Modern Games Look UNBELIEVABLE on CRT Monitors

[Supermodel_Evelynn]

I found this video on youtube it was uploaded recently and it brought a tear to my eye.

I am posting it here to raise awareness, in the hope that SONY would notice and bring back CRT. (I don't think anyone else has to know how or funding to create a modern CRT other than SONY) but I would take a CRT from any company in all honesty.

I know it's a pipe dream but modern strobing or OLED cannot come close to replicating CRT

A CRT has all the advantages of OLED and none of the awful IPS Glow or cross talk of a strobed LCD with horrible matte coating.
A CRT is a literal Glass bulb, you cannot replicate that with any sort of coating.

We cannot give up hope.

phpBB [video]

[Dalek]

It brought a tear to your eye? what?

Unpopular opinion, but I'll say it.

CRTs looked great for games up until the mid-2000s, but they'll look weird for anything past that.

I'm honestly bored of hearing people romanticise how great CRTs are.

Yes, CRTs were great at motion clarity and vivid colours
Yes LCDs took a while to get better at motion clarity and colours, but they were still useable and not a colossal disadvantage.

LCDs weren't that bad. I would argue that IPS was a step backwards from TN LCD in terms of contrast and IPS glow.

"CRT looks better than 4K on an OLED" yeah right.

Also bored of the half-truth that "CRTs look great at any resolution". No they dont. Having used CRTs 20 years ago, if CRTs weren't at a native resolution, they'd still look bad. Not unclear like LCDs, but you can clearly look at a CRT and tell it's using the wrong resolution. It was so much easier on the eyes if it was using the native resolution.

I don't miss the eyestrain they gave.
I don't miss the bulkyness and weight.
I don't miss how much desk space they took up.
I don't miss the sound they made turning them on.

CRTs won't be making a comeback. It's too niche and expensive to produce. Even if they were to somehow make a comeback, they would be insanely overpriced.

[Supermodel_Evelynn]

1) LCDs weren't that bad. I would argue that IPS was a step backwards from TN LCD in terms of contrast and IPS glow.

2) "CRT looks better than 4K on an OLED" yeah right.

3) Also bored of the half-truth that "CRTs look great at any resolution". No they dont. Having used CRTs 20 years ago, if CRTs weren't at a native resolution, they'd still look bad. Not unclear like LCDs, but you can clearly look at a CRT and tell it's using the wrong resolution. It was so much easier on the eyes if it was using the native resolution.

1) WRONG!! LCDs are always dog shit in motion because it's sample and hold technology and the LCDs with good colors have red phosphor blur making them bad, they also only come in Vaseline shit smeared coating, IPS glow and HORRIBLE MPRT. Things like resolution and refresh rate are a non argument because CRT production was stopped before further advancements could be made, you would have to compare 2005 era LCD to CRT but even a 60HZ to 85hz CRT MPRT is vastly superior to even a 1000HZ LCD and doesn't require shitty AI slop aka frame generation / interpolation to reach 1000 FPS to match 1000 HZ.

2) WRONG!! CRT absolutely look better than 4K OLED in MOTION by an infinite margin at that, OLED looks like shit for anything below 360HZ at constant 360 FPS let alone 4K OLED running at 165 HZ EEEEEWWWWWWWWWW GROSS (good luck with running either on AAA games without shitty frame gen / interpolation slop)

3) You are Half Wrong and Half correct, Native resolution looks better on any device, when people say it looks great at any resolution they are referring to CRT's unique ability to display pixelated graphics in absolute perfection regardless of the size of the screen. An LCD or OLED will look like ASS if the screen scales too large and resolution doesn't keep up, a CRT on the other hand can scale to any size and it's low native resolution still renders images amazing. This is why I could have sat at the same distance from both my 21" Sony Trinitron and my 36" Toshiba CRT and my PS1 and SNES games looked perfectly fine.

A 120HZ CRT in 1440P which could be done with modern fly back transformer updates would destroy any OLED or LCD even those LCD using G-Sync Pulsars. Because such a modern CRT would be easily running an MPRT equivalent of 2400 FPS at 2400 HZ OLED.
Not to mention a 120 HZ CRT would have no such issues like eye strain etc.

