I was quoted in a VICE article on the subject! www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz4gqm/why-this-20-year-old-crt-monitor-is-better-than-a-4k-lcd? Some have expressed unhappiness with the current offerings of CRT communities in my video, and I get why. I've made a channel for it in my discord server! I'm as welcoming as I can be! (which might not say much) eposvox.com/discord
I live in a small apartment with an extra room which my wife suggested be dedicated to my collection. I'm nothing close to rich. But hey, congrats on handling your own insecurities by being negative and toxic about other people's passions! That'll get you far in life!
A CRT is an electron accelerator, they don't actually have pixels, they are extremely inefficient, they are blurry. You're making the same sort of argument that "audiophiles" make with the supposed superiority of vinyl records over CDs. I used to work for RCA. Audiophiles don't know what they are talking about when they discuss audio quality, and you don't know what you're talking about when you are claiming a CRT is underappreciated compared to it's completely digital counterparts.
yeAH i DO NOT REMEMBER THE BRAND OR NAME OF THE MONITOR i HAD BUT IT WAS HUGE, FLAT SCREEN, CRYSTAL CLEAR, GREAT COLOURS AND VERY HIGH REFRESH RATE... oops capslock, Anyway I still miss that monitor to this day and its a shame it blew with a big time BANG!, I am currently Running a 1440P IPS widescreen display "Asus VX24A" , sharpest flat panel I have ever had and I would dare say would give a lot of the high end CRT monitors a run for there money when it comes to colour reproduction... the damn thing best do since its full sRGB compliant.
Tech was shittier but more interesting in the 90s. If you go to a tech show now it's mostly smartphone cases and phone gadgets. In the 90s there were robots, lasers, cyborgs, airships, hoverboards, holograms, x-ray vision, AI, CRT, and VR except none of it worked well or at all sometimes but it was exciting!
You might mix up CRT TVs with Monitors. No static with my Monitor and I don't remember my old CRT Monitors (at least the one I was using from 2001 to 2009) being staticy.
@@moomah5929 I think newer ones did not build so much static electricity as older ones. I remember having CRT monitor from around 1996 and it built a bit of static electricity, enough to have some fun with it. Newer ones I had did not do that though.
@@dmcemmet You could be right, it's been a long time since that time and can't really remember the feel of my old old monitors. This Philips 107E seems to be from around 2000, at least it's the earliest information I could find about it. We also had a Monitor for the C64 (a Commodore 1084 I believe) in the early 90's, where I can't remember it being staticy but then again it had a removable glass panel (tinted/filter?) in front of the actual screen, if I remember correctly.
It's a shame that you can't find any repair store that will deal with CRTs. I live in Chile and I'm literally the last person left in my city that works on and repairs CRTs if the person's willing to pay for the spare parts to get it back up and running. I even solder back the VGA cables, it's not that hard really.
Finally, someone that actually "gets it" when it comes to monitors. The ONLY reason I switched from CRT to LCD was because of widescreen support... If they made a widescreen CRT today, I couldn't give them my money fast enough!
Something is different in the way a CRT displays the picture, the pixels are drawn one at a time, it keeps the brain busy with new information instead of "downloading" a picture 60 or 120 times per second. You can't see the picture being displayed but the brain knows... OLED won't give you that feeling.
I just miss the scaling. You could switch to any resolution you liked, provided it was supported, and the CRT was like, "Yeah, not a problem. I can do that." I love my giant LCD display, but I do wish it could scale down from native without looking like someone's smeared Vaseline all over the screen. I still play a bunch of older games on a CRT, because it just looks better.
I came into this video as a skeptic, and you converted me to CRT fan. I was quite surprised to learn how advanced this old technology was in the early 2000s. What a great, informative video!
GTX 980 Ti with a CRT. Once you truly see 240 fps there is no going back. *Edit:* (120hz x 2 interlaced, from Stereo CRT monitors for old shutter glasses.) I also enjoy the extra radiation while playing Fallout.
That would be so awesome! Unfortunately, I got banned from Fallout 76 for fixing the fps bug where you move like fucking Flash Gordon over 60fps. Let me take a sip of this shitty rum while I tell you all about it... I'm blind! Rock gut no name booze in a plastic un-pourable shrourd of disappointment... I digress radiation sucks and is no laughing matter. Did you know that my last MRI gave me googly eyes? screw Bethesda! I only had that stroke after they ruined the good name of the last good game franchise. Dark humour about the end of the world and an immoral "all American" corporation. How do you fuck that up. Like really? :-/
Uh... you imply you have a 240Hz CRT? I'm not aware that those existed or exist. If you just mean 240FPS on a CRT of lower refresh rate then I don't know what your point could possibly be. I get the sarcasm about Fallout though.
I've never heard of a CRT monitor capable of 240hz, what brand is this mythical beast...more to the point what game are you playing that can give you 240fps on a 980ti,,,Quake 3? You must get sick and tired of swapping out fusion cells on that monitor...
Don't put a sign that says "Free" on it, no one will take it. You have to put like "$10" if you want someone to take it because they'll just steal it. If you say "free", no one will want it. Trust me, I've gotten rid of enough stuff to know lol.
I picked up some free stuff because it was labeled as such. I am pretty awkward when it comes to social contact in real life. This way I can pick up stuff without feeling too bad about it while also avoiding personal blunders :)
miss the crt days until I remember I held my 27" 4K monitor in one hand while I screwed in the vesa mounting screws with the other to the dual adjustable monitor arms :p
Here too, I love my 15 year old birthday present CRT TV, 21" with component input. I love it - as long as it keeps there and I don't need to move it from the stand. And that's still just 21 inches (true tho that it's a wall mount so it's a horrible hassle, less the weight and more the position you need to take to move it). Also when we gave away our 29" Panasonic CRT TV, that monster wasn't more than 32 kilos (sorry, ain't converting to pounds) but it was still a hassle to move. What I most miss from CRT TVs tho, was the built-in sound. No LCD I've seen, ever, came close to that 29" Panasonic one that could actually do bass down to the 60Hz or so. PC LCD monitors with speakers are also just there to say they're there. My old LCD monitor had speakers and I never dared even testing them. I bet my laptop would be better, not exaggerating.
switched years ago from a 40 kilo monster. i can tell ya, no lan party was held without a shopping cart to move that thing away from my place to my buddies
I actually asked my school's principal if I could have 5 of the supposedly junked CRTs, 2 fully functional IBM keyboards, and 2 IBM PC cases. (which I did get)
I no longer have any of my old CRT monitors, but definitely have plenty of experience with them. Worked at Best Buy before flat screens even came out, so I have a LOT of experience hoisting them heavy bastards up a ladder too lol
They are great vs. LCDs until recently with better technologies (OLEDs are unquestionable and the extinct Plasma based TVs) My first LCD in 2007 with CCFL has decent color vs CRT but poor contrast. It still works and using it for the kids, only with some water like stains on the screen on some angles. Single LED color (blue) based LCD's appeared and they are highly convenient, low power, low heat, lighter, and slimmer but image quality is almost trash. I know as I have a cheap laptop with that display. These days though, I don't think CRT still has a place except for the nostalgia and getting it for free. Most new LCDs today now have decent contrast (IPS, AHVA, HDR, etc) and color (quantum, nanocell), higher refresh.
Great video, I just recently picked up a nice Viewsonic CRT and I gotta say I've fallen in love with it and I'm starting to get a little obsessed. It's sad how rare even mediocre pc crt monitors are getting. It's like everyone has gotten rid of them and most of them are probably sitting in recycling centers just gathering dust. To bad they don't make them anymore I'm fearing the day mine breaks down and can't be repaired, speaking of which I guess I should start learning how to fix these things so I can keep one as long as possible.
The best part about CRTs isn't very low input lag but no image ghosting at all. If you'll play a game with high contrast fast moving objects most LCDs will give you blurry edges of those objects or some color "shadows" will be there. Which isn't the case for CRTs. No fixed resolution is the second best thing. 320x200 to 2048x1536 with image staying sharp - impossible for LCDs but any decent 21" CRT can do that.
Well there is something to look forward to oled, recently joled showed of some gaming monitors and sony and panasonic are working together on some oled displays they are probably going to be expensive though.
@@nestaash Main question about OLED monitors is how long will they last. I don't feel like spending 3k on something that will last for 3-4 years. Also i'm not sure if they are better at handling multiple resolutions.
@@shadowflash705 well you are right about a lot of things they will probably be over $2000 when they release but they will get cheaper as time goes on, oleds are known to burn in but if they are making gaming monitors they will try to implement some functions to help with the problem and the user will have to vary the content they watch and nothing can handle resolutions that are non-native like a CRT can.The reason why i look forward to them is the infinite contrast ratio they have and most of all how well they handle motion i can tell you 60hz gaming on a oled although not as smooth as gaming on a 165hz LCD IPS monitor has less blur. oleds monitors will most likely produce the best overall image quality, who knows they can suck at release or be the best thing since CRT we will just have to wait and see.
It's not just ghosting where CRTs are superior. They have superior motion clarity as well. LCDs use sample-and-hold technology. CRTs are completely different, and because of this they have WAY LESS motion blur. A 60hz LCD will keep a pixel displayed for a full 16.6 milliseconds. A CRT will display a pixel for about 1 milliseconds, thus substantially reducing motion blur. This is referred to as pixel persistence or just persistence; you will sometimes see monitors marketed with 1ms persistence (they use a gimmick to achieve this, it's not good like CRTs). Checkout a site called BlurBusters to read up on this phenomenon and why it happens.
The *best* part of owning a CRT was the absolute certainty that the wind will never slam a door shut that has a CRT stopping it, they're also great at making sure that your ocean liner won't float away.
Wish I had one near me -- would pay for your services if they were good. Shipping costs, of course, make it impossible to do this beyond local business.
yeah, if you can come up with some really good way to transport crts (maybe some kind of custom built reusable crate) then you might be able to buy, repair, then sell high end monitors, but finding tubes that run well enough to repair is hard. maybe if you get good enough you could salvage and jerry-rig components to make good custom monitors, there might even be some new technologies that make homemade CRTs possible, possibly without the intensive tube manufacturing
I love those Sony GDM FW900 monitors. I found 3 when i visited a CAD company a couple of years ago that they was going to throw away but they hadn't bothered carrying them out of the door. I took all 3 and my back was hurting for a week after. Still worth it :)
Man i miss my FW9010 so much. Kinda regret throwing it out when the flyback went kaput and wouldn't turn on. But moving it cross country was just too much hassle :/
My problem with CRTs is that they emit an extremely obnoxious high-pitched noise that makes it impossible for me to use them. It just gets too annoying and I can hear it so well that I can sometimes hear them from >30 metres away (eg when used in a museum). I always go like 'Oh, there is a CRT around' and everyone is like 'how did you know that?'.
The horizontal scan rate of NTSC CRT TVs is about 15khz. This is what makes the sound. Meanwhile, all PC CRTs are 65-141khz, well above human hearing range.
Not every CRT emit that noise, anyway for me was real when they were running at 60hz. Not only the screen was too bright, but they would usually make that insane noise. Increasing the refreshrate to 75 or 85 was the "fix" to stop that noise instantly.
@@BadAndUgly I had a 2005 iMac that often made *the* most annoying high pitched noise. I read that they had bad flyback transformers. I don't miss that.
I had an old 22" monster until the mid 2000's, but it ate too much electricity, and no-one was prepared to repair it if it went wrong. Then I ended up with a video card installed without any VGA ports, so I had to update and get rid of the old monitor to recycling. I really miss 4:3 aspect ratio and the monster sized screen. Ah, the good ol' days.
