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 displ

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.