CRT General Discussion and Chat
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Welcome to CRT general, for all your Cathode Ray Tube pleasure!
What is a CRT?
A CRT, or Cathode Ray Tube, is a vacuum filled glass tube, with an electron gun at one end, and painted in phosphorescent paint at the other end. The electron gun is controlled by magnets to "sweep" the beam of electrons from the gun across the phosphorescent paint to make it light up. That's how you get the picture on the tube.
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In a color CRT, there are 3 electron guns which are carefully aimed so they all land at different positions, which are obscured from eachother by a metal "shadow mask" or "aperture grille" which only allow the Red, Green, and Blue electron guns to interact with their red, green, and blue phosphor paints.
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Why CRT?
CRT's are huge! They're deep, they're heavy, the flyback transformers make an awful whining noise on some models. They generate a lot of heat, and they suck down a lot of electricity. Why could anyone possibly want one of these horrible devices in 2018 when you could have a 4k OLED TV with HDR and hyperpixels and Motion Rate 480 and a bazillion channels of TV???
There's a few reasons.
Number 1: COLOR
CRT's have excellent color reproduction, with black being black and vibrant colors. Unlike an LCD TV where the backlight is always on, a CRT TV's phosphors are only illuminated when they need to be.
# TWO: Input Lag/Latency
CRT's have zero input lag (Except for certain very late digital CRTs, which are much like modern LCD screens in how they process an image signal). This doesn't mean much for most people, but for competitive fighting games it can make a difference. For example Smash tournaments (ugh I know) use almost exclusively CRTs because of the lack of input lag. On a modern TV, especially a large high resolution one, turning the 240p or 480i signal from your game console into a 4k image for the TV can introduce dozens of miliseconds of latency.
C: Refresh Rate + Resolution
This is only for PC monitors, not TV's. On a PC CRTs you can almost always get refresh rates above 50/60hz. In fact, most will let you drive high resolution pictures at 85hz. For example, the Sony GDM-FW900, widely considered the king of CRTs, can run at
2304 x 1440 at 80 Hz. That's really good even by today's standards. While we're finally in the era of 2k high refresh rate (144hz) displays, having this capability in the early 2000's was incredible, and it's still impressive today. Plus you get all the other advantages of CRT's.
IV. SCALING!!! (and scanlines)
This is the big one. Analog CRT's (Again, this doesn't apply to very late high end digital CRT TVs) can display content at any resolution they support. This is important in both TVs and Monitors. On a TV, the console displays the image in either 240p or 480i resolutions. When putting those resolutions into a modern TV, they have to be run through the internal scaling circuitry on the TV. This often produces a hideous blurry mess, especially on ever higher resolution TV's. However, on a CRT TV, the image is crystal clear and sharp as a tack, as the analog circuitry doesn't do any scaling (I know the dot pitch of the phosphors is technically fixed so the """"pixels"""" don't change size, but that's being needlessly pedantic).
In particular, on a 240p console like the PS1 and anything prior, the electron beam only covers half the available vertical resolution, causing "scanlines," or a blank line between each line with color. This is an aesthetic people like.
On a CRT PC monitor it's even more important. Have you ever tried booting up a game at 640x480 on your 1080p monitor? It doesn't look good, does it? It's blurry, messy, and usually your monitor will stretch it to fill the screen, making it even worse. On a nice CRT PC monitor it will display anything from 320x240 to its maximum resolution (often 1152x864 or some oddball number like that) and look just as crisp at any size. This is great for playing older games that can't display in HD.
Which CRT?
There are many CRTs to choose form, what with it being the primary display technology for 80 years and all that. In general for gaming you want to be concerned with what inputs a CRT TV has. For a PC monitor, just pick the best resolution and refresh you can get your hands on, as almost all PC CRT monitors you can use with modern computers only have a VGA port.
On your CRT you have the folowing selection of inputs:
RF Tuner
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The worst input, most TVs in the 80's and earlier only have this option. This will require either a console with a built-in RF Modulator (anything before the NES, and many consoles up to before the PS1 era) or an RF Modulator. RF signals are terrible. They're grainy, the colors are bad, they're blurry and have terrible combing. The sound is also terrible and mono. Avoid this if you possibly can, unless you have an extremely old TV and are doing this for artistic purposes. Somehow modern TVs still have antenna jacks that will work with an RF signal.
Composite (AV)
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The yellow, white, and red RCA cables you know and love. This is an adequate at best signal. It's usually available on any console from the NES and up until the PS3/XBox 360. These are common and are on most TVs in the 90's and later, all the way to present day. There's not much to say here. The colors are okay, but the image is a bit fuzzy. I wouldn't use composite on any TV bigger than 9" or so if I had any other option.