I'm old enough to have grown up with CRTs. Yes, they had good refresh rates, response time, and resolutions. But they somehow still didn't manage to look as good to my eyes, I think it had something to do with looking through a thick layer of glass that also had a higher tendency to have a slight frosty glare, you could just tell the glass was there, hard to explain. With an LCD the text on a screen almost appears like there is no layer in front of it, almost like you could touch it, we're all used to it now but look at a CRT sometime and you might notice that layer of glass in front of everything. All I know is that as soon as I had my first LCD at 18 years old (19" 4:3 60hz 1280x960) I never looked back. Also, at the time I didn't even notice the refresh rate cap at all, it wasn't until I had it for a little while I learned that just because the fps might say 90 fps, I wasn't really seeing 90 fps. Another downside of CRTs is eye strain, I remember getting hooked on Diablo 2 back in the day, and back then playing for three or four hours straight without stopping was considered a lot, and in that amount of time your eyes would be in quite a lot of pain, this has never happened to me on an LCD. Then there is the desk space issue of course, many people were forced to sit them diagonally on their desks so they wouldn't be sitting too close to their screen, of course this can be fixed with a larger desk, but let's be realistic not everyone was able to for one reason or another, or just never got around to it. The one downside I immediately noticed on my first LCD was how it looked like garbage in non native resolutions. I was always used to adjusting my resolution on my CRT to get a good framerate on a game, it was the most important graphics option at the time, once I had an LCD I was forced to leave this option alone. That was the only real downside I remember being a big enough downside to notice.
Lost beetle to me it sounds as if you're talking about a scenario with a non-flat screen, and/or a bad light source causing glare. Also I've never had eye strain on a CRT, even when sometimes playing at 60 Hz (2048x 1536. Lower resolutions like 1600x1200 could go higher res), which is not a good refresh rate when the screen is low persistence (60 Hz on an LCD is fine because the pixels stay on and persist, it's not like they're flashing 60 times per second like a CRT is), but I suppose some people might be sensitive
You become sensitive to anything if you spend 8+ hours a day every day for 15+ years. Not to mention that you don't fix youself as fast when you're older.
I've got a 144hz 1440p LCD monitor but I've never in 30 years of computing seen a CRT that can push either of those specs, the bandwidth of VGA just didn't allow for it even if the tubes themselves could drive it, the VGA cable standard maxes out at 2048×1536px (QXGA) @85 Hz amd even thatrequires a really short, high quality cable. Funnily enough, when I bought my 144hz 1440p screen it only came with a VGA cable!
We do, the question is, are you willing to pay for them? A lot of these CRTs are only "affordable" nowadays, and cost four figures new. The same with a good flat panel--if you want massive refresh rates, ultra-low latency, or OLED, that costs money. A lot of money.
Back then we didn't really give a shit, and for those who did - it still cost them a lot of money. Nowadays it's actually easier and cheaper, there are plenty of affordable 1080p monitors with 100+ mhz refresh rates. To think of it, considering the cash this bloke blows on his CRT monitors that let's face it, look ugly as all hell and usually have 4:3 aspect ratio, i don't really see any reason whatsoever to even consider using one, other than for some weird purist reasons.
I witnessed a CRT implosion in the office one day...as a prank, someone dumped metal shavings through the air holes of a monster CRT monitor. The person turned on their monitor, and PLUNK!
had a old dell it was a amazing 1280X1024 120hz ofered free by a school. but sadly i had to stop using it it whitened and blured with age. i replaced it but always felt new monitors flat was so bad. took a decade to have a flat monitor as good as it was. but input lag still is a issue.
Actually i do have that Widescreen sony CRT you are talking about at the 11:50 mark. Im using right now actually. And let me tell you watching this vid made me feel good. The story of how i got that monitor basically getting it for free, long story short, was doing a AC job for this old guy who makes wedding movies for a living. He figured that since i cared about this stuff (I was getting into the AV field at the time) he gave it to me for free. Sadly this one has some yellow tin on the bottom right, and the antistaic wrapping is coming apart. Need to get it repaird, but good luck finding someone who can do that in Hawaii. or the price to ship it.... oh gawd. But im just glad i found this video, cause really. Someone is defending these monitors, and to relish in these old dying tech. But yes, it is a god tier CRT, like i got 1440p with 90htz like dude. yeah once you have one, all other consumer ones seem shallow in comparision.
To this day I still use a CRT on my main computer. Been through TWO holy grail Sony 24" monitors since about 2005, but each died a very similar death and each only lasted me about 5 years. I'm now on a 21" Philips 202P flat screen model. Vertically it is virtually identical in height to the Sony, it is just not as wide. I run mine at 1152x864 @ 100 hz. Picture on this is at least as good as either of the Sony's I had and in the 4 years I've had it I haven't noticed any degradation whatsoever of the image quality. Also like the Sony, this has dual inputs including a RGBHV BNC connector which I have connected to a Micomsoft XRGB-3 (which has native VGA output via line-doubling mode) for my Sega Genesis (over JP-21) and my RGB-modded NES (also over JP-21). Picture quality is amazing on this setup for both of my game consoles.
Watching this video on CRT Samsung SyncMaster 795mb. It's good that it's black and silver so it didn't get yellow with time. Soldering a new cable is a bit tedious, but there is nothing extraordinary difficult about it - you just solder wires one by one and isolating them with sticky tape and shrink tubes. I repaired my monitor in 2014 after the cable worned out
I just cut opened both original and new cables and compared their pinouts using multimeter. Here is what it looks like with some quick gibberish notes of mine: yadi.sk/d/1ZKsLPfVBi4afw Soldering was way more difficult than figuring out what goes where. That's a whole different story if you don't have original cable in place though.
They don't actually radiate... The thick layer of lead infused class blocks all radiation. Radiation only was a problem with the first series of color TV's when they got into a fault condition.
Same here. I had experience on CRT's before i got my first computer in 2005 but all my monitors have been LCD since. I totally agreee tho that early LCD-s were pretty poor in terms of image. The main appeal was low power and low size. As time progressed however LCD's advanced. Today i see no reason to get CRT. Yeah it's true LCD has not gotten rid of the signal processing delay and non native resolution issues but in terms of refreshrate, color, contrast and resolution new LCD's are now superior to CRT's. Plus adaptive sync that get's rid of tearing in games is a godsend. This is my list of LCD's i've owned since 2005: 1280x1024 60Hz TN 1680x1050 60Hz TN 1920x1080 60Hz IPS 2560x1440 165Hz IPS with G-Sync.
This is great, I remember how a buddy snatched up a 30 inch CRT they phased out at his workplace with some unheard of resolution back then, that freaking behemoth needed its own table but boy was it awe-inspiring, most monitors CRT or early flat panel back then were 15 inches. He sure enjoyed the heck out of Diablo 2 on that thing.
I still use CRT Tvs for retro gaming. I have a 34" Sony Trinitron Wega XBR955 HD w/HDMI & widescreen for more modern games and an old Curtis Mathes 27" for older games. I also have an NEC multisync monitor and a Viewsonic like the one in your video. However the viewsonic no longer works as one of the VGA pins broke out somehow when I moved last. I also have an older trinitron monitor that has a brightness issue. When it and the viewsonic were working properly, they both had amazing picture quality, better than any of my other CRT monitors. Great video btw!
I do miss the old days of having a monitor that could do any resolution and refresh I wanted to throw at it. 75Hz was considered the bare mininum normal and now the basic normal is only 60Hz. I don't miss the weight and the square screen but so much else about the CRT was actually better. I absolutely noticed blur and lag when I switched to LCD all those years ago. No matter what kind of fancy flat screen I use now nothing ever seems to be as smooth as the CRT was. Its like we've spent years and years trying to engineer our way back to what CRTs could do and we're still not really there. Modern flat screens bring many benefits but still...
This really is an excellent review and introduction to the late, great CRT. I hung on to CRT tech for both my PC monitor and HDTV until just recently. I had both the Sony FW900 and the Viewsonic P225F 21 inch. But like EposVox says, once they give up the ghost there is no one to fix them. They are old displays with tons of hours on them. I recycled my PC monitors when they quit working, but still have my CRT HDTV, the Sony XBR910.
are you also good for a small loan of 100 mil to setup a factory of dubious quality in cheap enough country and an R&D lab to re-engineer the various proprietary processes to achieve relatively sharp picture? :) they were really hard to produce, lots of manual labor
Thank you for making this video! We made sure to share it in our Facebook Group! We are glad to have people discuss these topics and help represent the things our community stands for. It is very true that "Retro Gaming" is often just seen as Retro Consoles and that us Retro PC Gamers are often not included, ignored, are a smaller community, and get very little publicity or attention.
@@dreamreaver1218 Actually we do, there is at least one I know of by Dell. Besides, a 4K OLED TV does exactly what a monitor would. There no longer seems to be any difference between monitors and TVs nowadays except that TVs have tuners and a remote control while PC monitors don't. I am using a 4K Panasonic TV as my primary monitor for my PC.
Best colors and deepest black? They did not. You are looking through nostalgia glasses when you should look at specs. They only advantage they have is input latency.
Fr like back in the days, humans built gigantic heavy blocks of technology, just to get a small, low resolution, glimmering display, then they built some thick slices of power guzzlers to get an absolutely beautiful looking display, and now we made energy efficient, super thin high resolution TVs and notice, that our previous techniques had so many advantages! I'm glad that we have some CRTs and a plasma tv!
*laughs from behind OLED display* yes I am aware tubes look better. Unfortunately tubes also weighs 60 lb, take up the entire desk, and make a stupid fucking whine. I fully acknowledge that they can provide a better picture but I also don't care because they were annoying to deal with.
Laser Lens too bad Oled still can’t touch the motion clarity of a crt. All flat panels use a “sample and hold” technique for displaying each frame while a crt strobes the frame.
I know you're trying to find an FW900. My tips would be messaging senior photo editors and graphic designers. They used FW900 back in the days and might have them laying around (unlikely but hey, worth a shot) Try to find an old forum post where they discuss about it and message the ones who are still active and posting. Happy hunting 🤠
One thing I liked about ALL CRTs is they are glass. They don't have a soft plastic surface like LCDs often have. CRTs were practically indestructible as long as they don't fall hard onto the floor. Not only did CRTs take up more space than an LCD but CRTs were sometimes very heavy depending on their size. If they did not contain toxic metals such as lead we would probably not have been phasing CRTs out. I still have a CRT TV in my bedroom. The only real problem with CRTs is trying to dispose of them. The garbage collectors don't take them any more in some cities. Just drive down an alley in Pittsburgh and you will see one sometimes that the owner of was just too lazy to search for a place to take it to and get rid of it.
The GDM-FW900 was/is a beast. I retired mine after 10+ years due to the brightness going down and the focus starting to pulse from time to time. But I can't bring myself to abandon it. :)
The dimmed tube can actually be revived, although the process can either kill it or restore it to it's previous glory. It involves electrocuting the cathode with a capacitor, look it up, there should be some info in english about that.
@@EposVox Alright. I see your 1024 and raise you a "En Ee Ess" and not "NES". (Also really liked your SDK video on the StreamDeck. I hope you do a tutorial series for it)
@@deus_ex_machina_ Never 1080p (ten-eighty pee) or 720p (seven-twenty pee)? Twice as fast, but not that accurate if you are not running 16:9 (or somewhat similar) aspect ratio...
All you young whipper snappers, In my day we had the specs "three twenty by two hundred and six forty by four eighty" memorized and we were glad for it by gum. Nowadays my 1080Ti won't even list a resolution below 800x600. No respect for the older resolutions I tell you. *shakes fist*
You missed the best part. Viewing angles! They're perfect, with no colour or contrast banding and shifting. Also no blur. I've tried 144hz monitors and they're NO WHERE NEAR as smooth as a 100hz crt. The only monitor I've seen that I would consider is one with 'backlight strobing' to simulate the technical reason crts look so smooth. It was an Acer at 120hz and apart from much worse blacks/viewing angles, seemed very nice.
I was using a Samsung CRT till this year, decided to buy an IPS. It is better in only one regard - colors are brighter. CRT indeed had tons of resolutions (I used 1600x1200 85Hz), had MUCH deeper blacks, greys were seamlessly blending into one another (instead of a "ladder" of different shades), and it was sharper and had no visible "cubes"\pixels. Also I loved how when you turn the brightness lower CRT made the blacks and greys much darker, but left whites and bright spots as they were. IPS just tones down everything, and thus I can't get as realistic a picture as on CRT.
