@@DwAboutItManFr its an anime, the charachters work out of a room above a CRT store and repair shop in 2011. Infact CRT's are the secret to make time travel possible.
@@DwAboutItManFr So it was a little complicated but effectively the data was being compressed by the massive vacuum tubes and sent through a connection that was accidently connected to Cerns super colider which happend to be a time machine of sorts. With phone controlled microwave being the control mechanism. This was all an accident but the core concept is what invents time travel.
Man, LCDs were a mistake. A stopgap technology giving people what they thought they wanted. I remember my first LCD, in 2008, was such a disappointment.
@@theaverageblitzer4351 the maximum refresh rate that a normal person would use is 240, and there are many CRTs going easily up to 180hz which is still more than enough for the most competitive gamer. And by the way they're 20 years old monitors that weren't even intended for extreme esports gaming. If a CRT would be made today for gamers, it would easily reach 500hz. Also, CRTs even with lower refresh rate are still better for gamers than 240hz LCDs because they have 0 latency and handle motion much better: your "but they can't do 500hz so they're useless 🤓🤓😭😭😭" argument makes no sense because the benefits of a CRT are still better for gamers, a 180hz CRT is much better than a 500hz LCD for gaming.
@LeoTheHuman_ there would be zero input delay if any modern gpu didn't have to go through a digital to analog converter and CRTs can consume like 200-400w of power compared to like 65w for an LCD or OLED also 240hz oled looks better when it comes to blacks and color depth overall the only way a CRT can match those refresh rates is by dropping below 1024x768 which is unacceptable the only advantage CRTs have is res scaling
@@theaverageblitzer4351 Well, with a non-VGA GPU I wouldn't buy a CRT to use it with an adapter and get so much latency, but for any older hardware I would definetly get one. CRTs don't consume over 200w at worst, they're still mostly under 100w. In color depth and especially blacks, CRTs are much better: I just watched a lot of comparsions, you should go watch some because here CRTs are clear winners and close seconds only to OLEDs. Also no, only on a low end monitor you'd need to drop down the resolution to sub-720 for a high refresh rate, and well on a over 1440p resolution most modern games won't even run at such high framerates anyways. And even sub-720p resolutions on a CRT mostly look better than +1080p on a LCD.
I purchased one of these new in 2003-2004 for $100 with shipping. Loved it dearly and it made me postpone switching to LCD until at least 2009-10! I never knew the obscurity or true power of it (one of the highest end consumer CRTs) and wound up giving it to a scrapyard after a few issues that likely could've been remedied with a couple cap replacements. I have missed it ever since.
i still using one from 2005, samsung syncmaster. truly highend trinitron monitor. got it for $10, when people got mad from LCD, and was trowing out these massive space eaters in quantities. If I would know, and have more room, I would take at least 10 of them.
Thank you! Sometimes you can find them on craigslist by searching for "dell monitor" instead of CRT. But I think most people now know what they have. Good luck!
What a nice screen. I used to have one myself, it unfortunately died few years ago, after 15+ years of service. Unfortunately in my case the CRT itself died, it developed internal short and the power from the green gun started to leak in to the red one. As a result, over time I had to tone up the green and town down the red to keep the image color balanced, right before death I had green at 100%, blue about 70% gain and red at 20%. It also started to suffer from the common issue of being "too bright before warm-up", and in last years in those bright periods it started to have red flashes which sometimes resulted by the power supply's self shutdown. I have measured the voltages and they were all fine, all guns were powered equally, so the issue was in the CRT itself. Well, thankfully for it to die it took years so it was not a "sudden surprise". By death I mark the point the red flashes became constant and did not go away after warmup. I have other CRTs of almost equal quality tho, my daily used one is IBM P260. Nice and very bright, high contrast and gamut, but it has developed a flaw of the screen being too bright (and even more so before warmup), so I had to dig in and add manual potentiometers to control the brightness. After this fix it keeps working fine and ironically "thanks" to it I can drive it very hard to the point I sometimes have to lower the contrast. Other two are NEC FE1250+, two units, one stored as backup one used. The one being used has also developed a flaw, before warmup the image can be horizontally a bit shorter, by about 0,5cm on each side, it stretches slowly as it warms up. I consider this not a serious issue, probably just a capacitor, this screen is noticeably sharper than the IBM P260 at high resolutions, but less bright. Overall, they are all veterans that are starting to show old age, but as long as the CRT is fine, everything else can be repaired. Iv so far had to retire 2 CRTs, the Dell, and IBM P200, which was my first high-end model, and I ran that thing to the ground, I ran so many hours on it that the CRT gun became tired over the years and lost most of its contrast/brightness, but otherwise it still worked fine. That thing was a trooper.
dang, you seem to know a lot about CRT's and keeping them running over the years. I wish I had your knowledge as I just picked up an RCA TruFlat TV, a Toshiba 20FA44 I believe, and a 32 inch Sony Trinitron KV-32FS210 which is a 160 pound beast.
wow, such a quality in-depth review and tutorial, it answered the pvm hyped broadcast monitors demand for retro all in one gaming crt monitor. you saved me from buying that expensive crt and opted to med quality average consumer PC monitors, for such having capability of that pvm with more affordable price. sir, you deserved a sub!
I have a P1130, used it for a while, then got a FW900 (which I use as my main monitor). The P1130 has an intermittent short in the tube which I think I managed to almost-fix (it still sometimes happens but only briefly and only when the tube is cold, there is no reasonable way to fix that unless it gets worse). Then did the white point calibration and it looks nice now. It is not as bright as the FW900, but I do not need that much light (some LCDs are a bit too bright for me even at the lowest setting). So, now I have a working P1130 and some skills in repairing CRTs. I still hope to find a FW900 to keep as a spare though. It's a shame CRT monitors are not made anymore.
Shadow mask CRT monitors made in the late 90s and early 2000s really did catch up to Trinitrons when it came to dot pitch (also brightness). These P1130 have a horizontal dot pitch of .24 mm. I actually own a ViewSonic A90-2 shadow mask with a horizontal dot pitch of .22mm. I also had a Dell trinitron 1000hs and the Viewsonic was noticeably much sharper and brighter then the Trinitron to the degree that I replaced my Trinitron with it and gave the Dell to my buddy to enjoy. Shadow mask viewsonics from that time really were something special I recommend keeping an eye out for one and grabbing it if you ever come across one.
Your post on reddit is one of the first results to pop up when searching for the ViewSonic A90-2! Looking at your videos, driving games like Forza really demonstrate how CRTs blow away LCDs in terms of motion clarity.
@@ApertureGrille Thanks lol I didn't know my posts would pop up on that. And yeah I've been meaning to make more videos I'm just currently trying to get a better setup. I'm still using my phone to record and I just got a tripod for it the other day. I just wanna show off how good some games look on CRTs. Not every game looks amazing but a lot do and if you are after the best quality the black levels, motion clarity, softness they have really can make a nice difference.
I know this was 4 years ago but maybe I will find a viewsonic shadow mask one of these days. I have a 32 inch sony trinitron i picked up off the curb and its a huge TV, but I love the CRT monitors the most because they remind me of the old days playing games with my dad
Great video. I just saved two P1130 from the trash yesterday. My old 19” trinitron had a blow driver IC a few years back so I ditched it. Afaict the P1130 is a 4:3 version of the FW 900 with a dot pitch that is 0.24 mm rather than 0.23 and fewer input options. The FW900 is the Cadillac but this puppy’s the Lincoln. I didn’t realize how nice a find these monitors were.
@@NicheAsQuiche Yeah man let me just go out and find a replacement FBT or driver IC that stopped being made decades ago. Unlike you I actually know how to fix CRTs and do it. Not all can be saved. Fuck off.
Awesome video,you went into great detail and cool how you got native scanlines. I just got a Dell E773c for free off craigslist,got my pi running on it with a hdmi to vga,have it outputting 240p at 120hz
that mini guide to get 448p was like water in the dessert. Been looking for that for a while, but everybody uses external scalers. I even gave up on it, an suddenly here it is. Thanks a lot
story time: back in 2005 i bought a dell dimension and the retailer was literally begging me to get a flat 17" screen over the 19" crt that i wanted and offered me a discount of nearly 150$ on a digital camera (big deal lol) and i said no because i hated how lcd screen looks on laptops back then, since 2010 the whole pc was sitting in the closet with a bunch of useless things because it was so heavy to carry it to my place, until a saw the Digital Foundry video, i was so happy that the monitor was still there nearly intact.
Such in-depth reviews, you could potentially become main TH-cam monitor reviewers. You can potentially purchase monitors review them and return for the beginning. I really wish you could review LG 27GL850-B
Thank you. It's tough when you first start out... no one is sending me monitors to review! I don't mind purchasing, but I really need to choose carefully to make sure I'm not reviewing stuff that's already been done. I don't really want to take advantage of returns, but I can probably sell the monitors after I've finished the reviews to make some of my money back. I have plans, but it may be several weeks before I get a new video up.
@@ApertureGrille I actually have a monitor that it seems no one has done a real indepth review of, and it's cheap. Check out the Lenovo l24q-20 it's a 23.8" 1440p 60hz ips display that you can get from bestbuy for $160 honestly for the price I think it's a rather good monitor but I don't have the proper equipment to really see how good it is. Could be an interesting video.
For emulating 224/240p 60FPS games on a VGA CRT monitor, I recommend using Retroarch at 224/240p@120Hz with black frame insertion. It's just about as sharp as a 15kHz PVM.
Professional Video Monitor, which is Sony's brand of professional grade 15kHz CRT monitors. The grille pitch, which is the distance between two phosphor bars of the same color, and the beam spot size are very fine on PVMs, which is what makes them professional grade.
you are an amazing narrator, thanks a lot for this work. My P1130 waits for a recap, need to prepare myself for that mentally), but even now the experience is great.
These reviews are incredilby informative, well scripted, and well edited too. I also really like how you talk like patrick bateman explaining huey lewis and the news when talking about what a monitor does well.
Nice video! Grabbed my P1130 2 days ago for less than 20$. Previous owner said that he used it for about one month in 2003. It looks a bit used but the display is almost untouched!
A lot of people don't seem to realize if your CRT is emitting a high pitch noise, which it shouldn't do, it's because of the power supply it's plugged into, it is similar to the background noise you get on a sound system, interference as well as just a dirty power grid can cause this. All you need is a power strip with a filter, as well as ideally a kettle lead for your CRTs that also has filtering, not only will it get rid of any high-pitched noise it will give you a cleaner, flicker free image. Your audio quality will be much better too.
I'd love to see more CRT reviews. Specifically the models you'd expect offices to dump in bulk. Personally if I could find one that can do 1280x1024 90Hz and do it well, for dirt cheap/free, that'd be great.
Nice vid. Found it while looking for specs to post for one I am selling. You're right! CRTS ROCK! So does PLASMA for that matter. Imagine how far along Plasma would be if Panasonic never gave up on it?
If you are plasma fans I would recommend you getting Pioneer Kuro PDP-LX6090...or 50inch LX5090 because 6090 is very rare - it was much more expensive and at the time 50 inch was big enough and really the only reason 5090 is on sale becase today it is kinda small size for a TV. 60 inch - still big enough. I myself picked 50 inch model for whopping 77$ and... ...OMG! - perfect gradation - less dithering noise - even less dithering compared to Panasonic if you specifically focus on near-black - no false posterization artifacts on fast eye movements - also why I say gradation is perfect - almost zero screen-door - you do see RGB subpixels but not gaps - even up close. Panasonic had rather large gaps - black level better than CRT - at least when you actually calibrate it to 2.4 gamma - 4:4:4 subsampling for PC - though in this case black level is worse... still better than even VT Panasonics!!! - better light spectrum - gamut is higher but you do do get proper Rec.709/sRGB gamut clamping - compared to Panasonic almost no temporary image retention - really you can play game all day long and have almost no ghosts and they clear quickly Only thing where Panasonic was better is input lag. Panasonics except latest models had 24ms on average drawing screen from the middle to top and bottom while Kuro has 32ms drawing screen from bottom to top. Too bad Pioneer stopped making plasmas and the same for Panasonic. It would be hard to compete with OLEDs though. Especially QD-OLED is pretty amazing tech and while for now for big TVs plasma has better 60Hz motion sharpness you can already surpass it - when and if we will see improvements to BFI tech and required power delivery adjustments to get enough brightness is another issue.
