The geometry on my CRT isn't perfect, but nothing analog is. Modern TVs have perfect geometry but they have their own issues like reduced motion clarify compared to a CRT.
Reduced motion clarity is a result of sample and hold, not digital. If the image flickered at the refresh rate and only showed the image briefly the motion clarity, at least on OLED displays, would be near perfect. CRTs work off persistence of vision after all to see the image
@@crestofhonor2349 although with current technology the problem is OLEDs can’t yet get bright enough to have a useable image at a low enough persistence (but thankfully we inch ever closer each year). That’s why LCDs won the race over OLED to reach CRT motion clarity (1ms or lower persistence) motion clarity, but that’s only available to the consumer in VR headsets, and still with lackluster colors. Then there’s also tiny nitpicks like modern strobing techniques at 60hz being way harsher on the eyes due to being on/off square waves rather than the smoother fade of the phosphors. Blurbusters showed that can be corrected with their rolling scan shader, but unless that gets implemented by display manufacturers at the hardware level, we’ll be waiting for 1000hz displays to completely simulate CRT motion at the software level
another issue mordern tvs have: no style (they all have a thin display wide legs and black frame and remote that looks like every other) no more cool textures and designs on the fronts , sides and remotes (yes theirs styles but not like we had everything looks the same now and boring decor wise)
I just wish we could make modern CRTs and improve them even if it was just for gaming, it sucks having to spend $100+ usually and its not even that good
there’s no money in crts and it would require millions in infrastructure investment to build out facilities to make them. Its dead technology and once the older crts stop working they will sadly be donee
It's a sad thing that everything needs to be profitable. Seems like there would be at least a few companies making basic CRTs but seemingly not because only eccentric gamers like us want them
Something else you should've went over is something referred to as "blooming." I had this problem on multiple TV's. It's where screen brightness affects the overall size/geometry of the picture. To me, this is the BIGGEST problem with CRT TV's.
I and probably most people didn't care about geometry issues back then because every TV had some visual quirk that we just ignored. There was no perfect picture back then and we just focused on enjoying the content but nowadays it's hard to ignore after using LCD's for so long. My biggest issue with CRTs is the lack of documentation on most models because they will all need to be serviced eventually and not having a service manual and schematics makes the job much harder
CRTs don't emit enough X-Rays... They emit Beta radiation however the Beta radiation is in fact captured by the phosphor layers and this is what makes them glow... This also increases the voltage inside the tube over time. Beta Radiation cannot cross glass or metals... However it could be kinda bad if a person were to be directly exposed to it... Thankfully a person would only be exposed to Beta Radiation if the electron gun was removed from the tube and aimed directly at the person. So yes the person would have to get a direct electron blast... Beta Radiation are free electrons.
@@randomcontent1736I have 4 working CRTs. A 36", a 27",and a 25" Trinitrons. Also have a 25" Phillips I bought retail circa 2001. All work perfectly, although I do have some service menu work to do on the 27" Sony.
Another frustrating element of CRT geometry and trying to fix it, is that some content will uniquely distort the screen. Certain things on screen, usually intensely bright elements, will warp the screen in unique ways so a test grid may not represent every scenario.
i've found turning down the contrast setting on my tv can entirely negate this on lower settings. but it does make the whole screen look dull so i usually try to find a blance between too much warping and too little contrast 😅
I've been diving into the CRT rabbithole the past couple weeks and this video humorously summarized most/all of the issues I've encountered so far. really good stuff
I recall there's already people making replacement control boards for CRTs and apparently there's also some people trying to get screens with very high refresh rates to emulate CRTs. Assuming people will continue to want CRTs, there'll inevitably be a point where the price of used CRTs will get so high it will become feasible to set up new manufacturing
True although you'd have to think about the pollution aspect as well. Then again maybe the amount of sets produced at that point might be low enough not to have a significant impact. Honestly if someone eventually manages to create an LCD based set that's good enough, I'd probably be happy. Imagine like a curved 8K HDR LCD, behind glass for authenticity, with enough detail and contrast to be able to simulate all different types of CRT, like shadow mask, aperture grille, etc. You could have toggle options for all those. You could simulate an old 1980s consumer set one day, a high-end PVM the next.
Heaters, AC Units and Electric Showers are the by far the most power demanding things one could have. We are talking about 1085W for AC units and around 7000W for electric showers...
One of the the things people don’t seem to talk about is the fact that a lot of them are on borrowed time. I just had a pvm 20m4 die with a unrepairable MICOM fault. I need to source a new A board which is impossible to find.
damn such a nice model too, pvms are nice but most of them are on high hours which turned on nonstop in their working days. might still be possible to revive it with the (hopefully)upcoming open source crt chassis.
I always keep spare parts for broadcast stuff, i had a 14M2 die on me (some ic in the power supply got fried) but since i had a spare PVM 1450 power supply i was able to get tha same ic on y 14M2, even if its not space efficient its worth it
I agree with a lot of your points, except the modern video part. I daily drive PC CRTs and even at 720p the colors and the clarity crush the 1440p monitor it replaced for way cheaper. Never had the urge to switch back. I agree for SD CRTs (depends on the set, the flicker isn't noticable to me using component or s video), unless you're talking about animation which imo always benefits from a good CRT and actually looks almost like a painting. Messing with CRTs is easy and pretty safe, there's really only 3 points to avoid. Got over my fear last month and did my first major solder job successfully earlier today. I feel so much better knowing I can keep my tubes going for longer by doing simple repairs. Once I get more practice I'll start offering services since it's definetly needed
Same here. I switched to CRT monitors when my laptop died within 2 years of purchase. My Trinitron Viewsonic is a thing of beauty, blows my laptop's screen completely out of the water
A correction that HD CRTs start at 480p and their native resolutions are usually 480p and 1080i/480p. 720p and 1080p, if those are supported, are scaled to one of the native resolutions, since the CRT just doesn’t have the Horizontal Scanning Frequency to display 720p or 1080p. Only rare BVMs and Computer monitors can do that.