Remember that you can use your older GPU that has an analog output just as a display out. It works the same as in your laptop with 2 GPUs, you just set a "High performance GPU". Also this is how you can use Freesync with your Nvidia GPU, just output it through and AMD card or APU. Or soon maybe through Intel iGPU, they should bring the support.
LCD and "LED" monitors are the same thing. The only difference is that the "LED" ones use an LED as a backlight instead of a cold cathode fluorescent lamp, but they are still both LCD screens. The only true LED screens are those digital billboards or the jumbo tron at a stadium which actually use LEDs to create the image. OLEDs are a totally separate technology as well
I haven't tried it, but you shouldn't have to buy a $250 digital to analog converter. Just throw in a old video card with a vga connector and enable pass-through from your fast card to the vga card.
I personally have an HDMI to VGA and DisplayPort to VGA inline DACs. The HDMI one...isn't very good - tops out at 1600x1200@60hz. The DisplayPort adapter is another story - it seems more than capable of pushing up to 4k to the monitor, though interlacing seems to confuse it so I end up with 4k@40hz😆
Some people want more performance and OS and system compatibility than using an ancient AGP POS that would at best restrict you to Windows XP. A last gen card like a GTX 980 has a DVI port with the analog connectors so you only need a $5 adapter for that or you could use a an Intel CPU with 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐋 𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐈𝐂𝐒 and a motherboard with a VGA port as long as you don't plan on playing any decent games from the last 10 years.
@@jaxativejax662 you don't get it do you? By passing through to an older card with vga connector you keep the performance of the fast card. But yes a AGP card would probably be incompatible.
I currently have an DELL E773p monitor with a basic resolution of 1024x768 (for optimal uses) for a maximum refresh rate of 85Hz. I picked it up at my school because it was no longer working, I proposed to my teachers to repair it and, in exchange, I pick it up. Since then, I use it as a secondary screen to play old games. I don't think I've ever seen such a high quality CRT monitor!
If you want a good adapter for DP to VGA I suggest the Delock 62967. It only costs 25€ compared to the hdfury and has enough bandwith for 96khz and 110khz monitors. I just wanted to suggest since 250€ is stupid expensive for an adapter, might aswell pickup a 980 at that point
One of the things i now regret is smashing old crt monitors whenever we came across them cleaning out of old office buildings for demolition. I recall many being flat screen variants. Probably smashed over 300 monitors in my life. I will now be on the lookout for safekeeping.
What I miss about CRT monitors were how they managed to soften every pixel and make them glow almost. If anyone has played any old DOS or SNES games on LCDs they'd know that everything looks super blocky. I've tried pixel shaders that attempt to mimick the nice glow from CRTs onto LCD but they just look pretty bad.
I still have a CTR monitor in my basement but a rat sprayed blood over it... Yeaaah. luckily it didn't pour inside though. Tbh I don't even want to know what the rats were doing in my basement on my CTR monitor.
Man! That last facebook group with the CRT flight simulator at 19:12 .... The CRTs alone drawing more than 1000W. xD I love CRTs though. I recently got a hold of a very simple Compaq V70... 1024x768@85Hz. 1280x1024@60Hz. But even if it is a simple consumer monitor the image is great. I use it for My Commodore Amiga 1200 (using GBS-C scaler for RGB Scart to VGA) Dreamcast 480p VGA as well as Emulation and Retro PC gaming with a GTX750Ti (Analogue output). I will upgrade it whenever I can find a new better CRT, but honestly, they are quite impossible to get hold of locally in Southern Sweden.
I feel so bad. Last year I had to throw away a 200hz flatscreen CRT (I think) probably even was Sony. Just that I didn't know who would buy it and they so heavy to ship. Now I want it back. Any idea how much it would have been worth now?
I still remember my Sony GDM-FW900. My back and desk remember it too. I gave it away years ago, when it wasn't very sought after. In fact I had to practically beg someone to take it. Times have changed apparently.
My dad bought a 20-something inch flat screen (not flat panel) Sony Trinitron. I remember being able to select approximately 1080p @ 240 Hz. The thing was MASSIVE, but it looked fantastic. Not as easy on the eyes due to the near-instant update rate. I'm an electrical engineer. The technology of CRTs are much more flexible, but very complicated due to needing a high voltage supply. LCDs require a lot of digital electronics, though.
Got myself a mint condition LG Flatron lately and damn, that really reminded me why they had to basically force me to finally ditch CRTs around 2010... There's honestly nothing better for gaming.
Any recommendations besides the HDfury for using a crt with modern gpu? I have an rtx 2080 so I do have the newest (assuming newest) hdmi and displayport connectors. Right now I have an hdmi to vga like you show in the video but I am having an issue displaying ANY interlaced refresh rate (even at something bizarre like 800 x 600 @ 60Hz) and I'm assuming this is why.
I had that exact ViewSonic CRT back in the 90s at my parents. Used it for years and years until Christmas 2005, I got a Dell D2405FPW which I used until a few months ago, and the old Dell is STILL working JUST fine.
"Avoid Ebay" I do agree with you, absolutely. Though I did get my 14" PVM from there lol It's great, but I'm actually getting myself a computer monitor since the screen is bigger, plus all the resolution benefits. It's kind of annoying since I can't go higher than 480i on my PVM. Also, if you like scanlines, you can use the RetroTink Ultimate to output a Raspberry Pi at 320p 120hz, which will allow 31khz and will make natural scanlines (Though the provided version of Lakka can be configured to output 480p/720p/1080p through VGA and Component. I use a Raspberry Pi to play GB and GBA games on my PVM over component so that would be a great setup! The only thing I wish were possible to do is to take an old console signal and convert it to a 120hz output to get the same result. I plan to just use the RetroTink 2X as you did.
Appreciate the love for CRTs but could do without LCD bashing. Sure CRTs have benefits to gaming over modern displays, but also vice versa. It's ultimately a preference thing and there's no reason to be negative about tech.
This is literally a tech love letter, saying I'm being negative is just being pedantic. The disadvantages to LCDs are objective complaints. While yes, LCDs have other advantages over CRTs, pointing out the flaws in the tech (something I happily did for CRTs, too) isn't "bashing".. holy cow.
The most satisfying thing about having a CRT as a kid: opening it up while it's on to see how it works and "popping" the capacitors with a butter knife. Great fun when you're a kid.
People really over exaggerate how “dangerous” a crt is They really aren’t, just use an anti static risk band, discharge the Catho Tube with a flat head, and you should be fine to tinker with the components
made me laugh when mates at school were so amazed when the first "HD" consoles came out when I had been play games like quake 2 at 1280 x 1024 at 80hz for years before on PC. It was at this point I became pc master race ;D
@@JPX64ChannelThe biggest advantage they have is that they are written in one specific way that makes them much easier to emulate on a PC, even Windows 7 games are becoming pain in the ass to run on Windows 10, with a console you just download the emulator, load the iso/rom and youre good to go.
@@JPX64Channel "good pc", I emulated GTA VCS, LCS 7 years ago no problem on my Phenom II x3 I didn't follow PS2 emulation since then but I guess the emulator regressed somehow over the years?
My last CRT was an NEC 6FG. Although it was a great CRT I had always issues with more a patterns on certain parts of the screen and with Focus uniformity across the entire tube. And it wasn't until I got a professional LCD display with a wide color gamut that I realized that the colors on my CRT were rather muted. I could not get those Dayglo pink and red and blue colors out of a CRT that I got out of the wide gamut LCD. Granted the LCD was an expensive model for graphic design use. But I still have the LCD it's over 10 years old. And now we have DCI 4K LCD panels in our Production Studio and they look incredible.
I never thought that my Sony GDM-FW900 would be worth anything 17 years later I barely use it. When I purchased it, it was expensive and took a few week to arrive, but worth it and still love it. One interesting thing about it was when I did get it was that the manufacturing date on it was after I placed the order, I have always wondered if Sony once receiving an order assembled one then shipped it, I doubt it, but who knows. I hope you find one I will be keeping mine for a while.
@@wormbagged It may be awhile before it breaks, like i said, I have used it very little, it currently is not at my main residence. When I do get a chance to use it, it's only about a month out of the year and I have it hooked up to a double conversion ups, I want it to last as long as possible. It's really hard to explain to people why I baby it and keep it, but when I turn it on and hook it up it's easy to see that a new flat panel just can't produce that picture the "outdated" CRT can, people are just used to the unnatural colors that are on there phones.
Ex-Staples Tech Supervisor here, Staples has changed their policy, they no longer take CRT monitors. Some stores still don't know about the policy change, so you can sometimes get away with it I'm sure, but just a heads up.
Turns out that was just the stores in my district. I went to their website and it still says they take CRTs. Not sure why my district was the only one, or if there were others.
@@SauerkrautNCheese they probably don't sell well, you need a certain kind of weirdo specifically looking for these, and those weirdos don't exist in your neighborhood lol
Thanks for good introduction to the world of CRT. What do you think about PC Monitors from mid 90s. I'm soon picking up a Goldstar-monitor which came with a PC 486 from around 1994. I was hoping to connect my laptop to it (it has VGA connector) to play some dos games through Dosbox, but I'm a bit unsure if the transfer will work out. Are there any risks in connecting modern computers to old monitors? And how do early 2000 differ from mid to late 90s monitors?
How human brain works: I see crt in the background on his video ME: Wow look at those nice deep colors. WAIT.🤔 Im looking at this trough my lcd monitor lel rip logic
it may sound counter-intuitive, but you CAN judge color characteristics of the crt despite its recorded with a camera and viewed on an lcd, its like an "analog intermediate". its the same principle like when you film a scene with an anlog film camera (16mm etc), digitalize it (telecine, scanner, digicam etc) and view it on an lcd, it still has the analogue "look", looks organic, beautiful colors etc. the analog film, or also the crt does something to the image, give it distinct characteristics, which can be recorded again and then still be noticeable. crt displays and anlogue(chemical) film have some aesthetic and technical similarities, thats why also a modern pc game looks so beautiful on a (good, well adjusted) crt
Basically, no camera is perfect. Pictures taken by any camera will be saturated. Thus, even if you could see the true contents of a camera, they still would not reflect reality. However, since images sensors work differently from the human eye, and things like Moiré patterns and IR bleeding are unavoidably different, details that we are not able to see get picked up. The distortion of those details during processing may amplify subtle differences (e.g. computer screens) in the finished result, regardless of whether that result is viewed on a CRT or an LCD monitor. Since we aren't seeing the "real thing", we have to rely on comparing the things we _can_ see. Apart from the video being obviously processed the shit out of, what our eyes are able to pick up is approximately equal to the "real thing". Another example of this is comparing audio equipment. If the sound sensor (microphone) is even _reasonably_ good, one should be able to tell significant differences in the real equipment from a digital sample. The human brain is simply that proficient in picking out differences. Of course, there are situations where one might say that a sensor simply sucks too much to even be compared to a human sensory system, as is the case with old phone cameras and dynamic microphones. But most professional/high end equipment such as what's used in this video is certainly comparable.
@@___xyz___ i think you mean, we humans with our chemical + neuronal seeing LEARN the errors and distortions from typical digital cameras and lcd screens, and with this knowledge we unconciously GUESS quite well how the real thing must have looked. that seems correct. it does not depend very much on the quality of the camera, monitor, as long as we know this kind of equipment and what it usually does to reality.
I still use the same CRT monitor from my first (decent) computer from 2002. I liked it so much that when it got wrecked from a power failure (or whatever causes a horizontal "wrinkle" to form), I went out of my way to find another on eBay in 2010. Needless to say, I paid precious cos if its weight and size which made the shipping more expensive than the monitor itself. But so worth it. Still running it today.
Same here. Still using my CRT monitor. My older one got damaged, so a friend offered me this one, since he didn't use it and takes a lot of space to store it. Best decision ever :D Got a little brightness problem (can't go up a certain value) and crops a little of the upper right corner... But totally worth it :)
Friends made fun of me for years because I still used one. I said I'd swap to LCD when they catch up to CRT in performance. They just assumed I was stuck in the past or too poor. (Excuse me, I paid over $1000 for that monitor!) Your video made me feel a little vindicated. I just recently got rid of my last CRT. I didn't even know there was this counterculture around them. Value Village, a thrift store chain in N.A., offers free electronics recycling. I just took it to them. Guess I shoulda thrown it on OfferUp or something to see if a collector wanted it first.
