tube that were nicer, I'm not going back. I don't want the giant box, and now that I have a 70" OLED, I don't want to go back to a tiny screen.
cyrialize 1y ago
When I used to run super smash brothers melee tournaments in my old apartment basement I had 4 CRTs. I still have one tiny CRT, the size of the screen is very small - roughly a banana from corner to corner. CRTs are absolutely required for in person melee tournaments. Playing not on CRTs introduces input lag of a few frames. There are 60 frames in a second in melee - so it's roughly one frame per millisecond. You may not think that is that big of a deal - but when a specific move has a 4-7 frame window, input lag becomes a problem. If you ever watch a melee tournament on YouTube or in person, you will either see CRTs everywhere, or computers emulating melee. When emulated there isn't input lag. The lag comes from the conversion needed to display melee on a non CRT TV I believe.
trenchpilgrim 1y ago
Some images to demonstrate how retro games look on CRT vs unfiltered on a modern display: https://x.com/ruuupu1 https://x.com/ruuupu1 https://old.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/owdtpu/thats_why_crt_is_unbeatable_crt_vs_pixel_perfect/ https://old.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/owdtpu/thats_why... https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/anwgxf/here_is_an_example_of_old_graphics_on_crt_vs/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/anwgxf/here_is_an_e... Modern emulators have post-processing filters to simulate the look, which is great. But it's not quite the same as the real thing.
- dangson 1y ago
  This helps validate my memories of SNES and PS1 games looking so much better when I was a kid than on an emulator today.
  - StopDisinfo910 1y ago
    I played SNES and PS1 games on a CRT. I played them on LCD and OLED TVs. I can’t tell the difference. I mean I can tell that hdmi cables never introduce chromatic abberation something which was quite common on these old TVs when the SCART cables I used to use got old and I never had a LCD screen catch fire something which happened to me twice with aging CRT screens. I really don’t get the nostalgia or whatever it is called when some of the people who think it was better then weren’t born at the time.
    - dfxm12 1y ago
      I think if you're looking from a normal couch to TV distance, you probably can't tell the difference. If you're sitting computer desk to monitor distance (close enough to read text), you probably can tell a difference. From there, I think there is some false nostalgia at worst or subjectivity at best. Did computer monitors even have (noticeable) scanlines? I don't remember them while playing Wolfenstein or playing around in MS paint on windows 3.1... Maybe playing gorillas in DOS, but I can't remember... If you're emulating snes on a modern PC, people like to say "games were developed with scanlines in mind", but they were also developed assuming you'd have a small TV and would be sitting ~8ft away from it!
EvanAnderson 1y ago
I regret taking all my old tube monitors to Goodwill back in the mid-2000s. I saved a Commodore 1942, at least, but I sent all the rest away to die. I appreciate the CRT modeling in emulators, but a hardware device that passes thru a display signal and provided sub-frame CRT artifacting and phosphor modeling (particularly if it supported 240P) would be bitchin'.
- thaeli 1y ago
  FPGA based devices that can do this, and quite well, do exist, they're just expensive. The RetroTINK-4k Pro is the top of the line as of this writing but it's a $750 converter.

131 points by tmendez 1y ago

wrs 1y ago

Wow, do I feel old right now.

I'm not really a CRT fan tbh but my neighbor was throwing away a working 24" Sony Trinitron and you don't just let one of those hit the dumpster lol Hooked up my spare PS2 and got a light gun for it. Wish i had a way to play duck hunt though.

RajT88 1y ago
I have a 32" Sony something or other. One of the very last ones - HDMI port and does 1080i or 720p. What a find! 30 dollars, and about killed myself getting it in the house. The plan is to have all the light gun systems hooked up to it. Being able to get 1080i out of a PS2 while having the light gun work is a challenge I have not yet surmounted.
- toast0 1y ago
  Unfortunately, you might have trouble with light gun games. Some of the HDMI CRTs do some video processing that adds video delay. :( If you're US based, you would probably use component video (YPbPr) to connect to your 1080i display; you can hook a ps2 light gun to the Y cable (usually green) and it should work if everything else is cool.
  - RajT88 1y ago
    Thanks for the tip! I was not very far down this rabbit hole yet.
- queenkjuul 1y ago
  Most games won't work right if you force 1080i (which you can do using OPL) but the light gun will work with component signals just use the green plug as has been mentioned. Gran Turismo 4 will output 1080i correctly, I've done that before, but the internal horizonal resolution is very low, so i actually prefer to play in 480p on my LCD, ymmv There's Pelican brand wireless light guns NOS on eBay that work with both PS1 and PS2 games that I've so far had good luck with

