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Advantages of CRT over LCD

MorrisMinor 4y ago
The best thing about CRTs was holding a magnet near the screen to twist the electron beam. Gives you an intuitive understanding of the sideways force experienced in a magnetic field. EDIT: Also, it was heaps of fun!
Veliladon 4y ago
The biggest advantage is that CRTs can have variable geometry pixels which match a lot of older resolutions and aspect ratios. While it's a lot easier to deal with non-square pixels on higher resolution displays (i.e. 1600x1200 can properly emulate a 1.2:1 rectangular pixel of a 320x200 display) CRTs still have effectively infinitely variable shaped pixels.
- deleted 4y ago
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- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Let's not forget that you could freely adjust the refresh rate to resolution ratio to the maximum bandwidth supported by the monitor. On my old 21" CRT, I would have the desktop at 1600x1200 @ 75Hz for maximum productivity and when gaming I would switch to 1024x768 @ 120Hz for "pwning n00bs" in Unreal Tournament '99/Quake 3 Arena. Meanwhile my 2019 4K display is a fixed 60Hz regardless of how much I lower the resolution. What a downgrade. I heard some modern gaming displays now also let you crank up the Hz as you lower the resolution, but every cheap CRT could do this back in the days as everything was purely analog so the limit was the bandwidth of your monitor and you were free to experiment with any resolution to refresh rate ratio between the available bandwidth in your GPU control panel as the RAMDAC of the GPU did all the heavy lifting in driving the display, while now, the driving is handled internally by the LCD control board so whatever the manufacturer decides, you're stuck with. Most CRTs also supported overclocking beyond factory spec, but you really ran the risk of frying some internal components after long term use. Ask me how I know.
  - beebeepka 4y ago
    There was nothing quite like Quake 3 in 800x600 @ 120hz. The smoothness and incredibly low input lag. I maintain that it was better, in many ways, than my current position 1440p @ 180hz setup. Sadly, UT99 was capped at 85 or 90 hz. It was very noticeable, especially at the time when my body was still young. I am still twitchy but not even close to what I could pull off 20 years ago. Mid 2000s to early 2010 were tough for monitor enthusiasts. LCDs were total crap and the vast, vast majority of gamers, let alone regular consumers, couldn't even wrap their heads around the whole FPS / Hz thing. The stupid 3d TV push didn't help much either because the masses were convinced all these TVs could do 100/200/400 etc. refresh rates even though the hdmi input was capped at 60 hz. Scary times
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      >Sadly, UT99 was capped at 85 or 90 hz. Such were the days when videogame engines tied the physics to the framerate, as having too many FPS would basically ruin the game. Just ask present day Bethesda :D
  - nyanpasu64 4y ago
    Sadly CRT SDTVs don't allow increasing the horizontal refresh rate beyond around 15.7 KHz (480i or 240p). I wish I had a CRT monitor, but don't have a space set out for it, and haven't looked for one.
  - dontlaugh 4y ago
    You get the same with OLED TVs. You often have a practical choice between 4k @ 60HZz and 1080p @ 120Hz, whether you're using a PC or a console.
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  I never could reconcile the "variable geometry pixels" with my meagre understanding that they all had a matrix / mesh / mask at front, I think for separating individual colour pixels... Didn't they? Edit : here it is - shadow mask and trinitron. These feel like extremely fixed, physical native resolution? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_mask https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_mask
  - dtx1 4y ago
    So TechnologyConnections made two Vids about that very topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX649lnKAU0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX649lnKAU0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea6tw-gulnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea6tw-gulnQ It's...complicated.
    - maven29 4y ago
      That sounds really similar to subpixel rendering as used in AMOLED displays and their diamond/pentile subpixel arrangements. I found a demo online illustrating this http://www.clivemaxfield.com/area51/do-not-delete/pentile-rgbw-demo.html http://www.clivemaxfield.com/area51/do-not-delete/pentile-rg...
  - grumbel 4y ago
    A subpixel on an LCD can only have a single brightness value across its whole area. The dots or stripes on an CRT have no such restriction, they are effectively little monochromatic pictures themselves. Don't think of those dots as fundamental elements of the image, the CRT doesn't address them and doesn't care about their shape. They are really just a color filter on top of the three greyscale images projected by the electron gun. The shadow mask ensures that each of those three electron streams land on the right color. See the TechnologyConnections video for more details.
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- Dalewyn 4y ago
  LCDs and their ineptitude with non native resolutions deeply annoys me. Sure, pixels in an LCD are fixed, but even resolutions that are multiples of 2 of their native resolution look like crap. 4K monitor? Surely it can handle 1080p, it's just dividing by 2; four physical pixels for one logical pixel, right? Nope! Looks like horseshit. Seemingly LCD monitors can't divide by 2. CRTs can handle any resolution within their spec range, so I could render a game at a lower resolution to have more video processing power for other stuff. LCDs? Gotta render everything at native or it looks like horseshit.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    That's why you should use GPU scaling instead.
  - mike_hock 4y ago
    It's because there always has to be some retarded-ass "enhancement" going on fucking with the colors, fucking with the image in any which way possible. Bullshit sharpening filter, bullshit edge detection filter that produces shitty artifacts around actual sharp edges that don't need to be fucked with. The early LCDs were shit because they did only nearest-point sampling. The new LCDs are shit because they "enhance" the image to shit, even in native resolution.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      >The new LCDs are shit because they "enhance" the image to shit, even in native resolution. If you're talking about motion interpolation and that kind of thing, that can all be easily turned off.
      - formerly_proven 4y ago
        The fact that many in-depth reviews contain a long section of "set these settings to these values to get an undistorted look" and the creation of filmmaker's mode belies this being easy to turn off.
  - 4y ago
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Missing from the article: "Advantages of LCD over CRT"
- NackerHughes 4y ago
  1. they're Thinner And Lighter™ 2. ...err... 3. ...that's it...