@@mr.stealyourgirl1779 Depends what you want to do wih them. Theres no way you would use a crt as a screen for a big home theather. A large thin oled would be miles better. but as a work monitor for certain productivity tasks(like photoshop or video editing), gaming(especially older games), and watching a movie on a smaller, closer screen, it can be really good. The whole reason oled was so useful in the first place, even with excessive burn in and ghosting issues, is that it was able to achieve CRT-like black levels and color reproduction. Thats what people mean by "catching up" with crts. Also refresh rates on those are increasing nowadays, but 60fps (especially for tvs) is STILL the norm. Even things like gsync or freesync have for decades been possible on crts by changing the vblank interval.
@@lutyanoalves444 CRT monitors aren't good for anything nowadays except for nostalgia, LCD panels have come a long way like the LCD's apple use in there mac pros or lg's hdr 10 Dolby vision oled panels. CRT monitors can only be as good as we remember them. CRT monitor can either do high refresh rates or high resolution, not both, but VA lcd panels can and do both, like my 144hz 1080p monitor.
I appreciate the amazing rundown! I just picked up a Dell E772p for use with my original Xbox. However, the HD Fury Nano GX is no longer available. Do you have a recommendation for a suitable replacement?
Funny to see millenial hipster types get excited over CRT's. Like it's some unearthed lost treasure. Never mind they were unreliable, power hogs, larger screens could heat the average sized home all by themselves and of course the whole screen flicker thing that basically ruined the eyes of an entire generation. I still get migraines looking at them. I'll deal with the input lag if I can save my eyesight. CRT's were a product of their time and having been in tech for almost 30 years I'm glad their time has passed. Sadly their worst aspect is disposal which usually has mountains of them ending up in poor Asian countries where the local inhabitants are suffering not only from the mess but the toxins contained in the CRT tubes and electronic components.
It's funny to see allegedly older people jump to call me a "milennial hipster" with no concept of age ranges or technology's development, as I am old enough to have spent more years of my life using exclusively CRTs pre-LCD takeover than using LCDs. All because I have a niche interest.
Well people are dumb, then. Especially since that particular Pokemon is from a game that released when we were still very much in CRT-only land. People's sense of time is so far off.
@@EposVoxMillennials: Born 1981-1996 (22-37 years old) which would put you in or around the millennial category and hipsters are usually ppl with weird niche hobbies that most ppl don't understand Like crt monitors or collecting cassetes or records or vhs tapes or all hosts of different weird things since you qualify for both just embrace it
Everything I've seen for Millennial/Gen Y extends to 2004, but yes, I am a millennial - but the implication (or sometimes direct statement) by many comments such as these is that I'm too young and never "actually used" CRTs when LCDs didn't take over until over halfway through my lifespan so far. As if they think CRTs died out in the 80s or some nonsense. And "hipster" is used as an insult. I'll embrace the Pichu hat all day, but people not understanding how time works, less so.
I had an electrohome ecp4500 crt projector. Looked like traffic lights and weighed 60 kilos. Best for gaming by a mile. No blur, black blacks, high native contrast, good brightness in dark room, no input lag, 30 000 hour tube life. Mine had hdfury adapter at 720p/1080i. There is tonne of calibration that can take hours to setup correctly but the quality is worth it. I was 38 rank in the world in Killzone 2 playing on it till the green tube died. I binned it 5 years ago. I use epson eh tw9100w and despite the benefits its has. It has got poor motion resolution, 60 ms input lag, panel misalignment.
I feel nostalgic for the static discharge, the ionized air smell, the high-pitched static noise, the heat and the resolutionless sharpness of these displays... The first LCDs were truly a shitfest - dim, ghosting, boring. I've got a pretty decent display now, a 27" IPS 165Hz 1440p G-Sync display. Very good contrast, very fast. But there is some pixel response blur in action and I can't really play old games scaled up without them looking crap. I can't exactly justify buying a CRT screen now, but I do 100% miss them. Well, I don't miss the eye strain... :D
my issues with CRTs are the noticeable flicker (even at over 60hz), the frequent geometry issues, the extreme weight, the depth, the noise patterns from the mismatch between the pixels and the dots on the screen, and the mild paranoia that they may be bathing me in harmful radiation still keep one for my classic game consoles tho
CRTs don't irradiate their users with anything more than visible light and low frequency microwaves - the X-rays are safely contained within the tube itself(this shielding is what makes CRT tubes heavy)
@@pyeltd.5457 i know full well that any properly constructed crt will not leak any hazardous radiation, but knowing that it generates it is still scary lol
I've never noticed flicker on a crt (in person) that was running over 60hz. Please clarify if you have first hand experience with a crt at 60hz or are going by video recordings of crts in use.
The only issues I have with CRTs (mostly TVs tho) is the annoying whine and geometry indeed. If they didn't have the geometry issue at high contrast scenes near edges, I would definitely love them even more. The TV whine is easily solvable with headphones thankfully. The flicker I only notice with my peripheral vision, focusing on it straight on I don't see anything, but seeing it from the sides does bother me a lot too.
so I never had any really high-end CRTs, but the ones I did have could go up to around 76 hz usually, at which point the flicker was still quite noticeable, but only if I didn't look directly at it. as for the whining noise, that's more of a TV problem, since as long as the Hsync is above 20khz or so it's basically impossible to hear. and once we passed the mid 90s, almost nothing ran that low
It's nice to see someone that still appreciates CRT monitors these days, LCDs were a large leap back in technology and it took them decades to offer even a fraction of the features a CRT had available for the previous half century. It wasn't until just the past few years that LCDs graduated from being stuck at 60 Hz, which genius designers thought was OK because the backlight was on all the time and you didn't need a higher refresh rate. I still have eight CRTs in decent condition and a further two that are not functional due to analog board issues and one which had a short in the VGA cable that I've not been able to work the pinout for. The two with analog board issues are unfortunately my best monitors, both were a matching set of 21" Dell P1130s. One stopped working completely due to multiple component faults and the other has similar faults but still works with a vertical retrace line. I'll eventually fix them, I just need the time to sit down at my bench and test the boards as they're super complex. Your pink CRT monitor is a lost cause. It has both analog board faults and a very worn out tube. You can fix the analog board, but the image is still going to be pink and dark because the electron guns are worn out. You can sometimes use a tube rejuvinator to get a bit of extra life out of them, or crank the current up on the flyback, but this will drastically accelerate the death of the tube. Rebuilding the tube is possible, but it requires specialized equipment and knowledge that is quickly vanishing.
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
I was quoted in a VICE article on the subject! www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz4gqm/why-this-20-year-old-crt-monitor-is-better-than-a-4k-lcd?
Some have expressed unhappiness with the current offerings of CRT communities in my video, and I get why. I've made a channel for it in my discord server! I'm as welcoming as I can be! (which might not say much) eposvox.com/discord
I live in a small apartment with an extra room which my wife suggested be dedicated to my collection. I'm nothing close to rich. But hey, congrats on handling your own insecurities by being negative and toxic about other people's passions! That'll get you far in life!
EposVox
A quick question, aside from response time and input lag, how does a CRT monitor compare to a VA LCD monitor?
A CRT is an electron accelerator, they don't actually have pixels, they are extremely inefficient, they are blurry. You're making the same sort of argument that "audiophiles" make with the supposed superiority of vinyl records over CDs.
I used to work for RCA. Audiophiles don't know what they are talking about when they discuss audio quality, and you don't know what you're talking about when you are claiming a CRT is underappreciated compared to it's completely digital counterparts.
yeAH i DO NOT REMEMBER THE BRAND OR NAME OF THE MONITOR i HAD BUT IT WAS HUGE, FLAT SCREEN, CRYSTAL CLEAR, GREAT COLOURS AND VERY HIGH REFRESH RATE... oops capslock, Anyway I still miss that monitor to this day and its a shame it blew with a big time BANG!, I am currently Running a 1440P IPS widescreen display "Asus VX24A" , sharpest flat panel I have ever had and I would dare say would give a lot of the high end CRT monitors a run for there money when it comes to colour reproduction... the damn thing best do since its full sRGB compliant.
Tech was shittier but more interesting in the 90s. If you go to a tech show now it's mostly smartphone cases and phone gadgets. In the 90s there were robots, lasers, cyborgs, airships, hoverboards, holograms, x-ray vision, AI, CRT, and VR except none of it worked well or at all sometimes but it was exciting!
My grandma said it was insane to hold onto my old Dell P990 19" CRT capable of 180hz at 640x480 but who's crazy now grandma? Oh it's me...
Pandaren Warrior 180hz!?!? That’s fucking awesome!!
A lot of radiation in your eyes? fking awesome!!
Valentin Rivas They don‘t have that high radiation
@@ManOfAttitudeLP1998 then why did they have anti-radiaton filters ?
Valentin Rivas not as much as your phone
I miss the static electricity that would make my arm hair stick to the screen and make that fun Pop Rocks sound.
I flashed back for a few seconds to my old Win 95 PC when I was four...
You might mix up CRT TVs with Monitors. No static with my Monitor and I don't remember my old CRT Monitors (at least the one I was using from 2001 to 2009) being staticy.
Don't forget about the little high pitch rig.
@@moomah5929 I think newer ones did not build so much static electricity as older ones. I remember having CRT monitor from around 1996 and it built a bit of static electricity, enough to have some fun with it. Newer ones I had did not do that though.
@@dmcemmet You could be right, it's been a long time since that time and can't really remember the feel of my old old monitors. This Philips 107E seems to be from around 2000, at least it's the earliest information I could find about it. We also had a Monitor for the C64 (a Commodore 1084 I believe) in the early 90's, where I can't remember it being staticy but then again it had a removable glass panel (tinted/filter?) in front of the actual screen, if I remember correctly.
It's a shame that you can't find any repair store that will deal with CRTs. I live in Chile and I'm literally the last person left in my city that works on and repairs CRTs if the person's willing to pay for the spare parts to get it back up and running. I even solder back the VGA cables, it's not that hard really.
i salute you for keeping up with your job
Come to my country i need you
Qué ciudad? Da tus datos, todavía uso CRT, en una de esas necesito tu taller algun día.
Very SteinsGate of you
@@alexiv5249 Vivo en Curicó. Si necesitas contactarme por cualquier motivo, puedes enviarme un mensaje privado.
man this is just depressing to see this tech die. Its so impressive.
Chicken!
?@@DavidZappi
Finally, someone that actually "gets it" when it comes to monitors. The ONLY reason I switched from CRT to LCD was because of widescreen support... If they made a widescreen CRT today, I couldn't give them my money fast enough!
they did make widescreen CRT monitors, infact i think SGI made a 1080p 16:9 CRT monitor
My liver take it or leave it
I have one, not a monitor but a Panasonic CRT TV. If you can call it widescreen but it's close.
widescreen crt's exist. also widescreen isnt that big of a deal
Something is different in the way a CRT displays the picture, the pixels are drawn one at a time, it keeps the brain busy with new information instead of "downloading" a picture 60 or 120 times per second. You can't see the picture being displayed but the brain knows... OLED won't give you that feeling.
I just miss the scaling. You could switch to any resolution you liked, provided it was supported, and the CRT was like, "Yeah, not a problem. I can do that." I love my giant LCD display, but I do wish it could scale down from native without looking like someone's smeared Vaseline all over the screen. I still play a bunch of older games on a CRT, because it just looks better.
I came into this video as a skeptic, and you converted me to CRT fan. I was quite surprised to learn how advanced this old technology was in the early 2000s. What a great, informative video!
GTX 980 Ti with a CRT.
Once you truly see 240 fps there is no going back. *Edit:* (120hz x 2 interlaced, from Stereo CRT monitors for old shutter glasses.)
I also enjoy the extra radiation while playing Fallout.
What monitor?
That would be so awesome! Unfortunately, I got banned from Fallout 76 for fixing the fps bug where you move like fucking Flash Gordon over 60fps. Let me take a sip of this shitty rum while I tell you all about it...
