Can CRT monitors have motion blur at high resolutions?

[valeriy l14]

They say that CRT technology has low motion blur due to the fact that they strobe and they have a low glow time of the phosphor (the website says that it is about 1ms).

But I wondered if CRT monitors with high resolution (2304x1440, almost QHD), such as the sony gdm-fw 900, can have motion blur at high speeds, or I am mistaken and the pixel visibility time is below 1 ms and they have a conditional at 5000 pixels, there will be no motion blur. I want to know

[Futuretech]

Perhaps experimentally there were 1ms phosphors. Most agree that the next generation CRT phosphors were going to be 0.5ms(2000Hz/2000FPS representation of motion).

The mighty FW900 depending on when it was constructed contains either 2ms(500) or 3ms(333) phosphors. Yes CRTs have natural LCD level motion blur of the likes of GTG but the great thing about CRTs is the consistent persistent phosphor decay time. Unlike an LCD which has variable decay in motion blur 0.4-1ms GTG other colors have various amounts in some cases lagging behind upwards of 15ms or more.

CRTs of high resolution usually had a softer tone to them in fact many would go past the native max range. For example some 4:3 CRTs would be 1920x1440 but some pushed it to 2048x1536 well past specification of the aperture grille limit. So some CRTs had a more natural approach to motion blur probably one of the reasons those with good CRT held unto them till good LCDs came out and even then the CRT still does more.

With that said back in 2015 Callsignvega on HardOCP/Hardforum. Mentioned with triple eyefinity 120hz monitors his monitors were producing lesser or almost equal motion blur than to his FW900. So LCDs have closed the gap substantially even Mark has promoted this idea and has surprised people by his comments on LCD improvements.

As for CRTs I think if we took it objectively most agree CRTs are relic sure there were many good ones. But even the best ones are probably nearly several decades old. Old tech vs New tech, even if LCDs are inferior to CRTs especially high end ones they are in existence for a reason.

If anything you can make an argument that CRTs at high resolution require more processing time i.e. latency. It's not that CRT latency is bad for the image but for the PCB circuitry and chips especially with how old and used CRTs are certainly there is some lag to be found. It's like Mark state LCDs scan out faster than CRTs as LCDs are solid-state and CRTs using a scanning electron gun to perform it's actions.

Really it's a difference between analog/solid state vs pure solid-state/semi-analog.

[Chief Blur Buster]

CRT does not have the same "more symmetric" persistence motion blur of LCDs (same blur at leading/trailing edges) because phosphor illuminates instantly but fades slower. CRT phoshor has a very noticeably finite fade time. You had phosphor ghosting effects (afterimages) since the phosphor fade takes a finite amount of time.

This is seen in the ApertureGrille pursuit camera tests of the XG270 versus a CRT.

This is the CRT:



In certain cases, square wave strobing on a very good LCD (e.g. Quest 2 LCD, XG270 LCD, and XG2431 LCD) can sometimes have less motion artifacts than a CRT tube.

Certainly, CRT has other better attributes -- but there you go; CRT "motion blur" in the form of phosphor ghosting.

CRT does set a VERY high bar. Not impossible to beat with LCD though. It's difficult to push strobe crosstalk down to a level that is less noticeable than CRT ghosting, but nowadays casn exceed CRT motion clarity on certain cherrypicked LCDs at cherrypicked refresh rates at cherrypicked pulse widths.

[zweepz]

Wow thats amazing about CRTs. Makes me miss mine *sniff sniff

[jman54]

CRT does not have the same "more symmetric" persistence motion blur of LCDs (same blur at leading/trailing edges) because phosphor illuminates instantly but fades slower. CRT phoshor has a very noticeably finite fade time. You had phosphor ghosting effects (afterimages) since the phosphor fade takes a finite amount of time.

This is seen in the ApertureGrille pursuit camera tests of the XG270 versus a CRT.

This is the CRT:



In certain cases, square wave strobing on a very good LCD (e.g. Quest 2 LCD, XG270 LCD, and XG2431 LCD) can sometimes have less motion artifacts than a CRT tube.

Certainly, CRT has other better attributes -- but there you go; CRT "motion blur" in the form of phosphor ghosting.

CRT does set a VERY high bar. Not impossible to beat with LCD though. It's difficult to push strobe crosstalk down to a level that is less noticeable than CRT ghosting, but nowadays casn exceed CRT motion clarity on certain cherrypicked LCDs at cherrypicked refresh rates at cherrypicked pulse widths.

So does that mean crt motion blur doesn't look as bad as sample and hold motion blur once you exceed the threshold for blur to appear or are they basically the same? Does this mean my crt actually has better motion clarity at lower resolution since x amount of movement is moving less pixels? I always felt that lower resolution like 480p somehow felt smoother in motion but figured it might of been in my head.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Does this mean my crt actually has better motion clarity at lower resolution since x amount of movement is moving less pixels?

Correct.

The lower DPI means less pixels to motionblur per physical motion speed (e.g. inches/sec or centimeters/sec).

Higher resolutions amplify display motion blur.

It's also why higher resolutions amplify refresh rate limitations on sample and hold displays, aka the Vicious Cycle Effect of my 1000Hz Journey Article. That's why the retina refresh rate for a 16K 180-degree VR headset is in the 5-digit Hz refresh rate range, and why the retina refresh rate for a typical 4K desktop monitor is somewhere in the 4-digit Hz refresh rate range.

So -- yes -- the CRT tube ghosting effects can sometimes be less noticeable when playing low-rez emulator material than when playing modern FPS PC gaming material.