Playing modern games on a CRT monitor

[Shapeshifter]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfac...mitter_display

what could have been. Now imagine that with a decade + of development behind it like LCD's have had.

[Athena]

Originally Posted by metroidfox

There is no way you actually have 30 bits of colour. The best HDR TVs/Sony's $80000 reference monitor can't even do 12-bit (Rec2020) fully yet.


https://pro.sony/en_SI/products/broa...bvm-hx310-v1.1
"Note: BVM‑HX310 V1.1 does not cover the ITU-R BT.2020, S-Gamut/S-Gamut3 and S-Gamut3.cine colour space in full."

Even the OLED (i.e. lower end one) can't do it: https://pro.sony/en_SI/products/broa...Block-pvm-x550
"* The PVM-X550 does not conform in full to the DCI-P3 or BT.2020 colour space."


Unlike consumer grade stuff, these things have truthful ratings. 10-bit all the way through.


^ either way, these things will crush CRTs in all but maybe motion performance.

Correct my video card nowadays outputs at 30 bits to a screen that does 10 bit to get billions of colors heading to the Adobe color gamut. so you are correct I Was thinking output rather than screen capability when I was typing. my bad. Thanks for catching that.

[GSGRUNT]

I do remember significant disappointment in the gaming experience while moving from CRT to LCD. Back then, even with primitive LCD tech, the change was worth it. All my old and once expensive CRTs are gone and I'm happy to never see them again.

[Quickstrike]

Originally Posted by metroidfox

Most good HDR TVs (albeit with dimming) probably beat CRTs at this point.

Also this thing: https://www.apple.com/ca/pro-display-xdr/
1000000:1 is the static contrast ratio on that thing. It dims per pixel.

It has 20.4 million pixels and 576 full array local dimming zone LEDs. So not even close to dimming per pixel.

[Trunks0]

Aperture grill CRT. All these years later and still capable as ever. LCDs still struggling to get it all on one panel.

[metroidfox]

Originally Posted by Quickstrike

It has 20.4 million pixels and 576 full array local dimming zone LEDs. So not even close to dimming per pixel.

It's a dual layer LCD panel. There is no backlight dimming on it.

First [active] layer is monochrome, and the second is a standard IPS RGB layer.

Even if you consider standard IPS contrast ratios of 1000:1 this thing has 1000 * 1000 = 1000000:1

It's the same style of panel as that $80000 Sony I linked previously. Totally a bargain if you realise how exotic it is.


https://www.businessinsider.com/appl...monitor-2019-6

[metroidfox]

no stand included though.


Still, I kind of want one. Though I can't justify that price. It's really aimed at media studios.

[Trunks0]

Originally Posted by metroidfox

It's a dual layer LCD panel. There is no backlight dimming on it.

First [active] layer is monochrome, and the second is a standard IPS RGB layer.

Even if you consider standard IPS contrast ratios of 1000:1 this thing has 1000 * 1000 = 1000000:1

It's the same style of panel as that $80000 Sony I linked previously. Totally a bargain if you realise how exotic it is.


https://www.businessinsider.com/appl...monitor-2019-6

Yes there is back light local dimming. It's right on tech specs on apples website. Which is a great feature btw, but it's not likely to be any more impressive than other displays with the same tech.

https://www.apple.com/ca/pro-display-xdr/specs/

[12Bass]

Originally Posted by Meteor_of_War

I still have an old Sony Trinitron 4:3 CRT (mfg date around 2002) that I use for my retro consoles that I don't have HD mods or HD clone consoles for. It looks great, and I much prefer playing them on the CRT. Those old consoles and games were designed for CRTs with scanlines so its just the ideal way to play them.

But I don't think I'd want to play current games on a CRT that were designed for modern flat panel HDTVs with no scanlines. The pixel art in retro games were designed with scanlines in mind, but modern games are designed for no scanlines and I think they would look odd with the scanlines. Maybe it would give them a retro aesthetic and that could be seen as a novelty to some, but its just not the way they were intended to be.