I'm blind! Rock gut no name booze in a plastic un-pourable shrourd of disappointment...
I digress radiation sucks and is no laughing matter. Did you know that my last MRI gave me googly eyes? screw Bethesda! I only had that stroke after they ruined the good name of the last good game franchise. Dark humour about the end of the world and an immoral "all American" corporation. How do you fuck that up. Like really? :-/
Uh... you imply you have a 240Hz CRT?
I'm not aware that those existed or exist. If you just mean 240FPS on a CRT of lower refresh rate then I don't know what your point could possibly be.
I get the sarcasm about Fallout though.
I've never heard of a CRT monitor capable of 240hz, what brand is this mythical beast...more to the point what game are you playing that can give you 240fps on a 980ti,,,Quake 3?
You must get sick and tired of swapping out fusion cells on that monitor...
@@jaxativejax662 _"You must get sick and tired of swapping out fusion cells on that monitor..."_ He's a regular over at Tosche Station.
Digital Foundry recently covered CRTs with modern games. And they have that holy grail you talked about!
I KNOW I'M SO JEALOUS
@@EposVox They hinted about making another video about CRTs. I'm really intrigued!
Honestly they are so good they make modern monitors look like scams. I wish crt TVs had the same thing too!
Don't put a sign that says "Free" on it, no one will take it. You have to put like "$10" if you want someone to take it because they'll just steal it. If you say "free", no one will want it.
Trust me, I've gotten rid of enough stuff to know lol.
lol good tip! but... kinda sad too. :/
@@Choom2077 Yeah it's unfortunate but that's how it works lol, and I live in a pretty nice neighborhood too haha.
You sir, are brilliant,
I'd never thought of this if you hadn't mentioned it... Cheers!
I picked up some free stuff because it was labeled as such.
I am pretty awkward when it comes to social contact in real life.
This way I can pick up stuff without feeling too bad about it while also avoiding personal blunders :)
Ahahahaha, would never work in sweden, but I get it should work in amurica XD
miss the crt days until I remember I held my 27" 4K monitor in one hand while I screwed in the vesa mounting screws with the other to the dual adjustable monitor arms :p
Here too, I love my 15 year old birthday present CRT TV, 21" with component input. I love it - as long as it keeps there and I don't need to move it from the stand. And that's still just 21 inches (true tho that it's a wall mount so it's a horrible hassle, less the weight and more the position you need to take to move it).
Also when we gave away our 29" Panasonic CRT TV, that monster wasn't more than 32 kilos (sorry, ain't converting to pounds) but it was still a hassle to move.
What I most miss from CRT TVs tho, was the built-in sound. No LCD I've seen, ever, came close to that 29" Panasonic one that could actually do bass down to the 60Hz or so.
PC LCD monitors with speakers are also just there to say they're there. My old LCD monitor had speakers and I never dared even testing them. I bet my laptop would be better, not exaggerating.
why do i have to use adblocker and instantly click forward 1:30 in every single video to actually watch a video.
I remember when I have a gaming PC in 2005 with the CRT monitor and it was a memory
switched years ago from a 40 kilo monster. i can tell ya, no lan party was held without a shopping cart to move that thing away from my place to my buddies
what I miss most is degaussing my screen😂
I actually asked my school's principal if I could have 5 of the supposedly junked CRTs, 2 fully functional IBM keyboards, and 2 IBM PC cases. (which I did get)
I no longer have any of my old CRT monitors, but definitely have plenty of experience with them. Worked at Best Buy before flat screens even came out, so I have a LOT of experience hoisting them heavy bastards up a ladder too lol
hahah yeah exatly
its just like tube amps opposed to solid state....except tube amps really do kick but i will haul those all day
They are great vs. LCDs until recently with better technologies (OLEDs are unquestionable and the extinct Plasma based TVs)
My first LCD in 2007 with CCFL has decent color vs CRT but poor contrast. It still works and using it for the kids, only with some water like stains on the screen on some angles.
Single LED color (blue) based LCD's appeared and they are highly convenient, low power, low heat, lighter, and slimmer but image quality is almost trash. I know as I have a cheap laptop with that display.
These days though, I don't think CRT still has a place except for the nostalgia and getting it for free. Most new LCDs today now have decent contrast (IPS, AHVA, HDR, etc) and color (quantum, nanocell), higher refresh.
Been friends with Adam for a good long while. Did a collab or two with him on the Tech channel too. :)
Damn up a ladder, and i thought i had it bad moving them from a truck to the store
Great video, I just recently picked up a nice Viewsonic CRT and I gotta say I've fallen in love with it and I'm starting to get a little obsessed. It's sad how rare even mediocre pc crt monitors are getting. It's like everyone has gotten rid of them and most of them are probably sitting in recycling centers just gathering dust. To bad they don't make them anymore I'm fearing the day mine breaks down and can't be repaired, speaking of which I guess I should start learning how to fix these things so I can keep one as long as possible.
I picked up a nice ViewSonic Optiquest Q71 recently
Someone in my neightbourhood left their old CRT by the side of the road. I am now using it to watch this video.
The best part about CRTs isn't very low input lag but no image ghosting at all. If you'll play a game with high contrast fast moving objects most LCDs will give you blurry edges of those objects or some color "shadows" will be there. Which isn't the case for CRTs. No fixed resolution is the second best thing. 320x200 to 2048x1536 with image staying sharp - impossible for LCDs but any decent 21" CRT can do that.
Well there is something to look forward to oled, recently joled showed of some gaming monitors and sony and panasonic are working together on some oled displays they are probably going to be expensive though.
@@nestaash Main question about OLED monitors is how long will they last. I don't feel like spending 3k on something that will last for 3-4 years. Also i'm not sure if they are better at handling multiple resolutions.
@@shadowflash705 well you are right about a lot of things they will probably be over $2000 when they release but they will get cheaper as time goes on, oleds are known to burn in but if they are making gaming monitors they will try to implement some functions to help with the problem and the user will have to vary the content they watch and nothing can handle resolutions that are non-native like a CRT can.The reason why i look forward to them is the infinite contrast ratio they have and most of all how well they handle motion i can tell you 60hz gaming on a oled although not as smooth as gaming on a 165hz LCD IPS monitor has less blur. oleds monitors will most likely produce the best overall image quality, who knows they can suck at release or be the best thing since CRT we will just have to wait and see.
It's not just ghosting where CRTs are superior. They have superior motion clarity as well. LCDs use sample-and-hold technology. CRTs are completely different, and because of this they have WAY LESS motion blur. A 60hz LCD will keep a pixel displayed for a full 16.6 milliseconds. A CRT will display a pixel for about 1 milliseconds, thus substantially reducing motion blur. This is referred to as pixel persistence or just persistence; you will sometimes see monitors marketed with 1ms persistence (they use a gimmick to achieve this, it's not good like CRTs). Checkout a site called BlurBusters to read up on this phenomenon and why it happens.
The worst thing though is screen tearing if you have vsync disabled and I hate vsync latency. Nothing like g-sync/freesync
People forget the best thing about owning a CRT monitor, pressing the degauss button.
Wave of nostalgia
but if you pressed it too much, you'd get brain damage
Someone make small program that will mimic the degauss please!
@@lysol7204 wtf dude I was literally thinking of this 5 min ago!
The *best* part of owning a CRT was the absolute certainty that the wind will never slam a door shut that has a CRT stopping it, they're also great at making sure that your ocean liner won't float away.
Maybe i should open up a CRT repair shop... hrmm
Wish I had one near me -- would pay for your services if they were good. Shipping costs, of course, make it impossible to do this beyond local business.
yES
I would come buy if CRTs were still a thing I would have learned the job of a crt technician
Rinoa's Auspicious Travails please
yeah, if you can come up with some really good way to transport crts (maybe some kind of custom built reusable crate) then you might be able to buy, repair, then sell high end monitors, but finding tubes that run well enough to repair is hard.
maybe if you get good enough you could salvage and jerry-rig components to make good custom monitors, there might even be some new technologies that make homemade CRTs possible, possibly without the intensive tube manufacturing
I love those Sony GDM FW900 monitors. I found 3 when i visited a CAD company a couple of years ago that they was going to throw away but they hadn't bothered carrying them out of the door. I took all 3 and my back was hurting for a week after. Still worth it :)
WOW
Man i miss my FW9010 so much. Kinda regret throwing it out when the flyback went kaput and wouldn't turn on. But moving it cross country was just too much hassle :/
@@AFluffyMobius are you sure it was even the flyback?
@@wormbagged I can only assume at this point. Before complete failure, it would sometimes "blink" like crazy with the picture going in and out.
I need some peanut butter with my jelly
My problem with CRTs is that they emit an extremely obnoxious high-pitched noise that makes it impossible for me to use them. It just gets too annoying and I can hear it so well that I can sometimes hear them from >30 metres away (eg when used in a museum).
I always go like 'Oh, there is a CRT around' and everyone is like 'how did you know that?'.
The horizontal scan rate of NTSC CRT TVs is about 15khz. This is what makes the sound. Meanwhile, all PC CRTs are 65-141khz, well above human hearing range.
Oh yeah I remember that whine, both from CRT TVs and Monitors, most obnoxious things ever.
Not every CRT emit that noise, anyway for me was real when they were running at 60hz. Not only the screen was too bright, but they would usually make that insane noise. Increasing the refreshrate to 75 or 85 was the "fix" to stop that noise instantly.
It's the high voltage transformer driven at line frequency emitting that noise. Usually TV's are run at ~15-16kHz and some are very loud.
@@BadAndUgly I had a 2005 iMac that often made *the* most annoying high pitched noise. I read that they had bad flyback transformers. I don't miss that.
I had an old 22" monster until the mid 2000's, but it ate too much electricity, and no-one was prepared to repair it if it went wrong. Then I ended up with a video card installed without any VGA ports, so I had to update and get rid of the old monitor to recycling. I really miss 4:3 aspect ratio and the monster sized screen.
Ah, the good ol' days.
i still have 4:3 sony lcd monitor
I'm old enough to have grown up with CRTs.
Yes, they had good refresh rates, response time, and resolutions. But they somehow still didn't manage to look as good to my eyes, I think it had something to do with looking through a thick layer of glass that also had a higher tendency to have a slight frosty glare, you could just tell the glass was there, hard to explain. With an LCD the text on a screen almost appears like there is no layer in front of it, almost like you could touch it, we're all used to it now but look at a CRT sometime and you might notice that layer of glass in front of everything. All I know is that as soon as I had my first LCD at 18 years old (19" 4:3 60hz 1280x960) I never looked back. Also, at the time I didn't even notice the refresh rate cap at all, it wasn't until I had it for a little while I learned that just because the fps might say 90 fps, I wasn't really seeing 90 fps. Another downside of CRTs is eye strain, I remember getting hooked on Diablo 2 back in the day, and back then playing for three or four hours straight without stopping was considered a lot, and in that amount of time your eyes would be in quite a lot of pain, this has never happened to me on an LCD. Then there is the desk space issue of course, many people were forced to sit them diagonally on their desks so they wouldn't be sitting too close to their screen, of course this can be fixed with a larger desk, but let's be realistic not everyone was able to for one reason or another, or just never got around to it.
The one downside I immediately noticed on my first LCD was how it looked like garbage in non native resolutions. I was always used to adjusting my resolution on my CRT to get a good framerate on a game, it was the most important graphics option at the time, once I had an LCD I was forced to leave this option alone. That was the only real downside I remember being a big enough downside to notice.
Same here. I have no idea why but i remember playing miniclip on my friends monitor, it was a shitty monitor compared to mine
i never felt at any point in time that any CRTs were better than any LCDs that I had tried for any purpose
Lost beetle to me it sounds as if you're talking about a scenario with a non-flat screen, and/or a bad light source causing glare.
Also I've never had eye strain on a CRT, even when sometimes playing at 60 Hz (2048x 1536. Lower resolutions like 1600x1200 could go higher res), which is not a good refresh rate when the screen is low persistence (60 Hz on an LCD is fine because the pixels stay on and persist, it's not like they're flashing 60 times per second like a CRT is), but I suppose some people might be sensitive
You become sensitive to anything if you spend 8+ hours a day every day for 15+ years. Not to mention that you don't fix youself as fast when you're older.
i Just looked back and feel like playing some snes on an old TV. Lol
Back then we had high framerate CRTs but not the PCs to run high frame rates and now we have PCs to run high framerates but not the right monitor.