7:22 Regarding the size, back in 2006 when I moved out and didn't have the money for a real nice TV, I bought some off brand 32" CRT and somehow got it to fit into my Escort. Dude at the store was sure it wasn't going to fit, but we got it! Then I had to get it out and then up stairs to my second floor apartment. Holy crap what an ordeal. I still have the TV which I need to hook up with my retro consoles.
I have a kv36fs300 that took 2 friends and an appliance dolly to get into my game room. I am getting ready to remodel the room and am not looking forward to moving it 😂😂.
Yeah, I'm also in my 40s and can tell before I walk in the door if the living room CRT is on. I've always wondered what's going on for people to lose hearing sensitivity so severely on average.
I know you said geometry issues are prevalent on all CRTs but VGA CRTs are the closest to perfection you can get. My 2 Apple CRTs have near perfect geometry. Convergence can also be adjusted in some via controls. My Sony CRT could have its convergence adjusted in its service menu and same goes for both Apple VGA CRTs I own. Many VGA CRTs had to have near perfect geometry just because they were designed for PC use where geometry issues would be far more noticeable and more of a problem Also a nice thing about Sony TVs is that their old and new remotes all use the same signal so I can use a 2019 Sony remote on my parents old 1990 Sony CRT and vice versa. Very neat to know you don't need the exact remote unless you really want it. I know not all brands are the same but Sony is one of the few to not change it at all over the decades. Also I'm surprised you didn't mention focus. Some CRTs will go out of focus after some amount of time and become blurry. It's not that common and is far more noticeable on VGA CRTs, which are far sharper so those issues are more noticeable. The best example I've seen is I think on a MrWhostheBoss video where he showcases a bunch of consoles on different TVs. His small CRT looked completely out of focus.
i just got my first CRT since 2012 in early december! it's a 20' Citizen brand model in silver from 2003...i love it! i use it all the time with my matching silver 2003 AKAI DVD/VCR combo, though i've thought about getting a first-gen Apple TV to connect to it as it has component inputs!! most of the issues mentioned don't bother me except for the whine...at certain angles it can get so loud :(
Yup, I found a Flatron at 20 bucks and started my journey through all of this, solved some issues with the hidden menu but some other stuff (red outline at the left) will need repair. Still works fine as it is, I had worse crts as a kid and looks awesome with my old SD DVDs.
I've repaired some arcade monitors and done yoke swaps, which is when the take the yoke from a worn out arcade monitors CRT and put it on a new CRT from a donor TV. Quite a bitch to adjust and you have to do it while its powered up. Personally I think arcade monitors are the easier to maintain option. Unlike TVs service manuals with schematics are easy to find, common issues are documented, and many still have things like new flyback transformers available. That said most arcade monitors use low end consumer tubes and will not look as good as the high end JVC D-Series and Sony Trinitrons.
For the Emerson EWF2006 mentioned at 14:55 you have to solder a jumper wire between J2, not J1. Then once you got it set up as well as you can, you have to desolder J2 and re-bridge J1. I have that same Emerson, but when I opened my remote J1 was already bridged. So I decided to try J2 and it worked.
One of the nice things about a CRT and retro gaming is that games for the NES, SNES, Playstation actually look better on a CRT. Playing the same games on emulated hardware and a modern HD display, the graphics are more blocky/pixelated compared to on a CRT which has a softer image of sprites, text, etc. It is a quirk of CRT displays that actually make games on retro consoles look better compared to playing them on a modern display.
Yeah exactly. Though I feel like this is hard to convey to people who never played these games on original displays. Even despite the articles and videos (about art & rendering techniques taking advantage of CRT blur back in the day) that do a decent job at explaining it.
Definitely on modern hardware without additional filtering or shaders, but I must say that CRT shaders these days can be absolutely astonishing on 4K displays, and particularly OLEDs with black frame insertion. Look up specifically Cyberlab's CRT-Royale shader presets for RetroArch and check them out (just bear in mind that you need to enable composite or s-video filters if you want that aspect), even if just video demonstrations by Retro Crisis. The aesthetic is effectively perfect; the only thing that's really missing is the perfect motion clarity of a real CRT and the brightness, but there's a CRT Beam Simulator shader you can add that further helps with motion clarity. I have a Bang & Olufsen MX4200 CRT TV which is gorgeous to game on, but I must say that I love emulating on my LG C2 OLED with CRT shaders, too.
I have a Toshiba Widescreen CRT TV. I use it daily watching OTA TV on it because it has a built in Digital Receiver. its real nice and honestly the colors and blacks are so clean
We sat closer to our tvs too then which is often left out when considering old tvs vs newer tvs. They had poor resolution but we didn't play from across the room back then. Many of us, especially kids, got mom and dad's old tv with issues or a small kitchen tv to play on. Also CRTs looked very different in person . Cameras capture the scan lines in odd positions you didn't see right in front of it. Younger audiences see these games upscaled and that makes them look terrible: 240P Is only one field forced to fill a 4K screen. PS2 480I Is also either using one field or badly combing on current tvs. Our old tvs used our presistince of vision: as one field was fading, another was being lit up. These got the job done and imo looked far sharper on those older tvs. I've seen younger gamers on RUclips and people where like "this is so blurry how did people play these?" Because we played them on the tvs they where intended for and for the time it was good enough
I also had issues with the beam focus being completely off from factory. I bought a new-old-stock CRT monitor that was out of focus and only kept getting worse. Thankfully there were people who knew what needs to be adjusted inside.
Feel like a good compromise is putting a crt filter on a modern screen. My TV doesn't have that built in, but whatever device you're playing on might be able to emulate that
As much as I think that nothing beats a real CRT set, they're just not as easy to come by anymore, and not everyone is that invested in retro games to find one, lol. So yeah a good CRT filter is better than nothing, at least new generations will be able to kinda see how good the games actually looked back in the day. Personally I'd recommend CRT Lottes to anyone. It's the best shader I've seen.
The first CRT adjustment i do is the Focus on the flyback. I like to see how sharp & clear i can get the image but of course it needs to be powered & a mirror helps out to see the screen while standing behind the unit to get the perfect focus.