Absolutely brilliant video sir, like others have said I think you covered everything that everyone should know about CRTs and how they compare to LCDs, you went the extra mile with all the explanations too. I will be sure to link to this video to people when I explain why CRTs are still very relevant to this day.
We needed more of this information 20 years ago when everybody was crazy about switching to terrible flat panels. It could have helped to prevent their "culling"
Thanks for the vid. I still use a CRT with a 980ti to avoid the 1000s needed for a modern GPU. 1280 resolution. Everything you said was right especially the blacks in some games I can see detail in the fog I could not see in the LCD.
I need your help. I have gtx 1070 and was thinking if its better to buy high quality VGA to DP adapter or should i downgrade to 980Ti. I was gonna replace 1070 anyway but should i keep her or sell and buy 980Ti. There is Startech adapter but im still concerned that i will lose picture quality even if i get high refresh rates.
@@fiece4767 reviews I've seen say cheap adaptors are no good for high Res CRT analogue displays. I would suggest reading some reviews from geeks and trying an adaptor first if you have a LCD. Remember blur busters do a good 1080p monitor now it's on their website. If you need to use a CRT get a 980ti as at 1280 x 1024 it still rocks. 👍 and has support for Windows 10. Or get a blur busters approved monitor and if you have the money a 3060ti or AMD card equivalent.
@@fiece4767 DP to VGA adapters are pretty good, I have compared two cloned high-end Sony CRTs, one connected directly to native VGA port and one to an adapter and there's no difference in quality or higher input lag, just make sure they're passthrough and don't do any sort of scaling or postprocessing, normally the ones that do advertise it somewhere so stay away from those, only buy the "dumb" ones that only do a fast digital to analog conversion.
Excellent video! We had 1130s in our LAN room and they were gorgeous when running Quake and older DOS games... the design was neat too. I still have a small CRT "farm" going albeit most are stashed away - among them big IIyama's and Suns(rebranded Trinitrons). No matter how good technology gets a CRT is awesome because it's a CRT - same with old cars like the Ford GT40 or an 80ies Lamborghini.
RGB Phosphor triads are not physical pixels; they are just there to provide color, they are not the building blocks of the digital image. A monochrome CRT lacks RGB phosphors, but the image is still made up of logical pixels in the GPU's frame buffer.
I just got one of these from a free monitor pile at my local pc repair place. Found this awesome video while digging up info on mine :> Those finds are still out there even now, you just have to keep your eyes open and be patient. I for one am completely ok with the fact my PC is potentially broken. Fair trade, universe. Fair trade.
I have one CRT to give in France. Diamontron 22' from Mitsubishi, fully working, no glass scratch, refresh rates up to 160hz in the lower res. You can check some of my fps gameplay using it.
the sharpens contrast ratio is overrated, natural "bloom" is an attractive image trait, and cinematographers try their best to encourage it. to much contrast ratio can look digital or in a movie, look like a soap opera, falling for the tech specs of technology can actually blind ones aesthetic until its too late and that aesthetic is sort of lost. great video.
I will post yet another recollection buying my first high end monitor , a Sony GDM 2038 It was second hand but nearly new and in a pawn shop for £500, this was back in 1992 i think. I sold my body for some medical experiments, cashed the cheque, bought the monitor, which was not lightweight, carried it across the city, 1.5 miles to my friends house, then brought it home the extra 45 miles, on my motorcycle. used the rest of the money to buy the highest end graphics card at the time, a whole whopping lotta 4MB of memory.( actually it might have been 8MB or perhaps even 16MB, it was a long time ago ) further back I recall splashing out on a 1MB graphics card , then worked my way up each time graphics card spec increased. but at the time, it could run the monitor perfectly. It was awesome, it took my friends, some of whom were working as games programmers, several years to get anything anywhere near it. i still have it, and it still works.
Every Quake player will remember the pain of trying an LCD display as a replacement for their CRT. Amazing video, but depressing to realize that we are still behind 20 year old technology with respect to motion clarity. LCD strobing has a long way to go, and strobed high refresh rate displays still suffer from awful general picture quality (black levels, colors, backlight bleed, vignetting).
*Sigh* I found a P1130 in recycling dumpster at a PC repair place (after asking for permission to check what was out there). A year or two later, I ended up dumping the thing to "make more room on my desk", and "not turn my room into a furnace" (I had a three CRT AMD Eyefinity array going). That was just back in 2015 or so. Such. Regret. Back then, I was just enamored with the black levels and near zero input lag of CRTs - I wasn't even using them in a way that allowed for good motion clarity (my FPS never matched my refresh rate). The things I'd do for another one of these... Motion clarity beats everything, IMO, and every time I think about looking into "better" computer monitors, I'm reminded that I have a curved VA monitor I don't bother using at all (wife uses it for WFH sometimes), and that I'd just be angry about the blur in everything I play. CRT and VR headsets, all the way, forever (except when playing/watching with other people - then the DLP projector suffices. Which I bought thinking it'd be clear, too, but I have a double image issue, and I have no idea what to do about that/if anything can be done, or if that's just inherent to DLP/this projector).
The high pitch whine of CRT is age/wear/tear , they were not noisy when new, the noise comes from the high voltage transformer breaking down, changing HV transformers was routine work for TV repair men. so you can still find NOS, New Old Stock HV transformers fairly easily, worth getting one or two, they are fairly easy to solder out and in.
Honestly I've been meaning to get a CRT to play my old consoles on (mostly my wii, i crave to play Mario Galaxy again when i get everithing set up) since 2018, but it's been this year were i've really got into it. After discarding SD TV's, failing to find HD CRT's near me and not even considering BVM's for their absurd prices and scarcity, I decided on CRT monitors. I snarched a free Flatron 915ft which i calibrated by hand (really sloppy) and, despite the wear it had, i really got to enjoy the aspects that make crt's the best for me: their adaptability (went from 240p on my various emulated games, to 480p on my Wii, to 1600x1200 or even connecting my vita to it), their cheap good black levels and motion clarity. Sadly, i think something in the power circuit blew out yesterday. I was already looking for an aperture grille replacement for better color, so it wasn't much of a setback. I would repair it but i don't have the tools nor the time to troubleshoot. At least it definitely isn't the tube as they don't die suddenly. Bit of a ramble, but i just wanted to say that your review was awesome and you really nailed the aspects of crt's i love. Your LCD panel reviews are also golden.
Hah, no worries. Too bad about the CRT. I don't have the skill to repair any of mine should something go wrong, so I'm hoping they last a good bit longer. I still occasionally see 17" CRTs pop up on craigslist in my area, but people now know when they have something valuable, so trinitrons are hard to find or expensive.
@@ApertureGrille It's sad to see CRT's go, even if they are replaced by more convenient displays. And that Trinitron scarcity is real! Over here i only see 15 inch ones pop up and then an old and very used 19-20 inches sony who can't go over 1600, for upwards of 150 euros! It makes thinking of spares really difficult.
just checked for new videos yesterday hoping for more of the excellent monitor reviews you make x) (by far the best on youtube). guess I was a day to early to get my wish fulfilled o:
I hate to break it to you, but the black level and nits depends on both the age and wear of the tube, and type of tube. Probably the best ones that I know of are the Gateway EV700, and the Compaq V500, the late 90s/very early 2000s white monitors are the best ones in the CRT era, and are both top of the line models, Trinitrons on the other hand have worse black levels because Trinitron tubes are 25 percent Brighter than regular slot mask tubes, resulting in blacks that are slightly grey. Sometimes, the best models aren't the ones that you always hear mentioned.
The thing you did a 10:00 was the most impressive configuration I ever saw for PC Crts on youtube. Almost ALL the channels always tells us that CRT its not good enough for retro gaming because the resolution its higher than TV crts and also because they are progressive's instead of interlaced, but you just made a CRT show TRUE beautiful scanlines just as good if not better than a PVM, that's AMAZING. You should really make a guide on how to get the most of this setting custom resolutions and making the scanlines apparent as this for different consoles/arcades... People would love to see that SPECIALY if it works with lower end CRTs, it would give a option for people that don't have/want buy a PVM because they (like me) mostly play emulators anyway.
Yeah, lcd tvs can strobe at 60hz, which looks great, but the extra processing used for the Clearmotion or the Trumotion modes that enable this cause extra input lag. It is not recommended.
Great vid - made a lot of topics clearer for me - although I think I still need to watch it again to really get it. - I have a JVC 21" TM-A210G - which I think is amazing - it definitely doesnt do scanlines but I like the fuzzy look - there is a kinda chromatic aberration effect which seems to have been taken advantage of in some games - Mega Turrican for instance. - although that might be just because I am using composite. - I don't think I would play Sonic on an emulator, but playing Dreamcast at 640x480 sounds pretty sweet - but doesnt that lower the FPS? - It seems intuitive that if you increase resolution that you would also need to increase the hertz - how can the gun draw more horizontal lines if it doesnt move faster?. I would love to see the gun in slow mo at diff resolutions.
@@JohnSmith-qn3ob The Xbox 360 looks incredible on an HD CRT monitor, for starters you have backwards compatibility to run OG Xbox games, and they of course look amazing and at their best given they were made for the CRT era, then you have tons of fantastic XBLA games, like Geometry Wars, PAC Man Championship Edition, Splosion Man, Trials HD, Castle Crashers, Banjo Kazooie & Tooie, Comic Jumper (and I could go on and on listing the tons of brilliant XBLA titles, man I miss XBLA :(), they all look at their absolute best on a good CRT. And lastly there is the main 360 games, don't get me wrong the 360 can look great on a decent LED, but it still looks and plays best on a CRT monitor through VGA, Alan Wake looks so damn good on an HD CRT, as does the Gears games, the Halo MC collection, Dead Rising and so on. Another amazing thing to do with your 360 hooked up to a CRT is installing CoinOps on it, giving access to all the retro consoles that also look their absolute best on a CRT and look as they were intended with some nice juicy scanlines.
@@Wobble2007 You can mod the original Xbox (that has a modchip, needs to be flashed with a special BIOS) to be compatible with Sync on Green and connect it to a CRT monitor via component cables. The monitor needs to be compatible with Sync on Green (usually Sony monitors, as they were big proponents of SoG, but other companies had monitors that supported SoG as well, usually higher-end models, my LGF900P supports it for example, and that's a slot mask monitor). Much better compatibility that way (basically every OG Xbox game has some problems on the 360 if it even works). There are some games that even support 720p or 1080i. You can do this with the PS2 as well (doesn't need to be flashed, but many games need to be forced in 480p, 720p or 1080i - not all games support 480p, let alone higher resolutions and some games will not have a proper resolution because the internal resolution of PS2 games varied). For GameCube and Wii games, you can just use the Wii U and an HDMI to VGA adapter (one without black crush). You can just use Retroarch on a PC and run games at 2560*240 @ 120 Hz with BFI (not all monitors can get bright enough to look good with this) or at 480p @ 60Hz with a scanline filter (should look indistinguishable from the first option from what I've heard). Many people play retro games this way. Another option is the MiSTer FPGA (scandoubled to 480p). Or you can get an OSSC and skip all of the above methods and just use original consoles. To me though, this option is way too sharp and I personally don't like it, but it's much better and preferable than any LCD. And it's going to look much sharper the bigger diagonal CRT you use. It's why I would never ever get a BVM for retro games, they're way too sharp (even though you have people paying crazy amount for them when you can just use a CRT and get comparable results).