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    And also vastly higher resolution, pixel density, contrast ratio, brightness, color depth, and display sizes. Oh and vastly lower energy consumption and heat output.
    - ahartmetz 4y ago
      No to contrast ratio and color depth. Contrast: The electron gun can turn off (OLEDs as well btw), LCDs will always bleed some backlight (although they have region dimming now). Color depth: only limited by GPU's RAMDAC, 10 bits were available in some Matrox cards.
    - dncornholio 4y ago
      No no no, CRT's weren't THAT bad. They were actually pretty good on all your points except energy. We definitely made some compromises on resolution, color depth, latency on LCD's.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    More comprehensive list or trade offs between the two: https://www.displaymate.com/crtvslcd.html https://www.displaymate.com/crtvslcd.html
    - marcinzm 4y ago
      That seems to be a decade out of date at this point.
jagger27 4y ago
Have there been any attempts to make something like a CRT with phosphors and an electron gun in a thinner form factor? What if we had a grid of smaller electron beams targeting a small display section instead of a single large one? Can it be done without vacuum tubes today?
- Aaargh20318 4y ago
  Yes, that’s basically what a plasma TV is.
  - jagger27 4y ago
    Oh neat, I didn't realize that. I guess it didn't work out very well.
    - AdamH12113 4y ago
      I have a plasma TV that I use for gaming (Panasonic Viera). It's a great display with none of the contrast or ghosting disadvantages of an LCD, but it's heavy, delicate, and most importantly, it puts out a ton of heat. A plasma TV is basically a grid of tiny neon lights. Like any active display (CRT, plasma, or OLED) it can suffer from burn-in, but I haven't found that to be a problem for my usage.
      - mikestew 4y ago
        Between a very old Panasonic Viera 42" upon which a buttload of Halo was played over many years, and the current Samsung Not-Smart Plasma which gets a bit less game play, I've yet to see the slightest hint of burn-in. I did get some ghosting on the Panny before I sold it, but I otherwise take plasma burn-in to be an artifact from TVs made twenty years ago.
        bzzzt 4y ago
        It's a problem with every plasma TV ever made. I've got one of the last Panasonic Viera's which, after almost 10 years, has a slight dark patch around the place where subtitles tend to appear (I'm from the Netherlands where almost all non-dutch content is subtitled) It's only really noticeable when looking at a uniform gray screen which is not my content of choice, but it's there.
greenn 4y ago
In the Super Smash Bros. Melee competitive scene we still use CRTs for in-person tournaments because of the input lag on LCDs. Most original hardware available to play the game doesn't have a digital display output unless you have an early model GameCube and purchase a ~$100 HDMI adapter. Even if you get the hardware setup for modern digital output, most LCD monitors still have poor response times without spending the extra money for a "gaming" monitor. There has been a lot of work by modders to reduce the input lag introduced by the game engine itself to offset the lag introduced by LCD monitors, but I hope someday LCDs can catch up in this last metric.
- chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
  > work by modders to reduce the input lag introduced by the game engine itself Can you link something about this? are people rewriting the core engine of melee?
  - CarVac 4y ago
    There's a phenomenon known as Polling Drift where the 2x-per-frame input polling at 120 Hz is mismatched with the NTSC framerate that's 0.1% slower, leading to a variable 0-0.5 frame input lag. This can be patched out. Additionally, they found that there is an extra frame of buffer hanging around that wasn't necessary so that can be removed. There might be something else too?
    - robocat 4y ago
      Another HN user mentioned a skipped frame every 20 seconds on a Dell monitor: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32582085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32582085
    - pezezin 4y ago
      That sounds weird to me. Old game consoles with analog video output didn't generate perfect NTSC or PAL timings (for example, the Megadrive would actually run at 59.92274 Hz in NTSC, and 49.701459 Hz in PAL), but it didn't matter as the CRT TVs had some wiggle room and would synchronize to the video signal. There was no such thing as input and output running at different rates and desynchronizing.
pcdoodle 4y ago
I think CRTs let your brain do some antialiasing so free details. I have some old 600mb divx rips that still look pretty damn good when viewed on a CRT.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  I had the exact same realization when testing my beloved diamondpro, the image was just nicer, warmer .. it was shocking.
  - hulitu 4y ago
    It's also because LCDs cannot display collours as good as CRTs. Only the latest HDRs come close.
- system2 4y ago
  It is simply adding a tiny bit of blur to the entire image.
  - Blackthorn 4y ago
    I don't think it's that simple. Old videogames look really ass on modern displays, even with ostensibly remastered releases that should be doing that tiny bit of blurring.
  - rtwok 4y ago
    If you do that the image just looks blurry. The magic is that it looks soft on a CRT. soft != blurry In my experience a simple scanline filter surprisingly helps in softening upscaled low res. The draw back is that the overall brightness is reduced. You can't win with LCD.
- jrm4 4y ago
  I just had this idea and I cant be the only one though, what about just a slightly blurry physical glass/plastic overlay?
  - 4y ago
bironran 4y ago
The biggest advantage of CRT is that my cat could sit on one. He would be drawn to that heat generating machine, lay on top of it with his fore legs dangling over the edge of the screen and snooze while I played whatever video game was the current hit well into the night. I miss that cat-butt-warmer. I miss my cat too.
- omerhj 4y ago
  One of my cats loved snoozing on my big 19" CRT as well. When I replaced the CRT with my first LCD monitor, he tried to hop onto the non-existent top of the screen. In a mad scramble to not fall he put all of his front claws in the plastic cover of the screen. The LCD went from zero to hundreds of bad pixels within a day :-( I still miss that cat too.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  Upvoted for wholesome cat love. I miss your cat on your behalf.
- ace2358 4y ago
  My cat used to sleep on my crt during 36 -48 gaming sessions of Everquest during school holidays with my best buddy. Two computers next to each other. Too much cola. Huge amounts of rage when we would die. Most likely because we barely slept. Heh. Then when I got my first MacBook Pro around 2007 my cat decided that the hot as keyboard was the new sleeping spot. No more computer use for me when he wanted to sleep haha. I miss that cat too.
- davidgerard 4y ago
  the death of the monitor toy not sure about cat hair in the vents though!
- jerrysievert 4y ago
  for me it was that I could play videos for the cat where it would attack the screen - the vhs tape that I played was called "video catnip". I wouldn't dare do that with an lcd display, even (or especially?) if it were mounted to a wall.