IG_Semmelweiss 1y ago

i have a 55" panasonic LCD. no apps or wifi.From 2003. Still works. We have roku, which at some point in the last 4 years, it went rogue and auto updated itself for who knows what telemetry . We almost never use it now. I plug my laptop via HDMI and the possibilities are still there.

neilv 1y ago
My Sony Bravia XBR6 from 2008 is perfectly fine for my living room screen. (I even programmed an old Sony remote to kludge sending theequivalent of the PS5 controller logo button, for the PS5 that the TV is plugged into, for streaming and gaming. And found the trick to get the TV to go to standby when the PS5's HDMI signal disappears, which isn't a standard feature, though waking is.) I'll probably only upgrade if I relocate cross-country, and have Bay Area levels of money to spend on a much more expensive non-'smart' setup.
Aloha 1y ago
At that age, are you sure its not plasma?
M95D 1y ago
> i have a 55" panasonic LCD. no apps or wifi.From 2003. Still works. Most probably a plasma, not LCD. LCDs from that time had extremely bad colors. If you're looking for an upgrade, try to find a Panasonic Viera VT/ST/GT50 or *60, but check for burn-in before you buy. > I plug my laptop via HDMI and the possibilities are still there. If the TV has HDMI CEC, then get yourself a RaspberryPi 4 (lowest memory model is enough) and LibreELEC. You'll thank me later.
- IG_Semmelweiss 1y ago
  Thank you for this! And thinking about it, yes its a plasma after all :)
qingcharles 1y ago
How insanely expensive was that display? I bought a 40" plasma around 2001 and it cost as much as a used car.

andrewstuart 1y ago

Guilty. I just love analog TVs.

emh68 1y ago

Sometimes I think about the bizarre path computer technology took. For instance, long-term storage. It would stand to reason that we'd invent some kind of big electrical array, and that's the best we could hope for. But hard drive technology (which relies on crazy materials technology for the platter and magnets, crazy high-precision encoders, and crazy physics like floating a tiny spring over the air bubble created by the spinning platter) came in and blew all other technology away. And, likewise, we had liquid crystal technology since the 70s, and probably could have invented it sooner, but no need, because Cathode Ray Tube technology appeared (a mini particle accelerator in your home! Plus the advanced materials science to bore the precision electron beam holes in the screen grid, the phosphor coating, the unusual deflection coil winding topology, and leaded glass to reduce x-ray expose for the viewers) and made all other forms of display unattractive by comparison. It's amazing how far CRT technology got, given its disconnect from other technologies. The sophistication of the factories that created late-model "flat-screen" CRTs is truly impressive. The switch to LCDs/LEDs was in a lot of ways a step back. Sure, we don't have huge 40lb boxes on our desks, but we lost the ultra-fast refresh rate enabled by the electron beam, not to mention the internal glow that made computers magical (maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, like people in the 80s who swore that vinyl records "sounded better"). Someday, maybe given advances in robotics and automation, I hope to start a retro CRT manufacturing company. The problems, such as the unavailability of the entire supply chain (can't even buy an electron gun, it would have to be made from scratch) and environmental restrictions (lead glass probably makes the EPA perk up and notice).

mrandish 1y ago
> like people in the 80s who swore that vinyl records "sounded better" I'm not one of those people who ever thought vinyl sounded better than a properly recorded and mastered digital version and I've always believed a high-bandwidth digital audio signal chain can recreate the "warmth" and other artifacts of tube compressors well beyond the threshold of human perception, however a broadcast-quality, high-definition CRT being fed a pristine hi-def analog RGB signal can still create some visuals which current flat screens can't. This is only controversial because most people have never seen that kind of CRT because they were incredibly rare. I got to see one of the broadcast production CRTs made to support NHK's analog high-definition video format in the 90s directly connected to HD broadcast studio cameras and the image quality was simply sensational. It was so much better than even the best consumer CRT TVs, that it was simply another thing entirely. Of course, it cost $40,000 and only a few dozen were ever made but it was only that expensive because these were prototypes made years before digital hi-def would be standardized and begin mass production. In fact, I think if it was A/B compared next to a current high-end consumer flat screen, a lot of people would say that CRT looks more pleasing and overall better. For natural imagery a CRT could render the full fidelity and sharpness of a 1080 image but without that over-crisp 'edginess' today's high-end flat screens get. And those "cathode rays" can render uniquely rich and deep colors vs diodes and crystals. Of course, for synthetic images like computer interfaces and high-dpi text, a flat screen can be better but for natural imagery, we lost something which hasn't yet been replaced. I'd love to see an ultra high-end CRT like that designed to display modern uncompressed 4K 12-bit HDR digital video.