@@Frolsa84 Yeah, I can't wait to get a Mister FPGA and hook it up via VGA to my HD CRT monitor, seems to me like one of the best ways to play the classics with accuracy and stability, plus the audio on FPGA is pretty much properly processed, whereas even the best SEGA Mega Drive emulator with nuked audio and low pass filtering doesn't sound as good as the real thing, audio is one of the most important things to get right.
ive got one of these left from the 3 i aquired back in 2007, I havent used it since 2010, you inspired me to pull it out of the closet for the first time in 10 years!
@@ApertureGrille yeah ive been lurking on there the last 2 days, after i saw this video of yours.. I bought the Delock DAC (inernationally for like $120 shipped) that has the same Synaptics IC as the famed SUNIX, so i should be able to reach 500-550MHz pixel clock resolutions, we'll see. The only thing I need help with is figuring out how to properly calibrate the P1130 without a XP PC & WinDAS lol..as i dont have access to any XP PCs anymore, or a color calibrator... any tips?
@@CubanLegend561 WinDAS will run on Win10, but you really need a colorimeter to get the most out of it following spacediver's guide. But OUCH on the price of that adapter! I'm sticking with the 980 Ti for at least a little bit longer. Spent a lot of time recently playing through Dead Cells on the CRT; it's way better than on either of my ASUS panels.
@@ApertureGrille oh neat news about WinDAS on W10 I'll def have to look into it now! would i need any special cables or things to get it working with a colorimeter to properly calibrate it? which do you recommend, and did you ever make a video of the calibration process for the P1130? Yes OUCH for that DAC price, but its worth it as these are out of production and seemingly really hard to get in the US, plus if i ever get a better CRT like a FW-900, i can use the Delock on it and reach the max res the monitor can take without issue. BTW what's the highest Pixel Clocks you've been able to get on your 980Ti and P1130 combo? oh and are there any CRT monitor Discord servers? lol
@@CubanLegend561 You can still find X-Rite DTP94 colorimeters on eBay for pretty cheap, and they work great, but they're a bit of a pain; to even install drivers, you need to disable windows driver signature enforcement, and I can't get my Ryzen system to recognize it at all. The 980 Ti will do 400 Mhz, so I'll usually top out my CRT at 2496x1872 at 60 Hz if I want the analog super-sampled look. Most of the time, though, I use 1340x1005 at 120 Hz, and that only needs a 240 MHz pixel clock.
Great video! I bought a p1130 in 2009 for 20 euros. Used it daily since then, for like 6-16 hours a day and is still going strong! (although it does need to warm up for a couple minutes while I make breakfast) I ran it at the standard 1280x1024 85 hz. I recently changed it to 1280x1024 100 hz. Cant see a real difference, but it might be slightly better) Difference with 60 hz and 85 hz is gigantic. 60 hz seems like a stroboscope. I see you run it at 1340x1005 @120hz? Can you explain why you think thats better? And might 120 hz make the monitor last less long? When I put it on 1280x1024 120 hz it went black on me.. Maybe you can even give me some tips on how to maintain the p1130? When I start it up now, it goes green and then pops into some sort of a lightbulb shaped halo until its warmed up.. sometimes (especially in winter when its colder in my house) It seems that some protection kicks in and it switches itself off during warm up. I have to take out the powercable and wait till the light stops blinking and then quickly put it back in to continue the warm up. Sometimes I had to do this 4 or 5 times. But it has been doing that for like 5 years lol, it still isnt dead, and the colors still seem fine. Is there any (preferably free and simple) software you would advise for calibrating it? I have been trying some simple monitortests and its looking fine, but I dont think its as great as it can be yet. Thanks in advance, greetings from The Netherlands!
That's a 5:4 aspect ratio and you might have geometry problems with it, you're better running it in 4:3 resolutions like 960p (1280*960) or 1200p (1600*1200). The 1340x1005 is probably a 4:3 resolution. I think it's probably optimal to run it in 1600*1200@85Hz from what I've read. That sounds like a cold solder joint or something. If it was made after a certain time period (like 2002-), it might not develop the G2 voltage fault that many Sony monitors have, so it might not REQUIRE calibrating. But I doubt you can calibrate it without special tools. I personally have a X-Rite i1 Display Pro I got for 50 euros unused, but these usually go for much higher.
Just found your channel, you definitely deserve more subs. I'm picking up a Iiyama Vision Master Pro 454 for free soon, i hope the CRT experience is as good as it has been hyped.
Free is good! The specs say 132 kHz horizontal frequency and 200 Hz max refresh, so the Iiyama is a bit better there than the Trinitron. If you haven't used one before, play a racing game at 1600x1200 and just watch the scenery go by.
@@KotatkoVonDrapek In the hardforum FW900 post they recomend using the Startech DP2VGAHD20, which reportedly hits 375 MHz pixel clock, and doesn't have weird issues like the Delock one. That's a really nice monitor BTW.
@@theunculturedswine8605 i got the delock one, the displayport connector is of awful quality but otherwise no problems, pushes the iiyama to its native res and beyond
dude i'm literally buying this monitor, will get it next monday do you have some recommended settings for best color, best resolution, etc ? cheers from romania
How did you even find one for sale? As I said in the video, there's a bit of work involved in getting a CRT to looks its best. Check out the links in the description to HardForum. spacediver's guide is what you'll want to follow.
@@ApertureGrille idk, i just looked it up online and found a guy who had a site running since 2006 and called him, he picked up, said he has some old p1130 in his garage and i'm meeting up with him this monday in bucharest We settled the price for 90 dollars Great review btw
@@SSketchii i got the monitor Took me an embarassing time to figure out the geometry settings lol Also can't figure out the colors on expert mode since the monitor doesnt have a chroma adjustment or a blue only setting so i keep it with preset colors All i have to say is that it's better than my previous tn panel asus vx238h when it comes to gaming and colors Its a different experience with a crt, at night it feels like a campfire experience, its warm and soothing Not as bright tho and during the day i have to keep the blinds on cause light significantly dims the screen Overall id give the tn a 6.5/10 and the crt 8.5/10
Go on eBay marketplace and have a sniff mate, you can get a bargain if you are quick enough and patient, otherwise go on eBay and you will also find something on therem although bargains are increasingly hard to find, I noticed the USA especially has a good stock of decent CRT's available, can't go wrong with a nice 17"+ Viewsonic, or a Dell which are often rebranded Sony Trinnys.
Nice review of my CRT Monitor, still hanging to life with some hits here and there. 1600x1200 @100Hz is best :D Feels weird dumbing down to 1980x1080 on normal LCD monitors. Lucky for me I jump between the CRT and the 2200x1080 Galaxy S9 OLED, even sensing an LCD gives me eye cancer.
Swapped out my 21" Sony for dual Dell 2001fp (20" IPS) in 2005. I did miss the low latency but with the console gaming taking over most new games were abandoning high framerate AND putting motion blur INTO game deliberately. Quake die-hards and simracers were the only ones sticking with CRT at the time. I went to a single widescreen 32" a few years later. Most games from 2005-2015 were targeting HD instead of low framerate and they were putting blur effects in deliberately (30/60fps targets) ... dark days for pc gaming. I actually think Oculus/Vive release put a fire under ATI/Nvidia to properly focus on low latency. Stereoscopic gaming was the niche that spawned modern VR and the stereo guys were OG blur busters. I still have a stereoscopic kit for CRT in the cupboard.
OLED utilizing Black Frame Insertion gets close to the CRT motion blur quality.... I'm desperate for an OLED gaming monitor which comes with a BFI option in the firmware.... because its turning the pixels off aka black. which is similar to how a CRT "pixel" fades to black nearly instantly after being drawn.
also, kinda makes you think that if we get LCD monitors fast enough, you could run the pixel refresh like a CRT where only a small line going down the screen, thus having native black frame insertion with no need for extra hardware/software to get it going.
I remember needing deskspace and therefore traded my Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2070SB asap for a 19 inch iiyama LCD......i was an idiot. If you could f8nd this monitor it was worth a review. Awesome CRT if not the best in my opinion.
That's like one of the most desired monitors these days, in the rank of a GDM-F520, Iiyama Vision Master Pro 454, FW900 or LaCie Electron Blue IV (which is a rebrand of the 2070SB if I'm not mistaken), as well as latter Mitsubishi models. Also, I'm probably forgetting one of the Nokia monitors which could also do pretty high horizontal frequencies.
@@adamplechaty Aww, my bad, I meant the Iiyama Vision Master Pro 514, because it's the highest specced CRT monitor out there (the 454 is the highest specced 19" monitor). Looking back at my comments, I got a W900 (FW900's older brother, one of only 5 CRT models that are widescreen and can do 1080p) and a 514 and could've gotten an F520, a Lacie IV (and III) and a 2070SB...
Hey a5hun! I currently run my P260s (also 21" Trinitrons to the readers here) at 1600x1200 @120hz and their limit is only 121kHz! The Video Bandwidth is set to 1152x864 in windows since I used the resolution setting of 1152x864@120hz and from there I set the resolution to 1600x1200@120!! They are only using 108.0, 108.9, and 108.9 kHz so it even works on my Nokia 445XiPlus! My setup is a cheap eBay DP to VGA adaptor and a DP to VGA cable for the second P260 off of my 1660ti. Also, CRTs still draw the image faster than 144hz monitors. (MG279Q for me which takes like 11ms total) CRTs forever, CRTs for life!
I've watched the whole video and I also love CRTs. But at 14:22 I've felt a need to defend TFT manufacturers. ULMB monitors like the ASUS PG279Q that I currently use, love (brightness and resolution) and hate (motion blur and contrast) allows the usage of a 60 Hz ULMB mode via the CRU utility (for Windows at least, on Linux via custom Modeline). You need to select the 85 Hz mode as base and increase the vertical total size until you get 60 Hz. The monitor will take it and it works fine with 60Hz locked games like Freedom Planet. But you still get Strobing Crosstalk as the IPS response time is not fast enough. Now here is the issue. This just can't be integrated in the product itself as people with epilepsy might get a seizure. I use a Siemens MCM 1706 17" CRT next to my Asus for Retro gaming purposes and the 60 Hz of that monitor is not nearly as harsh on the eye as the 60 Hz strobing of the TFT. I can't really say why that is but my assumption is the time it takes for the phosphor to stop glowing. And I guess is that Asus wanted to avoid being taken to the court for health issues. 85 Hz already flickers noticeably on this monitor. Also at this position you say that the TV you use is capable of doing it at 60 Hz. But has it a strobing or a scanning backlight? Scanning backlight monitors seem to be very rare. OLEDs are now also using this technique by simulating a rolling shutter by incorporating the fast pixel response times. So I'm quite looking forward for the first OLED monitors if they will eventually arrive. They finally might be on par to CRT motion performances.... hopefully.... O.o
Ooh, I didn't know about that 85 Hz trick. I just tried with both the VG27AQ and the VG279QM, but I can't get it to work. With CRU, are you increasing the vertical total to match the horizontal frequency in kHz with the 85 Hz mode? The TV I showed, the Samsung UN40KU6300, legitimately strobes the entire backlight at 60 Hz. It's a VA, and one of the slowest I've ever seen, so the end result looks quite bad, but they offer the option. A full blast strobe at 60 Hz is hard to look at when dealing with bright scenes, but it's tolerable for most video game scenes. CRTs at 60 Hz would sit well with more people because they have a rolling scan, like you mentioned. That keeps at least some part of the screen lit during the entire frame time, so it's less stressful on your eyes/brain.