I remember getting a flat-front CRT from Kroger when I was a teenager. It was 20” and had S-Video input and it was amazing for playing my older consoles. I miss it. After a while though it started getting discoloration at one point and I had no idea how to repair it in 2007 and felt it wasn’t worth it when I moved into an apartment with my friends who had two big tvs.
I am 41+ now and I can hear the whine very clear still. The CRT I have had since it was new both have some geometry and convergence issues but not sure if I call it enough to start mess with. What is most disturbing is the interlacing affect it has making the picture jump quite a bit. but for some reason it makes this in everything it pictures except the OSD text
Well I've found that the retroarch CRT shaders on a 4K monitor give the best possible experience - all the fuzziness and scanlines to make games look like they used to, and none of these issues!
I wouldn't even call it an issue, more like a quirk. Just mess with the service menu a little until it's good enough, doesn't have to be perfect. Heck, the analog nature of it is the thing that makes it perfect! And slight curves in the geometry just remind me of that.
There are actually a handful of HD CRTs that have HDMI inputs, but they have additional lag that they don't get from using YPbPr at 1080i, so it's still preferable to use YPbPr. But the HDMI support is there on some models, including multiple Sonys.
The issues with geometry, linearity and convergence are the main reasons I avoid flat CRTs. It baffles me why people who are wanting to play a bunch of retro scrolling games pick up huge Wega TVs with bowing and warping like a funhouse mirror. No consumer CRT is gonna be perfect but at least with a curved tube you are going to have decently straight lines and circles that don’t look like eggs.
Honestly, my old Magnavox CRT is in pretty good shape overall, although it has one rather annoying geometry problem that wasn't really covered in this video: Breathing. Basically, the overall size of the image will increase slightly if the image contains a lot of bright light, and vice versa if the image is dark. For most use cases, this isn't _too_ much of an issue, but as someone who likes to play flashy Bemani rhythm games on it, it kinda sucks to deal with and I wish I knew how to fix that :(
💖💖💖 Love the video. It is true that the curved screen for games seems like a match made in heaven. The flat screens do make films (even widescreen films) look amazing. As time goes on I find different screens for different uses cases makes the most sense. 💖💖💖
I have 3 crts, 2 of them are actually in arcade machines, the 13" crt I have for retro gaming is pretty good, I got it for free and it works amazingly, it has almost no issues, but I have seen crts with issues before and have even fixed them, kind of... they are a pain but they are still cool.
9:15 I imagine it's doubly difficult to make a buyer's guide for CRTs for gaming purposes, as many people looking to buy one for video games probably don't even *want* the quote-unquote 'best' possible TV, what they want is a display that satisfactorily replicates the experience they had playing video games on CRTs back when they were the dominant consumer display tech. And that means including the characteristic quirks and imperfections of general consumer-grade CRTs. (Certainly not PVMs, unless one is looking to recreate some kind of arcade machine experience, which may or may not have had such higher quality monitors back in the day.)
I've got a little 5" grayscale crt that I've been doing research for a composite input mod, because it would be a whole lot more portable if I didn't need to bring a vcr that is significantly larger than it to use it
after grabbing several CRTS with horrendous geometry i'm at the point where i'm ready to bring a 240p test suite enabled PSP3000 w/ composite cable to the thrift store with me in case I spot a unit I like
I use a Retrotink 5x, which is perfect for my retro gaming needs. I bought a Matsui crt once, a 14inch one, it arrived all smashed up, was able to be refunded and I got it for free, but I was able to fix it and got it working, to be fair it looked really nice, but I tried to fix the overscan and broke it again lol. That and the tv made that high pitch sound because I'm 23 and still young. To fix the overscan I think I had to open the tv before that's what I saw online, twisted two knobs, and the screen when white when turning it on, so I gave up and binned it.
2:34 probably a transformer problem, if you replace it, noise should be gone, or, at least, reduced. Maybe also recap, just to be sure. I also noticed that it applies mostly on tvs, not pc monitors. You also forgot about ghosting problem, which is usually ahows only on high refresh rate, like, 160 hz, which probably not a problem for tvs, usually they have only 30, 60, maybe 75 hz
when you started talking about convergence issue it kinda make me laugh I fixed mine by hitting it hard enough or letting it be for a bit and it sometimes just fixes it self
My year 2000 Sony Trinitron went to be with Tele-Jesus in 2009. The Samsung LCD I bought to replace it has now lasted over 15 years and is so much more versatile. Of course, now that I have raved about its longevity, it will probably crap out tomorrow, so I am off to beg People-Jesus not to tell Tele-Jesus about the pride I have in my TV. Probably wouldn’t hurt to knock on the wooden shelf that supports that gloriously lightweight (for 2009) LCD also.
I remember our Commodore 64 used UHF channel 34 and it always had transparent wavy lines that you could never quite tune out. Nothing off putting, but they were there all the same. Believe me it was better than no display at all, as when we first got the C64 both our TVs were VHF only.
I have a Trinitron KV-29X1D and it has some issues with the geomitry. And I can't easily fix it with the service menu. It's still pretty useable all things considered but I'd love to adjust it sometime if I can learn how to do it. But I'm also thinking about just selling it to buy an oled of similar size to use CRT filters instead.
gosh I always HATED CRT, the high pitch noize is Extremly painful for me and I never understood as a kid how no one else could hear it, just that, it makes it impossible for me to survive in the same room as a running CRT... and then, looking at one hurts my eyes as it really just blinks the image at 50hz instead of displaying it at 50fps which really hurts my eyes when looking at one, ontop of Lots of distortion when moving my eyes while looking at a CRT, also, for some reason, they are always Extremly bright, it always hurts my eyes like if I was looking at a super bright flame, not any sort of LCD or OLED screen at max brightness hurt my eyes that way and make them feel like its burning... also, I just never liked the scanlines look, I want my pixels to be square and without any black spaces between them I always saw CRT as tech from the last centurie and I never understood why anyone would ever want them, appart maybe the people that like using outdated tech that is barely usable
I had same experience with tv in childhood, but recently I bought lg flatron pc monitor. It doesn't have any of those problems, just a little problems with geometry and convergence. No pitch, no flickering(well, maybe on 75 hz or less). But, I can even overclock it to 160 hz, and it's way smoother that 75 hz lcd displays, how cool is that. Now I get why people like crt. It doesn't have input lag like any modern monitors, colours like on oleds, and high refresh rate.