303uru 1y ago

I’ve hunted down a couple old school big screen TVs, the fresnel lenses are awesome toys, you can melt just about anything using them as solar collectors.

retrac 1y ago

I think some younger people might have never really seen a CRT. And they're positively rare now. I encountered a CRT TV in the hospital waiting room recently and was a bit startled to see one. So for those only passingly familiar, if you get the opportunity, spend a bit of time experimenting with it visually. Jiggle your eyes, look away suddenly, and then back, and try oblique angles. Maybe you'll see what they mean about "you just can't recreate that glow". It's hard to describe but the image is completely ephemeral. All display technologies involve sleight-of-hand that exploits visual illusion and persistence of vision to some degree, but the CRT is maybe the most illusory of the major technologies. It's almost entirely due to persistence of vision. With colour TV and fast phosphors the majority of the light energy is released within a few milliseconds of the spot being hit by the beam. If you had eyes that worked at electronic speeds, you would see a single point drawing the raster pattern while varying in brightness. A bit of TEMPEST trivia: The instantaneous luminosity of a CRT is all you need to reconstruct the image. Even if it's reflected off a wall or through a translucent curtain. You need high bandwidth, at least a few megahertz, but a photodiode is all that's necessary. The resulting signal even has the horizontal and vertical blanking periods right where they should be. Only minor processing (even by old school analog standards) is required to produce something that can be piped right into another CRT to recreate the image. I'd bet it could be done entirely in DSP these days.

Waterluvian 1y ago
Also don’t forget to rub your palm across the screen to collect the fuzzies that built up.
- black_knight 1y ago
  Ah, I can feel it from just reading your comment! That’s a feeling I haven’t felt in a while!
  - asdff 1y ago
    How about the smell?

natas 1y ago

you may enjoy this. My daughter is 10 years old, couple of months ago we went to an airbnb which had a crt tv and some vhs tapes. she looks at a vhs tape and asks, what is this? She had a look on her face like if she had just found a dinosaur egg.

jader201 1y ago

I’ve got a 27” CRT right next to my 65” LG OLED C9 (which is starting to feel ancient, too). It sits in a cabinet that currently holds an NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, and PS2. It doesn’t get a ton of playtime, but when my now 21- and 18-year-old sons were young, I’d play on them quite a bit (they were already retro even then), and as they got older, they would too. My oldest is particularly fond of the retro consoles and playing on the CRT, so he’ll hop on it when he gets the itch for something retro. I feel like there’s a charm that will never fade, not only with retro consoles, but also playing them on a CRT. I’ll never get rid of our CRT. My oldest son wouldn’t let me, even if I wanted to.

mahirsaid 1y ago

one of the best for shooter games because of the high refresh rate. There is virtually no lag for quick scoping or fast playing. there is very little computing happening inside.

WalterBright 1y ago

Those aren't old TVs. When I was a kid, I'd go to the TV repair shops and take old "unrepairable" vacuum tube TVs (no transistors!) off their hands. At home I tried to fix them. I had no idea how to fix them. But I had a lot of fun trying. One of the fun things was to randomly swap around the vacuum tubes and see what would happen. Very entertaining! I used to have a box full of scavenged tubes. Sadly, I eventually tossed them out, never realizing how valuable they'd be in a few years. My mom was convinced I was going to electrocute myself, and finally made me get rid of the sets.