@@ApertureGrille The VG27AQ and VG279QM both use ELMB as Blur Reduction technique. I don't know if ELMB allows this hack. I'm also not sure if it has something to do with the horizontal frequency which makes this work and I currently don't have access to Windows. But I can send you some Linux Modelines which I have derived afterwards from my CRU settings and just tested to check if they still work. And it still is an issue for my eyes. During gameplay it's not as bad as on the desktop though. ULMB 85 Hz Modeline: "2560x1440" 346.50 2560 2608 2640 2720 1440 1443 1448 1499 +hsync -vsync ULMB 60 Hz Modeline: "2560x1440" 346.50 2560 2608 2640 2720 1440 1443 1448 2123 +hsync -vsync Both Video timings are exactly the same if it wasn't for the last number, which is the total vertical size in pixels that leads to the reduction of the frame rate. Sadly the strobing phase seems to be unchanged by doing so. So the Strobe Cross Talk remains. ULMB TN monitors are quite better at this but well... they have other problems. My TV is a Sony KDL-55W828B and also supports backlight strobing at 60 Hz. They call it MotionFlow Impulse. But the picture gets very dim and the mode doesn't support 50 Hz Input. You can mod most of the old gaming consoles to 60 Hz but the dim picture still makes it unusable.
Got myself a Dell P1130 CRT and HP P1230 Today and found your video. What sort of GPU should I ideally test it on? Something like a gtx 980? (I got a VGA-DVI cable)
Any GPU in now possible to use with native VGA thanks to USB-C display port alternative mode, you can get RTX cards with USB-C that are display alternate capable and simply run a passive USB-C to VGA cable to you monitor, it can in theory max out any CRT monitors refresh and resolution capabilities, 2048x1556 @ 85Hz for instance is no problem, if you don't or can't have an RTX card then a GTX970/980/980Ti are all fantastic, still very capable cards with nice 400Mhz VGA RAMDAC, if only there was a GPU with a native 5XBNC input to run my Sony GPD-5002PT9, 5BNC2VGA is fine but BNC2BNC would be better I bet, actually 5XBNC2DVI-A might be worth looking into, the BNC usually allows for a slight boost in res and refresh, plus it's supposed to give a slight edge IQ wise, could probably only tell side by side though tbh.
Yep. I connected my old CRT the other day and its crazy how much better they are when it comes to FPS games. The mouse movements felt like in real time and absolutely no motion blur. To bad my CRT is old as hell and the picture quality sucks etc.
Nvidia sucks at interlacing, you can do it but it's a process to get it working, you also have to do that process every time a fullscreen application shows up and everytime you boot up windows. It's a temporary solution that becomes a pain to deal with on the daily AMD is just plug and play, create the resolution then set it. and it always works. even when you restart your pc. it boots up into your interlaced resolution no problem.
For my unit the "hum" noise is minimal, easily covered by a pc fan at 700rpm. Speakers "blank noise" is actually more noticeable, while still being silent at an arms lenght.
I have a very quiet room, so the CRT was definitely a bit irritating. And the pitch would change depending on what was being displayed: thume.ca/screentunes/
Now this is cool, I stumbled on your video, I own Monitor 2002-40! just 8 away from each other!!! PLEASE Tell me you still have the Driver file!! I lost my file!!
Nice name, btw! Those numbers should be Year/Week, so if you've got 2002-40, it would have been made some time in October. You probably don't need any sort of driver for these CRTs. Most of the information is contained in the EDID, which Windows will automatically pull when you plug the monitor in. But you can really adjust whatever settings you need in CRU.
I quite miss my IBM P260 (19.8 inch diagonal, Trinitron). It worked really well, I usually used it at 1600x1200 at 85Hz for desktop work, coding, etc,. but it also rocked in gaming. I bought it used around 2004, for like 20$. And used for years, but many years later, I got rid of it (for essentially nothing). It served me well. I am still searching for the perfect monitor. Still not there yet. Technology is already there, just model selection on market is really crappy, due to manufacturer choices. For work (and some non-fps gaming), I use Eizo EV2730Q 26.5 inch, 1920x1920, which is absolutely amazing. But for media consumption and gaming I am still looking for something that I would fully want. And considering this second (and third probably) monitor I will also want to use for work, not just gaming, I don't want 16:9 or anything wider. 16:10 should do fine, but there are no high refresh monitors with VRR on the marked and that aspect ratio. My Crossover 2560x1600, can be pushed to 105Hz at 1920x1200, but at 2560x1600 it only does 60Hz.
Is this monitor suitable for modern FPS games such as Rainbow Six Siege where an enemy can be peeking from minute pixel holes? Are CRT monitors clear enough at that 1440 x 1080 resolution? Thanks
Im still amazed, how good CRT's in 2023 are. Yes, they need lot of juice, are heavy, bulky and don't recommend it for video editting ect. I scored 2 ViewSonic PT813 last Month. The Motion Clarity and Blacks are insane good, even better than my LED 144Hz Display. The best Part about CRT Monitors is, you can use lower Reasolution and your game still looks great.
CRT's last, best hope was SED (Surface-conduction electron-emitter display), but that never went anywhere. Modern LCDs can get pretty close to CRT by hiding their slow pixel transitions with backlight strobing. The new ViewSonic XG270 (not the XG270QG) had its backlight strobing mode tuned by Chief BlurBuster, but it still won't allow strobing at 60 Hz.
Here are the two recommended options from HardForum: Delock DP to VGA: www.delock.de/produkte/G_62967/merkmale.html?setLanguage=en May be a bit hard to find, but it has a max output of 350 MHz, which is only slightly less than the native DAC on the 980 Ti. Or for anyone with a graphics card with USB-C: Vention CGMHA Type-C to VGA Converter
No one ever says what they use to connect it though. lol Unless you have an older Graphics card you gotta rely on some adapters or scalers and I've yet to find one that just always works.
That motion clarity holy shit. I have a VA 144hz panel and the smearing is nutty. Sound wont bother me as I got headphones. I also game in the dark. Just take me back to PS2 era help
That's what i used my CRT mostly, for retrogaming and nostalgia. They're amazing for that. For PS2 i'd recomend a SD TV or HD TV with component input, as with CRT Monitors you'd need a deinterlacer to hit the minimum 31 KHz signal. Also TV's are generally brighter, bigger and have better color.
I just bought a GT 710 years ago. I run it paired with my RTX 2070. Works as smooth as butter, too bad it has only one Analog output (VGA paired with HDMI and DVI-D) instead of more Analog outputs (because that would be nice). At least I can use CRTs natively.
Btw, you can use even more modern graphic cards than the GTX 980, even though they don't have analog out. You just need a 2nd graphics card that has analog out. You can have any 900 series Nvidia, and pair it with a Nvidia GTX 1060. You'll hook up your CRT to the older 900 series, and you can still use the 1060 to render all your games, even on the CRT monitor. Doesn't have to be a 900 series, can be even older, from what I hear (I use a 960 and 1060). You're basically using the older card as an over glorified digital to analog converter.
I have 3 CRT Monitors... nothing comes close to their Motion Clarity, nothing... but I'm not using them to play anymore, flickering is a problem to me, i guess i got too used to LCDs... I kinda love LCDs too.
I have a NEC MultiSync FE700 CRT from 2000 and I'm trying to get it to work fine with my 2070ti graphics card. It only has HDMI and a DVI port so of course I have to use an adapter. It does turn on but there are problems. The text on the screen look choppy compared to my last desktop which has a direct vga port and the text is crisp, clean and smooth. Idk if it has to do with my adapter so maybe I need a better one? But I don't know what are better ones. Second, when I hibernate my computer, my monitor will not turn on, not even when I reboot or restart. So I don't know if I need a different GPU or if there's some settings that need to be set. If you can help me with that, I'd appreciate it. I mainly bought this so I can stream console games, but I do want to play some modern pc games like Doom Eternal someday.
I'm still using the 980 Ti with its native analog out, but the one HDMI to VGA adapter I've used is the Benfei HDMI to VGA. It'll do 330 MHz, but you have to use YCbCr. Otherwise I don't have much experience with other adapters. Check the FW900 thread on HardForum for more recent updates on some of the adapters.
@@JohnyTheWizKid If we're talking about the same one, this is the only thing I've seen on that adapter: hardforum.com/threads/24-widescreen-crt-fw900-from-ebay-arrived-comments.952788/post-1044790107 They were having trouble with AMD cards, but since you're on a 2080 Ti, you may have better luck.
@@ApertureGrille Weeeellll... I AM using a AMD Ryzen 9 processor. So far, so good. But it isn't as quiet as I thought it'd be because every window I open or something I click, it hums louder. My 2015 Lenovo from Best Buy was quieter. I suppose it is to be expected if its trying to run on my CRT, huh?
You can use 2560x224p and 240p @180Hz with Retroarch and custom resolutions set in the driver. 448p looks not good with NES or SNES. The Scanlines are wrong, 2x too much.
11:31 mine actually did and also did 4k res. It said 200hz in windows 7 refresh rate pick or xp. Man i do miss the one I had but it caused me eye pain and headache so it had to go.
My cousin just let me have his old p1130 but it has a yellow tint all over the screen and some horizontal lines, I really want to fix this problems to enjoy this monitor
I'm a 15 year old that loves CRT TVs and I think they look cooler and more high-definition in my perspective than the LCD screens.
its very bad for your Eyes,but lcd sucks balls.
based
“I love crt”. Words I haven’t heard since watching steins gate.
What you mean?
@@DwAboutItManFr its an anime, the charachters work out of a room above a CRT store and repair shop in 2011. Infact CRT's are the secret to make time travel possible.
@@EllRiver How?
@@DwAboutItManFr So it was a little complicated but effectively the data was being compressed by the massive vacuum tubes and sent through a connection that was accidently connected to Cerns super colider which happend to be a time machine of sorts. With phone controlled microwave being the control mechanism. This was all an accident but the core concept is what invents time travel.
xD
this is one of the best videos I have watched that discusses the pros and cons between cathode ray tubes and flat panel displays
It's by far the best I've seen.
Man, LCDs were a mistake. A stopgap technology giving people what they thought they wanted. I remember my first LCD, in 2008, was such a disappointment.
Ah you see people would rather have a monitor that doesn't weigh 60lb and take up half a desk also find me a 500hz CRT
@@theaverageblitzer4351 the maximum refresh rate that a normal person would use is 240, and there are many CRTs going easily up to 180hz which is still more than enough for the most competitive gamer.
And by the way they're 20 years old monitors that weren't even intended for extreme esports gaming.
If a CRT would be made today for gamers, it would easily reach 500hz.
Also, CRTs even with lower refresh rate are still better for gamers than 240hz LCDs because they have 0 latency and handle motion much better: your "but they can't do 500hz so they're useless 🤓🤓😭😭😭" argument makes no sense because the benefits of a CRT are still better for gamers, a 180hz CRT is much better than a 500hz LCD for gaming.
@LeoTheHuman_ there would be zero input delay if any modern gpu didn't have to go through a digital to analog converter and CRTs can consume like 200-400w of power compared to like 65w for an LCD or OLED also 240hz oled looks better when it comes to blacks and color depth overall the only way a CRT can match those refresh rates is by dropping below 1024x768 which is unacceptable the only advantage CRTs have is res scaling
@@theaverageblitzer4351 Well, with a non-VGA GPU I wouldn't buy a CRT to use it with an adapter and get so much latency, but for any older hardware I would definetly get one.
CRTs don't consume over 200w at worst, they're still mostly under 100w.
In color depth and especially blacks, CRTs are much better: I just watched a lot of comparsions, you should go watch some because here CRTs are clear winners and close seconds only to OLEDs.
Also no, only on a low end monitor you'd need to drop down the resolution to sub-720 for a high refresh rate, and well on a over 1440p resolution most modern games won't even run at such high framerates anyways.
And even sub-720p resolutions on a CRT mostly look better than +1080p on a LCD.
the montor just goes back far, most peoples desk have room@@theaverageblitzer4351
I purchased one of these new in 2003-2004 for $100 with shipping. Loved it dearly and it made me postpone switching to LCD until at least 2009-10! I never knew the obscurity or true power of it (one of the highest end consumer CRTs) and wound up giving it to a scrapyard after a few issues that likely could've been remedied with a couple cap replacements. I have missed it ever since.