Me with an 80s(?) crt: Yu-huh. We need to do some work on it, I can hear sparking when it's on, but I've been unable to find schematics. Such are the problems with a free tv, colors look pretty good tho lol.
I had a huge Sony CRT TV with all the good hookups and picture in a picture it was awesome but it was so big and heavy. I ended up getting rid of it before I knew about gaming on CRT TVs. I looked it up to see what it would take to buy a similar TV back and it's over $1,000. I wish I would have kept that TV.
It takes serious catastrophic failure or you pushing a CRT beyond safe operating parameters for one of them to generate x-rays. It is a possibility, but it is not an outcome in most general circumstances.
haven't finished the video but what about computer monitors?? Like ones that can go up to 1024x768, those don't count as high res but they're not standard definition
took me too long to realise this video is only talking about the "junk" crts, aka tvs which would never have the image quality, resolution or refresh rate that crt computer monitors do
They can go much higher that 1024x768. Mine lg flatron can go up to 2048x1536, but only on flickery 60 hz, so I prefer 800x600 with 160 hz for games, and 1600x1200@85 for browsing
They can go much higher that 1024x768. Mine lg flatron can go up to 2048x1536, but only on flickery 60 hz, so I prefer 800x600 with 160 hz for games, and 1600x1200@85 for browsing
my crt is curved but it still has a fisheye effect thats annoyingly noticeable when scrolling horizontally in pixel art games. so i just avoid playing anything like that on it... even tho i love platformers ):
I bought a 32 inch Samsung hd crt in 2023. Hardly ever used, had issues with convergence and geometry and the entire service menu had multiple wrong settings out of the factory. I learned how to set up the convergence rings that’s like a dangerous hobby for a maniac. Took me days to get the glimpse. The geometry well I made it better but can’t be perfect. I made the picture better changing some values in the service menu. I could continue on but don’t want to bore you. All together it’s a holy grail tv for playing retro remasters such as the quake and doom 1+2 I run it on 720p via a hdmi edi dongle as early hdmi handshake is not perfect and makes lag. Seriously in the states are so many hd crt for pennies. These thing will worth a lot in a few years when retro gamers wake up. You can’t replace it. The ultimate experience to play retro games so anything before 2010
The power draw matters more depending on where you live. I live in a part of the country where, for some reason, we are charged more than anywhere else (this includes the island of hawaii) and so everyone here actually puts thought into how much power any and everything uses. I've upgraded electronics just for the cost savings in electricity. Kinda makes me want to move. There's actually no good reason for the higher cost here other than greed.
You can hear power flow through your house and hear tube tv's turn on and the noise EV cars make. Not due to age. Might be due to either ears or brain or both.
A friend of mine is 40 and he can hear it very well. Weirdly enough, he actually has ear damage, which makes him more sensitive to noise and not less, somehow?
10:40 I actually got a VCR for free from one of my neighbors it was just sitting on a table across the street with a big free sign and I took it home and plugged it in and it worked well it could play and record tapes
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
The geometry on my CRT isn't perfect, but nothing analog is. Modern TVs have perfect geometry but they have their own issues like reduced motion clarify compared to a CRT.
Reduced motion clarity is a result of sample and hold, not digital. If the image flickered at the refresh rate and only showed the image briefly the motion clarity, at least on OLED displays, would be near perfect. CRTs work off persistence of vision after all to see the image
Sorry Europe And Australia
@@crestofhonor2349 although with current technology the problem is OLEDs can’t yet get bright enough to have a useable image at a low enough persistence (but thankfully we inch ever closer each year). That’s why LCDs won the race over OLED to reach CRT motion clarity (1ms or lower persistence) motion clarity, but that’s only available to the consumer in VR headsets, and still with lackluster colors. Then there’s also tiny nitpicks like modern strobing techniques at 60hz being way harsher on the eyes due to being on/off square waves rather than the smoother fade of the phosphors. Blurbusters showed that can be corrected with their rolling scan shader, but unless that gets implemented by display manufacturers at the hardware level, we’ll be waiting for 1000hz displays to completely simulate CRT motion at the software level
Not even true, you just genuinely have a shit tv
another issue mordern tvs have: no style (they all have a thin display wide legs and black frame and remote that looks like every other)
no more cool textures and designs on the fronts , sides and remotes (yes theirs styles but not like we had everything looks the same now and boring decor wise)
I just wish we could make modern CRTs and improve them even if it was just for gaming, it sucks having to spend $100+ usually and its not even that good
Modern CRT displays would be very expensive though, much more than a used set that no one wants
there’s no money in crts and it would require millions in infrastructure investment to build out facilities to make them. Its dead technology and once the older crts stop working they will sadly be donee
It's a sad thing that everything needs to be profitable. Seems like there would be at least a few companies making basic CRTs but seemingly not because only eccentric gamers like us want them
@@crestofhonor2349 idrc about expensive so long as its worth it honestly
They’re also heavy as hell
Something else you should've went over is something referred to as "blooming." I had this problem on multiple TV's. It's where screen brightness affects the overall size/geometry of the picture. To me, this is the BIGGEST problem with CRT TV's.
I and probably most people didn't care about geometry issues back then because every TV had some visual quirk that we just ignored. There was no perfect picture back then and we just focused on enjoying the content but nowadays it's hard to ignore after using LCD's for so long.
My biggest issue with CRTs is the lack of documentation on most models because they will all need to be serviced eventually and not having a service manual and schematics makes the job much harder
CRTs don't emit enough X-Rays... They emit Beta radiation however the Beta radiation is in fact captured by the phosphor layers and this is what makes them glow... This also increases the voltage inside the tube over time. Beta Radiation cannot cross glass or metals... However it could be kinda bad if a person were to be directly exposed to it... Thankfully a person would only be exposed to Beta Radiation if the electron gun was removed from the tube and aimed directly at the person. So yes the person would have to get a direct electron blast... Beta Radiation are free electrons.
