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I wonder if there’ll eventually be enough demand for new CRTs, and if manufacturing technology has improved enough to make a CRT that is less of an ecological m

I wonder if there’ll eventually be enough demand for new CRTs, and if manufacturing technology has improved enough to make a CRT that is less of an ecological menace. If cost were only partly a constraint, how good could we build a CRT today? I am still mesmerized by new display technologies / display technologies that I haven’t seen in a long time. Like the vector CRTs that exist in old Asteroids cabinets. The phosphors are really bright—brighter than you can imagine an LCD being. I also remember the first time I saw e-ink and being shocked to see something so inert looking shift to a new image. This article really captured my imagination. I’ve not seen a modern GPU driving high frame rates on a CRT, but now I’m very curious to do so. I’d imagine the experience would defy my intuitions the same as it appears to have done for the authors here.

ptx 6y ago
They took up a huge amount of desk space though, which was quite inconvenient. But perhaps they could be made flatter?
- everdrive 6y ago
  The obsession with device thinness and smallness is a cancer. Engineering gets put into the wrong efforts, and cost, efficiency, and repair-ability are all damaged. Modern lcd screens seem to be the worst of this. The screen itself is quite thin, but then the base, and the cables coming out the back mean it’s still effectively 3-7 inches “thick.” The thinness accomplishes nothing, and has made the device worse.
  - vikramkr 6y ago
    Sure, but I think you're looking at CRTs with rose tinted glasses if you think the thickness, size, and weight of those monitors was not a problem. I physically couldn't fit a couple of extra monitors on my desk, and a vertical monitor for code, etc, on my desk if they were as thick as the CRT I used to use ages ago. And having recently upgraded from a plasma TV to an LED - good lord even the plasma TV was stupid heavy. Sometimes you want to be able to move around physical objects you know? Cleaning, rearranging, etc? There's a difference going from a 10 mm phone to a 9 mm phone vs going from a 30 inch CRT to a 65 inch LED
  - andrewzah 6y ago
    I used to have around 10 CRTs at a given moment in my collection, 5 of which were usually in my trunk, ready to go at a given moment. The weight made transporting them absolutely horrendous. I find it ridiculous to think that it's not worth spending time, money, and research on smaller form factors if possible. I will take the compactness and weight of a modern LCD over a CRT any day. The only reason I had those CRTs was the smash bros gaming community needed them, as the nintendo gamecube natively outputs to 480p. Which makes modern displays untenable due to their upscalers, which take different amounts of time to upscale. (480p) CRTs are consistent.
  - bee_rider 6y ago
    The thinness makes it take a little less space if you lose the base and switch to an armature (which is generally nicer anyway).
  - asdff 6y ago
    the base has to have depth or else the monitor will fall over. you can also pop the screen off from the base and do whatever you want with the loose screen. at least for mine. wires also typically are inserted parallel with the screen so no trobule there.
- throwanem 6y ago
  Not without significant consequences. The closer the electron gun is to the phosphor, the lower the incidence angle of the electron beam becomes - think of aiming a laser at a card perpendicular to the beam, and gradually rotating the card toward the parallel. The same thing happens to an electron beam hitting an acutely angled screen as to a laser dot hitting an acutely angled card. So you lose power density as the beam spreads out, which both dims the target phosphor dots (as they receive less energy) and causes adjacent dots to light dimly (as they receive energy "smeared" off the target point). To passively counteract this effect, you need to increase the curvature of the screen, which causes pincushion distortion in the resulting image. To actively counter it, you need to vary beam intensity with scan position, but that still doesn't resolve the loss of focus away from center. That can only be fixed by using a narrower beam, so that the incidence angle matters less. Whether that's feasible I don't really know - this is about where my understanding of the relevant physics and electronics plays out, unfortunately. But if it can be done at all, I would intuitively expect the required control and drive electronics to be very expensive to produce, and maybe also needing regular tuning in a way that ordinary CRTs largely avoid.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  At least back then we got to have desks that were bigger than a cabinet door, if only because they had to accommodate the CRT.
throwaway2048 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_electron-emitter_display https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_electron-em... These have almost all the advantages of a CRT, but without a lot of the downsides like bulkiness and materials usage.
- skavi 6y ago
  Reading through the history section pisses me off. That seems like some really impressive tech; I wonder where it’d be today if it had succeeded.
badsectoracula 6y ago
> I’ve not seen a modern GPU driving high frame rates on a CRT, but now I’m very curious to do so. You can probably find some decent CRTs on Facebook marketplace for very cheap (e.g. the other day i found a bunch of them less than 10 euros each) - they wont be as good as those mentioned in the article (unless you get really lucky) but anything that can do 120Hz or above should be enough to let you see that. A bigger problem would be connecting them to the modern GPU. Nvidia removed the DAC from their GPUs after GTX 9xx series and even that wasn't that great (AMD also removed it some time before). So you'll need to find some way to convert the digital signal to analog VGA signal and a good DAC for that. I think there is some thread in the HardOCP forums about that but personally i haven't tried to go down that rabbit hole (yet :-P).
Yizahi 6y ago
Next will be hobbyists longing resurrection of plasma TVs :)

ptx 6y ago

They took up a huge amount of desk space though, which was quite inconvenient. But perhaps they could be made flatter?