That's heart wrenching to hear...!
i still using one from 2005, samsung syncmaster. truly highend trinitron monitor. got it for $10, when people got mad from LCD, and was trowing out these massive space eaters in quantities. If I would know, and have more room, I would take at least 10 of them.
Do you remember the type of CRT you had?
This is the the BEST CRT explanation video on TH-cam. This guy tells you everything. Excellent job. I’m looking for one of these crt monitors now.
Thank you! Sometimes you can find them on craigslist by searching for "dell monitor" instead of CRT. But I think most people now know what they have. Good luck!
What a nice screen. I used to have one myself, it unfortunately died few years ago, after 15+ years of service. Unfortunately in my case the CRT itself died, it developed internal short and the power from the green gun started to leak in to the red one. As a result, over time I had to tone up the green and town down the red to keep the image color balanced, right before death I had green at 100%, blue about 70% gain and red at 20%. It also started to suffer from the common issue of being "too bright before warm-up", and in last years in those bright periods it started to have red flashes which sometimes resulted by the power supply's self shutdown. I have measured the voltages and they were all fine, all guns were powered equally, so the issue was in the CRT itself. Well, thankfully for it to die it took years so it was not a "sudden surprise". By death I mark the point the red flashes became constant and did not go away after warmup.
I have other CRTs of almost equal quality tho, my daily used one is IBM P260. Nice and very bright, high contrast and gamut, but it has developed a flaw of the screen being too bright (and even more so before warmup), so I had to dig in and add manual potentiometers to control the brightness. After this fix it keeps working fine and ironically "thanks" to it I can drive it very hard to the point I sometimes have to lower the contrast. Other two are NEC FE1250+, two units, one stored as backup one used. The one being used has also developed a flaw, before warmup the image can be horizontally a bit shorter, by about 0,5cm on each side, it stretches slowly as it warms up. I consider this not a serious issue, probably just a capacitor, this screen is noticeably sharper than the IBM P260 at high resolutions, but less bright.
Overall, they are all veterans that are starting to show old age, but as long as the CRT is fine, everything else can be repaired. Iv so far had to retire 2 CRTs, the Dell, and IBM P200, which was my first high-end model, and I ran that thing to the ground, I ran so many hours on it that the CRT gun became tired over the years and lost most of its contrast/brightness, but otherwise it still worked fine. That thing was a trooper.
I have P1130 with identicial problem as yours. It's too bright on start, and it has flicker red color at turn on. I think it's going to die.
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Thank you for this beautiful comment sir
dang, you seem to know a lot about CRT's and keeping them running over the years.
I wish I had your knowledge as I just picked up an RCA TruFlat TV, a Toshiba 20FA44 I believe, and a 32 inch Sony Trinitron KV-32FS210 which is a 160 pound beast.
wow, such a quality in-depth review and tutorial, it answered the pvm hyped broadcast monitors demand for retro all in one gaming crt monitor. you saved me from buying that expensive crt and opted to med quality average consumer PC monitors, for such having capability of that pvm with more affordable price. sir, you deserved a sub!
I have a P1130, used it for a while, then got a FW900 (which I use as my main monitor). The P1130 has an intermittent short in the tube which I think I managed to almost-fix (it still sometimes happens but only briefly and only when the tube is cold, there is no reasonable way to fix that unless it gets worse). Then did the white point calibration and it looks nice now. It is not as bright as the FW900, but I do not need that much light (some LCDs are a bit too bright for me even at the lowest setting). So, now I have a working P1130 and some skills in repairing CRTs. I still hope to find a FW900 to keep as a spare though.
It's a shame CRT monitors are not made anymore.
Shadow mask CRT monitors made in the late 90s and early 2000s really did catch up to Trinitrons when it came to dot pitch (also brightness). These P1130 have a horizontal dot pitch of .24 mm. I actually own a ViewSonic A90-2 shadow mask with a horizontal dot pitch of .22mm. I also had a Dell trinitron 1000hs and the Viewsonic was noticeably much sharper and brighter then the Trinitron to the degree that I replaced my Trinitron with it and gave the Dell to my buddy to enjoy. Shadow mask viewsonics from that time really were something special I recommend keeping an eye out for one and grabbing it if you ever come across one.
Your post on reddit is one of the first results to pop up when searching for the ViewSonic A90-2! Looking at your videos, driving games like Forza really demonstrate how CRTs blow away LCDs in terms of motion clarity.
@@ApertureGrille Thanks lol I didn't know my posts would pop up on that. And yeah I've been meaning to make more videos I'm just currently trying to get a better setup. I'm still using my phone to record and I just got a tripod for it the other day. I just wanna show off how good some games look on CRTs. Not every game looks amazing but a lot do and if you are after the best quality the black levels, motion clarity, softness they have really can make a nice difference.
Diamontron is also an aperture grille I guess
I know this was 4 years ago but maybe I will find a viewsonic shadow mask one of these days. I have a 32 inch sony trinitron i picked up off the curb and its a huge TV, but I love the CRT monitors the most because they remind me of the old days playing games with my dad
CRT is god tier
Great video. I just saved two P1130 from the trash yesterday. My old 19” trinitron had a blow driver IC a few years back so I ditched it. Afaict the P1130 is a 4:3 version of the FW 900 with a dot pitch that is 0.24 mm rather than 0.23 and fewer input options. The FW900 is the Cadillac but this puppy’s the Lincoln. I didn’t realize how nice a find these monitors were.
If something in CRT blows they're easy enough to fix it you know how to be safe. you don't have to throw it out, big waste
@@NicheAsQuiche Yeah man let me just go out and find a replacement FBT or driver IC that stopped being made decades ago. Unlike you I actually know how to fix CRTs and do it. Not all can be saved. Fuck off.
Awesome video,you went into great detail and cool how you got native scanlines.
I just got a Dell E773c for free off craigslist,got my pi running on it with a hdmi to vga,have it outputting 240p at 120hz
Nice! Free really is the best price for a monitor!
Is it any good? What have you been using it for?
that mini guide to get 448p was like water in the dessert. Been looking for that for a while, but everybody uses external scalers. I even gave up on it, an suddenly here it is. Thanks a lot
story time: back in 2005 i bought a dell dimension and the retailer was literally begging me to get a flat 17" screen over the 19" crt that i wanted and offered me a discount of nearly 150$ on a digital camera (big deal lol) and i said no because i hated how lcd screen looks on laptops back then, since 2010 the whole pc was sitting in the closet with a bunch of useless things because it was so heavy to carry it to my place, until a saw the Digital Foundry video, i was so happy that the monitor was still there nearly intact.
Such in-depth reviews, you could potentially become main TH-cam monitor reviewers. You can potentially purchase monitors review them and return for the beginning. I really wish you could review LG 27GL850-B
Thank you. It's tough when you first start out... no one is sending me monitors to review! I don't mind purchasing, but I really need to choose carefully to make sure I'm not reviewing stuff that's already been done. I don't really want to take advantage of returns, but I can probably sell the monitors after I've finished the reviews to make some of my money back.
I have plans, but it may be several weeks before I get a new video up.
@@ApertureGrille I actually have a monitor that it seems no one has done a real indepth review of, and it's cheap. Check out the Lenovo l24q-20 it's a 23.8" 1440p 60hz ips display that you can get from bestbuy for $160 honestly for the price I think it's a rather good monitor but I don't have the proper equipment to really see how good it is. Could be an interesting video.
For emulating 224/240p 60FPS games on a VGA CRT monitor, I recommend using Retroarch at 224/240p@120Hz with black frame insertion.
It's just about as sharp as a 15kHz PVM.
1440p with a filter is much nicer
@@ItsPyrus panics go back to reddit
what is PVM?
Professional Video Monitor, which is Sony's brand of professional grade 15kHz CRT monitors. The grille pitch, which is the distance between two phosphor bars of the same color, and the beam spot size are very fine on PVMs, which is what makes them professional grade.
@@darksoulzfreak thanks
you are an amazing narrator, thanks a lot for this work.
My P1130 waits for a recap, need to prepare myself for that mentally), but even now the experience is great.
Technically, the Dreamcast VGA signal is an improperly coded 720x480 signal, not 640x480.
This is the most impressive and very detailed review ever.
These reviews are incredilby informative, well scripted, and well edited too. I also really like how you talk like patrick bateman explaining huey lewis and the news when talking about what a monitor does well.
Nice video! Grabbed my P1130 2 days ago for less than 20$. Previous owner said that he used it for about one month in 2003. It looks a bit used but the display is almost untouched!
wow lucky
A lot of people don't seem to realize if your CRT is emitting a high pitch noise, which it shouldn't do, it's because of the power supply it's plugged into, it is similar to the background noise you get on a sound system, interference as well as just a dirty power grid can cause this. All you need is a power strip with a filter, as well as ideally a kettle lead for your CRTs that also has filtering, not only will it get rid of any high-pitched noise it will give you a cleaner, flicker free image. Your audio quality will be much better too.
I wish i knew this.
Thanks, this is some good info to know. I don't know how to get a cable with filtering but a power strip is easy enough to get.
I'd love to see more CRT reviews. Specifically the models you'd expect offices to dump in bulk. Personally if I could find one that can do 1280x1024 90Hz and do it well, for dirt cheap/free, that'd be great.
Nice vid. Found it while looking for specs to post for one I am selling. You're right! CRTS ROCK! So does PLASMA for that matter. Imagine how far along Plasma would be if Panasonic never gave up on it?
If you are plasma fans I would recommend you getting Pioneer Kuro PDP-LX6090...or 50inch LX5090 because 6090 is very rare - it was much more expensive and at the time 50 inch was big enough and really the only reason 5090 is on sale becase today it is kinda small size for a TV. 60 inch - still big enough.
I myself picked 50 inch model for whopping 77$ and...
...OMG!
- perfect gradation
- less dithering noise
- even less dithering compared to Panasonic if you specifically focus on near-black
- no false posterization artifacts on fast eye movements - also why I say gradation is perfect
- almost zero screen-door - you do see RGB subpixels but not gaps - even up close. Panasonic had rather large gaps
- black level better than CRT - at least when you actually calibrate it to 2.4 gamma
- 4:4:4 subsampling for PC - though in this case black level is worse... still better than even VT Panasonics!!!
- better light spectrum - gamut is higher but you do do get proper Rec.709/sRGB gamut clamping
- compared to Panasonic almost no temporary image retention - really you can play game all day long and have almost no ghosts and they clear quickly
Only thing where Panasonic was better is input lag.
Panasonics except latest models had 24ms on average drawing screen from the middle to top and bottom while Kuro has 32ms drawing screen from bottom to top.
Too bad Pioneer stopped making plasmas and the same for Panasonic.
It would be hard to compete with OLEDs though.
Especially QD-OLED is pretty amazing tech and while for now for big TVs plasma has better 60Hz motion sharpness you can already surpass it - when and if we will see improvements to BFI tech and required power delivery adjustments to get enough brightness is another issue.
I'm in love with your channel and I am binge-watching your videos
By far the best in-depth look at modern CRT use! Thank You!!
Absolutely brilliant video sir, like others have said I think you covered everything that everyone should know about CRTs and how they compare to LCDs, you went the extra mile with all the explanations too. I will be sure to link to this video to people when I explain why CRTs are still very relevant to this day.
We needed more of this information 20 years ago when everybody was crazy about switching to terrible flat panels. It could have helped to prevent their "culling"
My Pre-K class had two of these in the classroom to play starfall on. Memories :P
This video looks great on my GDM-C520K. Nicely done.
Thanks for the vid. I still use a CRT with a 980ti to avoid the 1000s needed for a modern GPU. 1280 resolution. Everything you said was right especially the blacks in some games I can see detail in the fog I could not see in the LCD.
I need your help. I have gtx 1070 and was thinking if its better to buy high quality VGA to DP adapter or should i downgrade to 980Ti. I was gonna replace 1070 anyway but should i keep her or sell and buy 980Ti. There is Startech adapter but im still concerned that i will lose picture quality even if i get high refresh rates.