Arrath 4y ago
I miss degaussing my monitor.
VyseofArcadia 4y ago
I do wish display manufacturers used more display tech in parallel. I'd love the option to buy a modern CRT or a modern LCD or a modern OLED, etc. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, but it seems like on the market, CRT being fat outweighed all other concerns. Pun intended.
tverbeure 4y ago
The article points out that LCDs have more lag, but then it states this: > And if there is scaling involved, there is probably going to be some lag The lag that's introduced by a scaler is trivial, and measured in microseconds...
cannam 4y ago
I can't imagine loving a monitor the way I loved my iiyama Vision Master Pro. 1600x1200 at 71Hz driven from a Matrox Millennium (4MB VRAM and no 3D acceleration whatsoever) with soft-edged pixels and no visible grain or mesh. It was by far the best computer-related object I had ever owned. But that would be so impractical now, given its bulk and what else is available. We actually still have a CRT as our main TV here - a 28" Sony - not for any exciting retro reason but just because we've had it from new and it still works. We have a bigger LCD in another room. We bought that to watch films on, but it was always disappointing for that - it's too clean, it feels as if you're watching the making-of documentary rather than the film itself. So we hardly ever use it and mostly stick with the CRT. It's satisfying to watch, but part of me hopes it'll stop working so we can get the space in the corner back.
- bloody_bocker 4y ago
  > feels as if you're watching the making-of documentary rather than the film itself. Isn't that because of many picture enhancers that come with modern tvs? I think major offender is the interpolation to go from cinematic 24 frames to higher frame rate. I believe it's commonly called soap opera effect...
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  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Yep, but there's no reason to use it. Just go to the settings menu and turn it off. While you're in there, set the color settings to "movie" mode too so the colors are more faithful. Modern TVs look absolutely horrible out-of-the-box, because they're made to look cool in showrooms, but if you fix those settings they look great. Even better, turn on a YouTube video that shows how to adjust the black and white levels and tune them.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  Be aware of the energy you are wasting, a modern tv uses much less power than a crt.
rocky1138 4y ago
I would love to see modern CRTs but we have to be honest with ourselves about the negative environmental side with their lead components. Perhaps we could build a more environmentally friendly CRT with our processes nowadays.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  It’ll be very niche gadget so who cares about environment.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    You'd think that about mechanical keyboards too, but there you go.
    - yourusername 4y ago
      Mechanical keyboards are a small niche. I would be suprised if they make up more than 0.5% of the keyboards in use today.
- some-guy 4y ago
  In addition to this, once OLED monitors for PCs (or similar) become commonplace, a lot of the complaints I had about LCD/LED are no longer relevant. My LG CX looks absolutely stunning, and the input lag is unnoticable.
aimor 4y ago
It wasn't until I was shopping for an LED TV that I really understood a lot of the important details in how a sequence of images can be made to look like the images are in motion. The biggest revelation was the difference between showing a still image for just a moment vs holding that still image on screen for a long time. Illuminating the screen pixel-by-pixel with a short duty factor gave CRTs sharp crisp motion compared to LED and LCD screens. The UFO tests really drove the point home (along with a lot of other visual phenomena). https://www.testufo.com/blackframes https://www.testufo.com/blackframes What got me hung up for so long was that so much of the conversation has been about frame rates and shutter speeds, when it's really a different (but related) effect. I've been wanting to play around with high framerate video with frames combined to mimic slower shutter speeds. That is, 120 Hz open shutter video blurred with a 4-frame sliding window to look like it was shot at 30 fps. Or other such tricks. I thought high-end cameras might do such things automatically but it seems like they don't and I want to figure out why not. (does it look bad?) https://kevinlisota.photography/2020/04/understanding-video-frame-rate-and-shutter-speed/ https://kevinlisota.photography/2020/04/understanding-video-... https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/tv-motion-blur-explained-and-why-all-the-4k-tv-solutions-fall-short/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/tv-motion-blur-...
- uxp100 4y ago
  That would not look like 30 fps necessarily. The keyword you want to learn about is “Shutter Angle”
  - aimor 4y ago
    That's right, my example was off because film is 'usually' shot 180 degrees. So 30 FPS has an effective shutter of 1/60", and 120Hz open shutter needs a 2-frame sliding window to match that look. Or use a 3-frame window for 1/40", a more blurry film (1/48") look. There's power in being able to make that choice when editing. What I'm not sure about is how similar merging two images together will be compared to doing it natively with the camera. I'm guessing it will look slightly different, but I'll find out when I try it.
smokel 4y ago
One advantage is that you can have another kind of fun with it, as displayed in the amazing demo "Copper" by Surprise!Productions (1992). Most of the effects in that demo are made possible by varying values in the CRT Controller registers of the VGA card. Fond memories! https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2048 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2048
asciimov 4y ago
Things I don't miss from CRTS: Their weight, the heat they put off, eye strain caused by low refresh rates (below 75hz for me), having to adjust the rabbit ears or outdoor antenna when one of the 4 channels got too snowy, image burn in. Things that I miss from CRTS: black is black not grey, console tvs and tv's as furniture, better viewing angles as people didn't mount their damned tv over a fireplace or up high in general, turning the brightness knob down if it too bright at night, video games (of course),
- xwolfi 4y ago
  Try OLED it solved the black, the viewing angle, the video games look insane, the near zero bezels make the image seem floating and well a remote control can adapt brightness well.
  - nottorp 4y ago
    It did? I thought they're advertising themselves based on how effectively they can blind you. You could turn down the brightness on a CRT down to 10% or less at night and still use it.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      Why can’t you turn the brightness down on your lcd?
      - nottorp 4y ago