I've got a 144hz 1440p LCD monitor but I've never in 30 years of computing seen a CRT that can push either of those specs, the bandwidth of VGA just didn't allow for it even if the tubes themselves could drive it, the VGA cable standard maxes out at 2048×1536px (QXGA) @85 Hz amd even thatrequires a really short, high quality cable.
Funnily enough, when I bought my 144hz 1440p screen it only came with a VGA cable!
@@jaxativejax662 Hahahhahah rip
@@jaxativejax662 Crazy! my asus came with a cable for every single connector it had available
We do, the question is, are you willing to pay for them? A lot of these CRTs are only "affordable" nowadays, and cost four figures new. The same with a good flat panel--if you want massive refresh rates, ultra-low latency, or OLED, that costs money. A lot of money.
Back then we didn't really give a shit, and for those who did - it still cost them a lot of money. Nowadays it's actually easier and cheaper, there are plenty of affordable 1080p monitors with 100+ mhz refresh rates. To think of it, considering the cash this bloke blows on his CRT monitors that let's face it, look ugly as all hell and usually have 4:3 aspect ratio, i don't really see any reason whatsoever to even consider using one, other than for some weird purist reasons.
I witnessed a CRT implosion in the office one day...as a prank, someone dumped metal shavings through the air holes of a monster CRT monitor. The person turned on their monitor, and PLUNK!
ray...tubes, ray tracing?
^^^^^
no beam racing as in many 80/90's games were racing the beam
Oof
had a old dell it was a amazing 1280X1024 120hz
ofered free by a school.
but sadly i had to stop using it it whitened and blured with age.
i replaced it but always felt new monitors flat was so bad.
took a decade to have a flat monitor as good as it was.
but input lag still is a issue.
The issues you're describing are usually fixable by opening the case and adjusting the pots on the flyback transformer
@@n1ghtblur as i said it was more than a decade ago and it is way too late.
90s anime on a CRT monitor = peak comfy
This person gets it.
Actually i do have that Widescreen sony CRT you are talking about at the 11:50 mark. Im using right now actually. And let me tell you watching this vid made me feel good. The story of how i got that monitor basically getting it for free, long story short, was doing a AC job for this old guy who makes wedding movies for a living. He figured that since i cared about this stuff (I was getting into the AV field at the time) he gave it to me for free. Sadly this one has some yellow tin on the bottom right, and the antistaic wrapping is coming apart. Need to get it repaird, but good luck finding someone who can do that in Hawaii. or the price to ship it.... oh gawd.
But im just glad i found this video, cause really. Someone is defending these monitors, and to relish in these old dying tech.
But yes, it is a god tier CRT, like i got 1440p with 90htz like dude. yeah once you have one, all other consumer ones seem shallow in comparision.
better to quickly fire it into the garbage and rejoin 2018.
I miss that satisfying click and sound of the Degauss function.
Ha.. me too. I use to press it just to hear that and see the screen go squiggly even when it didn't need to degauss.
I'm surprised my monitor never exploded doing that so much.
These monitors were tougher than people gave them credit for.
Me to, someone could make a fortune selling a degauss app which imitated the function.
To this day I still use a CRT on my main computer. Been through TWO holy grail Sony 24" monitors since about 2005, but each died a very similar death and each only lasted me about 5 years. I'm now on a 21" Philips 202P flat screen model. Vertically it is virtually identical in height to the Sony, it is just not as wide. I run mine at 1152x864 @ 100 hz. Picture on this is at least as good as either of the Sony's I had and in the 4 years I've had it I haven't noticed any degradation whatsoever of the image quality. Also like the Sony, this has dual inputs including a RGBHV BNC connector which I have connected to a Micomsoft XRGB-3 (which has native VGA output via line-doubling mode) for my Sega Genesis (over JP-21) and my RGB-modded NES (also over JP-21). Picture quality is amazing on this setup for both of my game consoles.
Watching this video on CRT Samsung SyncMaster 795mb. It's good that it's black and silver so it didn't get yellow with time. Soldering a new cable is a bit tedious, but there is nothing extraordinary difficult about it - you just solder wires one by one and isolating them with sticky tape and shrink tubes. I repaired my monitor in 2014 after the cable worned out
The difficult part is figuring out which cable stub goes to which pin on the new connector... not the soldering itself.
I just cut opened both original and new cables and compared their
pinouts using multimeter. Here is what it looks like with some quick
gibberish notes of mine: yadi.sk/d/1ZKsLPfVBi4afw
Soldering was way more difficult than figuring out what goes where. That's a whole different story if you don't have original cable in place though.
Nope, don't miss my massive radiating desk weight. Was an early adopter of lcds.
me too...I got an LCD with my first computer in 2006.
They don't actually radiate... The thick layer of lead infused class blocks all radiation.
Radiation only was a problem with the first series of color TV's when they got into a fault condition.
Didn't realize they radiated stupidity.
Same here. I had experience on CRT's before i got my first computer in 2005 but all my monitors have been LCD since. I totally agreee tho that early LCD-s were pretty poor in terms of image. The main appeal was low power and low size. As time progressed however LCD's advanced. Today i see no reason to get CRT. Yeah it's true LCD has not gotten rid of the signal processing delay and non native resolution issues but in terms of refreshrate, color, contrast and resolution new LCD's are now superior to CRT's. Plus adaptive sync that get's rid of tearing in games is a godsend.
This is my list of LCD's i've owned since 2005:
1280x1024 60Hz TN
1680x1050 60Hz TN
1920x1080 60Hz IPS
2560x1440 165Hz IPS with G-Sync.
@@shabazz18 He's stupid because he was turned off by one of the major problems of CRTs. Okay then, Einstein.
This is great, I remember how a buddy snatched up a 30 inch CRT they phased out at his workplace with some unheard of resolution back then, that freaking behemoth needed its own table but boy was it awe-inspiring, most monitors CRT or early flat panel back then were 15 inches.
He sure enjoyed the heck out of Diablo 2 on that thing.
Wow I'm watching a video from the future. The internet is truly powerful
I used a 21" Trinitron until it died a couple years ago. What a beautiful picture! I'd love to find another one. Worth the power bill.
@Uranium 235 But TV ts suck Pc Monitors and PVM/BVM are the best among crts
CRT still the best display. My eyes get tired very fast when looking at LED display. Only CRT I can use long hours.
Usually the opposite
@@BavarianM Not at high refresh rate
Those things kill my eyes and ears. How can you stand crt
@@TheTca211 CRT Monitors don't cause Eye Strain cause of High Refresh Rate and either don't make these weird sounds cause of 31khz or higher
@@dominikf.5100 hhmmmmmmmmmmmm
all the things in your room.. the nostalgic old games... old school runescape. Truly a man of culture. Subbed
Haha thanks! :D
I still use CRT Tvs for retro gaming. I have a 34" Sony Trinitron Wega XBR955 HD w/HDMI & widescreen for more modern games and an old Curtis Mathes 27" for older games. I also have an NEC multisync monitor and a Viewsonic like the one in your video. However the viewsonic no longer works as one of the VGA pins broke out somehow when I moved last. I also have an older trinitron monitor that has a brightness issue. When it and the viewsonic were working properly, they both had amazing picture quality, better than any of my other CRT monitors. Great video btw!
I do miss the old days of having a monitor that could do any resolution and refresh I wanted to throw at it. 75Hz was considered the bare mininum normal and now the basic normal is only 60Hz. I don't miss the weight and the square screen but so much else about the CRT was actually better. I absolutely noticed blur and lag when I switched to LCD all those years ago. No matter what kind of fancy flat screen I use now nothing ever seems to be as smooth as the CRT was. Its like we've spent years and years trying to engineer our way back to what CRTs could do and we're still not really there. Modern flat screens bring many benefits but still...
Also, I didn't have to run my heater in the winter in my apartment. The Viewsonic kept the whole place nice and roasty.
This really is an excellent review and introduction to the late, great CRT. I hung on to CRT tech for both my PC monitor and HDTV until just recently. I had both the Sony FW900 and the Viewsonic P225F 21 inch. But like EposVox says, once they give up the ghost there is no one to fix them. They are old displays with tons of hours on them. I recycled my PC monitors when they quit working, but still have my CRT HDTV, the Sony XBR910.
If someone made an affordable 16:9 CRT, I'd buy it.
are you also good for a small loan of 100 mil to setup a factory of dubious quality in cheap enough country and an R&D lab to re-engineer the various proprietary processes to achieve relatively sharp picture? :) they were really hard to produce, lots of manual labor
I would too, the brightness of a new CRT still can't be matched with flat panel technology.
Altho the image is nice I prefer the high refresh rate for proper gaming.
Maybe for more scenic games it would be nice tho...
good luck with that.
and good luck to your back after having to drag something that massive across the house.
;-)
Shut up and take my money!
Thank you for making this video! We made sure to share it in our Facebook Group!
We are glad to have people discuss these topics and help represent the things our community stands for.
It is very true that "Retro Gaming" is often just seen as Retro Consoles and that us Retro PC Gamers are often not included, ignored, are a smaller community, and get very little publicity or attention.
You've convinced me. Ok. I've worked in front of CRt monitors for some years when I was a kid but never knew a thing about refresh rates.
CRT monitors had the best colors and the deepest black you can imagine.
Was very true but only until OLED came along.
@@listerdave1240 Unfortunately we don't have OLED monitors for PC users yet. When we do, i agree.
@@dreamreaver1218 Actually we do, there is at least one I know of by Dell. Besides, a 4K OLED TV does exactly what a monitor would. There no longer seems to be any difference between monitors and TVs nowadays except that TVs have tuners and a remote control while PC monitors don't.
I am using a 4K Panasonic TV as my primary monitor for my PC.
@@listerdave1240 oled s are unreliable expensive peace of shites
Best colors and deepest black? They did not. You are looking through nostalgia glasses when you should look at specs.
They only advantage they have is input latency.
Fr like back in the days, humans built gigantic heavy blocks of technology, just to get a small, low resolution, glimmering display, then they built some thick slices of power guzzlers to get an absolutely beautiful looking display, and now we made energy efficient, super thin high resolution TVs and notice, that our previous techniques had so many advantages! I'm glad that we have some CRTs and a plasma tv!
*laughs from behind OLED display*
yes I am aware tubes look better. Unfortunately tubes also weighs 60 lb, take up the entire desk, and make a stupid fucking whine. I fully acknowledge that they can provide a better picture but I also don't care because they were annoying to deal with.
Laser Lens too bad Oled still can’t touch the motion clarity of a crt. All flat panels use a “sample and hold” technique for displaying each frame while a crt strobes the frame.
Laughs in super amoled
Laughs from behinf cave painting
@@randyortonsbulge laughs from 20,000 BC cavemen fire graphics
super amoled is one of the best examples of bad motion clarity
I know you're trying to find an FW900.
My tips would be messaging senior photo editors and graphic designers. They used FW900 back in the days and might have them laying around (unlikely but hey, worth a shot)
Try to find an old forum post where they discuss about it and message the ones who are still active and posting.
Happy hunting 🤠
One thing I liked about ALL CRTs is they are glass. They don't have a soft plastic surface like LCDs often have. CRTs were practically indestructible as long as they don't fall hard onto the floor. Not only did CRTs take up more space than an LCD but CRTs were sometimes very heavy depending on their size. If they did not contain toxic metals such as lead we would probably not have been phasing CRTs out. I still have a CRT TV in my bedroom. The only real problem with CRTs is trying to dispose of them. The garbage collectors don't take them any more in some cities. Just drive down an alley in Pittsburgh and you will see one sometimes that the owner of was just too lazy to search for a place to take it to and get rid of it.
I remember going to LAN partys with my 21" CRT in 2000 ^^ HEAVY!
I still enjoy my 2 CRTs that I got recently.
people actually had to drag those things around?