@@fiece4767 reviews I've seen say cheap adaptors are no good for high Res CRT analogue displays. I would suggest reading some reviews from geeks and trying an adaptor first if you have a LCD. Remember blur busters do a good 1080p monitor now it's on their website. If you need to use a CRT get a 980ti as at 1280 x 1024 it still rocks. 👍 and has support for Windows 10. Or get a blur busters approved monitor and if you have the money a 3060ti or AMD card equivalent.
@@fiece4767 DP to VGA adapters are pretty good, I have compared two cloned high-end Sony CRTs, one connected directly to native VGA port and one to an adapter and there's no difference in quality or higher input lag, just make sure they're passthrough and don't do any sort of scaling or postprocessing, normally the ones that do advertise it somewhere so stay away from those, only buy the "dumb" ones that only do a fast digital to analog conversion.
Excellent video!
We had 1130s in our LAN room and they were gorgeous when running Quake and older DOS games... the design was neat too.
I still have a small CRT "farm" going albeit most are stashed away - among them big IIyama's and Suns(rebranded Trinitrons). No matter how good technology gets a CRT is awesome because it's a CRT - same with old cars like the Ford GT40 or an 80ies Lamborghini.
Thanks! I'm always glad to hear that other people collect CRTs like I do.
RGB Phosphor triads are not physical pixels; they are just there to provide color, they are not the building blocks of the digital image.
A monochrome CRT lacks RGB phosphors, but the image is still made up of logical pixels in the GPU's frame buffer.
I just got one of these from a free monitor pile at my local pc repair place. Found this awesome video while digging up info on mine :>
Those finds are still out there even now, you just have to keep your eyes open and be patient. I for one am completely ok with the fact my PC is potentially broken. Fair trade, universe. Fair trade.
I have one CRT to give in France.
Diamontron 22' from Mitsubishi, fully working, no glass scratch, refresh rates up to 160hz in the lower res.
You can check some of my fps gameplay using it.
the sharpens contrast ratio is overrated, natural "bloom" is an attractive image trait, and cinematographers try their best to encourage it. to much contrast ratio can look digital or in a movie, look like a soap opera, falling for the tech specs of technology can actually blind ones aesthetic until its too late and that aesthetic is sort of lost. great video.
I will post yet another recollection
buying my first high end monitor , a Sony GDM 2038
It was second hand but nearly new and in a pawn shop for £500, this was back in 1992 i think.
I sold my body for some medical experiments, cashed the cheque, bought the monitor, which was not lightweight, carried it across the city, 1.5 miles to my friends house, then brought it home the extra 45 miles, on my motorcycle.
used the rest of the money to buy the highest end graphics card at the time, a whole whopping lotta 4MB of memory.( actually it might have been 8MB or perhaps even 16MB, it was a long time ago )
further back I recall splashing out on a 1MB graphics card , then worked my way up each time graphics card spec increased.
but at the time, it could run the monitor perfectly.
It was awesome, it took my friends, some of whom were working as games programmers, several years to get anything anywhere near it.
i still have it, and it still works.
Every Quake player will remember the pain of trying an LCD display as a replacement for their CRT. Amazing video, but depressing to realize that we are still behind 20 year old technology with respect to motion clarity. LCD strobing has a long way to go, and strobed high refresh rate displays still suffer from awful general picture quality (black levels, colors, backlight bleed, vignetting).
Fantastic video. I have hopes for oled and micro-led to give me something as good when my Philips p202 gives out.
i googled "Philips p202" and got "PHILIPS LMP-P202 Projector Lamp"
so you use a projector lamp? mind if ask your use cases?
@@Vary180 no, it's a crt monitor.
@@TuiCatNZ well i blame google cuz all i see is lamps 😂
*Sigh* I found a P1130 in recycling dumpster at a PC repair place (after asking for permission to check what was out there). A year or two later, I ended up dumping the thing to "make more room on my desk", and "not turn my room into a furnace" (I had a three CRT AMD Eyefinity array going). That was just back in 2015 or so.
Such. Regret. Back then, I was just enamored with the black levels and near zero input lag of CRTs - I wasn't even using them in a way that allowed for good motion clarity (my FPS never matched my refresh rate).
The things I'd do for another one of these...
Motion clarity beats everything, IMO, and every time I think about looking into "better" computer monitors, I'm reminded that I have a curved VA monitor I don't bother using at all (wife uses it for WFH sometimes), and that I'd just be angry about the blur in everything I play.
CRT and VR headsets, all the way, forever (except when playing/watching with other people - then the DLP projector suffices. Which I bought thinking it'd be clear, too, but I have a double image issue, and I have no idea what to do about that/if anything can be done, or if that's just inherent to DLP/this projector).
i used a big crt tv as the tv for the bedroom up until a year or two ago but now i use it for my old consoles
The high pitch whine of CRT is age/wear/tear , they were not noisy when new, the noise comes from the high voltage transformer breaking down, changing HV transformers was routine work for TV repair men. so you can still find NOS, New Old Stock HV transformers fairly easily, worth getting one or two, they are fairly easy to solder out and in.
When I still have a old crt monitor from a Dell pc my mom bought a long time ago.
Honestly I've been meaning to get a CRT to play my old consoles on (mostly my wii, i crave to play Mario Galaxy again when i get everithing set up) since 2018, but it's been this year were i've really got into it. After discarding SD TV's, failing to find HD CRT's near me and not even considering BVM's for their absurd prices and scarcity, I decided on CRT monitors.
I snarched a free Flatron 915ft which i calibrated by hand (really sloppy) and, despite the wear it had, i really got to enjoy the aspects that make crt's the best for me: their adaptability (went from 240p on my various emulated games, to 480p on my Wii, to 1600x1200 or even connecting my vita to it), their cheap good black levels and motion clarity.
Sadly, i think something in the power circuit blew out yesterday. I was already looking for an aperture grille replacement for better color, so it wasn't much of a setback. I would repair it but i don't have the tools nor the time to troubleshoot. At least it definitely isn't the tube as they don't die suddenly.
Bit of a ramble, but i just wanted to say that your review was awesome and you really nailed the aspects of crt's i love. Your LCD panel reviews are also golden.
Hah, no worries. Too bad about the CRT. I don't have the skill to repair any of mine should something go wrong, so I'm hoping they last a good bit longer.
I still occasionally see 17" CRTs pop up on craigslist in my area, but people now know when they have something valuable, so trinitrons are hard to find or expensive.
@@ApertureGrille It's sad to see CRT's go, even if they are replaced by more convenient displays.
And that Trinitron scarcity is real! Over here i only see 15 inch ones pop up and then an old and very used 19-20 inches sony who can't go over 1600, for upwards of 150 euros! It makes thinking of spares really difficult.
Overclock it to 160hz interlaced 1920x1440i with CRU
p1130s dont accept interlace for some reason
@@usonianassembly3962 Yes mine doesn't like it somehow
just checked for new videos yesterday hoping for more of the excellent monitor reviews you make x) (by far the best on youtube). guess I was a day to early to get my wish fulfilled o:
Just got this one from local listing. It has 47k hours and still looking awesome.
I hate to break it to you, but the black level and nits depends on both the age and wear of the tube, and type of tube. Probably the best ones that I know of are the Gateway EV700, and the Compaq V500, the late 90s/very early 2000s white monitors are the best ones in the CRT era, and are both top of the line models, Trinitrons on the other hand have worse black levels because Trinitron tubes are 25 percent Brighter than regular slot mask tubes, resulting in blacks that are slightly grey. Sometimes, the best models aren't the ones that you always hear mentioned.
your skull is empty
The thing you did a 10:00 was the most impressive configuration I ever saw for PC Crts on youtube.
Almost ALL the channels always tells us that CRT its not good enough for retro gaming because the resolution its higher than TV crts and also because they are progressive's instead of interlaced, but you just made a CRT show TRUE beautiful scanlines just as good if not better than a PVM, that's AMAZING.
You should really make a guide on how to get the most of this setting custom resolutions and making the scanlines apparent as this for different consoles/arcades... People would love to see that SPECIALY if it works with lower end CRTs, it would give a option for people that don't have/want buy a PVM because they (like me) mostly play emulators anyway.
Yeah, lcd tvs can strobe at 60hz, which looks great, but the extra processing used for the Clearmotion or the Trumotion modes that enable this cause extra input lag.
It is not recommended.
Great vid - made a lot of topics clearer for me - although I think I still need to watch it again to really get it. - I have a JVC 21" TM-A210G - which I think is amazing - it definitely doesnt do scanlines but I like the fuzzy look - there is a kinda chromatic aberration effect which seems to have been taken advantage of in some games - Mega Turrican for instance. - although that might be just because I am using composite. - I don't think I would play Sonic on an emulator, but playing Dreamcast at 640x480 sounds pretty sweet - but doesnt that lower the FPS? - It seems intuitive that if you increase resolution that you would also need to increase the hertz - how can the gun draw more horizontal lines if it doesnt move faster?. I would love to see the gun in slow mo at diff resolutions.
Do you have an xbox 360? I'd love to see some games on one of those Dells with the VGA cable.
I'll take that as a "no"
@@JohnSmith-qn3ob The Xbox 360 looks incredible on an HD CRT monitor, for starters you have backwards compatibility to run OG Xbox games, and they of course look amazing and at their best given they were made for the CRT era, then you have tons of fantastic XBLA games, like Geometry Wars, PAC Man Championship Edition, Splosion Man, Trials HD, Castle Crashers, Banjo Kazooie & Tooie, Comic Jumper (and I could go on and on listing the tons of brilliant XBLA titles, man I miss XBLA :(), they all look at their absolute best on a good CRT. And lastly there is the main 360 games, don't get me wrong the 360 can look great on a decent LED, but it still looks and plays best on a CRT monitor through VGA, Alan Wake looks so damn good on an HD CRT, as does the Gears games, the Halo MC collection, Dead Rising and so on.
Another amazing thing to do with your 360 hooked up to a CRT is installing CoinOps on it, giving access to all the retro consoles that also look their absolute best on a CRT and look as they were intended with some nice juicy scanlines.
@@Wobble2007 You can mod the original Xbox (that has a modchip, needs to be flashed with a special BIOS) to be compatible with Sync on Green and connect it to a CRT monitor via component cables. The monitor needs to be compatible with Sync on Green (usually Sony monitors, as they were big proponents of SoG, but other companies had monitors that supported SoG as well, usually higher-end models, my LGF900P supports it for example, and that's a slot mask monitor). Much better compatibility that way (basically every OG Xbox game has some problems on the 360 if it even works). There are some games that even support 720p or 1080i.
You can do this with the PS2 as well (doesn't need to be flashed, but many games need to be forced in 480p, 720p or 1080i - not all games support 480p, let alone higher resolutions and some games will not have a proper resolution because the internal resolution of PS2 games varied).
For GameCube and Wii games, you can just use the Wii U and an HDMI to VGA adapter (one without black crush).
You can just use Retroarch on a PC and run games at 2560*240 @ 120 Hz with BFI (not all monitors can get bright enough to look good with this) or at 480p @ 60Hz with a scanline filter (should look indistinguishable from the first option from what I've heard). Many people play retro games this way. Another option is the MiSTer FPGA (scandoubled to 480p). Or you can get an OSSC and skip all of the above methods and just use original consoles.
To me though, this option is way too sharp and I personally don't like it, but it's much better and preferable than any LCD. And it's going to look much sharper the bigger diagonal CRT you use. It's why I would never ever get a BVM for retro games, they're way too sharp (even though you have people paying crazy amount for them when you can just use a CRT and get comparable results).
@@Frolsa84 Yeah, I can't wait to get a Mister FPGA and hook it up via VGA to my HD CRT monitor, seems to me like one of the best ways to play the classics with accuracy and stability, plus the audio on FPGA is pretty much properly processed, whereas even the best SEGA Mega Drive emulator with nuked audio and low pass filtering doesn't sound as good as the real thing, audio is one of the most important things to get right.
ive got one of these left from the 3 i aquired back in 2007, I havent used it since 2010, you inspired me to pull it out of the closet for the first time in 10 years!
