My folks have a widescreen CRT they bought around 2003, 2004. I remember DVDs looking way better on it than they did on my PC, so I guess it's true that CRT forgives many sins.

Always wondered what laserdiscs would look like on it, but I'm not gonna lug my player all the way there just to check.

Probably the reason why YOUR and MOST LCD TVs don’t have horrible results compared to me is becuase if it can receive a composite or S-Video signal natively, which my PS3DTV does NOT do, it might more properly blend the gaps, than if there’s a middle processor like a Philips DVD record, which I need if want to watch Composite and S-Video on my PS3DTV.

Unfortunately, Screen captures don’t accurately tell the picture. The direct feed will look pixelated. An example is the Bally Astrocade. If you capture a direct feed, you’ll see pixelated characters, but if you look with the naked eye on a CRT TV, it doesn’t look as pixelated. It looks more blended.

It’s just not evident in a direct screen capture. Any time you take the direct Screen capture with a DVD or a Video Game Streamer/Recorder it digitizes the picture. I would use Beta and VHS as a problem, but the problem is both are designed to capture analog video 480i, and the 240p causes opposite problems. On Beta, you can watch a taped video game at real speed, but Betascan it and the scan picture gets lost. VHS has the opposite problem, where video doesn’t show when running at standard playback speed, but forward scan the video and you can actually get a picture.

Don’t trust direct screen captures. The CRT Color blending is an "Artifact" in its own right. I guess if you take a close up picture of a CRT vs a LCD, the CRT blends the colors horizontally more gradually which can be seen on a close up on a digital camera, but have vertical bands, and on video games even black bands which is frequently called "scanlines" (but should be called "skipped lines") which are only evident in "digital capture". Assuming the video is 240p, the close up would look blockier on the LCD screen, if it doesn’t upscale and simulate pixels between pixels.

But in defense of upscaling, of course Amazon Prime Video does look better on our 4K player on a 1080p TV, and I assume I’m only downloading a 480p picture with only 1.5 Mb/s inbound, and it’s the Sony UBP-X800’s video processor which upscales the video to 1080p, despite only having enough bandwidth to process 480p

Give it the eyeball test. Go up to an inch of the TV and compare a 24 inch CRT vs a 24 inch LCD. Also look at the screen from a normal gaming viewing distance. which one looks prettier either standing still or in motion?

I guess whether you’re algorithmically upscaling video or analogously displaying it, the more pixels between defined pixels, the better the picture. The Sony PS3DTV would not upscale 480i video, (and there’s a good reason for that: that would kill the instant ping time, and that is important on a Gaming TV) so given my choice between a PS3DTV and A Sony Wega CRT, MY choice is clear. The Wega.

The only reason why I brought it up is because I was sticking my finger in the air, seeing if other people noticed the difference between a CRT TV and an LCD screen in the Laser Disc community. You can see WHY i thought that, based on my particular situation of a Sony Wega vs a Playstaiotn 3D TV viewing Laser Discs.

If you want to see what I see, turn off the upscaling mode, or high picture processing mode, that is (I assume because your primary love is movies and not games). on by default on your big screen TVs. if you put it in low ping mode aka game mode for just a few minutes, you’ll be able to freeze frame nearly instantly, but you’ll see the cost of low ping on 480i media and how upscaling is the modern equivalent to a CRT TV in terms of color blending old media.

And as I said, CRT TV may be the better technology in terms of pure color blending, but it comes at a cost getting extremely impractical to move larger than 24 inches, and even at extreme levels can’t go beyond 36 inches. Everything is a tradeoff. If one thing was purely better than another, the old thing would be totally obsoleted. Except in Amish Country in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where would a blacksmith get a steady job?

But at least Amish communities support themselves within their small boundaries. CRT enthusiats are not all in one geographic area, therefore it’s impractical to have a hobbyist CRT maker of high quality 4x3 NTSC RF to HDMI, 240p and 480i to 2160p, with a 16x9 mode. Those suckers are heavy. Are CRTs banned by governemnt, or are they like the blacksmith, just too small of a market to justify making neew ones?

Luckily, since most of the customers are gamers, the largest screen you will ever need is 24 inches. Gamers want the screen to be big enough to focus on a details but far enough to be able to scan the screen easily. For gamers, it’s not a "bigger is better" mentality. There is a size in which gaming TVs become too big to be practical. Which fits the New CRT market (if there were one) perfectly. Movie goers have moved on. if you’re going to sell a CRT TV today, you better sell it as a quality low ping gaming TV.