        https://www.howtogeek.com/294307/TURN-UP-YOUR-TVS-BACKLIGHT-NOT-THE-BRIGHTNESS-TO-MAKE-IT-BRIGHTER/ https://www.howtogeek.com/294307/TURN-UP-YOUR-TVS-BACKLIGHT-... Random explanation :) It tells you how to blind yourself more, but it's valid if you want the other way too. Although they say it's for TVs, it goes for LCD monitors too these days. Not to mention that whatever you turn down on a LCD monitor will mess up your colors beyond a point.
      - doubled112 4y ago
        I do this almost daily. Daytime is bright. Nighttime is not. Why shouldn't my monitor follow?
volforix 4y ago
None.
eternityforest 4y ago
They're vintage enthusiast items. Someone who likes classic cars will probably not want to replace everything with modern digital stuff. CRTs will always have that, as long as they are available. Definitely not something I'd want to own though. They're bulky, significantly hot, sometimes noisy, full of lead glass. And... HD is pretty nice.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  > Definitely not something I'd want to own Not something I’d ever want to return to. Back when I finally had an LCD, it was so amazing. When every place had LCDs, it was even better, no more annoying sounds!
timonoko 4y ago
We are still waiting for the infinite precision displays "pixels are dying at alarming level, but they are individual atoms so no matter". Was this from William Gibson? Anyways. I have already planned how this display is constructed. Instead of individually addressing every pixel, the display is backed with layered pyramid of guad-decoders, which divide the display to four smaller displays. The picture or quad-message Q={Q,Q,Q,Q} can be of any precision, but when the decoder does not see sub-decoders but just pixels, it just calculates the average and turns the pixel on. The beauty of display of mine is that they can be stacked. You just add another decoder-level behind the display. Or may they are constructed that way, so you can repair a display by replacing one 64x64 pixel module.
- timonoko 4y ago
  BTW. This display is many ways similar to CRT or rather vector displays. When gaming you can send Q-messages to areas of intense activity and the rest remains the same. Q-message needs to have ignore flag (Ign). As an example this message turns the lowest-rightmost pixel Red on 256x256-display: (Ign Ign Ign (Ign Ign Ign (Ign Ign Ign (Ign Ign Ign (Ign Ign Ign Red))))) Q-messages are in Lisp, of course.
rsecora 4y ago
>>>> Usually when there are limitations, the computer and display are able to negotiate compatible options and hide the incompatible ones. Ejem... there was a time were X configuration was black magic, and only the bold venture to change it.
- ghostDancer 4y ago
  Recall as a teen installing Linux and then reading the monitor manual, looking for the specs to add it to the configuration after reading to be careful that you could break it, and starting X holding my breath.
dopp0 4y ago
If the article does not consider: "slapping the shit out of the monitor when you're angry at the computer", then it's scientifically inaccurate.
tedk-42 4y ago
Next up, article on the advantages of eating cyanide. Doesn't matter about the advantages - the disadvantages far outweigh them.
- PaulBGD_ 4y ago
  What’s the disadvantage of crts that outweighs all the advantages?
  - zajio1am 4y ago
    1) flickering 2) fuzzy pixels
  - ridgered4 4y ago
    It is mostly the weight and physical space the tube requires. They use a lot of desk space and require a decent quality desk to hold them. They also use somewhat more power than LCDs but I suspect LCDs more modern look and space saving qualities drove their adoption much more than the power usage. The way their refresh rate works also seems to cause a lot less eyestrain on LCDs, particular when comparing a low quality CRT to a low quality LCD.
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    What I call the "square eyes" syndrome. After you use one for ten hours, you go home with a weird tension/buzz in your head. Doesn't happen with LCDs.
bowsamic 4y ago
The real biggest advantage is Time Crisis
deergomoo 4y ago
I had a 20” Sony PVM (20M4E) for a few years for retro games. Playing anything intended for analogue video was an absolute joy. The characteristics of the display were factored into the creation of the art in a fascinating way (and sometimes even the characteristics of the display signal, like the transparency effects in Sonic the Hedgehog that only work over composite video). I ended up selling it due to space and practicality concerns, plus some of the corner geometry was starting to drift in a way that would need physical adjustments to the tube to correct. I used the money to buy a RetroTink 5X scaler; it’s not the same by any stretch, but it’s a best-in-class scaler so at least I’m not adding a ton of latency and visual artefacts to the process. I find it remarkable how much display tech can affect our perception of what is essentially the same image, and how this manifests with different types of content. It’s not even just legacy stuff—OLEDs have very different motion characteristics to LCDs due to the pixel response time, for example.
kypro 4y ago
There's something so comfy looking about CRT monitors. I know it's just nostalgia, but there's something in that. I've been playing a lot of Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) recently. The games are alright, but honestly they kind of suck when objectively compared to modern games. I still enjoy them though, but that's because they take me back to simpler times. I'm not sure I'd use a CRT monitor for any of it's tech specs, but would I get a huge amount of satisfaction from setting up a CRT monitor just so I can recreate my childhood experience of playing Jedi Knight II again? Probably.
- Bakary 4y ago
  My recommendation is to watch speedruns of that game as I recall them being hilariously insolent.
- headsoup 4y ago
  I don't think a lot of them sucked at all compared to modern games. Forced constraints lead to wonderful creativity and strong - even if simple - game design. Sure the games might not have had as much breadth or depth at times, but I feel today's games are far more generic in general, you have to go searching for interesting concepts, rather than just browsing what is 'on the shelf' at the shops.
headsoup 4y ago
Obviously the biggest advantage of having a CRT again is reliving the glory days of pointing my SNES Super Scope at it and blasting away at Yoshi's Safari, Battle Clash and Metal Combat! They have sad sadly in a box for far too long, I really need to go find an old crt and stop living in shame.
degrees57 4y ago
When I was a desktop tech, visiting a user with a problem, I carried a laser pointer with me. I could point to elements on the screen without getting my fingerprints on the glass and without invading the user's personal space. Laser pointers are pretty much useless on LCD. Not that I would ever go back; but it was a nice feature at the time.
- pezezin 4y ago
  > Laser pointers are pretty much useless on LCD. What do you mean? An LCD will reflect a laser pointer just fine (I just tested it).
Vrondi 4y ago
The article doesn't even mention the only true advantage of CRT: that they work with lightguns for video games. I miss games like Duck Hunt and Vampire Night!