If you need any help setting it up, drop by the Sony FW900 thread on HardForum.
@@ApertureGrille yeah ive been lurking on there the last 2 days, after i saw this video of yours.. I bought the Delock DAC (inernationally for like $120 shipped) that has the same Synaptics IC as the famed SUNIX, so i should be able to reach 500-550MHz pixel clock resolutions, we'll see. The only thing I need help with is figuring out how to properly calibrate the P1130 without a XP PC & WinDAS lol..as i dont have access to any XP PCs anymore, or a color calibrator... any tips?
@@CubanLegend561 WinDAS will run on Win10, but you really need a colorimeter to get the most out of it following spacediver's guide. But OUCH on the price of that adapter! I'm sticking with the 980 Ti for at least a little bit longer. Spent a lot of time recently playing through Dead Cells on the CRT; it's way better than on either of my ASUS panels.
@@ApertureGrille oh neat news about WinDAS on W10 I'll def have to look into it now! would i need any special cables or things to get it working with a colorimeter to properly calibrate it? which do you recommend, and did you ever make a video of the calibration process for the P1130? Yes OUCH for that DAC price, but its worth it as these are out of production and seemingly really hard to get in the US, plus if i ever get a better CRT like a FW-900, i can use the Delock on it and reach the max res the monitor can take without issue. BTW what's the highest Pixel Clocks you've been able to get on your 980Ti and P1130 combo? oh and are there any CRT monitor Discord servers? lol
@@CubanLegend561 You can still find X-Rite DTP94 colorimeters on eBay for pretty cheap, and they work great, but they're a bit of a pain; to even install drivers, you need to disable windows driver signature enforcement, and I can't get my Ryzen system to recognize it at all.
The 980 Ti will do 400 Mhz, so I'll usually top out my CRT at 2496x1872 at 60 Hz if I want the analog super-sampled look. Most of the time, though, I use 1340x1005 at 120 Hz, and that only needs a 240 MHz pixel clock.
Great video! I bought a p1130 in 2009 for 20 euros. Used it daily since then, for like 6-16 hours a day and is still going strong! (although it does need to warm up for a couple minutes while I make breakfast)
I ran it at the standard 1280x1024 85 hz. I recently changed it to 1280x1024 100 hz. Cant see a real difference, but it might be slightly better) Difference with 60 hz and 85 hz is gigantic. 60 hz seems like a stroboscope.
I see you run it at 1340x1005 @120hz? Can you explain why you think thats better? And might 120 hz make the monitor last less long? When I put it on 1280x1024 120 hz it went black on me..
Maybe you can even give me some tips on how to maintain the p1130? When I start it up now, it goes green and then pops into some sort of a lightbulb shaped halo until its warmed up.. sometimes (especially in winter when its colder in my house) It seems that some protection kicks in and it switches itself off during warm up. I have to take out the powercable and wait till the light stops blinking and then quickly put it back in to continue the warm up. Sometimes I had to do this 4 or 5 times. But it has been doing that for like 5 years lol, it still isnt dead, and the colors still seem fine.
Is there any (preferably free and simple) software you would advise for calibrating it? I have been trying some simple monitortests and its looking fine, but I dont think its as great as it can be yet.
Thanks in advance, greetings from The Netherlands!
That's a 5:4 aspect ratio and you might have geometry problems with it, you're better running it in 4:3 resolutions like 960p (1280*960) or 1200p (1600*1200). The 1340x1005 is probably a 4:3 resolution. I think it's probably optimal to run it in 1600*1200@85Hz from what I've read.
That sounds like a cold solder joint or something.
If it was made after a certain time period (like 2002-), it might not develop the G2 voltage fault that many Sony monitors have, so it might not REQUIRE calibrating. But I doubt you can calibrate it without special tools. I personally have a X-Rite i1 Display Pro I got for 50 euros unused, but these usually go for much higher.
Just found your channel, you definitely deserve more subs. I'm picking up a Iiyama Vision Master Pro 454 for free soon, i hope the CRT experience is as good as it has been hyped.
Free is good! The specs say 132 kHz horizontal frequency and 200 Hz max refresh, so the Iiyama is a bit better there than the Trinitron. If you haven't used one before, play a racing game at 1600x1200 and just watch the scenery go by.
@@ApertureGrille Yeah, just gotta figure out how to hook it up to my rtx3080 first :D
@@KotatkoVonDrapekit will not work. You need a gpu with analog input for the best experience....active converter vga hdmi are crap
@@KotatkoVonDrapek In the hardforum FW900 post they recomend using the Startech DP2VGAHD20, which reportedly hits 375 MHz pixel clock, and doesn't have weird issues like the Delock one. That's a really nice monitor BTW.
@@theunculturedswine8605 i got the delock one, the displayport connector is of awful quality but otherwise no problems, pushes the iiyama to its native res and beyond
I used to have an IBM P260 and now I'll never have a monitor as cool as that ever again.
This is a great video showing some amazing comparisons.
This video brought good old memories :D awesome review, keep it up!
dude i'm literally buying this monitor, will get it next monday
do you have some recommended settings for best color, best resolution, etc ?
cheers from romania
How did you even find one for sale? As I said in the video, there's a bit of work involved in getting a CRT to looks its best. Check out the links in the description to HardForum. spacediver's guide is what you'll want to follow.
@@ApertureGrille idk, i just looked it up online and found a guy who had a site running since 2006 and called him, he picked up, said he has some old p1130 in his garage and i'm meeting up with him this monday in bucharest
We settled the price for 90 dollars
Great review btw
@@sebmeister67 how'd it go
@@SSketchii i got the monitor
Took me an embarassing time to figure out the geometry settings lol
Also can't figure out the colors on expert mode since the monitor doesnt have a chroma adjustment or a blue only setting so i keep it with preset colors
All i have to say is that it's better than my previous tn panel asus vx238h when it comes to gaming and colors
Its a different experience with a crt, at night it feels like a campfire experience, its warm and soothing
Not as bright tho and during the day i have to keep the blinds on cause light significantly dims the screen
Overall id give the tn a 6.5/10 and the crt 8.5/10
Just saw you link this on the monitors subreddit. What an excellent video! You got a new subscriber.
Your cadence reminds me of Christian Bale in American Psycho (Enjoying the crt vids)
Those CRT's are better than the monitor I'm using right now. 😢
Go on eBay marketplace and have a sniff mate, you can get a bargain if you are quick enough and patient, otherwise go on eBay and you will also find something on therem although bargains are increasingly hard to find, I noticed the USA especially has a good stock of decent CRT's available, can't go wrong with a nice 17"+ Viewsonic, or a Dell which are often rebranded Sony Trinnys.
that's a tonn of research behind that video
thank you truly, it's so interesting
I appreciate your hard work)
Nice review of my CRT Monitor, still hanging to life with some hits here and there. 1600x1200 @100Hz is best :D
Feels weird dumbing down to 1980x1080 on normal LCD monitors. Lucky for me I jump between the CRT and the 2200x1080 Galaxy S9 OLED, even sensing an LCD gives me eye cancer.
Swapped out my 21" Sony for dual Dell 2001fp (20" IPS) in 2005. I did miss the low latency but with the console gaming taking over most new games were abandoning high framerate AND putting motion blur INTO game deliberately. Quake die-hards and simracers were the only ones sticking with CRT at the time. I went to a single widescreen 32" a few years later.
Most games from 2005-2015 were targeting HD instead of low framerate and they were putting blur effects in deliberately (30/60fps targets) ... dark days for pc gaming.
I actually think Oculus/Vive release put a fire under ATI/Nvidia to properly focus on low latency. Stereoscopic gaming was the niche that spawned modern VR and the stereo guys were OG blur busters. I still have a stereoscopic kit for CRT in the cupboard.
OLED utilizing Black Frame Insertion gets close to the CRT motion blur quality.... I'm desperate for an OLED gaming monitor which comes with a BFI option in the firmware.... because its turning the pixels off aka black. which is similar to how a CRT "pixel" fades to black nearly instantly after being drawn.
also, kinda makes you think that if we get LCD monitors fast enough, you could run the pixel refresh like a CRT where only a small line going down the screen, thus having native black frame insertion with no need for extra hardware/software to get it going.
Nice tip on the NES native res solution. What's your opinion on adding scanlines to double resolutions like this?
I just got a P1130 for 55 bucks, I love it so far, and I've barely used it with MiSTer only so far.
I remember needing deskspace and therefore traded my Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2070SB asap for a 19 inch iiyama LCD......i was an idiot. If you could f8nd this monitor it was worth a review. Awesome CRT if not the best in my opinion.
M M rip
@@Coldmustard899 ahahahahah yes stupid decision
That's like one of the most desired monitors these days, in the rank of a GDM-F520, Iiyama Vision Master Pro 454, FW900 or LaCie Electron Blue IV (which is a rebrand of the 2070SB if I'm not mistaken), as well as latter Mitsubishi models. Also, I'm probably forgetting one of the Nokia monitors which could also do pretty high horizontal frequencies.
@@Frolsa84 what's so special about the Iiyama 454? I own it but replaced it with 21 Dell P1110 instead.
@@adamplechaty Aww, my bad, I meant the Iiyama Vision Master Pro 514, because it's the highest specced CRT monitor out there (the 454 is the highest specced 19" monitor).
Looking back at my comments, I got a W900 (FW900's older brother, one of only 5 CRT models that are widescreen and can do 1080p) and a 514 and could've gotten an F520, a Lacie IV (and III) and a 2070SB...
Hey a5hun!
I currently run my P260s (also 21" Trinitrons to the readers here) at 1600x1200 @120hz and their limit is only 121kHz!
The Video Bandwidth is set to 1152x864 in windows since I used the resolution setting of 1152x864@120hz and from there I set the resolution to 1600x1200@120!!
They are only using 108.0, 108.9, and 108.9 kHz so it even works on my Nokia 445XiPlus!
My setup is a cheap eBay DP to VGA adaptor and a DP to VGA cable for the second P260 off of my 1660ti. Also, CRTs still draw the image faster than 144hz monitors. (MG279Q for me which takes like 11ms total)
CRTs forever, CRTs for life!
I have a P260 in the basement! How is that working? What's doing the downsampling?
@@ApertureGrille how much for shipping to AZ? And I have no clue what the conversion is doing.
@@ApertureGrille picture quality is great! I think CRU shows it at 1024p output @ 60hz, but my monitors are showing it as a 120hz signal.
I've watched the whole video and I also love CRTs.
But at 14:22 I've felt a need to defend TFT manufacturers. ULMB monitors like the ASUS PG279Q that I currently use, love (brightness and resolution) and hate (motion blur and contrast) allows the usage of a 60 Hz ULMB mode via the CRU utility (for Windows at least, on Linux via custom Modeline). You need to select the 85 Hz mode as base and increase the vertical total size until you get 60 Hz. The monitor will take it and it works fine with 60Hz locked games like Freedom Planet. But you still get Strobing Crosstalk as the IPS response time is not fast enough.
Now here is the issue. This just can't be integrated in the product itself as people with epilepsy might get a seizure. I use a Siemens MCM 1706 17" CRT next to my Asus for Retro gaming purposes and the 60 Hz of that monitor is not nearly as harsh on the eye as the 60 Hz strobing of the TFT. I can't really say why that is but my assumption is the time it takes for the phosphor to stop glowing. And I guess is that Asus wanted to avoid being taken to the court for health issues. 85 Hz already flickers noticeably on this monitor.
Also at this position you say that the TV you use is capable of doing it at 60 Hz. But has it a strobing or a scanning backlight? Scanning backlight monitors seem to be very rare. OLEDs are now also using this technique by simulating a rolling shutter by incorporating the fast pixel response times. So I'm quite looking forward for the first OLED monitors if they will eventually arrive. They finally might be on par to CRT motion performances.... hopefully.... O.o
Ooh, I didn't know about that 85 Hz trick. I just tried with both the VG27AQ and the VG279QM, but I can't get it to work. With CRU, are you increasing the vertical total to match the horizontal frequency in kHz with the 85 Hz mode?