I checked the 240p test patterns on my audiosonic CRT and it’s fine, despite being neglected for years and having been rained on
And it’s a 13 incher, with stupidly good clarity and brightness
How does your crt still work holy
@@randomcontent1736I have 4 working CRTs. A 36", a 27",and a 25" Trinitrons. Also have a 25" Phillips I bought retail circa 2001. All work perfectly, although I do have some service menu work to do on the 27" Sony.
@@randomcontent1736those things be troopers
@@cities_aviv yeah but rain is crazy
I remember that when I had a CRT TV, what bothered me was that the geometry wasn't as it should be :D
Another frustrating element of CRT geometry and trying to fix it, is that some content will uniquely distort the screen. Certain things on screen, usually intensely bright elements, will warp the screen in unique ways so a test grid may not represent every scenario.
i've found turning down the contrast setting on my tv can entirely negate this on lower settings. but it does make the whole screen look dull so i usually try to find a blance between too much warping and too little contrast 😅
I've been diving into the CRT rabbithole the past couple weeks and this video humorously summarized most/all of the issues I've encountered so far. really good stuff
I recall there's already people making replacement control boards for CRTs and apparently there's also some people trying to get screens with very high refresh rates to emulate CRTs. Assuming people will continue to want CRTs, there'll inevitably be a point where the price of used CRTs will get so high it will become feasible to set up new manufacturing
Not likely the infrastructure investment required is not feasible in the hayday you hundreds of millions being made it’s a dead technology now
True although you'd have to think about the pollution aspect as well. Then again maybe the amount of sets produced at that point might be low enough not to have a significant impact.
Honestly if someone eventually manages to create an LCD based set that's good enough, I'd probably be happy. Imagine like a curved 8K HDR LCD, behind glass for authenticity, with enough detail and contrast to be able to simulate all different types of CRT, like shadow mask, aperture grille, etc. You could have toggle options for all those. You could simulate an old 1980s consumer set one day, a high-end PVM the next.
Heaters, AC Units and Electric Showers are the by far the most power demanding things one could have. We are talking about 1085W for AC units and around 7000W for electric showers...
One of the the things people don’t seem to talk about is the fact that a lot of them are on borrowed time. I just had a pvm 20m4 die with a unrepairable MICOM fault. I need to source a new A board which is impossible to find.
damn such a nice model too, pvms are nice but most of them are on high hours which turned on nonstop in their working days. might still be possible to revive it with the (hopefully)upcoming open source crt chassis.
@@babixillo upcoming? it's already here.
@@sunderark is it? i thought its still work in progress
I always keep spare parts for broadcast stuff, i had a 14M2 die on me (some ic in the power supply got fried) but since i had a spare PVM 1450 power supply i was able to get tha same ic on y 14M2, even if its not space efficient its worth it
@@sunderarkWhere?
I agree with a lot of your points, except the modern video part. I daily drive PC CRTs and even at 720p the colors and the clarity crush the 1440p monitor it replaced for way cheaper. Never had the urge to switch back. I agree for SD CRTs (depends on the set, the flicker isn't noticable to me using component or s video), unless you're talking about animation which imo always benefits from a good CRT and actually looks almost like a painting.
Messing with CRTs is easy and pretty safe, there's really only 3 points to avoid. Got over my fear last month and did my first major solder job successfully earlier today. I feel so much better knowing I can keep my tubes going for longer by doing simple repairs. Once I get more practice I'll start offering services since it's definetly needed
Same here. I switched to CRT monitors when my laptop died within 2 years of purchase. My Trinitron Viewsonic is a thing of beauty, blows my laptop's screen completely out of the water
A correction that HD CRTs start at 480p and their native resolutions are usually 480p and 1080i/480p. 720p and 1080p, if those are supported, are scaled to one of the native resolutions, since the CRT just doesn’t have the Horizontal Scanning Frequency to display 720p or 1080p. Only rare BVMs and Computer monitors can do that.
4:48 a lot of people eat to realize that radiation is not a boogie man, but it is also not harmless
That first clip took me back man.... gta 3 on ps2 throught a tiny tube tv is just something else.
7:22 Regarding the size, back in 2006 when I moved out and didn't have the money for a real nice TV, I bought some off brand 32" CRT and somehow got it to fit into my Escort. Dude at the store was sure it wasn't going to fit, but we got it! Then I had to get it out and then up stairs to my second floor apartment. Holy crap what an ordeal. I still have the TV which I need to hook up with my retro consoles.
I have a kv36fs300 that took 2 friends and an appliance dolly to get into my game room. I am getting ready to remodel the room and am not looking forward to moving it 😂😂.
lol I’m in my mid 40’s, my car stereo that I listen to daily does 160db. I can hear the CRT whine with no issues
42 here and I can still hear the CRT whine just fine as well.
Yeah, I'm also in my 40s and can tell before I walk in the door if the living room CRT is on. I've always wondered what's going on for people to lose hearing sensitivity so severely on average.
I know you said geometry issues are prevalent on all CRTs but VGA CRTs are the closest to perfection you can get. My 2 Apple CRTs have near perfect geometry. Convergence can also be adjusted in some via controls. My Sony CRT could have its convergence adjusted in its service menu and same goes for both Apple VGA CRTs I own. Many VGA CRTs had to have near perfect geometry just because they were designed for PC use where geometry issues would be far more noticeable and more of a problem
Also a nice thing about Sony TVs is that their old and new remotes all use the same signal so I can use a 2019 Sony remote on my parents old 1990 Sony CRT and vice versa. Very neat to know you don't need the exact remote unless you really want it. I know not all brands are the same but Sony is one of the few to not change it at all over the decades.