The GDM-FW900 was/is a beast. I retired mine after 10+ years due to the brightness going down and the focus starting to pulse from time to time. But I can't bring myself to abandon it. :)
The dimmed tube can actually be revived, although the process can either kill it or restore it to it's previous glory. It involves electrocuting the cathode with a capacitor, look it up, there should be some info in english about that.
probably you need a recap, just change every electrolitic capacitor
A big drive towards LCD was power usage and space. Companies wanted lower electricity bills and more room on desks.
If only CRTs were redesigned to minimize those issues.
Take it from an older PC kid. We don't say 1024 (spelled out). We say "ten twenty-four by seven sixty eight." Good video! Keep it up.
I also grew up in that time and those around me said it both ways :P
@@EposVox Alright. I see your 1024 and raise you a "En Ee Ess" and not "NES". (Also really liked your SDK video on the StreamDeck. I hope you do a tutorial series for it)
@@deus_ex_machina_ Never 1080p (ten-eighty pee) or 720p (seven-twenty pee)? Twice as fast, but not that accurate if you are not running 16:9 (or somewhat similar) aspect ratio...
All you young whipper snappers, In my day we had the specs "three twenty by two hundred and six forty by four eighty" memorized and we were glad for it by gum.
Nowadays my 1080Ti won't even list a resolution below 800x600. No respect for the older resolutions I tell you. *shakes fist*
We never called it the NES. It was just "The Nintendo".
You missed the best part. Viewing angles! They're perfect, with no colour or contrast banding and shifting.
Also no blur. I've tried 144hz monitors and they're NO WHERE NEAR as smooth as a 100hz crt. The only monitor I've seen that I would consider is one with 'backlight strobing' to simulate the technical reason crts look so smooth. It was an Acer at 120hz and apart from much worse blacks/viewing angles, seemed very nice.
He also didn't mention anything about motion resolution or how CRTs don't get blurry while the image is in motion.
exactly! +1
My flat screen monitor is fine, does everything a CRT can do but better, also, CRTs are way to big
I was using a Samsung CRT till this year, decided to buy an IPS. It is better in only one regard - colors are brighter. CRT indeed had tons of resolutions (I used 1600x1200 85Hz), had MUCH deeper blacks, greys were seamlessly blending into one another (instead of a "ladder" of different shades), and it was sharper and had no visible "cubes"\pixels. Also I loved how when you turn the brightness lower CRT made the blacks and greys much darker, but left whites and bright spots as they were. IPS just tones down everything, and thus I can't get as realistic a picture as on CRT.
Remember that you can use your older GPU that has an analog output just as a display out. It works the same as in your laptop with 2 GPUs, you just set a "High performance GPU".
Also this is how you can use Freesync with your Nvidia GPU, just output it through and AMD card or APU. Or soon maybe through Intel iGPU, they should bring the support.
I believe it's APU only, not via an AMD card.
@@photonboy999 Nope, it also works with an external card
TL;DW, all CRT's (especially the Trinitrons) are display treasure.
LCD and "LED" monitors are the same thing. The only difference is that the "LED" ones use an LED as a backlight instead of a cold cathode fluorescent lamp, but they are still both LCD screens. The only true LED screens are those digital billboards or the jumbo tron at a stadium which actually use LEDs to create the image. OLEDs are a totally separate technology as well
I'm still playing my 360 on a VGA monitor using that cable.
I haven't tried it, but you shouldn't have to buy a $250 digital to analog converter. Just throw in a old video card with a vga connector and enable pass-through from your fast card to the vga card.
wait those exist?
I personally have an HDMI to VGA and DisplayPort to VGA inline DACs. The HDMI one...isn't very good - tops out at 1600x1200@60hz. The DisplayPort adapter is another story - it seems more than capable of pushing up to 4k to the monitor, though interlacing seems to confuse it so I end up with 4k@40hz😆
Some people want more performance and OS and system compatibility than using an ancient AGP POS that would at best restrict you to Windows XP.
A last gen card like a GTX 980 has a DVI port with the analog connectors so you only need a $5 adapter for that or you could use a an Intel CPU with 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐋 𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐈𝐂𝐒 and a motherboard with a VGA port as long as you don't plan on playing any decent games from the last 10 years.
@@jaxativejax662 you don't get it do you? By passing through to an older card with vga connector you keep the performance of the fast card.
But yes a AGP card would probably be incompatible.
How do you do that? Is this a Windows 10 feature?
I currently have an DELL E773p monitor with a basic resolution of 1024x768 (for optimal uses) for a maximum refresh rate of 85Hz. I picked it up at my school because it was no longer working, I proposed to my teachers to repair it and, in exchange, I pick it up. Since then, I use it as a secondary screen to play old games. I don't think I've ever seen such a high quality CRT monitor!
If you want a good adapter for DP to VGA I suggest the Delock 62967.
It only costs 25€ compared to the hdfury and has enough bandwith for 96khz and 110khz monitors.
I just wanted to suggest since 250€ is stupid expensive for an adapter, might aswell pickup a 980 at that point
ViewSonic CRT was very good
One of the things i now regret is smashing old crt monitors whenever we came across them cleaning out of old office buildings for demolition. I recall many being flat screen variants. Probably smashed over 300 monitors in my life. I will now be on the lookout for safekeeping.
Watching this on CRT :DDD
nice
What I miss about CRT monitors were how they managed to soften every pixel and make them glow almost. If anyone has played any old DOS or SNES games on LCDs they'd know that everything looks super blocky. I've tried pixel shaders that attempt to mimick the nice glow from CRTs onto LCD but they just look pretty bad.
This is one of the reasons I have trouble letting CRT's go. Pixels just look "dead" on an LCD...
I still have a CTR monitor in my basement but a rat sprayed blood over it... Yeaaah. luckily it didn't pour inside though.
Tbh I don't even want to know what the rats were doing in my basement on my CTR monitor.
Man! That last facebook group with the CRT flight simulator at 19:12 .... The CRTs alone drawing more than 1000W. xD
I love CRTs though. I recently got a hold of a very simple Compaq V70... 1024x768@85Hz. 1280x1024@60Hz. But even if it is a simple consumer monitor the image is great. I use it for My Commodore Amiga 1200 (using GBS-C scaler for RGB Scart to VGA) Dreamcast 480p VGA as well as Emulation and Retro PC gaming with a GTX750Ti (Analogue output). I will upgrade it whenever I can find a new better CRT, but honestly, they are quite impossible to get hold of locally in Southern Sweden.
I feel so bad. Last year I had to throw away a 200hz flatscreen CRT (I think) probably even was Sony. Just that I didn't know who would buy it and they so heavy to ship. Now I want it back. Any idea how much it would have been worth now?
Probably $300 if in good condition.
I have found a sold eBay listing of a 17" Sony CPD-200SX monitor that went for $312 USD, no box or manuals.
That is definitely not a great example. Most people are not buying a low end monitor for that much.
@@wormbagged well someone did purchase that monitor for 312 dollars. Make of that what you will.
@@eggyrepublic 300 is unbelievably delusional. 150 at best (nearly perfect condition)
I still remember my Sony GDM-FW900. My back and desk remember it too. I gave it away years ago, when it wasn't very sought after. In fact I had to practically beg someone to take it. Times have changed apparently.
My dad bought a 20-something inch flat screen (not flat panel) Sony Trinitron. I remember being able to select approximately 1080p @ 240 Hz. The thing was MASSIVE, but it looked fantastic. Not as easy on the eyes due to the near-instant update rate.
I'm an electrical engineer. The technology of CRTs are much more flexible, but very complicated due to needing a high voltage supply. LCDs require a lot of digital electronics, though.
Got myself a mint condition LG Flatron lately and damn, that really reminded me why they had to basically force me to finally ditch CRTs around 2010... There's honestly nothing better for gaming.
Any recommendations besides the HDfury for using a crt with modern gpu? I have an rtx 2080 so I do have the newest (assuming newest) hdmi and displayport connectors. Right now I have an hdmi to vga like you show in the video but I am having an issue displaying ANY interlaced refresh rate (even at something bizarre like 800 x 600 @ 60Hz) and I'm assuming this is why.
I had that exact ViewSonic CRT back in the 90s at my parents. Used it for years and years until Christmas 2005, I got a Dell D2405FPW which I used until a few months ago, and the old Dell is STILL working JUST fine.
"Avoid Ebay"
I do agree with you, absolutely. Though I did get my 14" PVM from there lol It's great, but I'm actually getting myself a computer monitor since the screen is bigger, plus all the resolution benefits. It's kind of annoying since I can't go higher than 480i on my PVM. Also, if you like scanlines, you can use the RetroTink Ultimate to output a Raspberry Pi at 320p 120hz, which will allow 31khz and will make natural scanlines (Though the provided version of Lakka can be configured to output 480p/720p/1080p through VGA and Component. I use a Raspberry Pi to play GB and GBA games on my PVM over component so that would be a great setup! The only thing I wish were possible to do is to take an old console signal and convert it to a 120hz output to get the same result. I plan to just use the RetroTink 2X as you did.
Appreciate the love for CRTs but could do without LCD bashing. Sure CRTs have benefits to gaming over modern displays, but also vice versa. It's ultimately a preference thing and there's no reason to be negative about tech.
This is literally a tech love letter, saying I'm being negative is just being pedantic. The disadvantages to LCDs are objective complaints. While yes, LCDs have other advantages over CRTs, pointing out the flaws in the tech (something I happily did for CRTs, too) isn't "bashing".. holy cow.
Plenty of reason to be negative about tech... Why you projecting yourself onto technology? Lol
The most satisfying thing about having a CRT as a kid: opening it up while it's on to see how it works and "popping" the capacitors with a butter knife. Great fun when you're a kid.
People really over exaggerate how “dangerous” a crt is
They really aren’t, just use an anti static risk band, discharge the Catho Tube with a flat head, and you should be fine to tinker with the components
made me laugh when mates at school were so amazed when the first "HD" consoles came out when I had been play games like quake 2 at 1280 x 1024 at 80hz for years before on PC. It was at this point I became pc master race ;D
well console has it's own advantages
@@JPX64ChannelThe biggest advantage they have is that they are written in one specific way that makes them much easier to emulate on a PC, even Windows 7 games are becoming pain in the ass to run on Windows 10, with a console you just download the emulator, load the iso/rom and youre good to go.
@@JPX64Channel "good pc", I emulated GTA VCS, LCS 7 years ago no problem on my Phenom II x3 I didn't follow PS2 emulation since then but I guess the emulator regressed somehow over the years?
Resolution isn't everything. But computer monitors certainly weren't limited by NTSC 480i like TVs did.
My last CRT was an NEC 6FG. Although it was a great CRT I had always issues with more a patterns on certain parts of the screen and with Focus uniformity across the entire tube. And it wasn't until I got a professional LCD display with a wide color gamut that I realized that the colors on my CRT were rather muted. I could not get those Dayglo pink and red and blue colors out of a CRT that I got out of the wide gamut LCD. Granted the LCD was an expensive model for graphic design use. But I still have the LCD it's over 10 years old. And now we have DCI 4K LCD panels in our Production Studio and they look incredible.
I never thought that my Sony GDM-FW900 would be worth anything 17 years later I barely use it. When I purchased it, it was expensive and took a few week to arrive, but worth it and still love it. One interesting thing about it was when I did get it was that the manufacturing date on it was after I placed the order, I have always wondered if Sony once receiving an order assembled one then shipped it, I doubt it, but who knows. I hope you find one I will be keeping mine for a while.
When yours breaks ill buy it from you.
@@wormbagged It may be awhile before it breaks, like i said, I have used it very little, it currently is not at my main residence. When I do get a chance to use it, it's only about a month out of the year and I have it hooked up to a double conversion ups, I want it to last as long as possible. It's really hard to explain to people why I baby it and keep it, but when I turn it on and hook it up it's easy to see that a new flat panel just can't produce that picture the "outdated" CRT can, people are just used to the unnatural colors that are on there phones.
@@Will_RM lol no
Ex-Staples Tech Supervisor here, Staples has changed their policy, they no longer take CRT monitors. Some stores still don't know about the policy change, so you can sometimes get away with it I'm sure, but just a heads up.
