The end of the CRT era...

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

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  1. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    Last time I spoke to the guys who make the Groove Tube Predicta replicas they were concerned about their continued ability to get picture tubes.

    http://cbelec.com/
     
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  2. Anthology123

    Anthology123 Senior Member

    I still have two CRTs. A 1996 Sony Trinitron 19" in my bedroom, and a 2004 27" Wega in my Home theater. Both are still going strong. I have Zenith HDTV OTA converter boxes on them. At least the Wega has its 16x9 mode, still looks good for DVDs and Blu-ray. I bought a Blu-ray the last year they still had analog outputs solely for this reason. We do have one LCD, a Samsung 32" in our living room.
     
  3. mj_patrick

    mj_patrick Senior Member

    Location:
    Elkhart, IN, USA
    I think so. I could definitely tell when I sat behind a machine at 60Hz or lower. I always tried for the maximum amount of Hz the monitor would support, which was usually 100Hz-120Hz from memory. Despite the lesser frequency of headaches, the migraines still existed. Went away almost completely with LCDs (although I have sat behind 1-2 dodgy brands such as Hannspree that had some uncomfortable displays). I might get them once or twice a year now.
     
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  4. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    We are just getting in guns that will work on flat screens. They were developed a while back and then tested. My vendor is getting an extra set in for my company to try. My multi game system has over 3000 original arcade games, including all those great Nintendo gun games like the one you cited and Hogans Alley, etc. They made a lot of those VS Nintendo two player games. Was a double edged sword when Super Mario came out because they made so much money porting it to the their home console that they abandoned the coin op market. Ouch! That was a tremendous loss to our industry.
     
  5. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    Ya, its hard to justify a CRT...just not practical for a lot of reasons. But, you feed it the right signal, ie, laserdisc, and I have to say I like the picture better! I'm sure the reason is more about being used to it than actually being better, but it is what it is. All things being equal, I was fine with CRT. I barely used my $3000 40" Mitsubishi when flat screens came out. What a waste of money! It was an awesome set, but you needed HDMI inputs and it just quickly became obsolete with gaming systems, etc.
     
  6. mj_patrick

    mj_patrick Senior Member

    Location:
    Elkhart, IN, USA
    I agree the classic games look much better on the CRT displays- the displays they were designed for. All those characteristics like the CRT monitor scanlines, the RGB aperture grills/shadow masks, phosphoric persistence etc., etc.. all are elements that added texture and detail to what was some otherwise pretty minimal artwork. This becomes even more so on vector display based CRTs for games like Tempest.

    I lucked out when I bought the Dig Dug cabinet- the guy had put in a brand new Wells-Gardner monitor before deciding to sell it. If the monitor went out tomorrow, I don't know if I'd bother replacing it unless I got a considerable deal.

    LCD screens aren't popular from a classic gamer's purist standpoint, but they're a lot more practical. If there's some kind of scanline effects or dot masks that can be used, it becomes less of an issue with me. Some of the NTSC effects happening in emulation these days are quite impressive.
     
  7. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    I bought a Sony Trinitron 13" TV for 95ยข a couple of months ago. The CRT era is over.
     
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  8. Django

    Django Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dublin, Ireland
    All the TV's I own are old style CRTs. (2 28 inchers & a portable)
     
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  9. adm62

    adm62 Senior Member

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    I bought an HD CRT set in about 2006 for $800 (no digital tuner), I sold it for $40, 4 years later, had flat screens ever since. Reading this thread I wonder why people have 10 or 11 TVs in their homes. Why?
     
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  10. rockclassics

    rockclassics Senior Member

    Location:
    Mainline Florida
    All 4 tvs in my house are standard definition. Just never felt the need to upgrade. I also run tvs until they die.
     
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  11. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    I wonder if this will be like vinyl and umm tubes all over again. People who threw out their vinyl and tube amps now are back trying to rebuy them.:)

    Actually for the vast majority the flat screens are better. I just don't like their color and motion properties although they have improved mightily in the last decade. Still, the colors seem more natural and lifelike on my late model 29" Samsung CRT. It was cheap too and much less heavy than prior models.
     