S-Video
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Common throughout the 90's onwards, S-video is a big step up over composite. Where composite has all video information transmitted over one wire, S-video has it separated into two wires. This is completely adequate for most gamers, and most systems PS1 and later have cheap S-video cables readily available. If you have to choose between S-Video and Composite, shop smart. Shop S-mart. Also requires two RCA audio cables for sound, like composite.
Component (Y/Pb/Pr)
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Now we're getting to the good stuff. This is a 3-cable solution that produces superb image quality, and supports resolutions up to 1080i. PS2 and later consoles support Component video, so if you have a nice consumer TV and want to play PS1 games, pop them into a PS2 and use the component cables. The picture quality of Component is indistinguishable from RGB.
RGB/SCART
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Europeans held on to their CRT TV's for much longer than Americans did because of this port. SCART ports can actually carry Composite and S-Video signals on them, but what we're interested in is RGB SCART, which is the highest quality image you can get. Thankfully, RGB and Component are easily transcodable between eachother, so if you get a SCART cable for your console, you can buy a cheap transcoder and get the signal into your american Component capable TV. Also you can adapt RGB SCART to a PVM, discussed later.
Here's a picture comparison between Composite and RGB (not mine)
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So now you know what inputs you're looking for, you can start hunting craigslist and garage sales for TVs with them. However there's also another concern about what kind of TV you want. Do you want a TV, or a professional video monitor (PVM)? And if so, which brand of each?
To answer which brand is easy. SONY! Sony had a proprietary CRT technology called Trinitron for about 40 years, during which they made better CRTs than anyone else. The Aperture grille placed a fine series of wires across the screen to block the electron guns, and used phosphor stripes instead of phosphor dots. Long story short, Sony CRTs are sharper and far brighter than other CRTs that use a Shadow Mask.
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See how much more black is in the shadow mask picture?
So while other TVs and monitors are good, Sony's are simply better. If you can get a Trinitron, get it!
PVMs vs TV
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There are two kinds of CRT monitors used for console gaming. PVM's are Professional Video Monitors (though PVM is a Sony trademark, the term is used for all brands.) PVMs are professional quality monitors used in production and and filming and broadcast work. They offer incredibly high resolution RGB inputs, and provide the sharpest quality of all available CRTs. Even non-sony units are still several cuts above your average consumer TV. Unfortunately, due to a series of videos by My Life In Gaming, the prices of PVMs have skyrockted from dozens of dollars to several hundreds of dollars for higher end ones. If you can find one for cheap, go for it!
Please let me know if there's anything you'd like me to add to this OP.
Might want to add a background to this picture, looks like shite if you have a custom theme on.
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Oh boy, a place to show off my CRT HDTV!
I have the Panasonic TH-32D60 32-inch HDTV made in 2004, regarded in Japan as one of the best CRT TVs of all time, as well as one of the last mass-produced ones ever. Bought it used not that long ago for a pretty good price.
This baby can take 1080i, 720p, 480p, and 480i through its two component video inputs, and of course it has two S-Video/Conposite inputs on the back in addition to one more on the front. At the moment though I only use the component inputs with a component video switcher since all of the game consoles I have can output at least 480p. Both old and new games look excellent on it with very little delay. Being from the time when digital TV was just starting to spread, it even has a digital TV tuner and EPG, still compatible with modern digital terrestrial and satellite TV. I had to put a HDMI-Component converter between the TV and my Switch, but it looks as if there is not even a converter in between.
The adjustment was a little bit weird at first, there was a ridiculous amount of overscan (picture was cropped more than needed) and the picture was a bit warped at parts, but I managed to fix both of those through its service mode. Probably because it is HD and the scanning frequency is significantly higher, the really high pitched noise is completely inaudible, but of course it still has the transformer hum. Also it is heavy as fuck as one might imagine, 59kg and it definitely needed two people for it to be carried into my room.
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Next to my desk for scale, as well as showing live TV:
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Nice one! I haven't heard much from people with HD CRTs, I always wanted one.
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Not using this monitor anymore because it died (unfortunately), the display stopped turning on at all, would just keep powering on and off, not much I could've done and the repairs would've costed more than I got the monitor for. Unfortunate, would still be using it too if it worked. It was great when it was alive though.
They're fantastic in overall picture quality, they can give cheap LCDs a good run for their money and often look nicer than them. However, the weight will probably kill it for nearly everyone that wants one, only the most craziest of people like myself will go to the effort to haul it inside. My set is similar to daigennki's, except mine is a Toshiba and has a VGA input on the back with the ability to display up to 1024x768 through it.
The sweetspot for them is if you have 6-7th gen gaming consoles, since they output at 480p - 720p natively. OG Xbox games over component look 👌