Also I'm surprised you didn't mention focus. Some CRTs will go out of focus after some amount of time and become blurry. It's not that common and is far more noticeable on VGA CRTs, which are far sharper so those issues are more noticeable. The best example I've seen is I think on a MrWhostheBoss video where he showcases a bunch of consoles on different TVs. His small CRT looked completely out of focus.
i just got my first CRT since 2012 in early december! it's a 20' Citizen brand model in silver from 2003...i love it! i use it all the time with my matching silver 2003 AKAI DVD/VCR combo, though i've thought about getting a first-gen Apple TV to connect to it as it has component inputs!! most of the issues mentioned don't bother me except for the whine...at certain angles it can get so loud :(
Yup, I found a Flatron at 20 bucks and started my journey through all of this, solved some issues with the hidden menu but some other stuff (red outline at the left) will need repair. Still works fine as it is, I had worse crts as a kid and looks awesome with my old SD DVDs.
I've repaired some arcade monitors and done yoke swaps, which is when the take the yoke from a worn out arcade monitors CRT and put it on a new CRT from a donor TV. Quite a bitch to adjust and you have to do it while its powered up.
Personally I think arcade monitors are the easier to maintain option. Unlike TVs service manuals with schematics are easy to find, common issues are documented, and many still have things like new flyback transformers available.
That said most arcade monitors use low end consumer tubes and will not look as good as the high end JVC D-Series and Sony Trinitrons.
A lot of content was made for those lower quality tubes though
I got my Trinitron for $5 at a warehouse sale. Best purchase I’ve ever made.
Notable thing is high-quality CRT computer monitors basically have none of these setbacks when calibrated correctly.
I don't know if I am glad or feel scammed that I can still hear that noise at 32
For the Emerson EWF2006 mentioned at 14:55 you have to solder a jumper wire between J2, not J1. Then once you got it set up as well as you can, you have to desolder J2 and re-bridge J1.
I have that same Emerson, but when I opened my remote J1 was already bridged. So I decided to try J2 and it worked.
One of the nice things about a CRT and retro gaming is that games for the NES, SNES, Playstation actually look better on a CRT. Playing the same games on emulated hardware and a modern HD display, the graphics are more blocky/pixelated compared to on a CRT which has a softer image of sprites, text, etc. It is a quirk of CRT displays that actually make games on retro consoles look better compared to playing them on a modern display.
Yeah exactly. Though I feel like this is hard to convey to people who never played these games on original displays. Even despite the articles and videos (about art & rendering techniques taking advantage of CRT blur back in the day) that do a decent job at explaining it.
Definitely on modern hardware without additional filtering or shaders, but I must say that CRT shaders these days can be absolutely astonishing on 4K displays, and particularly OLEDs with black frame insertion. Look up specifically Cyberlab's CRT-Royale shader presets for RetroArch and check them out (just bear in mind that you need to enable composite or s-video filters if you want that aspect), even if just video demonstrations by Retro Crisis. The aesthetic is effectively perfect; the only thing that's really missing is the perfect motion clarity of a real CRT and the brightness, but there's a CRT Beam Simulator shader you can add that further helps with motion clarity. I have a Bang & Olufsen MX4200 CRT TV which is gorgeous to game on, but I must say that I love emulating on my LG C2 OLED with CRT shaders, too.
I have a Toshiba Widescreen CRT TV. I use it daily watching OTA TV on it because it has a built in Digital Receiver. its real nice and honestly the colors and blacks are so clean
We sat closer to our tvs too then which is often left out when considering old tvs vs newer tvs. They had poor resolution but we didn't play from across the room back then. Many of us, especially kids, got mom and dad's old tv with issues or a small kitchen tv to play on. Also CRTs looked very different in person . Cameras capture the scan lines in odd positions you didn't see right in front of it. Younger audiences see these games upscaled and that makes them look terrible: 240P Is only one field forced to fill a 4K screen. PS2 480I Is also either using one field or badly combing on current tvs. Our old tvs used our presistince of vision: as one field was fading, another was being lit up. These got the job done and imo looked far sharper on those older tvs. I've seen younger gamers on RUclips and people where like "this is so blurry how did people play these?" Because we played them on the tvs they where intended for and for the time it was good enough
I also had issues with the beam focus being completely off from factory. I bought a new-old-stock CRT monitor that was out of focus and only kept getting worse. Thankfully there were people who knew what needs to be adjusted inside.
i so want a crt for my n64 and wii but i live in iceland 😭😭 (hopefully i'll find one soon)
Feel like a good compromise is putting a crt filter on a modern screen. My TV doesn't have that built in, but whatever device you're playing on might be able to emulate that
As much as I think that nothing beats a real CRT set, they're just not as easy to come by anymore, and not everyone is that invested in retro games to find one, lol. So yeah a good CRT filter is better than nothing, at least new generations will be able to kinda see how good the games actually looked back in the day.
Personally I'd recommend CRT Lottes to anyone. It's the best shader I've seen.
@@pyroxene4768agreed, the filters have gotten very good lately.
“And if you don’t trust the FDA I don’t know what to tell you”
Bro slept through Covid
The first CRT adjustment i do is the Focus on the flyback. I like to see how sharp & clear i can get the image but of course it needs to be powered & a mirror helps out to see the screen while standing behind the unit to get the perfect focus.
R.I.P. Godpuu, he just couldn't keep his hands off that tube.
I remember getting a flat-front CRT from Kroger when I was a teenager. It was 20” and had S-Video input and it was amazing for playing my older consoles. I miss it. After a while though it started getting discoloration at one point and I had no idea how to repair it in 2007 and felt it wasn’t worth it when I moved into an apartment with my friends who had two big tvs.
I am 41+ now and I can hear the whine very clear still. The CRT I have had since it was new both have some geometry and convergence issues but not sure if I call it enough to start mess with. What is most disturbing is the interlacing affect it has making the picture jump quite a bit. but for some reason it makes this in everything it pictures except the OSD text
I'm 45 I can still hear the noise. When will it stop??
Well I've found that the retroarch CRT shaders on a 4K monitor give the best possible experience - all the fuzziness and scanlines to make games look like they used to, and none of these issues!
i love my 30" WEGA widescreen, it goes hard
I wouldn't even call it an issue, more like a quirk. Just mess with the service menu a little until it's good enough, doesn't have to be perfect. Heck, the analog nature of it is the thing that makes it perfect! And slight curves in the geometry just remind me of that.