Just to clarify... scanlines are an artifact of 240p/doublestrike on SD CRTs and are most commonly seen with old video game systems like the NES, Genesis, SNES, TG16, etc.... With 240p, the image is drawn twice in the same spot using only half of the scanlines on the screen, giving a low resolution, non-flickering, progressive picture, whilst leaving the interleaved lines black. High resolution CRTs used for computers and HDTV don't generally show any scanlines at all, as they draw all the lines on the screen for each frame. Some early computer CRTs (e.g. Amiga 1080) used interlaced high resolution modes, though anything from the 2000s did not, thus no scanlines.

FWIW, I love the look of true CRT scanlines on retro consoles and keep a 27" Trinitron around for that purpose. IMO, old games look wrong if displayed any other way, though modern shaders can make flat panels look somewhat close. Blocky low resolution console games look horrible when displayed on LCDs,....

[Meteor_of_War]

Originally Posted by 12Bass

Just to clarify... scanlines are an artifact of 240p/doublestrike on SD CRTs and are most commonly seen with old video game systems like the NES, Genesis, SNES, TG16, etc.... With 240p, the image is drawn twice in the same spot using only half of the scanlines on the screen, giving a low resolution, non-flickering, progressive picture, whilst leaving the interleaved lines black. High resolution CRTs used for computers and HDTV don't generally show any scanlines at all, as they draw all the lines on the screen for each frame. Some early computer CRTs (e.g. Amiga 1080) used interlaced high resolution modes, though anything from the 2000s did not, thus no scanlines.

FWIW, I love the look of true CRT scanlines on retro consoles and keep a 27" Trinitron around for that purpose. IMO, old games look wrong if displayed any other way, though modern shaders can make flat panels look somewhat close. Blocky low resolution console games look horrible when displayed on LCDs,....

Thanks, I guess I've never seen one of the high res CRTs you're referring to in person. I thought I had, back in the late 90's early 2000's we had a 19" Sony Trinitron PC monitor that I believe could do 2560x1600 and I remember its scanlines being visible. But maybe I am wrong.

Agreed on your thoughts of CRT scanlines. Those old games were certainly designed with the scanlines in mind, and just don't look quite right without them.

[metroidfox]

Originally Posted by Trunks0

Yes there is back light local dimming. It's right on tech specs on apples website. Which is a great feature btw, but it's not likely to be any more impressive than other displays with the same tech.

https://www.apple.com/ca/pro-display-xdr/specs/

So that's really disappointing. There doesn't appear to be much agreement on what's going on here. HDTV test, and Business Insider seem to agree that the monochrome-RGB dual layer is being used, but then the backlight dimming isn't necessary then.

[Trunks0]

It could also mean this implementation leads to allot less backlight bleed/light haloing you commonly get with local dimming.

[Nagorak]

It's sad that we still don't have the contrast and lack of ghosting that CRTs had. It says more about how slow progress on LCDs has been than how great CRTs were.

With that being said, CRTs are obsolete and dead for a reason. Whatever their advantages were more than outweighed by their ridiculous size, horrible flicker at low refresh rate (I could not even use a CRT running at 60 Hz), eye strain even at higher refresh rates, and excessive power consumption.

I stuck with CRTs longer than most, because the first few generations of LCDs were unusable, in my opinion. But those days have long passed. For the few situations now where a CRT is better, I'll still take an LCD for being superior the other 99% of the time.

[12Bass]

Used my pair of 21" Trinitrons at 100Hz refresh... even higher at lower resolutions... no eye strain.

[Meteor_of_War]

Yeah I can remember the flicker on my old CRT PC monitors at 60Hz was rough after working/gaming for more than an hour or so. But that's why I had them set to 85Hz which was fine even after hours of use.

I imagine it would be even better at higher refresh rates.

[12Bass]

Originally Posted by Meteor_of_War

Yeah I can remember the flicker on my old CRT PC monitors at 60Hz was rough after working/gaming for more than an hour or so. But that's why I had them set to 85Hz which was fine even after hours of use.

I imagine it would be even better at higher refresh rates.

Oh yeah... I'm pretty sensitive to flicker. 85Hz is acceptable. 100 is nice and smooth. 120 is liquid butter....

[Apocalypsee]

The thing I remember most about CRT was how hot my face after playing games on it. But yeah, it was great, minimum refresh rate I could handle was 72Hz. The monitor I used was EIZO Flexscan E55D, aperture grill 17 inch and weight at cool 21kg.

[Kain]