The end of the CRT era...

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by agaraffa, Apr 28, 2015.

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  1. Linus

    Linus Senior Member

    Location:
    Melb. Australia
    If I had the room and Mrs Linus was agreeable, (the last time was June 1989), I'd collect CRTs. They look great, retro-furniture-wise, and I'd make a fortune hiring them out as movie props!
     
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  2. latedep31

    latedep31 Forum Resident

    I think they are RGB compatible, and old consoles look great that way.

    I have a smaller Sony Trinitron flat CRT, specifically for video games. If I can get a good SCART to Component converter someday, that would be great.
     
  3. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Boy, I sure don't. Although my mom bought a Sony console circa '86 that I did think was pretty stunning:

    [​IMG]

    I don't know if this is the exact same model, but it's pretty darn close. The sound quality was amazing for a TV (and it could play loud). This was right at the tail end of Sony's golden age, before it all went to crap.

    Those objects are seldom as dense as an old CRT TV, or as hard to get a grip on to move. I know, because I used to move every year or two, and even really heavy objects like a sofa you could work with on your own if you had to to get them moved around. TVs were the hardest to deal with (and probably the most fragile heavy object in each move).
     
  4. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I have to admit, the Sony XBRs were pretty much the best consumer TV sets of the 1980s and much of the 1990s. Once HD came in, though, things changed...

    BTW, probably the single widest-used color monitor for picture mastering these days is the Sony Broadcast BVM-X300, which is about $30K. Very, very nice pictures, but it's only 30".
     
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  5. GuildX700

    GuildX700 Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Man, my old Sony XBR32 was IIRC 186 pounds and that weight was not evenly distributed, it was near impossible to move.
     
  6. DTS-MA 7.1

    DTS-MA 7.1 Forum Resident

    Location:
    NJ
    Those things could give you a hernia.
     
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  7. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    OLED. Nice if you can afford it, I suppose...

    Sony Product Detail Page BVMX300
     
  8. Trashman

    Trashman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    Sound quality might be one of the few areas that some of these old CRTs beat out modern TVs. The speakers in most thin flatscreen TVs are borderline unusable. The only real option is to run the sound through an external amp and speakers.
     
  9. GuildX700

    GuildX700 Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Yup, my XBR had a labyrinth bass ducted tuning and mids /tweeters, for a TV it sounded pretty good, also had wireless headphones.
     
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  10. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I saw one on Wednesday and it's very nice. Very heavy, very deep. I also saw the $150,000 Dolby Pulsar HDR display, which is about the size of a washing machine and as bright as the sun.
     
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  11. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
  12. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    I'd take the comparisons with a pinch of salt, as they're comparing a CRT to a vanilla LCD display, which isn't the only or even the best alternative display tech (such as plasma - rip, OLEDs or even the new quantum dot based LED LCDs).

    They make comments like "all other resolutions require rescaling, which generally results in significant image degradation", which simply isn't true. Today's scalers are excellent and you simply won't see any 'degradation' at normal viewing distances.

    Also blatantly false is this comment "pleasing images but not accurate because of problems with black-level, gray-scale and Gamma. Reduced color saturation at low intensity levels due to a poor black-level. Generally not suitable for professional image color balancing". Today's wide color gamut displays reach 99% DCI-P3 colorspace coverage, which is way better than the old Rec.709. Color saturation is greatly enhanced with quantum dot filters and new displays have much better black levels, including OLEDs which have perfect blacks. These types of displays are routinely used in professional settings.
     
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  13. Rocker

    Rocker Senior Member

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    I recently got a nice 49" flatscreen 4K smart TV... so my old 27" tube TV is now in storage in the garage. (That thing is a monster... it weighs a ton, and is almost impossible to move by yourself). :p

    But I'm reluctant to get rid of it, because as several people already mentioned, you can't really play older video game systems on these new TVs... and I've get several old game consoles that are still a lot of fun.
     
  14. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    OK thanks for the analysis. I did suspect they were not comparing the SOTA but average tendencies of each technology. In mitigation the chart was from 2011 although they probably should update it. I did like their attempt to layout side by side differences and capacities.
     