everdrive 6y ago
The obsession with device thinness and smallness is a cancer. Engineering gets put into the wrong efforts, and cost, efficiency, and repair-ability are all damaged. Modern lcd screens seem to be the worst of this. The screen itself is quite thin, but then the base, and the cables coming out the back mean it’s still effectively 3-7 inches “thick.” The thinness accomplishes nothing, and has made the device worse.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  Sure, but I think you're looking at CRTs with rose tinted glasses if you think the thickness, size, and weight of those monitors was not a problem. I physically couldn't fit a couple of extra monitors on my desk, and a vertical monitor for code, etc, on my desk if they were as thick as the CRT I used to use ages ago. And having recently upgraded from a plasma TV to an LED - good lord even the plasma TV was stupid heavy. Sometimes you want to be able to move around physical objects you know? Cleaning, rearranging, etc? There's a difference going from a 10 mm phone to a 9 mm phone vs going from a 30 inch CRT to a 65 inch LED
- andrewzah 6y ago
  I used to have around 10 CRTs at a given moment in my collection, 5 of which were usually in my trunk, ready to go at a given moment. The weight made transporting them absolutely horrendous. I find it ridiculous to think that it's not worth spending time, money, and research on smaller form factors if possible. I will take the compactness and weight of a modern LCD over a CRT any day. The only reason I had those CRTs was the smash bros gaming community needed them, as the nintendo gamecube natively outputs to 480p. Which makes modern displays untenable due to their upscalers, which take different amounts of time to upscale. (480p) CRTs are consistent.
- bee_rider 6y ago
  The thinness makes it take a little less space if you lose the base and switch to an armature (which is generally nicer anyway).
- asdff 6y ago
  the base has to have depth or else the monitor will fall over. you can also pop the screen off from the base and do whatever you want with the loose screen. at least for mine. wires also typically are inserted parallel with the screen so no trobule there.
throwanem 6y ago
Not without significant consequences. The closer the electron gun is to the phosphor, the lower the incidence angle of the electron beam becomes - think of aiming a laser at a card perpendicular to the beam, and gradually rotating the card toward the parallel. The same thing happens to an electron beam hitting an acutely angled screen as to a laser dot hitting an acutely angled card. So you lose power density as the beam spreads out, which both dims the target phosphor dots (as they receive less energy) and causes adjacent dots to light dimly (as they receive energy "smeared" off the target point). To passively counteract this effect, you need to increase the curvature of the screen, which causes pincushion distortion in the resulting image. To actively counter it, you need to vary beam intensity with scan position, but that still doesn't resolve the loss of focus away from center. That can only be fixed by using a narrower beam, so that the incidence angle matters less. Whether that's feasible I don't really know - this is about where my understanding of the relevant physics and electronics plays out, unfortunately. But if it can be done at all, I would intuitively expect the required control and drive electronics to be very expensive to produce, and maybe also needing regular tuning in a way that ordinary CRTs largely avoid.
jeffbee 6y ago
At least back then we got to have desks that were bigger than a cabinet door, if only because they had to accommodate the CRT.

throwaway2048 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_electron-emitter_display https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_electron-em... These have almost all the advantages of a CRT, but without a lot of the downsides like bulkiness and materials usage.

skavi 6y ago
Reading through the history section pisses me off. That seems like some really impressive tech; I wonder where it’d be today if it had succeeded.

badsectoracula 6y ago

> I’ve not seen a modern GPU driving high frame rates on a CRT, but now I’m very curious to do so. You can probably find some decent CRTs on Facebook marketplace for very cheap (e.g. the other day i found a bunch of them less than 10 euros each) - they wont be as good as those mentioned in the article (unless you get really lucky) but anything that can do 120Hz or above should be enough to let you see that. A bigger problem would be connecting them to the modern GPU. Nvidia removed the DAC from their GPUs after GTX 9xx series and even that wasn't that great (AMD also removed it some time before). So you'll need to find some way to convert the digital signal to analog VGA signal and a good DAC for that. I think there is some thread in the HardOCP forums about that but personally i haven't tried to go down that rabbit hole (yet :-P).

Yizahi 6y ago

Next will be hobbyists longing resurrection of plasma TVs :)