The best thing about CRTs was holding a magnet near the screen to twist the electron beam. Gives you an intuitive understanding of the sideways force experienced in a magnetic field. EDIT: Also, it was heaps of fun!

Veliladon 4y ago

The biggest advantage is that CRTs can have variable geometry pixels which match a lot of older resolutions and aspect ratios. While it's a lot easier to deal with non-square pixels on higher resolution displays (i.e. 1600x1200 can properly emulate a 1.2:1 rectangular pixel of a 320x200 display) CRTs still have effectively infinitely variable shaped pixels.

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ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Let's not forget that you could freely adjust the refresh rate to resolution ratio to the maximum bandwidth supported by the monitor. On my old 21" CRT, I would have the desktop at 1600x1200 @ 75Hz for maximum productivity and when gaming I would switch to 1024x768 @ 120Hz for "pwning n00bs" in Unreal Tournament '99/Quake 3 Arena. Meanwhile my 2019 4K display is a fixed 60Hz regardless of how much I lower the resolution. What a downgrade. I heard some modern gaming displays now also let you crank up the Hz as you lower the resolution, but every cheap CRT could do this back in the days as everything was purely analog so the limit was the bandwidth of your monitor and you were free to experiment with any resolution to refresh rate ratio between the available bandwidth in your GPU control panel as the RAMDAC of the GPU did all the heavy lifting in driving the display, while now, the driving is handled internally by the LCD control board so whatever the manufacturer decides, you're stuck with. Most CRTs also supported overclocking beyond factory spec, but you really ran the risk of frying some internal components after long term use. Ask me how I know.
- beebeepka 4y ago
  There was nothing quite like Quake 3 in 800x600 @ 120hz. The smoothness and incredibly low input lag. I maintain that it was better, in many ways, than my current position 1440p @ 180hz setup. Sadly, UT99 was capped at 85 or 90 hz. It was very noticeable, especially at the time when my body was still young. I am still twitchy but not even close to what I could pull off 20 years ago. Mid 2000s to early 2010 were tough for monitor enthusiasts. LCDs were total crap and the vast, vast majority of gamers, let alone regular consumers, couldn't even wrap their heads around the whole FPS / Hz thing. The stupid 3d TV push didn't help much either because the masses were convinced all these TVs could do 100/200/400 etc. refresh rates even though the hdmi input was capped at 60 hz. Scary times
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    >Sadly, UT99 was capped at 85 or 90 hz. Such were the days when videogame engines tied the physics to the framerate, as having too many FPS would basically ruin the game. Just ask present day Bethesda :D
- nyanpasu64 4y ago
  Sadly CRT SDTVs don't allow increasing the horizontal refresh rate beyond around 15.7 KHz (480i or 240p). I wish I had a CRT monitor, but don't have a space set out for it, and haven't looked for one.
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  You get the same with OLED TVs. You often have a practical choice between 4k @ 60HZz and 1080p @ 120Hz, whether you're using a PC or a console.
NikolaNovak 4y ago
I never could reconcile the "variable geometry pixels" with my meagre understanding that they all had a matrix / mesh / mask at front, I think for separating individual colour pixels... Didn't they? Edit : here it is - shadow mask and trinitron. These feel like extremely fixed, physical native resolution? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_mask https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_mask
- dtx1 4y ago
  So TechnologyConnections made two Vids about that very topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX649lnKAU0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX649lnKAU0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea6tw-gulnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea6tw-gulnQ It's...complicated.
  - maven29 4y ago
    That sounds really similar to subpixel rendering as used in AMOLED displays and their diamond/pentile subpixel arrangements. I found a demo online illustrating this http://www.clivemaxfield.com/area51/do-not-delete/pentile-rgbw-demo.html http://www.clivemaxfield.com/area51/do-not-delete/pentile-rg...
- grumbel 4y ago
  A subpixel on an LCD can only have a single brightness value across its whole area. The dots or stripes on an CRT have no such restriction, they are effectively little monochromatic pictures themselves. Don't think of those dots as fundamental elements of the image, the CRT doesn't address them and doesn't care about their shape. They are really just a color filter on top of the three greyscale images projected by the electron gun. The shadow mask ensures that each of those three electron streams land on the right color. See the TechnologyConnections video for more details.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Dalewyn 4y ago
LCDs and their ineptitude with non native resolutions deeply annoys me. Sure, pixels in an LCD are fixed, but even resolutions that are multiples of 2 of their native resolution look like crap. 4K monitor? Surely it can handle 1080p, it's just dividing by 2; four physical pixels for one logical pixel, right? Nope! Looks like horseshit. Seemingly LCD monitors can't divide by 2. CRTs can handle any resolution within their spec range, so I could render a game at a lower resolution to have more video processing power for other stuff. LCDs? Gotta render everything at native or it looks like horseshit.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  That's why you should use GPU scaling instead.
- mike_hock 4y ago
  It's because there always has to be some retarded-ass "enhancement" going on fucking with the colors, fucking with the image in any which way possible. Bullshit sharpening filter, bullshit edge detection filter that produces shitty artifacts around actual sharp edges that don't need to be fucked with. The early LCDs were shit because they did only nearest-point sampling. The new LCDs are shit because they "enhance" the image to shit, even in native resolution.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >The new LCDs are shit because they "enhance" the image to shit, even in native resolution. If you're talking about motion interpolation and that kind of thing, that can all be easily turned off.
    - formerly_proven 4y ago
      The fact that many in-depth reviews contain a long section of "set these settings to these values to get an undistorted look" and the creation of filmmaker's mode belies this being easy to turn off.
- 4y ago

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

Missing from the article: "Advantages of LCD over CRT"

NackerHughes 4y ago
1. they're Thinner And Lighter™ 2. ...err... 3. ...that's it...
- tshaddox 4y ago
  And also vastly higher resolution, pixel density, contrast ratio, brightness, color depth, and display sizes. Oh and vastly lower energy consumption and heat output.
  - ahartmetz 4y ago
    No to contrast ratio and color depth. Contrast: The electron gun can turn off (OLEDs as well btw), LCDs will always bleed some backlight (although they have region dimming now). Color depth: only limited by GPU's RAMDAC, 10 bits were available in some Matrox cards.
  - dncornholio 4y ago
    No no no, CRT's weren't THAT bad. They were actually pretty good on all your points except energy. We definitely made some compromises on resolution, color depth, latency on LCD's.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  More comprehensive list or trade offs between the two: https://www.displaymate.com/crtvslcd.html https://www.displaymate.com/crtvslcd.html
  - marcinzm 4y ago
    That seems to be a decade out of date at this point.

jagger27 4y ago

Have there been any attempts to make something like a CRT with phosphors and an electron gun in a thinner form factor? What if we had a grid of smaller electron beams targeting a small display section instead of a single large one? Can it be done without vacuum tubes today?