There are actually a handful of HD CRTs that have HDMI inputs, but they have additional lag that they don't get from using YPbPr at 1080i, so it's still preferable to use YPbPr. But the HDMI support is there on some models, including multiple Sonys.
The issues with geometry, linearity and convergence are the main reasons I avoid flat CRTs. It baffles me why people who are wanting to play a bunch of retro scrolling games pick up huge Wega TVs with bowing and warping like a funhouse mirror. No consumer CRT is gonna be perfect but at least with a curved tube you are going to have decently straight lines and circles that don’t look like eggs.
I got my sony trinitron at a college surplus sale for $1 (they werent allowed to give it for free even tho they wanted to), its great for gcn games
this is the best retroscaler ad of all time :^)
You should've had a loud noise warning for that high pitched squeal, that literally hurt my ears. I'm also in my 30s, BTW, and I can still hear it.
crt from 2004 lasted me my entire i mean entire life from born to 18 so far just fine
Interlacing👏
Gives👏
Me👏
Headaches👏
Honestly, my old Magnavox CRT is in pretty good shape overall, although it has one rather annoying geometry problem that wasn't really covered in this video: Breathing.
Basically, the overall size of the image will increase slightly if the image contains a lot of bright light, and vice versa if the image is dark.
For most use cases, this isn't _too_ much of an issue, but as someone who likes to play flashy Bemani rhythm games on it, it kinda sucks to deal with and I wish I knew how to fix that :(
💖💖💖 Love the video. It is true that the curved screen for games seems like a match made in heaven. The flat screens do make films (even widescreen films) look amazing. As time goes on I find different screens for different uses cases makes the most sense. 💖💖💖
Thank you! Glad to see you here
Bowing and blooming phenomena are also sensitive to which colours are present on which parts of the screen!
ah CRT's. the magnet is their kryptonite.
I have 3 crts, 2 of them are actually in arcade machines, the 13" crt I have for retro gaming is pretty good, I got it for free and it works amazingly, it has almost no issues, but I have seen crts with issues before and have even fixed them, kind of... they are a pain but they are still cool.
9:15 I imagine it's doubly difficult to make a buyer's guide for CRTs for gaming purposes, as many people looking to buy one for video games probably don't even *want* the quote-unquote 'best' possible TV, what they want is a display that satisfactorily replicates the experience they had playing video games on CRTs back when they were the dominant consumer display tech. And that means including the characteristic quirks and imperfections of general consumer-grade CRTs. (Certainly not PVMs, unless one is looking to recreate some kind of arcade machine experience, which may or may not have had such higher quality monitors back in the day.)
I've got a little 5" grayscale crt that I've been doing research for a composite input mod, because it would be a whole lot more portable if I didn't need to bring a vcr that is significantly larger than it to use it
I have a Panasonic CT-36D from 2002 and I don't even think it has a service menu, that or it's unknown how to access it
after grabbing several CRTS with horrendous geometry i'm at the point where i'm ready to bring a 240p test suite enabled PSP3000 w/ composite cable to the thrift store with me in case I spot a unit I like
I picked up a crt about 3-4 years ago when i started collecting consoles, $50 for like a 27 inch
I'm 38 and still can hear the hissing sound...
I use a Retrotink 5x, which is perfect for my retro gaming needs. I bought a Matsui crt once, a 14inch one, it arrived all smashed up, was able to be refunded and I got it for free, but I was able to fix it and got it working, to be fair it looked really nice, but I tried to fix the overscan and broke it again lol. That and the tv made that high pitch sound because I'm 23 and still young.
To fix the overscan I think I had to open the tv before that's what I saw online, twisted two knobs, and the screen when white when turning it on, so I gave up and binned it.
@ 2:36 No, no, I'm forty and I definitely heard that! Yeowch!
god... it's freaking vibrating...
2:34 probably a transformer problem, if you replace it, noise should be gone, or, at least, reduced. Maybe also recap, just to be sure. I also noticed that it applies mostly on tvs, not pc monitors.
You also forgot about ghosting problem, which is usually ahows only on high refresh rate, like, 160 hz, which probably not a problem for tvs, usually they have only 30, 60, maybe 75 hz
Fuckin magnets, how do they work?
Still, they are more advanced than modern screens. Crt is the best when it comes to input lag. They also don't have the ghosting problem like LCD.
Actually, they have. At least if you overclock them, I have ghosting on my lg flatron on 160 hz
when you started talking about convergence issue it kinda make me laugh I fixed mine by hitting it hard enough or letting it be for a bit and it sometimes just fixes it self
Hd crts or edcrts are actually 480p to 1080i not 1080p.
My year 2000 Sony Trinitron went to be with Tele-Jesus in 2009. The Samsung LCD I bought to replace it has now lasted over 15 years and is so much more versatile. Of course, now that I have raved about its longevity, it will probably crap out tomorrow, so I am off to beg People-Jesus not to tell Tele-Jesus about the pride I have in my TV. Probably wouldn’t hurt to knock on the wooden shelf that supports that gloriously lightweight (for 2009) LCD also.
I remember our Commodore 64 used UHF channel 34 and it always had transparent wavy lines that you could never quite tune out. Nothing off putting, but they were there all the same. Believe me it was better than no display at all, as when we first got the C64 both our TVs were VHF only.
I have a Trinitron KV-29X1D and it has some issues with the geomitry. And I can't easily fix it with the service menu. It's still pretty useable all things considered but I'd love to adjust it sometime if I can learn how to do it. But I'm also thinking about just selling it to buy an oled of similar size to use CRT filters instead.
2:56 that's just interlaced resolution in general, not a problem with CRTs.
