CRT Technology Collector Here... AMA

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Naveronasis
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Re: CRT Technology Collector Here... AMA

Post by Naveronasis » 05 Jun 2021, 00:40

blurfreeCRTGimp wrote:
04 Jun 2021, 14:02
Hey chief, one thing CRT has going for it more than black level, color, and motion, is the fact that it is not fixed pixel.

I'm looking to buy a new old stock CRT for this very reason. These high hz LCD's are getting better, but hitting the refresh rate=hz while vsync is going, in the current GPU market is kinda difficult.

Some of these LCDs have the death by a thousand cuts approach to reaching motion clarity, when it seems like back in the day they had it figured out in a far easier way.
If you're near Pittsburgh I could probably part with one of my NOS 17" Monitors. I have some NOS 20" ones too but I want to keep those >.> I also have some lightly used ones you might be able to get off me fairly cheap to free. Were talking like... 1600x1200 max probably resolution-wise... but that's not too bad.

Naveronasis
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Re: CRT Technology Collector Here... AMA

Post by Naveronasis » 05 Jun 2021, 00:44

blurfreeCRTGimp wrote:
04 Jun 2021, 17:01
Damn Chief, that was one hell of a projector setup. I enjoyed Episode 1 Racer in the Arcade a lot.

You are right that CRT was also death by 1000 cuts, but the point was, the work was done. We started from scratch for convenience purposes.

I do feel like we could use lasers and Quantum dots to get a modern scanning display that is not fixed pixel.

I was even thinking about that old Nebra Anybeam projector. Nvidia once did a cascaded LCD experiment. The same approach could work with scanning laser projection.

With VR technology, you should be able to cascade two or more of them for a 4x increase in resolution and 2 times the brightness.
Supposedly what killed CRT was two things. 1: The desk space requirement and superiority of LCD for text documents in the workplace for computer monitors, and the price fixing lawsuit filed against CRT makers for purposely keeping 1080p out of consumer sets by forming an under the table trust to sell higher-priced projection and LCD units for full 1080p support. Rather than make what would have been cheaper-cost but lower-margin HDCRT that supported 1080p they simply killed off the products. The environmental lobby didn't help much either as energy star was big at the time.

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Chief Blur Buster
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Re: CRT Technology Collector Here... AMA

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 05 Jun 2021, 19:26

Naveronasis wrote:
04 Jun 2021, 16:31
Startech makes a high bandwidth Display Port to VGA that exceeds the VGA standard so you can easily push 2048x1536 at 75hz (if you have a good enough monitor) without artifacts. Sometimes it gets tempermental if it's plugged in and not active though and will constantly reconnect. I would link it but Idk if links are allowed i gotta check the rules.
Useful / relevant are certainly allowed. The automatic link block for newbies disappear after a few posts. Also, Amazon links that are posted in these forums, will be auto-affiliated to Blur Buster’s commissioned code.

I’ll follow up later, good info here — just wanted to address this point immediately;
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Naveronasis
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Re: CRT Technology Collector Here... AMA

Post by Naveronasis » 05 Jun 2021, 22:19

milojr21 wrote:
04 Jun 2021, 06:00
Best way to connect a crt without input lag to modern video cards? Best PC monitor that isn't a fw900?
Since it's okay to post...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0849FTBXQ/re ... 7D9QJYmGkq

That's the correct High bandwidth adapter. Also Extron VSC500 and DVS304 for Sd and HD crt tv respectively but those are only on ebay.

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Re: CRT Technology Collector Here... AMA

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 09 Jun 2021, 02:14

Naveronasis wrote:
05 Jun 2021, 22:19
milojr21 wrote:
04 Jun 2021, 06:00
Best way to connect a crt without input lag to modern video cards? Best PC monitor that isn't a fw900?
Since it's okay to post...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0849FTBXQ/re ... 7D9QJYmGkq

That's the correct High bandwidth adapter. Also Extron VSC500 and DVS304 for Sd and HD crt tv respectively but those are only on ebay.
Another experiment you should try is FreeSync on a CRT tube.

You'll need a very simple reverse adaptor (HDMI-to-VGA) that is custom porch/sync compatible (1:1 conversion between analog/digital domains). The adaptor needs to be compatible with custom resolutions within its bandwidth specs.

FreeSync is just fundamentally a variable-thickness VHOLD black bar spacer between refresh cycles on the cable, so it's 1:1 mappable between analog domain and digital domains.

It seems to work better on older analog MultiSync tubes (1990s with fewer "refresh rate cop" watchguard electronics), so this would be perfect to test your Sony curved W900 CRT.

1. Find a simple HDMI-to-VGA daptor
2. Find a FreeSync compatible Radeon card (NVIDIA cards doesn't work with this force trick)
3. Use ToastyX CRU to edit the EDID block to force a FreeSync range to EDID-override your CRT
4. Run a variable refresh rate demo on your CRT tube.