Aaargh20318 4y ago
Yes, that’s basically what a plasma TV is.
- jagger27 4y ago
  Oh neat, I didn't realize that. I guess it didn't work out very well.
  - AdamH12113 4y ago
    I have a plasma TV that I use for gaming (Panasonic Viera). It's a great display with none of the contrast or ghosting disadvantages of an LCD, but it's heavy, delicate, and most importantly, it puts out a ton of heat. A plasma TV is basically a grid of tiny neon lights. Like any active display (CRT, plasma, or OLED) it can suffer from burn-in, but I haven't found that to be a problem for my usage.
    - mikestew 4y ago
      Between a very old Panasonic Viera 42" upon which a buttload of Halo was played over many years, and the current Samsung Not-Smart Plasma which gets a bit less game play, I've yet to see the slightest hint of burn-in. I did get some ghosting on the Panny before I sold it, but I otherwise take plasma burn-in to be an artifact from TVs made twenty years ago.
      - bzzzt 4y ago
        It's a problem with every plasma TV ever made. I've got one of the last Panasonic Viera's which, after almost 10 years, has a slight dark patch around the place where subtitles tend to appear (I'm from the Netherlands where almost all non-dutch content is subtitled) It's only really noticeable when looking at a uniform gray screen which is not my content of choice, but it's there.

greenn 4y ago

In the Super Smash Bros. Melee competitive scene we still use CRTs for in-person tournaments because of the input lag on LCDs. Most original hardware available to play the game doesn't have a digital display output unless you have an early model GameCube and purchase a ~$100 HDMI adapter. Even if you get the hardware setup for modern digital output, most LCD monitors still have poor response times without spending the extra money for a "gaming" monitor. There has been a lot of work by modders to reduce the input lag introduced by the game engine itself to offset the lag introduced by LCD monitors, but I hope someday LCDs can catch up in this last metric.

chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
> work by modders to reduce the input lag introduced by the game engine itself Can you link something about this? are people rewriting the core engine of melee?
- CarVac 4y ago
  There's a phenomenon known as Polling Drift where the 2x-per-frame input polling at 120 Hz is mismatched with the NTSC framerate that's 0.1% slower, leading to a variable 0-0.5 frame input lag. This can be patched out. Additionally, they found that there is an extra frame of buffer hanging around that wasn't necessary so that can be removed. There might be something else too?
  - robocat 4y ago
    Another HN user mentioned a skipped frame every 20 seconds on a Dell monitor: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32582085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32582085
  - pezezin 4y ago
    That sounds weird to me. Old game consoles with analog video output didn't generate perfect NTSC or PAL timings (for example, the Megadrive would actually run at 59.92274 Hz in NTSC, and 49.701459 Hz in PAL), but it didn't matter as the CRT TVs had some wiggle room and would synchronize to the video signal. There was no such thing as input and output running at different rates and desynchronizing.

pcdoodle 4y ago

I think CRTs let your brain do some antialiasing so free details. I have some old 600mb divx rips that still look pretty damn good when viewed on a CRT.

agumonkey 4y ago
I had the exact same realization when testing my beloved diamondpro, the image was just nicer, warmer .. it was shocking.
- hulitu 4y ago
  It's also because LCDs cannot display collours as good as CRTs. Only the latest HDRs come close.
system2 4y ago
It is simply adding a tiny bit of blur to the entire image.
- Blackthorn 4y ago
  I don't think it's that simple. Old videogames look really ass on modern displays, even with ostensibly remastered releases that should be doing that tiny bit of blurring.
- rtwok 4y ago
  If you do that the image just looks blurry. The magic is that it looks soft on a CRT. soft != blurry In my experience a simple scanline filter surprisingly helps in softening upscaled low res. The draw back is that the overall brightness is reduced. You can't win with LCD.
jrm4 4y ago
I just had this idea and I cant be the only one though, what about just a slightly blurry physical glass/plastic overlay?
- 4y ago

bironran 4y ago

The biggest advantage of CRT is that my cat could sit on one. He would be drawn to that heat generating machine, lay on top of it with his fore legs dangling over the edge of the screen and snooze while I played whatever video game was the current hit well into the night. I miss that cat-butt-warmer. I miss my cat too.

omerhj 4y ago
One of my cats loved snoozing on my big 19" CRT as well. When I replaced the CRT with my first LCD monitor, he tried to hop onto the non-existent top of the screen. In a mad scramble to not fall he put all of his front claws in the plastic cover of the screen. The LCD went from zero to hundreds of bad pixels within a day :-( I still miss that cat too.
eyelidlessness 4y ago
Upvoted for wholesome cat love. I miss your cat on your behalf.
ace2358 4y ago
My cat used to sleep on my crt during 36 -48 gaming sessions of Everquest during school holidays with my best buddy. Two computers next to each other. Too much cola. Huge amounts of rage when we would die. Most likely because we barely slept. Heh. Then when I got my first MacBook Pro around 2007 my cat decided that the hot as keyboard was the new sleeping spot. No more computer use for me when he wanted to sleep haha. I miss that cat too.
davidgerard 4y ago
the death of the monitor toy not sure about cat hair in the vents though!
jerrysievert 4y ago
for me it was that I could play videos for the cat where it would attack the screen - the vhs tape that I played was called "video catnip". I wouldn't dare do that with an lcd display, even (or especially?) if it were mounted to a wall.