WalterBright 1y ago
Oh, I did understand what resistors, capacitors (then called condensers), and inductors did, but how they worked together to make a TV work utterly baffled me. I couldn't understand how the vacuum tubes worked, either. I didn't know anyone who had any idea how electronics worked.
voldacar 1y ago
Most TV tubes aren't too valuable. Now if your TV was made by telefunken, that might be a different story
- WalterBright 1y ago
  I do prefer tubes that have the funk.
alnwlsn 1y ago
Your mom was probably thinking along the right lines haha. But don't worry, TV tubes are practically worthless. I've been to swap meets for an antique radio club in my area. Sometimes, there will be a few boxes of tubes from TV sets there (400-500 tubes) and people literally can't give them away. Tubes from audio equipment are the only ones people are after.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  Thanks! I didn't know that.

cesaref 1y ago

Back in the 80s, as the home computer revolution got going, computers were typically wired up to small, cheap, portable TVs as a display device. These TVs used shadow masks, and the computer video output was typically modulated to a TV signal, and the TV was 'tuned' to the computer. All of this added large amounts of blur and distortion even before the signal was displayed on the TV. By the mid 80s, it was maybe more typical to buy a dedicated CRT monitor, and the computer connected via composite, or maybe even an RGB feed to the monitor, allowing higher resolution and much improved quality. For the well healed, this route also led to the holy grail, a trinitron tube! At each of these changes, the aesthetic of the display technology changed, but probably the best memories come from the original blurry stuff as the magical moment of actually getting something out of a home computer.

qingcharles 1y ago
For a long time my only "monitor" when I was a kid was a 12" B+W TV for my ZX Spectrum. For the day of my birthday when I got it I was allowed to hook it up to the family 14" color TV, but after that it was back to the B+W for the next couple of years! (funnily enough, when I finally got a PC years later, the only monitor I could afford was a Philips monochrome VGA -- I guess they now sell for multiples of the original retail price? https://www.ebay.com/itm/176945464730 https://www.ebay.com/itm/176945464730)

reactordev 1y ago

I’ve been searching for years for the old CRT Viewsonic Mac monitor that used RGB inputs. (Might have been CMYK). You plug in the DIP head to the video out and you attach each individual connectors to the color connectors on the back. The thing was massive, easily over 24”. Beige plastic that we all love. Growing up my dad was a Mac guy and he had all kinds of Apple stuff. The weird page sized monitor, performa 600, trackball mouse, ergonomic keyboard. Granted my father was in software and this was the early 90s but it would _definitely_ define my initial passion for computers. I’ve been looking for this monitor so that I can restore his setup. I have his Performa, peripherals, and restored those. I just need that giant monitor he used to use. My father passed away last year. My world has been different ever since.

detritus 1y ago
It'd've been RGB :) But you've now got me mulling over the implications of a CMYK-based subtractive colour process 'monitor'. I'm guessing the refresh rate wouldn't be too hot..!
- pansa2 1y ago
  > It'd've been RGB :) Yeah, sounds like one of those CRT monitors that has separate BNC connectors for each of RGBHV.
  - reactordev 1y ago
    They were absolutely BNC connectors!

christkv 1y ago

Have a look at https://github.com/mausimus/ShaderGlass https://github.com/mausimus/ShaderGlass it seems promising an emulating the CRT. I don't run windows so have not testet it myself.

clemensnk 1y ago

My son who is 12 has gotten into collecting old Nintendo. Just the other day, I managed to find one of the consumer CRT holy grails on our local equivalent of Craigslist. A B&O MX4200. It's one of the last CRTs that B&O made from the mid 00s. It has an excellent picture, nice onscreen menus for calibrating the tube, and supports NTSC over composite so he can connect his early 80s Famicom that's been modded for composite out.

TechSquidTV 1y ago

I collect CRT TVs. I try to limit myself to only special ones. I own a clear RCA SecureView TV from a jail cell, and several Sony Professional Video Monitors. I started this hobby JUST as it started to become a little more popular. Terrible timing.

throw0101d 1y ago

If in the Toronto, Canada area, the television museum may be worth a visit: * https://mztv.com https://mztv.com Pre-WW2 televisions seem to be quite rare: > To put this special set in some context, there are more 18th century Stradivarius violins in existence than pre-World War II TVs and, to make it that bit rarer, this TV has only had two owners. “I’ve handled 38 pre-war tells and this is the finest and even comes with the original invoice,” said Bonhams specialist Laurence Fisher. “It cost a huge amount and the owner must have had wealth and means…It is a very rare thing and there are collectors who would love to have it.” * https://newsfeed.time.com/2011/04/05/do-not-adjust-your-set-oldest-working-television-to-be-sold-at-auction/ https://newsfeed.time.com/2011/04/05/do-not-adjust-your-set-...

retrac 1y ago
That museum looks exciting! > Pre-WW2 televisions seem to be quite rare Pre-war television was rare. Electronic television came to maturity during the Great Depression. Early TVs were horribly expensive and given the economic situation of the 1930s almost no one could afford them! The UK started regular TV broadcasts in 1936 and by 1939 there were about 20,000 televisions in the whole country. And that was much further along than France, Germany, or the USA. Most of those 20,000 were scrapped or sold during the war or they served as TVs faithfully into the 40s and even 50s, and then were retired. There are only a handful of working televisions of that vintage in the world.