  15. Jason Pumphrey

    Jason Pumphrey Forum Resident

    I have one working CRT TV, for vintage video gaming.
     
  16. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Oh good - you can get your tan while you work!
     
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  17. TheVU

    TheVU Forum Resident

    Thats actually not untrue. I rented someone's little retro tv for $30 bucks/two days a year ago for a short I was working on.
     
    Linus likes this.
  18. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    We're talking serious radiation damage (at least when it's at 4000 nits -- that's 40 times normal TV-screen brightness.)
     
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  19. Dreadnought

    Dreadnought I'm a live wire. Look at me burn.

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    A decade ago when ditching our ten year old 20" bedroom CRT I did pause and reflect upon tossing something that worked perfectly and seemed to have everlasting life given the hours it had logged. There was nostalgia as well. Later after full adaptation to the higher resolution of LCD, if I did encounter an old TV, I would be surprised by how fuzzy and (newly) inadequate was the image. I didn't remember it as that bad.
     
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  20. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    I had nearly the same reaction. When we moved to Florida, we had two CRT TVs left. The old 27" bedroom Trinitron got broken when the movers carelessly dropped it out at the truck and they replaced it with a new, cheap Insignia LCD from the nearest Best Buy. At the time it seemed like a fair trade, and I surely don't miss moving that old Sony tube set around.

    Anyway, we still had a 13" portable Sony that had been used in our spa-room up north. We had no use for it, but it had few hours on it, so it came south. After some time here in Florida, I hooked it up in another bedroom with one of those digital/analog TV converters that the government forced manufacturers to make. After hooking it up and watching side-by-side with that crappy Insignia, I was amazed at how bad the analog tube picture was compared to the flat screen. The colors were just OK, skewed a bit toward the red - Sony CRT's TVs always had a bit of a warm look to them. But what struck me most was the crappy geometry. A good inch of the picture was missing on the left side; the bars of the new widescreen picture started low and got higher in the middle; when playing a 4:3 picture, the overscan was really bad; and the brighter whites had a blooming effect to them. Finally, even at the tiny 13" size, at a reasonable distance, I could still see the horizontal lines of the NTSC picture. I realize that with some internal tweaking, some of those geometric oddities could be fixed a bit, and I'm sure they were oversized because of the small size of the TV to begin with. It was probably showing most of the "safe area".

    That Sony went into the 'yard sale' basket. I think we managed to get $25 for it, but that was the last CRT in the house.
     
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  21. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Note that article has a date of 2011. Time has moved on, and so has a lot of the technical data out there on monitors. I think OLED is a pretty solid technology these days. The two leading calibration companies I look to for technical information are Spectracal Calman and Light Illusion:

    Display Color Calibration
    Light Illusion

    Each has very relevant and contemporary information on how picture quality is judged today, and I think Steve Shaw on Light Illusion has some thoughts on the issues between CRT vs. LCD vs. OLED vs. light valve projection.
     
  22. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    LCD sets have gotten a lot better since 2011 as well, haven't they? They seem dramatically brighter (and the blacks blacker) than they were a few years ago - a lot of them look like plasmas now, only crisper.
     
  23. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    I mentioned the date myself as a qualifier and another poster commented on a few of the assertions. OLED looks promising but I don't see any OLED monitors for commercially feasible prices nor sizes. Am I missing something? And if not what's the hangup? Are there safety issues? My main contention was that CRT and LCD comparisons were not a slamdunk for LCD.
     
  24. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Yes, they are much better now, in three key areas - maximum brightness, wide color gamuts which includes 3D color and saturation (thanks to quantum dot filters), better black levels - but still nowhere near as good as OLEDs which are technically perfect blacks.

    There has also been improvement in viewing angles (depending on panel tech) and reflection absorbing screen filters which also has the effect of enhancing the perceived picture quality.
     
  25. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    What do you mean by 'commercially feasible prices'? The latest and best OLEDs are still expensive around $3k and more, but some of the older gen units are much cheaper, especially from 'off brand' Chinese manufacturers. As for sizes, they're all pretty much big format screens 55 in and up. I don't think you'll find smaller screens than that.
     
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