I remember when Goodwill was closing out on CRT TVs about 3 years ago, they were advertising them as low ping Gaming TVs and the ONLY way to play Duck Hunt and other Light Gun games without shooting blanks.

There will be a turning point where CRT TVs will turn from Goodwill Garbage to a Retro Game Treasure. Vinyl Record Albums and Turntables came back from the dead. Maybe CRTs that are "gamer sized" will come back too. But yeah, Big screen CRTs are dead and will stay dead.

I guess upscaling to more "in between pixels" and "in between colors" makes a good computerized way to make a digital 480i picutre seem to have more pixels and more colors.

The problem with gaming is that it adds WAY too much ping to be playable, especially on a retro game brought to a modern TV.

Thankfully native 1080p displays are way quicker than a typical networked game ping time.

As someone who played Street Fighter on both 1) a Genesis and a CRT TV, 2) A Genesis on a DVD-R-machine-converted HDMI TV, and 3) a modern version for Street Fighter 2 on an Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, I say in terms of rank form best to worst, is 1, 3, and 2.

The reason why 3 is higher than 2 is because a game that starts at native 1080p and gets piped straight to the TV in 1080p with a slight ping just due to the nature of LCD screens, which, even if you don’t buy a modern gaming LCD, which can be anywhere from 4 ms to 1 ms, depending on how premium you want to go, even at 33 ms of the PS3DTV, a Nine year old TV, at 33 ms, is quicker than any composite->HDMI conversion on a DVD recorder.


So I guess the HDMI technology doesn’t add ANY ping, nor the higher resolution. The 2 biggest factors are the screen, and any video processing. Here’s my test...



So the conclusion is video processing and the display itself are the 2 biggest contributors to ping.

Also movie watchers value size and picture quality, the more the better. Gamers prefer quick ping times, the quicker, the better, and the right size TV. You can go too big and too small, just not both at the same time. It’s the person who dabbles in both universes who must make some tough decisions.

It’s also true that most computer based DVD players suck. I have the current spec 4K iMac and DVDs look as bad on it as they did on my PowerPC Mac Mini 15 years ago because it’s the same app, I’m pretty sure. The screen is the best one in my house if you ignore that it’s only 21”.

To be honest, I don't actually remember what I used as a point of comparison. I just remember DVDs looking pretty good on it, as opposed to, I dunno, watching them on my current LCD TV via non-upscaling player, which ends up showing all the compression artefacts you wouldn't really notice on the CRT. Or at least as far as I can remember. It's been ages since I've watched anything on it, much less with any real scrutiny!

I think mostly HD (or HD ready) CRT's matter, or mattered, especially like someone else already mentioned around 2005 or so when lcd's were still far behind.
I am still happy with my Philips 28PW9551 for that very reason and still like the colours more than on my 3d lcd pc screen, but if it breaks one day, it has to make place for for example an oled by that time i guess and a good scaler.

I don’t know about that. There is a significant paradigm shift from CRTs that only draw as many lines on the screen as there are on the disc because that’s literally the signal being shown to you as it is being read and HD sets that put everything through a super complicated digitization process. The majority of the difference between a traditional CRT and a later period HD one is also true of CRT and LCD. They are both mostly digital they just send the data to another kind of panel and because of that they both aren’t that great for old video games because the interlacing FX don’t work as well (ie: shadows in KOF).

I used to have a monitor from a company called NetTV (no relation) and it was basically a 27” CRT that worked as a very good display for composite, Y/C, and component and rendered them at native res but ALSO had a VGA socket that would display 1024/768. It was a true multi sync monitor that could handle SD and HD TV. I traded it for another very nice monitor that died soon after. It was pretty special. No TV tuner. The best Sega Dreamcast display imaginable. I miss it.

I plan to keep a “real” (mostly analog signal path) CRT with me for as long as possible even though I have a 960.

I swore by CRT for a while when it came to LD. Last two were a 40" Sony XBR WEGA then a 36" Super Fine Pitch WEGA.

LD looked great on them, but having to move a few times in the last few years made me hate them as they were just too damn heavy, and the footprint was a bit much when you're apartment living and space is a hot commodity.

Got rid of them and got an HD Plasma TV instead.

LD looks great on that too.

