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I still remember dragging my CRT around to LAN parties... oh the good old days... was such a pain in the ass though in reality...
by aogl 6y ago
I still remember dragging my CRT around to LAN parties... oh the good old days... was such a pain in the ass though in reality...
- mgiampapa 6y agoThose Sony Trinitron's were literally were made of lead. My back still hurts, but the 20" was worth it!
- enneff 6y agoStill the nicest displays I've ever used.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y agoAnd 120hz refresh rates... almost 20 years ago!
- hunter2_ 6y agoI never noticed a benefit over 70 or so. The flicker of 60 made my eyes bleed though. Then with LCDs 60 was fine.
- aasasd 6y agoI still don't know what it is about 60 Hz that made me see the flicker plainly as a strobing light. TVs at 50 Hz—nothing (other than being generally bleh back then). Had to use 800x600 instead of 1024x768 just to have 85 Hz instead. On LCDs, I still can see faint flicker on some static backgrounds, and I think 60 Hz might play a role here too—though it seems to also depend on the brightness and Flux being on or off. E.g. on https://marctenbosch.com/news/ https://marctenbosch.com/news/
- extrapickles 6y agoThe LCDs you see this on are 6-bit color displays using temporal dithering to pretend to be 8-bit color.
- exikyut 6y agoThat's why drop shadows look horrible when I'm looking at my screen at the wrong angle... I knew it was a dithering thing, forgot LCDs were 6-bit.
- blattimwind 6y agoOnly cheap/low-end LCDs are 6 bit. Most are 8 bit with no dithering.
- aasasd 6y agoShould this be the case with a Macbook, even if a sorta old one? Because that's the machine I've seen the flicker on, for the past bunch of years.
- garaetjjte 6y agoThe reason for flickering on specific patterns is independent of temporal dithering. This is caused by cyclic polarity inversion: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/inversion.php http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/inversion.php (temporal dithering usually is visible as slight noise on darker shades)
- TylerE 6y agoAC power is 60hz so room lighting (especially florescent) also flickers at 60hz. It’s a sort of wagon wheel effect.
- aasasd 6y agoI dropped a hint right there that the AC frequency is definitely not 60 Hz where I am.
- TylerE 6y agoActually you didn't. There were many countries that used PAL for TV broadcasts but have 60hz AC.
- aasasd 6y agoHmm, afaik the framerates were chosen to be equal to the AC freq so that there are no glitches in the image. Do those countries have converters or something in the TVs, or did they watch jumpy image?
- hunter2_ 6y agoThey didn't say PAL, they said "50 Hz TV." PAL and 50 Hz TV are not synonymous. Brazil has 60 Hz AC and uses PAL-M which is 60 Hz TV. AC=TV even in these odd cases. Old CRTs couldn't possibly clock their flyback to anything but mains.
- hunter2_ 6y agoFluorescent lighting, assuming it's not starting to fail, flickers at 120 Hz because each half cycle lights it up equally (+ or - doesn't matter). Incandescent also has 120 Hz flicker but the valleys are almost as bright as the peaks (slow response) so it's essentially imperceptible. Cheap LEDs like some holiday minilights are rectified so they'll flicker at 60 Hz and I can't stand them.
- blattimwind 6y agoThree reasons: You sit much closer to a computer screen compared to a TV, so your peripheral vision has a better chance with the computer screen to see flicker. Computer CRTs supported higher refresh rates, so they used phosphors with shorter afterglow (otherwise you'd get ghosting/S&H-like artifacts like TFTs produce). You can notice this one when you photograph a computer CRT vs. photographing a TV with the same shutter speed. And at the end of CRT TVs a lot of them were 100 Hz.
- aasasd 6y agoInteresting hypotheses, though I still can't quite accept them as final. I seem to recall that the effect was much more noticeable, not only when sitting in front of the screen—basically enter the room and there it is. And I think that I've experimented with lower refresh rates too, at least I definitely had the time and inclination—but can't remember if the monitor allowed them with the available resolutions. It's stuck in my memory that only 60 Hz does this. When I get rich and have lots of free time, I'll probably buy a bunch of old CRTs just to dig to the roots of this.
- aasasd 6y agoBtw, I count only two reasons there.
- blattimwind 6y ago(1) You sit much closer ... (2) Computer CRTs supported ... (3) And at the end ...
- foobarbecue 6y agoYeah, and I had 3d shutter glasses that worked great with the trinitron... In 2000 or so. Nvidia 3d Vision came along later but now sadly those product lines are abandoned, I guess due to VR which is just not what I want at all
- ccozan 6y agoWow, such memories with the 3D Vision. Was quite visionary. And indeed I had to buy a Sony Trinitron with 120Hz refresh otherwise it wouldn't work. I remember playing MoH:AA, the play experience was quite out of this world.
- foobarbecue 6y agoCoincidentally, my whole team still uses Nvidia 3d Vision 2 at work, despite lack of support from Nvidia. One of the reasons I took the job is because I saw they were using it. Not having access to those systems is one of the hardships of working at home. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7638&fbclid=IwAR1GqqPKs-PrKJdOWzc5kU8I900arHiJwJyQrh_vywuOD6XrtzLP1W8Eois https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7638&fbclid=I...
- A_No_Name_Mouse 6y agoWas that the one with the demagnitize button? I used to slap the monitor while pushing the button so my coworkers would think I hit it so hard the image bounced around
- Slartie 6y agoAll the better ones had that button, usually named "degauss". My 22" flat CRT (it was flat on the front, like LCDs today, which was a great feature at the time, but made the thing extremely expensive and extremely heavy) had a degauss function that was apparently so powerful it visibly distorted the image on other monitors right next to it when I degaussed mine. I made a joke of doing that in the middle of games on LAN parties ;-) didn't work repeatedly though, after degaussing once I had to wait for some time until degaussing again would actually do something.
- PunksATawnyFill 6y agoI made the mistake of pressing Degauss on a monitor while holding a magnet next to it. This basically calibrated the thing to look normal... with the magnet there. It took quite a while to restore to normal.
- dredmorbius 6y agoNumerous monitors had degaussing features, Sony's among them.
- gattilorenz 6y agoAnd if they didn't, and somehow you managed to magnetize it, you needed to use a degaussing coil, moving it away from the screen in a spiralling motion... ah, the memories. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pVLizAHby4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pVLizAHby4
- soylentcola 6y agoI assume that by "somehow managed to magnetize it" you mean "had crappy detachable boom box speakers sitting on top of it in college, causing the TV to eventually display distorted blobs at the top edge of the image". No? Huh, guess it was just me ;)
- tomc1985 6y agoI am amazed that I never gave myself a hernia trying to lug a 21" monstrosity of a CRT to LAN parties
- saberdancer 6y agoI bought an aluminum PC case and was quite happy with myself because it was much lighter. It weighed about 5kg instead of 15kg of normal metal ones. 15 years later it is still the case I use today, even though I am thinking about replacing it. Doesn't get much carrying today though.