Do French 819-line Black and White TVs count as high definition TVs?
gosh I always HATED CRT, the high pitch noize is Extremly painful for me and I never understood as a kid how no one else could hear it, just that, it makes it impossible for me to survive in the same room as a running CRT... and then, looking at one hurts my eyes as it really just blinks the image at 50hz instead of displaying it at 50fps which really hurts my eyes when looking at one, ontop of Lots of distortion when moving my eyes while looking at a CRT, also, for some reason, they are always Extremly bright, it always hurts my eyes like if I was looking at a super bright flame, not any sort of LCD or OLED screen at max brightness hurt my eyes that way and make them feel like its burning...
also, I just never liked the scanlines look, I want my pixels to be square and without any black spaces between them
I always saw CRT as tech from the last centurie and I never understood why anyone would ever want them, appart maybe the people that like using outdated tech that is barely usable
I had same experience with tv in childhood, but recently I bought lg flatron pc monitor. It doesn't have any of those problems, just a little problems with geometry and convergence. No pitch, no flickering(well, maybe on 75 hz or less). But, I can even overclock it to 160 hz, and it's way smoother that 75 hz lcd displays, how cool is that. Now I get why people like crt. It doesn't have input lag like any modern monitors, colours like on oleds, and high refresh rate.
I never heard that high pitch frequencies you are talking about, not even back in the day.
Also hd crts can't display anything beyond 1080i
6:25 that was as heavy as me a month ago 😂😂😂
I played Battlefield 4 and MW3 on a crt because my family couldn't afford a flat tv for years
Me with an 80s(?) crt: Yu-huh.
We need to do some work on it, I can hear sparking when it's on, but I've been unable to find schematics. Such are the problems with a free tv, colors look pretty good tho lol.
Did you try checking eBay? I had to buy schematics for 2 different TVs, because I couldn't find them online anywhere.
@@SorinLion Upload them online if you haven't already, for the sake of anyone else who has those specific models
I had a huge Sony CRT TV with all the good hookups and picture in a picture it was awesome but it was so big and heavy. I ended up getting rid of it before I knew about gaming on CRT TVs. I looked it up to see what it would take to buy a similar TV back and it's over $1,000. I wish I would have kept that TV.
*Advocate (not "Advocator"):🤗
i have a 32 inch Sony Trinitron and Matching Hernia. that's right, i can move it by myself, but my spine is now fused together
Well, the iMac G3 has on the tube written, that it generates X-rays.
4:28 That wasn't a screw up. That was a government study, my guy.
It takes serious catastrophic failure or you pushing a CRT beyond safe operating parameters for one of them to generate x-rays. It is a possibility, but it is not an outcome in most general circumstances.
haven't finished the video but what about computer monitors?? Like ones that can go up to 1024x768, those don't count as high res but they're not standard definition
"CRTs are just not as sharp as modern displays", that is, if you get a TV and not a proper expensive later CRT computer monitor
took me too long to realise this video is only talking about the "junk" crts, aka tvs which would never have the image quality, resolution or refresh rate that crt computer monitors do
They can go much higher that 1024x768. Mine lg flatron can go up to 2048x1536, but only on flickery 60 hz, so I prefer 800x600 with 160 hz for games, and 1600x1200@85 for browsing
They can go much higher that 1024x768. Mine lg flatron can go up to 2048x1536, but only on flickery 60 hz, so I prefer 800x600 with 160 hz for games, and 1600x1200@85 for browsing
my crt is curved but it still has a fisheye effect thats annoyingly noticeable when scrolling horizontally in pixel art games. so i just avoid playing anything like that on it... even tho i love platformers ):
That whine is nostalgic to me
Buy an old universal remote. These will work on basically any brand of CRT.
Better yet, a service remote. It's amazing, makes it easy to get to the service menu on all sorts of sets.
2:35 bro that was extremely loud with headphones, a warning would be appropriate.
We all like CRT Tvs and monitors!
I’d watch a breakdown of a CRT if you do one
I bought a 32 inch Samsung hd crt in 2023. Hardly ever used, had issues with convergence and geometry and the entire service menu had multiple wrong settings out of the factory.
I learned how to set up the convergence rings that’s like a dangerous hobby for a maniac. Took me days to get the glimpse. The geometry well I made it better but can’t be perfect. I made the picture better changing some values in the service menu. I could continue on but don’t want to bore you. All together it’s a holy grail tv for playing retro remasters such as the quake and doom 1+2
I run it on 720p via a hdmi edi dongle as early hdmi handshake is not perfect and makes lag. Seriously in the states are so many hd crt for pennies. These thing will worth a lot in a few years when retro gamers wake up. You can’t replace it. The ultimate experience to play retro games so anything before 2010
James channel made a game boy with a BW CRT attached.
The power draw matters more depending on where you live. I live in a part of the country where, for some reason, we are charged more than anywhere else (this includes the island of hawaii) and so everyone here actually puts thought into how much power any and everything uses. I've upgraded electronics just for the cost savings in electricity. Kinda makes me want to move. There's actually no good reason for the higher cost here other than greed.
You said people in their 30's and 40's can't hear it.
Well, that isn't true.
You can hear power flow through your house and hear tube tv's turn on and the noise EV cars make.
Not due to age.
Might be due to either ears or brain or both.
A friend of mine is 40 and he can hear it very well. Weirdly enough, he actually has ear damage, which makes him more sensitive to noise and not less, somehow?
‼️ 0:49 perfessional? Do you listen to the words you say?
Negawatt?
@@netmeister7941 u def boi?
@@billgates3699You dropped as a child "boi"?
1:18 use truecaller
10:40 I actually got a VCR for free from one of my neighbors it was just sitting on a table across the street with a big free sign and I took it home and plugged it in and it worked well it could play and record tapes
I guess it's gonna be a scaler for me then
Mine got fixed ny the rings in the back. Not that hard
advocator. hmm i expected spell check to vindicate my feeling that that was not a word. but maybe it is? advocator. hmm seems legit
Why can I not escape the purgatory that is crt’s. I haven’t owned one in almost a decade now. But yet my feed is filled with videos about crt’s 😂😂
Sorry bro 😂
It's trying to send you a message to get one lol
Probably because you comment on them like this... lol
But hey why not join us and get one? Or two. Or three.