RIP
Turns out that was just the stores in my district. I went to their website and it still says they take CRTs. Not sure why my district was the only one, or if there were others.
@@SauerkrautNCheese they probably don't sell well, you need a certain kind of weirdo specifically looking for these, and those weirdos don't exist in your neighborhood lol
@@samsh0-q3a we didn't sell them, they went from us by way of freight to a sorting facility. We're not really sure what happened from there.
Thanks for good introduction to the world of CRT.
What do you think about PC Monitors from mid 90s. I'm soon picking up a Goldstar-monitor which came with a PC 486 from around 1994. I was hoping to connect my laptop to it (it has VGA connector) to play some dos games through Dosbox, but I'm a bit unsure if the transfer will work out. Are there any risks in connecting modern computers to old monitors? And how do early 2000 differ from mid to late 90s monitors?
How human brain works: I see crt in the background on his video ME: Wow look at those nice deep colors.
WAIT.🤔 Im looking at this trough my lcd monitor lel rip logic
it may sound counter-intuitive, but you CAN judge color characteristics of the crt despite its recorded with a camera and viewed on an lcd, its like an "analog intermediate". its the same principle like when you film a scene with an anlog film camera (16mm etc), digitalize it (telecine, scanner, digicam etc) and view it on an lcd, it still has the analogue "look", looks organic, beautiful colors etc.
the analog film, or also the crt does something to the image, give it distinct characteristics, which can be recorded again and then still be noticeable. crt displays and anlogue(chemical) film have some aesthetic and technical similarities, thats why also a modern pc game looks so beautiful on a (good, well adjusted) crt
The camera picks up the better quality anyway, so yes you aren't seeing the truth but you get a glimpse of it.
Basically, no camera is perfect. Pictures taken by any camera will be saturated. Thus, even if you could see the true contents of a camera, they still would not reflect reality. However, since images sensors work differently from the human eye, and things like Moiré patterns and IR bleeding are unavoidably different, details that we are not able to see get picked up. The distortion of those details during processing may amplify subtle differences (e.g. computer screens) in the finished result, regardless of whether that result is viewed on a CRT or an LCD monitor. Since we aren't seeing the "real thing", we have to rely on comparing the things we _can_ see. Apart from the video being obviously processed the shit out of, what our eyes are able to pick up is approximately equal to the "real thing".
Another example of this is comparing audio equipment. If the sound sensor (microphone) is even _reasonably_ good, one should be able to tell significant differences in the real equipment from a digital sample. The human brain is simply that proficient in picking out differences. Of course, there are situations where one might say that a sensor simply sucks too much to even be compared to a human sensory system, as is the case with old phone cameras and dynamic microphones. But most professional/high end equipment such as what's used in this video is certainly comparable.
@@___xyz___ i think you mean, we humans with our chemical + neuronal seeing LEARN the errors and distortions from typical digital cameras and lcd screens, and with this knowledge we unconciously GUESS quite well how the real thing must have looked. that seems correct. it does not depend very much on the quality of the camera, monitor, as long as we know this kind of equipment and what it usually does to reality.
But then you have to scale the image for each resolution change and it's annoying.
I watching this video while dissembling my crt monitor
I still use the same CRT monitor from my first (decent) computer from 2002.
I liked it so much that when it got wrecked from a power failure (or whatever causes a horizontal "wrinkle" to form), I went out of my way to find another on eBay in 2010. Needless to say, I paid precious cos if its weight and size which made the shipping more expensive than the monitor itself. But so worth it. Still running it today.
Same here. Still using my CRT monitor.
My older one got damaged, so a friend offered me this one, since he didn't use it and takes a lot of space to store it. Best decision ever :D
Got a little brightness problem (can't go up a certain value) and crops a little of the upper right corner... But totally worth it :)
YES, GREEN HAM GAMING MADE IT IN THIS VIDEO
And we was playing the Wice - Star Fighter music video in the background for a bit!
I rewound it 3 times to make sure. Glad I wasn’t the only one. I hope he starts making videos again
@@mikestewart9088 ikr, we never seem to know if he's alive
@@danwager781 he literally just released a new video 17 hrs ago lmao!
@@mikestewart9088 wtf
Friends made fun of me for years because I still used one. I said I'd swap to LCD when they catch up to CRT in performance. They just assumed I was stuck in the past or too poor. (Excuse me, I paid over $1000 for that monitor!) Your video made me feel a little vindicated.
I just recently got rid of my last CRT. I didn't even know there was this counterculture around them. Value Village, a thrift store chain in N.A., offers free electronics recycling. I just took it to them. Guess I shoulda thrown it on OfferUp or something to see if a collector wanted it first.
rip
crt was never that great in performance, how about you drop another $1000 on an oled tv to give you an idea of what you were missing
@@mr.stealyourgirl1779
Depends what you want to do wih them.
Theres no way you would use a crt as a screen for a big home theather.
A large thin oled would be miles better.
but as a work monitor for certain productivity tasks(like photoshop or video editing), gaming(especially older games), and watching a movie on a smaller, closer screen, it can be really good.
The whole reason oled was so useful in the first place, even with excessive burn in and ghosting issues, is that it was able to achieve CRT-like black levels and color reproduction. Thats what people mean by "catching up" with crts.
Also refresh rates on those are increasing nowadays, but 60fps (especially for tvs) is STILL the norm.
Even things like gsync or freesync have for decades been possible on crts by changing the vblank interval.
@@lutyanoalves444 CRT monitors aren't good for anything nowadays except for nostalgia, LCD panels have come a long way like the LCD's apple use in there mac pros or lg's hdr 10 Dolby vision oled panels. CRT monitors can only be as good as we remember them. CRT monitor can either do high refresh rates or high resolution, not both, but VA lcd panels can and do both, like my 144hz 1080p monitor.
@@mr.stealyourgirl1779
this took me 5 seconds on google: arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=549177
youre such a funny guy
I appreciate the amazing rundown! I just picked up a Dell E772p for use with my original Xbox. However, the HD Fury Nano GX is no longer available. Do you have a recommendation for a suitable replacement?
Funny to see millenial hipster types get excited over CRT's. Like it's some unearthed lost treasure. Never mind they were unreliable, power hogs, larger screens could heat the average sized home all by themselves and of course the whole screen flicker thing that basically ruined the eyes of an entire generation. I still get migraines looking at them. I'll deal with the input lag if I can save my eyesight. CRT's were a product of their time and having been in tech for almost 30 years I'm glad their time has passed. Sadly their worst aspect is disposal which usually has mountains of them ending up in poor Asian countries where the local inhabitants are suffering not only from the mess but the toxins contained in the CRT tubes and electronic components.
It's funny to see allegedly older people jump to call me a "milennial hipster" with no concept of age ranges or technology's development, as I am old enough to have spent more years of my life using exclusively CRTs pre-LCD takeover than using LCDs. All because I have a niche interest.
@@EposVox It's the hat.
Well people are dumb, then. Especially since that particular Pokemon is from a game that released when we were still very much in CRT-only land. People's sense of time is so far off.
@@EposVoxMillennials: Born 1981-1996 (22-37 years old) which would put you in or around the millennial category and hipsters are usually ppl with weird niche hobbies that most ppl don't understand Like crt monitors or collecting cassetes or records or vhs tapes or all hosts of different weird things since you qualify for both just embrace it
Everything I've seen for Millennial/Gen Y extends to 2004, but yes, I am a millennial - but the implication (or sometimes direct statement) by many comments such as these is that I'm too young and never "actually used" CRTs when LCDs didn't take over until over halfway through my lifespan so far. As if they think CRTs died out in the 80s or some nonsense.
And "hipster" is used as an insult.
I'll embrace the Pichu hat all day, but people not understanding how time works, less so.
CRTs were great
I had an electrohome ecp4500 crt projector. Looked like traffic lights and weighed 60 kilos. Best for gaming by a mile. No blur, black blacks, high native contrast, good brightness in dark room, no input lag, 30 000 hour tube life. Mine had hdfury adapter at 720p/1080i. There is tonne of calibration that can take hours to setup correctly but the quality is worth it. I was 38 rank in the world in Killzone 2 playing on it till the green tube died. I binned it 5 years ago. I use epson eh tw9100w and despite the benefits its has. It has got poor motion resolution, 60 ms input lag, panel misalignment.
Anyone else notice how he was talking about more frames while playing war frame at 0:19. Wonder if that's intentional ;)
Degaussing was so fun back in the day!
90s anime in HD + 90s CRT monitor = ultimate (unintended) vaporwave experience
Watching this made me regret tossing my 21" Black Dell Trinitron. :( The thing was still working flawlessly when I tossed it in 2011).
I'll bet that you couldn't toss it far...
@@jaxativejax662 You have it all wrong... The monitor tossed me.
Melee anyone?
yes
me
No only firearms
better we can do it on my lg 27 uk650 monitor and it looks amazing
@@eduardoavila646 right over your head....
I feel nostalgic for the static discharge, the ionized air smell, the high-pitched static noise, the heat and the resolutionless sharpness of these displays... The first LCDs were truly a shitfest - dim, ghosting, boring.
I've got a pretty decent display now, a 27" IPS 165Hz 1440p G-Sync display. Very good contrast, very fast. But there is some pixel response blur in action and I can't really play old games scaled up without them looking crap. I can't exactly justify buying a CRT screen now, but I do 100% miss them.
Well, I don't miss the eye strain... :D
my issues with CRTs are the noticeable flicker (even at over 60hz), the frequent geometry issues, the extreme weight, the depth, the noise patterns from the mismatch between the pixels and the dots on the screen, and the mild paranoia that they may be bathing me in harmful radiation
still keep one for my classic game consoles tho
CRTs don't irradiate their users with anything more than visible light and low frequency microwaves - the X-rays are safely contained within the tube itself(this shielding is what makes CRT tubes heavy)
@@pyeltd.5457 i know full well that any properly constructed crt will not leak any hazardous radiation, but knowing that it generates it is still scary lol
I've never noticed flicker on a crt (in person) that was running over 60hz. Please clarify if you have first hand experience with a crt at 60hz or are going by video recordings of crts in use.
The only issues I have with CRTs (mostly TVs tho) is the annoying whine and geometry indeed. If they didn't have the geometry issue at high contrast scenes near edges, I would definitely love them even more. The TV whine is easily solvable with headphones thankfully.
The flicker I only notice with my peripheral vision, focusing on it straight on I don't see anything, but seeing it from the sides does bother me a lot too.
so I never had any really high-end CRTs, but the ones I did have could go up to around 76 hz usually, at which point the flicker was still quite noticeable, but only if I didn't look directly at it.
as for the whining noise, that's more of a TV problem, since as long as the Hsync is above 20khz or so it's basically impossible to hear. and once we passed the mid 90s, almost nothing ran that low
I used the combo xbox360+nokia crt untill the crt died. Man, it was the best combo. Press F to that CRT. Great vid.
Nuno Brandao F
F
F
It's nice to see someone that still appreciates CRT monitors these days, LCDs were a large leap back in technology and it took them decades to offer even a fraction of the features a CRT had available for the previous half century. It wasn't until just the past few years that LCDs graduated from being stuck at 60 Hz, which genius designers thought was OK because the backlight was on all the time and you didn't need a higher refresh rate.
I still have eight CRTs in decent condition and a further two that are not functional due to analog board issues and one which had a short in the VGA cable that I've not been able to work the pinout for. The two with analog board issues are unfortunately my best monitors, both were a matching set of 21" Dell P1130s. One stopped working completely due to multiple component faults and the other has similar faults but still works with a vertical retrace line. I'll eventually fix them, I just need the time to sit down at my bench and test the boards as they're super complex.
Your pink CRT monitor is a lost cause. It has both analog board faults and a very worn out tube. You can fix the analog board, but the image is still going to be pink and dark because the electron guns are worn out. You can sometimes use a tube rejuvinator to get a bit of extra life out of them, or crank the current up on the flyback, but this will drastically accelerate the death of the tube.
Rebuilding the tube is possible, but it requires specialized equipment and knowledge that is quickly vanishing.