Farbklex 1y ago

I host monthly retro gaming meetups and we use CRT TVs that we store at the local library. Luckily, more than enough are still given away for free here. Right now we have around 25. They're just surprisingly good when paired with a good signal and an old gaming console. I still would love to have a professional monitor but they are too pricey for me. I also need to get myself a CRT monitor.

bob1029 1y ago

My favorite TV of all time was a 65" Panasonic plasma. 4k OLED looks really good in dark scenes, but something about turning that plasma up to its full 800 watt+ vivid mode is a completely different universe. Practically unusable during the summer in Texas though. The efficiency is really bad and you essentially need a custom hvac solution if you want to put it in a proper "theater" room. The noises it made in high brightness scenes were also a bit distracting. It had to move a lot of power very quickly.

gwbas1c 1y ago

My first HD TV was a tube. The picture was flat, but it did have overscan. Compared to today's TVs, it was small. (~30") Even though there were some aspects of the tube that were nicer, I'm not going back. I don't want the giant box, and now that I have a 70" OLED, I don't want to go back to a tiny screen.

cyrialize 1y ago

When I used to run super smash brothers melee tournaments in my old apartment basement I had 4 CRTs. I still have one tiny CRT, the size of the screen is very small - roughly a banana from corner to corner. CRTs are absolutely required for in person melee tournaments. Playing not on CRTs introduces input lag of a few frames. There are 60 frames in a second in melee - so it's roughly one frame per millisecond. You may not think that is that big of a deal - but when a specific move has a 4-7 frame window, input lag becomes a problem. If you ever watch a melee tournament on YouTube or in person, you will either see CRTs everywhere, or computers emulating melee. When emulated there isn't input lag. The lag comes from the conversion needed to display melee on a non CRT TV I believe.

trenchpilgrim 1y ago

Some images to demonstrate how retro games look on CRT vs unfiltered on a modern display: https://x.com/ruuupu1 https://x.com/ruuupu1 https://old.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/owdtpu/thats_why_crt_is_unbeatable_crt_vs_pixel_perfect/ https://old.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/owdtpu/thats_why... https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/anwgxf/here_is_an_example_of_old_graphics_on_crt_vs/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/anwgxf/here_is_an_e... Modern emulators have post-processing filters to simulate the look, which is great. But it's not quite the same as the real thing.

dangson 1y ago
This helps validate my memories of SNES and PS1 games looking so much better when I was a kid than on an emulator today.
- StopDisinfo910 1y ago
  I played SNES and PS1 games on a CRT. I played them on LCD and OLED TVs. I can’t tell the difference. I mean I can tell that hdmi cables never introduce chromatic abberation something which was quite common on these old TVs when the SCART cables I used to use got old and I never had a LCD screen catch fire something which happened to me twice with aging CRT screens. I really don’t get the nostalgia or whatever it is called when some of the people who think it was better then weren’t born at the time.
  - dfxm12 1y ago
    I think if you're looking from a normal couch to TV distance, you probably can't tell the difference. If you're sitting computer desk to monitor distance (close enough to read text), you probably can tell a difference. From there, I think there is some false nostalgia at worst or subjectivity at best. Did computer monitors even have (noticeable) scanlines? I don't remember them while playing Wolfenstein or playing around in MS paint on windows 3.1... Maybe playing gorillas in DOS, but I can't remember... If you're emulating snes on a modern PC, people like to say "games were developed with scanlines in mind", but they were also developed assuming you'd have a small TV and would be sitting ~8ft away from it!

EvanAnderson 1y ago

I regret taking all my old tube monitors to Goodwill back in the mid-2000s. I saved a Commodore 1942, at least, but I sent all the rest away to die. I appreciate the CRT modeling in emulators, but a hardware device that passes thru a display signal and provided sub-frame CRT artifacting and phosphor modeling (particularly if it supported 240P) would be bitchin'.

thaeli 1y ago
FPGA based devices that can do this, and quite well, do exist, they're just expensive. The RetroTINK-4k Pro is the top of the line as of this writing but it's a $750 converter.