Denying this level of science is like denying the earth is a sphere or denying that the moon landing took place or denying that vaccines work.
PS: You also get the novelty of knowing that you have own a cool device that uses an electron gun to shoot electrons at a phosphorescent screen.

[daemonjax]

I think it's weird to watch a video of a crt on a lcd and determine crts look better than lcds.

[Supermodel_Evelynn]

I think it's weird to watch a video of a crt on a lcd and determine crts look better than lcds.

Not really, the scanlines in a CRT TV can be viewed on a LCD and you can see a clear difference just how superior it looks for retro games

You could also use CRT Beam Simulator from blur busters to get an idea of what a CRT can look like in motion.

[RealNC]

If you can't keep things friendly, then it's better to not post.

[betonKruglosuTotchno]

If you can't keep things friendly, then it's better to not post.

Can you do a better job pointing out all the problems in what "Supermodel" posts? Can you edit the post instead of deleting it?

[betonKruglosuTotchno]

Modern Games Look UNBELIEVABLE on CRT Monitors

Is that your personal experience? Would be unfortunate if you were reposting somebody's opinion without verifying their claims.

1) Author of the video plays at 1600x1200 and claims it's better than 4k.
2) Author of the video there is zero motion blur on CRT despite phosphor phosphor afterglow/persistence.
3) Author of the video claims that BFI reduces brightness while there are many LCDs with BFI which are brighter than his IBM CRT in any conditions
4) Author of the video compares CRT to OLED when BFI exists and specifically 3 months after Nvidia Pulsar came to market (even if you ignore Titan Army non-Nvidia monitors which were released September 2025).
5) Author of the video completely omits what the contrast ratio of CRT is.

I'm upset about all those shortcomings of the video you are happy about.

modern strobing ... cannot come close to replicating CRT

Can you quantify that?

cross talk of a strobed LCD

alta vista: Nvidia Pulsar

[kyube]

I do agree that CRTs are somewhat redundant to use nowadays. Both from a spatial & temporal aspect.
LCDs with a good backlight strobing implementations are sufficient enough for the vast majority of pixel speeds that a common user works with.
As in, one will likely not experience this speed very often.
1920 px/s being as clear as static, akin to what a few DyAc+/2, ELMB-Nebula & a few other models do, is a good “effective motion clarity” value to achieve.
One would be surprised how many implementations fail to achieve this goal at “usable” brightness values (>100cd/m²)

modern strobing ... cannot come close to replicating CRT

Can you quantify that?

Unless he has information on every single backlight strobing implementation on the market (pulse width data based on oscilloscope graphs or concrete pulse on time interval values & their respective luminance values), I'm quite certain he doesn't.
I do plan on releasing this data in the upcoming future, as I want to quantify all implementations using publically available data on the market as much as possible.

cross talk of a strobed LCD

alta vista: Nvidia Pulsar

Crosstalk requires good G2G RT, namely the vast majority of transitions being below the refreshtime.
At what exact refresh rate compliance that is (when using the utmost possible precision in terms of plotting G2G RT on a heatmap), I don't know.
Perhaps >85%?
I do think crosstalk is solved issue for the 100-200Hz backlight strobing range, as panels have evolved greatly compared to early LCD era.
The bigger issue is that duty cycle adjustments are locked & most monitor vendors don't use large enough voltage boosting to achieve good brightness.
They opt for the "brightness-first" approach, as opposed to the "effective motion clarity first" approach.
Of course, you also have models which don't have this distinction, mostly comprised of DyAc+/2 models & the KTC M27P6.

Note: The 50-100Hz refresh strobing range shouldn't even be considered for any use-case. It's dreadful from a eye ergonomics perspective.

[betonKruglosuTotchno]

Crosstalk requires good G2G RT, namely the vast majority of transitions being below the refreshtime.
At what exact refresh rate compliance that is (when using the utmost possible precision in terms of plotting G2G RT on a heatmap), I don't know.
Perhaps >85%?

It would be unfortunate if it turns out that Supermodel is writing about BFI crosstalk as if Pulsar does not exist today.