If you have no experience with variable refresh rates yet, it's a technology that can eliminate human-visible single-framedrop stutters and make framerate changes seamlessly smooth -- software animation at www.testufo.com/vrr .... What's impressive is that variable refresh rate (changing refresh rate every single refresh cycle) works on certain analog MultiSync CRT tubes too. Changing refresh rates 100 times a second is seamless when horizontal scanrate never changes, and you're simply adding/removing scanlines to the blanking interval (variable thickness VHOLD bar separating refresh cycles) to temporally space apart refresh cycle.

VRR is quite a simple modification of a 100-year-old raster video signal delivery mechanism, and symmetric mappable 1:1 between analog domains and digital domains, even though it was never intended for analog domain... but it works on a small percentage of MultiSync CRTs that didn't have overly fussy refresh rate cops (automatic blankout).

If you need experience with VRR first, play with a VRR-compatible LCD first with framerate-ramping demos (like AMD windmill demo or other software package) before attempting to force a variable
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Naveronasis
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Re: CRT Technology Collector Here... AMA

Post by Naveronasis » 09 Jun 2021, 09:23

I'm familiar with all this stuff only I dont have any spare Radeon cards laying around and... Big oof on trying to get one right now :(

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Re: CRT Technology Collector Here... AMA

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 09 Jun 2021, 14:44

Naveronasis wrote:
09 Jun 2021, 09:23
I'm familiar with all this stuff only I dont have any spare Radeon cards laying around and... Big oof on trying to get one right now :(
If you do a W900 analog FreeSync test, I want to publish a Blur Busters article on this!

You can use a very old Radeon GPU from ten years ago -- even those GPUs are abandoned by the miners now, and you can still scoop something up reasonable. It will need simpler graphics but the AMD Windmill demo works great on those nearly 10-year-old Radeon, and VRR is....great for beautifying underpowered frame rates :D

A good potential sweet spot is the power-hungry RX480 or RX580 from the used GPU market (aka eBay). They eat too much electricity for the miners but who cares if you're paying a few dollars more on your own electric bill just to have a -- heaven forbid -- actual GPU in your hands. The 580 is even powerful enough to run Cyberpunk 2077 at above the minimum settings.

And you want low frame rates anyway to test VRR. VRR is mostly useless for >200fps but great for those fluctuating 40-to-80fps framerates, as long as your framerates is almost always below Hz, is where VRR works most of its magic.\

Oh, by the way, some video players are VRR capable when their settings are configured correctly. SMPlayer can play video in VRR way, and the display Hz exactly matches the video framerate (whatever it is, 47.952fps or 48fps theater HFR or 59.94fps NTSC). Any framerate in VRR range you get perfect 1:1 pulldown. None of those "a stutter every 10 seconds" problem of ever-so-slightly unsynchronized framerate & refreshrates. You're welcome.

P.S. Did you know? Run www.testufo.com/refreshrate on a fixed-Hz display to a precision of 8 digits for about 15 to 30 minutes. Notice how cold temperatures and warm temperatures can change the refresh rate slightly. Run this on a freshly-powered-up computer. Run this immediately after playing a high-power video game. Etc. This is because the clock chips of the CPU and the clock chips of the GPU can drift apart/closer together at sub-microsecond timescales -- creating these measurement differences. Even fixed refresh rates can vary in microscopic ways. Your clock chips are not as precise as atomic clocks.
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blurfreeCRTGimp
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Re: CRT Technology Collector Here... AMA

Post by blurfreeCRTGimp » 10 Jun 2021, 16:44

"If you're near Pittsburgh I could probably part with one of my NOS 17" Monitors. I have some NOS 20" ones too but I want to keep those I also have some lightly used ones you might be able to get off me fairly cheap to free. Were talking like... 1600x1200 max probably resolution-wise... but that's not too bad."

I am sadly in California, so I would need to ship one.

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Re: CRT Technology Collector Here... AMA

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 14 Jun 2021, 16:10

Philadelphia and California.

There must be other CRT collectors reading this. Whereabouts you CRT collectors located? Any of you near Toronto, Canada?

I have a use to add back about 1 or 2 semi-inexpensive reasonably-high-bandwidth multisync CRTs to my collection for comparision testing purposes (as part of the Blur Busters Approved programme). They don't have to be the flagships, even just be used surplus discards from offices such as non-flat Dell 19" CRTs or others. They've become fairly rare around here, having been discarded at the recycling centres.

With Blur Busters headquarters located in Hamilton near Toronto, Canada, it's often too far a shipping distance for some suitable CRTs. -- rather than the flagship well-priced desirable CRTs such as Sony FW900 which are sometimes priced high like a rare GTX 3090 -- especially when the cost of properly double-boxed shipping-with-love is rolled in.
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Naveronasis
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Re: CRT Technology Collector Here... AMA

Post by Naveronasis » 14 Jun 2021, 21:51

I know some people in toronto. Also if the border wasn't shut down I could bring you a monitor XD.

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