Arrath 4y ago

I miss degaussing my monitor.

VyseofArcadia 4y ago

I do wish display manufacturers used more display tech in parallel. I'd love the option to buy a modern CRT or a modern LCD or a modern OLED, etc. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, but it seems like on the market, CRT being fat outweighed all other concerns. Pun intended.

tverbeure 4y ago

The article points out that LCDs have more lag, but then it states this: > And if there is scaling involved, there is probably going to be some lag The lag that's introduced by a scaler is trivial, and measured in microseconds...

cannam 4y ago

I can't imagine loving a monitor the way I loved my iiyama Vision Master Pro. 1600x1200 at 71Hz driven from a Matrox Millennium (4MB VRAM and no 3D acceleration whatsoever) with soft-edged pixels and no visible grain or mesh. It was by far the best computer-related object I had ever owned. But that would be so impractical now, given its bulk and what else is available. We actually still have a CRT as our main TV here - a 28" Sony - not for any exciting retro reason but just because we've had it from new and it still works. We have a bigger LCD in another room. We bought that to watch films on, but it was always disappointing for that - it's too clean, it feels as if you're watching the making-of documentary rather than the film itself. So we hardly ever use it and mostly stick with the CRT. It's satisfying to watch, but part of me hopes it'll stop working so we can get the space in the corner back.

bloody_bocker 4y ago
> feels as if you're watching the making-of documentary rather than the film itself. Isn't that because of many picture enhancers that come with modern tvs? I think major offender is the interpolation to go from cinematic 24 frames to higher frame rate. I believe it's commonly called soap opera effect...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Yep, but there's no reason to use it. Just go to the settings menu and turn it off. While you're in there, set the color settings to "movie" mode too so the colors are more faithful. Modern TVs look absolutely horrible out-of-the-box, because they're made to look cool in showrooms, but if you fix those settings they look great. Even better, turn on a YouTube video that shows how to adjust the black and white levels and tune them.
tinus_hn 4y ago
Be aware of the energy you are wasting, a modern tv uses much less power than a crt.

rocky1138 4y ago

I would love to see modern CRTs but we have to be honest with ourselves about the negative environmental side with their lead components. Perhaps we could build a more environmentally friendly CRT with our processes nowadays.

vbezhenar 4y ago
It’ll be very niche gadget so who cares about environment.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  You'd think that about mechanical keyboards too, but there you go.
  - yourusername 4y ago
    Mechanical keyboards are a small niche. I would be suprised if they make up more than 0.5% of the keyboards in use today.
some-guy 4y ago
In addition to this, once OLED monitors for PCs (or similar) become commonplace, a lot of the complaints I had about LCD/LED are no longer relevant. My LG CX looks absolutely stunning, and the input lag is unnoticable.

aimor 4y ago

It wasn't until I was shopping for an LED TV that I really understood a lot of the important details in how a sequence of images can be made to look like the images are in motion. The biggest revelation was the difference between showing a still image for just a moment vs holding that still image on screen for a long time. Illuminating the screen pixel-by-pixel with a short duty factor gave CRTs sharp crisp motion compared to LED and LCD screens. The UFO tests really drove the point home (along with a lot of other visual phenomena). https://www.testufo.com/blackframes https://www.testufo.com/blackframes What got me hung up for so long was that so much of the conversation has been about frame rates and shutter speeds, when it's really a different (but related) effect. I've been wanting to play around with high framerate video with frames combined to mimic slower shutter speeds. That is, 120 Hz open shutter video blurred with a 4-frame sliding window to look like it was shot at 30 fps. Or other such tricks. I thought high-end cameras might do such things automatically but it seems like they don't and I want to figure out why not. (does it look bad?) https://kevinlisota.photography/2020/04/understanding-video-frame-rate-and-shutter-speed/ https://kevinlisota.photography/2020/04/understanding-video-... https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/tv-motion-blur-explained-and-why-all-the-4k-tv-solutions-fall-short/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/tv-motion-blur-...

uxp100 4y ago
That would not look like 30 fps necessarily. The keyword you want to learn about is “Shutter Angle”
- aimor 4y ago
  That's right, my example was off because film is 'usually' shot 180 degrees. So 30 FPS has an effective shutter of 1/60", and 120Hz open shutter needs a 2-frame sliding window to match that look. Or use a 3-frame window for 1/40", a more blurry film (1/48") look. There's power in being able to make that choice when editing. What I'm not sure about is how similar merging two images together will be compared to doing it natively with the camera. I'm guessing it will look slightly different, but I'll find out when I try it.

smokel 4y ago

One advantage is that you can have another kind of fun with it, as displayed in the amazing demo "Copper" by Surprise!Productions (1992). Most of the effects in that demo are made possible by varying values in the CRT Controller registers of the VGA card. Fond memories! https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2048 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=2048

asciimov 4y ago

Things I don't miss from CRTS: Their weight, the heat they put off, eye strain caused by low refresh rates (below 75hz for me), having to adjust the rabbit ears or outdoor antenna when one of the 4 channels got too snowy, image burn in. Things that I miss from CRTS: black is black not grey, console tvs and tv's as furniture, better viewing angles as people didn't mount their damned tv over a fireplace or up high in general, turning the brightness knob down if it too bright at night, video games (of course),

xwolfi 4y ago
Try OLED it solved the black, the viewing angle, the video games look insane, the near zero bezels make the image seem floating and well a remote control can adapt brightness well.
- nottorp 4y ago
  It did? I thought they're advertising themselves based on how effectively they can blind you. You could turn down the brightness on a CRT down to 10% or less at night and still use it.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    Why can’t you turn the brightness down on your lcd?
    - nottorp 4y ago
      https://www.howtogeek.com/294307/TURN-UP-YOUR-TVS-BACKLIGHT-NOT-THE-BRIGHTNESS-TO-MAKE-IT-BRIGHTER/ https://www.howtogeek.com/294307/TURN-UP-YOUR-TVS-BACKLIGHT-... Random explanation :) It tells you how to blind yourself more, but it's valid if you want the other way too. Although they say it's for TVs, it goes for LCD monitors too these days. Not to mention that whatever you turn down on a LCD monitor will mess up your colors beyond a point.
    - doubled112 4y ago
      I do this almost daily. Daytime is bright. Nighttime is not. Why shouldn't my monitor follow?

volforix 4y ago

None.

eternityforest 4y ago

They're vintage enthusiast items. Someone who likes classic cars will probably not want to replace everything with modern digital stuff. CRTs will always have that, as long as they are available. Definitely not something I'd want to own though. They're bulky, significantly hot, sometimes noisy, full of lead glass. And... HD is pretty nice.