  12. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I would love to see a multiple P-I-P feature where you could see 2, 3, or even 4 stations at once and bop back and forth with audio, then pick one picture and blow it up to full size. You can do this with a few channels on DirecTV, but I'd love to see a bunch that way. In a perfect world, we could all have a wall with (say) four 32" or 40" screens with various channels, then below that one big 10' display with whatever we wanted to concentrate on. For people who love sports, this would be a great set up. Not practical for most rooms.

    You should see the monitors we use to master movies & TV shows for your screen. Trust me, they're a lot better than that. There's a lot going on in the image you can't see.
     
  13. ssmith3046

    ssmith3046 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Arizona desert
    Reminds me of my first VCR that I bought the first year they were available. It was a top loader the size of a suitcase and cost $1200.00. Curtis Mathes make and hooked to a Zeneth color TV with CRT of course.
     
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  14. blind_melon1

    blind_melon1 An erotic adventurer of the most deranged kind....

    Location:
    Australia
    This made me think of this scene in 'Back to the Future II' :D
    [​IMG]
     
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  15. blind_melon1

    blind_melon1 An erotic adventurer of the most deranged kind....

    Location:
    Australia
    I don't see them much these days either, but over here at the time the best widescreen CRT I could find on the market was the Grundig I bought. It really was a great set for its day :)
     
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  16. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI
    Same here with the computer monitor, and the one in my bedroom is actually a 20" screen, so I don't think that'd count as a portable (though it's light enough to be)...
     
  17. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI
    "See Mr. Greene, he's so serene, he's got a TV in every room..."
     
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  18. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    That's the best comment in the entire thread by far. :righton:
     
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  19. btf1980

    btf1980 Senior Member

    Location:
    NYC
    Hey, my uncle still has a working betamax player that works fine, it doesn't mean I'm jonesing to play it when blu-ray is around. He boxed it up, but it works.

    The flat panels today are better, not to mention that they will be much cheaper on your electric bill. Those CRTs are actually costing you money. A decent flat panel is dirt cheap these days. It literally makes no sense at this point to hang on to old CRT tech that is not only visually inferior, it takes more space and it uses more electricity, which you are paying for.

    What's the point, other than saying you didn't give up old tech for the sake of saying you didn't give up old tech? Congrats I guess, but you're paying much more than what you would be paying in electricity with a modern flat panel, many of which are energy saving. Why not get something that's not only visually better, but energy efficient?

    I remember when my uncle (same guy with the betamax, because "you never know") got rid of his massive CRT for an LED display. He couldn't believe it when his electric bill came and he saw the price difference. All those years, he was paying so much more month after month. The savings difference was enough for him to also change some of the appliances in his house, like the old fridge for an energystar one. That woke his anachronistic behind up...haha.

    When people who switch calculate the cost savings they could have had over the years when they start using energy efficient appliances, that's when it hits them. Sometimes it's because they aren't aware of how much more they are paying to "hang on" to old things. Your CRT ain't romantic and sexy like vinyl. ;)
     
    Last edited: Apr 30, 2015
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  20. junk

    junk Hellion

    Location:
    St. Louis
    About half of ours are dedicated to the various gaming consoles in our game room.
     
  21. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I use my flat panel for a variety of vintage game systems, and the only ones that would fully benefit from a CRT would be the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision. I don't use a light gun so I haven't had issues with that on the NES.
     
  22. PHILLYQ

    PHILLYQ Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brooklyn NY
    I had a CRT monitor on a desk(19 inch) and it took up about 2/3 of the entire desk area on a large desk. I switched to a flat screen monitor and all of a sudden I had a LOT of room on the desk. For space saving alone it's great, besides the much improved screen.
     
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  23. frozen-beach

    frozen-beach Forum Resident

    The love of CRT tvs will never die as long as retro gamers exist. Things like nintendo, atari and other old systems look like garbage on hdtvs, plus sometimes response time can be laggy. My dad used to have a 32 inch CRT tv before he replaced it with an hdtv. The CRT is currently mine.
     
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  24. Jose Jones

    Jose Jones Outstanding Forum Member

    Location:
    Detroit, Michigan
    TVs are one of the few major workhorses in our lives that perform better and cost much less than their previous counterparts over the past half-century.
     
  25. tommy-thewho

    tommy-thewho Senior Member

    Location:
    detroit, mi
    I still have a 35" crt Toshiba that works great. Thing weighs a ton and has HD on it.

    Has great sound with it also. Hope to get many more years out of it.
     
    Dude111 likes this.
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