Crt Tv - 60 fps vs 30 fps

Ask about motion blur reduction in gaming monitors. Includes ULMB (Ultra Low Motion Blur), NVIDIA LightBoost, ASUS ELMB, BenQ/Zowie DyAc, Turbo240, ToastyX Strobelight, etc.
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malachi84
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Joined: 13 Nov 2018, 20:38

Crt Tv - 60 fps vs 30 fps

Post by malachi84 » 13 Nov 2018, 21:34

Hello everyone im new in this website and i have some questions, long story short i became a collector and i started buying consoles, after going to a retrogaming convention here in latinamerica i noticed that games looked smoother on crt tvs, i found it odd and after trying out emulators and consoles on my hdtv i decide to get a crt to compare, and i was shocked at how smooth it looked with 60 fps games, it was crazy, now i have a small understanding of what is happening, but my issue comes now with 30fps games, i have noticed on a 30fps game
that when the screen scrolls left to right on a crt tv it has this notorious stutter that happens, like the background
shimmers back and forth when i play mario 64 or crash bandicoot 1.

This makes curious about a couple of things:

1. Since 60hz allows 60 fps games to look good when in motion (No blurr) does this mean that 30fps is never goin to look good or should i say smooth ?
I mean it looked less noticeable on my Lcd due to the sample and hold method of displaying frames but on my Crt tv it had that weird issue and i
guess it has alway been like this except that we didn't notice when we were kids.

2. I had to buy a crt tv to get a smooth quality of motion @60fps, is lcd, oled or whatever modern displays ever goin to give us that quality of motion ??

3. If 60fps needs 60hz to display smoothly, what happens with 30fps ?? Does 30hz even exist ?? Doesn't that depend on flicker and stuff, am i goin to get sick for looking
at a 30 hz screen for too long Lol, i mean can crt tvs get that low ??

4. Final question relates to the second one, in theory, an lcd with crt quality smoothnes of movement or whatever you call it, will be able to make 60fps AND 30fps games look
smooth ??

I know i have oversimplified some thing but i hope i can get at least a couple of answers from you guys, i swear after researching all that stuff last year and getting no answer, this website was a godsend, i mean its almost like no one gets why would i buy an old crt tv at all Lol i guess thats why they are so cheap still.

Btw my tests were done with a snes, a genesis, a ps2 and a wii with hombrew launcher, so i tested retro emulators and real hardware.

Thanks in advance.

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RealNC
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Re: Crt Tv - 60 fps vs 30 fps

Post by RealNC » 14 Nov 2018, 00:12

CRTs are indeed (almost) blurless. Because of how they operate, they do not result in any blur, and 60FPS animations therefore look perfectly clear when you follow them with you eyes.

(OK, there is a tiny bit of blur even in CRTs, because of phosphor decay, but for all intents and purposes, especially when comparing to sample and hold LCDs, we can just say that there's no blur.)

However, this also means that anything but 60FPS will have issues on a 60Hz CRT. At 30FPS, each image is shown twice, and our brains perceive that as two difference images. This "double-image" effect is normal on CRT displays that display animations that is half that of their refresh rate.

As of modern displays reaching CRT-like motion clarity, right now, nope. There are attempts, namely using motion blur reduction by strobing the display's backlight. There's TVs that do this, and gaming monitors (I have one of those). But this creates other issues (bad colors and motion artifacts.) OLED and mLED displays of the future might be able to solve this though.

Another way this can be solved is by using extremely high frame rates. For example 1000FPS on a 1000Hz display. However, as you can imagine, this isn't something that is possible right now.

To your 30Hz question, that does not exist for the simple reason that it flickers so much as to be completely unwatchable. Your eyes would hurt badly.

To your last question, no, you cannot make 30FPS look smooth unless you do motion blur reduction at 30Hz, which is not watchable.

Here is what 30Hz looks like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VYLZ_ZnvH0

As you can imagine, this is absolutely not something you can look at for longer than a few seconds. I already feel sick just by having looked at it for 5 seconds.

Somewhat related: here's a video showing a CRT display at extreme slow motion. It has a very nice capture of the CRT's electron gun as it scans over the screen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BJU2drrtCM

It's easy to see how a CRT works in this video, and thus it's easier to understand why CRT displays have almost no motion blur compared to modern displays.
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malachi84
Posts: 2
Joined: 13 Nov 2018, 20:38

Re: Crt Tv - 60 fps vs 30 fps

Post by malachi84 » 14 Nov 2018, 13:47

Man, thanks for the info, it's amazing how niche this is, not many people know
about this and i have to really dig deep in order to get some factual information.

What i find interesting is that there isn't a major focus on retro gaming in this
website, it's all about modern pc gaming, wich is weird since so many people play
retro games, not many of them have this sort of obscure desire to get smooth 60fps
gameplay without blur.

All major gamers on youtube upscale their games for their HDTV and just throw
their crt away despite the fact that there is a huge benefit to the visual quality.

It makes me not want to play retro games on an Lcd anymore, at least not for 60 fps games, 30fps
looks bad either way, but 60fps looks amazing on a crt, and i should enjoy it as long as i can.

Hopefully this post will serve someone who is looking for this same type of info regarding this
topic.

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