However, I am kicking around the idea of getting another CRT. Not for LD, but for retro gaming. I still play my Saturn often, and with having many fighting games for it, the slight lag you get when the Plasma is processing that NTSC signal for the display messes you up a bit.

I had a CRT monitor like that as well. I should have kept it but it must not have survived a purge.

The retro gaming community has driven the price of pro CRT monitors nuts. Especially Sony. The PVM series and especially BVM line are highly prized - the most extreme case being the pricing on the 32 inch HR Trinitron where they are going for like $6k now (sure it was a $40k display new, but those were going for around $1k before certain gaming forums hyped CRT). At least this effect is preserving more of them, as tube displays are mostly seen as e waste to the layman seller.

I'm glad I got my pristine Ikegami TM20-80 20 inch master monitor for little over $100 shipped like 5 years back with the way the prices have been. None of this effects ordinary old tube TV sets, which are basically free to haul away at this point - my main direct view TV is an SD Sony Wega, and I really should troll Craigslist for a spare or two. I use it to watch the occasional LD plus anime files and emulate games off a computer, with video downconversion from VGA to component through an Extron VSC-500.

I prefer 4:3 CRT's for LaserDisc, since the video output is 4:3 anyways (exept for Sqeeze LDs). And you would have to Zoom in to fill the 16:9 screen, which decrease the image quality

I could never really understand the retro gaming people.
If you think about it you can get a dedicated jamma machine with lets say a 4 slot Neo Geo for under a grand and then get the games
you want.

No need to get a home version that is just a copy of what you could have from the arcade.
I'll never forget when I bought a Double Dragon II board for 11 bucks and put it in a regular black cab, put a new panel and played
the crap out of it and it was AMAZING, better than ANY home port of the game I have EVER played.

I even had a dedicated Afterburner upright that I paid top dollar for at the time, I think it was around 500 and it was Exactly like the arcade,
oh wait it was the arcade

But it’s not “collectable” because JAMMA is dusty and smells like cigs. It’s all PCBs and photocopied operator guides, and occasionally 40,000 volts, nothing colorforul to show pictures of on Friendface.

Also they are way way too scared of working on and learning anything about actual electronics to get inside a cabinet so they’ll pay more for a bad port of something than the entire machine it takes to run it, for sure. I’d bet there are several examples of this happening.

I purposefully hunt down the rattiest playable MVS carts only. The ones from Mexican ghetto arcades with blood still on them. VGA grade that, wimps!

I'd love to be able to own cabinets of all my favorite arcade games, but who has space for all that?

So it's much easier to just play the ports on my Sega Saturn on a quality CRT along with all the Saturn exclusives that I still play to this day.

Though I will admit to kicking myself for not purchasing this one 6-slot Neo Geo cabinet I saw at a Arcade Auction some years back. Had one of the rarest Neo Geo games ever in it--Super Dodge Ball.

Went for just $80.

If only I had the space for it!!!!!

Well if you have space for a 300lbs CRT then you have space for a 19" upright or cocktail table with a Jamma connector and the 3 major buttons you would use.
Then just plug and unplug your boards.

Its not like anybody really plays more than 10 or 15 games all the time even if they own 100 for their SNES.
I had about 30 when I owned it but only played those 5-8 all the time, then I sold it and never looked back.

But boy do I miss my arcades I had.
Unfortunately mine didn't have any brothel blood on them, must have been cleaned before I got them.

Didn't have any cig smoke either, or maybe one did?? That I bought broken and it was way too old I couldn't fix the monitor, first one
tossed and then learned how to fix them from there.

Did you see the news making the rounds about a WATA graded sealed first run copy of Super Mario Bros "selling" for over $100,000? It's of course super dubious since this was at an auction house, where you can bid whatever you want. Multiple people went in on owning it together (yeah, I know...) including the guy that OWNS and co-founded the auction house at which it sold.



That's true, but you also can't watch more than one movie at a time either. Well I mean you can but why would you want to. I don't mind holding onto things. Now, eventually some stuff does get to the point where it's worth more than I think it is and in those cases I sell the stuff or swap it.

Ugh, was it Heritage??
I just got a flier and see they are now auctioning off graded games

Yep. Heritage and WATA are in cahoots. Doing a bunch of bs to make the news rounds.

I’m so glad I’m just slightly too fortunate to know what any of that crap is. I get the idea.

I actually heard about that too, I think it wasn't just first run but it was like a factory prototype or something that made it far more unique?