The TV I showed, the Samsung UN40KU6300, legitimately strobes the entire backlight at 60 Hz. It's a VA, and one of the slowest I've ever seen, so the end result looks quite bad, but they offer the option. A full blast strobe at 60 Hz is hard to look at when dealing with bright scenes, but it's tolerable for most video game scenes.
CRTs at 60 Hz would sit well with more people because they have a rolling scan, like you mentioned. That keeps at least some part of the screen lit during the entire frame time, so it's less stressful on your eyes/brain.
@@ApertureGrille The VG27AQ and VG279QM both use ELMB as Blur Reduction technique. I don't know if ELMB allows this hack. I'm also not sure if it has something to do with the horizontal frequency which makes this work and I currently don't have access to Windows. But I can send you some Linux Modelines which I have derived afterwards from my CRU settings and just tested to check if they still work. And it still is an issue for my eyes. During gameplay it's not as bad as on the desktop though.
ULMB 85 Hz Modeline: "2560x1440" 346.50 2560 2608 2640 2720 1440 1443 1448 1499 +hsync -vsync
ULMB 60 Hz Modeline: "2560x1440" 346.50 2560 2608 2640 2720 1440 1443 1448 2123 +hsync -vsync
Both Video timings are exactly the same if it wasn't for the last number, which is the total vertical size in pixels that leads to the reduction of the frame rate.
Sadly the strobing phase seems to be unchanged by doing so. So the Strobe Cross Talk remains. ULMB TN monitors are quite better at this but well... they have other problems.
My TV is a Sony KDL-55W828B and also supports backlight strobing at 60 Hz. They call it MotionFlow Impulse. But the picture gets very dim and the mode doesn't support 50 Hz Input. You can mod most of the old gaming consoles to 60 Hz but the dim picture still makes it unusable.
Your speakers look intriguing - 2-ways with car subs as woofers. There must be quite a hole in the midrange.
Got myself a Dell P1130 CRT and HP P1230 Today and found your video. What sort of GPU should I ideally test it on? Something like a gtx 980? (I got a VGA-DVI cable)
Any GPU in now possible to use with native VGA thanks to USB-C display port alternative mode, you can get RTX cards with USB-C that are display alternate capable and simply run a passive USB-C to VGA cable to you monitor, it can in theory max out any CRT monitors refresh and resolution capabilities, 2048x1556 @ 85Hz for instance is no problem, if you don't or can't have an RTX card then a GTX970/980/980Ti are all fantastic, still very capable cards with nice 400Mhz VGA RAMDAC, if only there was a GPU with a native 5XBNC input to run my Sony GPD-5002PT9, 5BNC2VGA is fine but BNC2BNC would be better I bet, actually 5XBNC2DVI-A might be worth looking into, the BNC usually allows for a slight boost in res and refresh, plus it's supposed to give a slight edge IQ wise, could probably only tell side by side though tbh.
For competetive fps, the input lag+motion blur on lcd make them inferior to crts.
Yep. I connected my old CRT the other day and its crazy how much better they are when it comes to FPS games. The mouse movements felt like in real time and absolutely no motion blur. To bad my CRT is old as hell and the picture quality sucks etc.
Amazing video showing step by step why CRT are so good. Liked and subbed!
Awesome! Thank you!
10:55 why not just interlace? Youre using native analog out and even my 19" can do 1600x1200i 140hz and that's around 103khz
Nvidia sucks at interlacing, you can do it but it's a process to get it working, you also have to do that process every time a fullscreen application shows up and everytime you boot up windows. It's a temporary solution that becomes a pain to deal with on the daily
AMD is just plug and play, create the resolution then set it. and it always works. even when you restart your pc. it boots up into your interlaced resolution no problem.
@@jskilabe5986 I'm using an Nvidia gpu
@@idkrossplay so do you know a simpler way of getting interlacing working?
@@jskilabe5986 yes go into CRU and use their interlacing features, not the ones built into Nvidia control panel
For my unit the "hum" noise is minimal, easily covered by a pc fan at 700rpm. Speakers "blank noise" is actually more noticeable, while still being silent at an arms lenght.
I have a very quiet room, so the CRT was definitely a bit irritating. And the pitch would change depending on what was being displayed:
thume.ca/screentunes/
Keep in mind that modern display technologies like LCDs, LEDs, OLEDs, QLEDs, AMOLEDs and SuperAMOLEDs all have better color accuracy than the CRTs.
Now this is cool, I stumbled on your video, I own Monitor 2002-40! just 8 away from each other!!!
PLEASE Tell me you still have the Driver file!! I lost my file!!
Nice name, btw! Those numbers should be Year/Week, so if you've got 2002-40, it would have been made some time in October.
You probably don't need any sort of driver for these CRTs. Most of the information is contained in the EDID, which Windows will automatically pull when you plug the monitor in.
But you can really adjust whatever settings you need in CRU.
This went from reviewing a monitor to talking about crts. Great video (no really it’s interesting)
I quite miss my IBM P260 (19.8 inch diagonal, Trinitron). It worked really well, I usually used it at 1600x1200 at 85Hz for desktop work, coding, etc,. but it also rocked in gaming. I bought it used around 2004, for like 20$. And used for years, but many years later, I got rid of it (for essentially nothing). It served me well.
I am still searching for the perfect monitor. Still not there yet. Technology is already there, just model selection on market is really crappy, due to manufacturer choices.
For work (and some non-fps gaming), I use Eizo EV2730Q 26.5 inch, 1920x1920, which is absolutely amazing. But for media consumption and gaming I am still looking for something that I would fully want. And considering this second (and third probably) monitor I will also want to use for work, not just gaming, I don't want 16:9 or anything wider. 16:10 should do fine, but there are no high refresh monitors with VRR on the marked and that aspect ratio. My Crossover 2560x1600, can be pushed to 105Hz at 1920x1200, but at 2560x1600 it only does 60Hz.
**2** 21 inch Trinitron tubes!? Whats that desk made out of?! Cement?
My PC CRT's don't squeal at all. Your flyback might have been going out! And yes, I can heard high frequencies. Lol.
Is this monitor suitable for modern FPS games such as Rainbow Six Siege where an enemy can be peeking from minute pixel holes? Are CRT monitors clear enough at that 1440 x 1080 resolution? Thanks
Yes
great vid, you should do more on CRTs!!
Thank you! I should have some new stuff coming relatively soon, and the CRT may make an appearance.
Im still amazed, how good CRT's in 2023 are.
Yes, they need lot of juice, are heavy, bulky and don't recommend it for video editting ect.
I scored 2 ViewSonic PT813 last Month. The Motion Clarity and Blacks are insane good, even better than my LED 144Hz Display.
The best Part about CRT Monitors is, you can use lower Reasolution and your game still looks great.
Super in depth and a very good explaination.
Thank you! I've still got this CRT right beside me. I'm going to keep it going forever!
Would they be able to make a CRT monitor these days modernize it and make it a flat panel? Or make a modern monitor that mimics what does CRT does?
CRT's last, best hope was SED (Surface-conduction electron-emitter display), but that never went anywhere. Modern LCDs can get pretty close to CRT by hiding their slow pixel transitions with backlight strobing. The new ViewSonic XG270 (not the XG270QG) had its backlight strobing mode tuned by Chief BlurBuster, but it still won't allow strobing at 60 Hz.
@@ApertureGrille will you be doing a review of the x270? That was one monitor I was going to consider buying but not many people are talking about it.
You forget the LCD has a backlight thats why it looks a lot brighter in the dark when its displaying a pitch black image
Nice vid, man. How can i connect gtx1060 on that crt? give me link on adaptor.
Here are the two recommended options from HardForum:
Delock DP to VGA:
www.delock.de/produkte/G_62967/merkmale.html?setLanguage=en
May be a bit hard to find, but it has a max output of 350 MHz, which is only slightly less than the native DAC on the 980 Ti.
Or for anyone with a graphics card with USB-C:
Vention CGMHA Type-C to VGA Converter
No one ever says what they use to connect it though. lol Unless you have an older Graphics card you gotta rely on some adapters or scalers and I've yet to find one that just always works.
That motion clarity holy shit. I have a VA 144hz panel and the smearing is nutty.
Sound wont bother me as I got headphones. I also game in the dark.
Just take me back to PS2 era help
That's what i used my CRT mostly, for retrogaming and nostalgia. They're amazing for that.
For PS2 i'd recomend a SD TV or HD TV with component input, as with CRT Monitors you'd need a deinterlacer to hit the minimum 31 KHz signal. Also TV's are generally brighter, bigger and have better color.
I just bought a GT 710 years ago. I run it paired with my RTX 2070.
Works as smooth as butter, too bad it has only one Analog output (VGA paired with HDMI and DVI-D) instead of more Analog outputs (because that would be nice). At least I can use CRTs natively.
Btw, you can use even more modern graphic cards than the GTX 980, even though they don't have analog out. You just need a 2nd graphics card that has analog out. You can have any 900 series Nvidia, and pair it with a Nvidia GTX 1060. You'll hook up your CRT to the older 900 series, and you can still use the 1060 to render all your games, even on the CRT monitor.
Doesn't have to be a 900 series, can be even older, from what I hear (I use a 960 and 1060). You're basically using the older card as an over glorified digital to analog converter.
Shit, that's cool. Got a tutorial?
I have 3 CRT Monitors... nothing comes close to their Motion Clarity, nothing... but I'm not using them to play anymore, flickering is a problem to me, i guess i got too used to LCDs... I kinda love LCDs too.
I have a NEC MultiSync FE700 CRT from 2000 and I'm trying to get it to work fine with my 2070ti graphics card. It only has HDMI and a DVI port so of course I have to use an adapter. It does turn on but there are problems. The text on the screen look choppy compared to my last desktop which has a direct vga port and the text is crisp, clean and smooth. Idk if it has to do with my adapter so maybe I need a better one? But I don't know what are better ones. Second, when I hibernate my computer, my monitor will not turn on, not even when I reboot or restart. So I don't know if I need a different GPU or if there's some settings that need to be set. If you can help me with that, I'd appreciate it. I mainly bought this so I can stream console games, but I do want to play some modern pc games like Doom Eternal someday.
I'm still using the 980 Ti with its native analog out, but the one HDMI to VGA adapter I've used is the Benfei HDMI to VGA. It'll do 330 MHz, but you have to use YCbCr.
Otherwise I don't have much experience with other adapters. Check the FW900 thread on HardForum for more recent updates on some of the adapters.
@@ApertureGrille So I guess I do need a better adapter. Would the StarTech.com DisplayPort be a good choice?
@@JohnyTheWizKid If we're talking about the same one, this is the only thing I've seen on that adapter:
hardforum.com/threads/24-widescreen-crt-fw900-from-ebay-arrived-comments.952788/post-1044790107
They were having trouble with AMD cards, but since you're on a 2080 Ti, you may have better luck.
@@ApertureGrille Weeeellll... I AM using a AMD Ryzen 9 processor. So far, so good. But it isn't as quiet as I thought it'd be because every window I open or something I click, it hums louder. My 2015 Lenovo from Best Buy was quieter. I suppose it is to be expected if its trying to run on my CRT, huh?
You can use 2560x224p and 240p @180Hz with Retroarch and custom resolutions set in the driver. 448p looks not good with NES or SNES. The Scanlines are wrong, 2x too much.
11:31 mine actually did and also did 4k res. It said 200hz in windows 7 refresh rate pick or xp. Man i do miss the one I had but it caused me eye pain and headache so it had to go.
My cousin just let me have his old p1130 but it has a yellow tint all over the screen and some horizontal lines, I really want to fix this problems to enjoy this monitor