Semaphor 4y ago
> Definitely not something I'd want to own Not something I’d ever want to return to. Back when I finally had an LCD, it was so amazing. When every place had LCDs, it was even better, no more annoying sounds!

timonoko 4y ago

We are still waiting for the infinite precision displays "pixels are dying at alarming level, but they are individual atoms so no matter". Was this from William Gibson? Anyways. I have already planned how this display is constructed. Instead of individually addressing every pixel, the display is backed with layered pyramid of guad-decoders, which divide the display to four smaller displays. The picture or quad-message Q={Q,Q,Q,Q} can be of any precision, but when the decoder does not see sub-decoders but just pixels, it just calculates the average and turns the pixel on. The beauty of display of mine is that they can be stacked. You just add another decoder-level behind the display. Or may they are constructed that way, so you can repair a display by replacing one 64x64 pixel module.

timonoko 4y ago
BTW. This display is many ways similar to CRT or rather vector displays. When gaming you can send Q-messages to areas of intense activity and the rest remains the same. Q-message needs to have ignore flag (Ign). As an example this message turns the lowest-rightmost pixel Red on 256x256-display: (Ign Ign Ign (Ign Ign Ign (Ign Ign Ign (Ign Ign Ign (Ign Ign Ign Red))))) Q-messages are in Lisp, of course.

rsecora 4y ago

>>>> Usually when there are limitations, the computer and display are able to negotiate compatible options and hide the incompatible ones. Ejem... there was a time were X configuration was black magic, and only the bold venture to change it.

ghostDancer 4y ago
Recall as a teen installing Linux and then reading the monitor manual, looking for the specs to add it to the configuration after reading to be careful that you could break it, and starting X holding my breath.

dopp0 4y ago

If the article does not consider: "slapping the shit out of the monitor when you're angry at the computer", then it's scientifically inaccurate.

tedk-42 4y ago

Next up, article on the advantages of eating cyanide. Doesn't matter about the advantages - the disadvantages far outweigh them.

PaulBGD_ 4y ago
What’s the disadvantage of crts that outweighs all the advantages?
- zajio1am 4y ago
  1) flickering 2) fuzzy pixels
- ridgered4 4y ago
  It is mostly the weight and physical space the tube requires. They use a lot of desk space and require a decent quality desk to hold them. They also use somewhat more power than LCDs but I suspect LCDs more modern look and space saving qualities drove their adoption much more than the power usage. The way their refresh rate works also seems to cause a lot less eyestrain on LCDs, particular when comparing a low quality CRT to a low quality LCD.
- wrycoder 4y ago
  What I call the "square eyes" syndrome. After you use one for ten hours, you go home with a weird tension/buzz in your head. Doesn't happen with LCDs.

bowsamic 4y ago

The real biggest advantage is Time Crisis

deergomoo 4y ago

I had a 20” Sony PVM (20M4E) for a few years for retro games. Playing anything intended for analogue video was an absolute joy. The characteristics of the display were factored into the creation of the art in a fascinating way (and sometimes even the characteristics of the display signal, like the transparency effects in Sonic the Hedgehog that only work over composite video). I ended up selling it due to space and practicality concerns, plus some of the corner geometry was starting to drift in a way that would need physical adjustments to the tube to correct. I used the money to buy a RetroTink 5X scaler; it’s not the same by any stretch, but it’s a best-in-class scaler so at least I’m not adding a ton of latency and visual artefacts to the process. I find it remarkable how much display tech can affect our perception of what is essentially the same image, and how this manifests with different types of content. It’s not even just legacy stuff—OLEDs have very different motion characteristics to LCDs due to the pixel response time, for example.

kypro 4y ago

There's something so comfy looking about CRT monitors. I know it's just nostalgia, but there's something in that. I've been playing a lot of Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) recently. The games are alright, but honestly they kind of suck when objectively compared to modern games. I still enjoy them though, but that's because they take me back to simpler times. I'm not sure I'd use a CRT monitor for any of it's tech specs, but would I get a huge amount of satisfaction from setting up a CRT monitor just so I can recreate my childhood experience of playing Jedi Knight II again? Probably.

Bakary 4y ago
My recommendation is to watch speedruns of that game as I recall them being hilariously insolent.
headsoup 4y ago
I don't think a lot of them sucked at all compared to modern games. Forced constraints lead to wonderful creativity and strong - even if simple - game design. Sure the games might not have had as much breadth or depth at times, but I feel today's games are far more generic in general, you have to go searching for interesting concepts, rather than just browsing what is 'on the shelf' at the shops.

headsoup 4y ago

Obviously the biggest advantage of having a CRT again is reliving the glory days of pointing my SNES Super Scope at it and blasting away at Yoshi's Safari, Battle Clash and Metal Combat! They have sad sadly in a box for far too long, I really need to go find an old crt and stop living in shame.

degrees57 4y ago

When I was a desktop tech, visiting a user with a problem, I carried a laser pointer with me. I could point to elements on the screen without getting my fingerprints on the glass and without invading the user's personal space. Laser pointers are pretty much useless on LCD. Not that I would ever go back; but it was a nice feature at the time.

pezezin 4y ago
> Laser pointers are pretty much useless on LCD. What do you mean? An LCD will reflect a laser pointer just fine (I just tested it).

Vrondi 4y ago

The article doesn't even mention the only true advantage of CRT: that they work with lightguns for video games. I miss games like Duck Hunt and Vampire Night!