We've all been fucked.
CRT was obviously perfect. Its still the de-facto way to play retro. But, CRT probably lasted too long, and admittedly those TVs did take a lot of space. But we didn't know better and it was fine to have your TV on a table or stand with more depth. Hanging your flat panel TV on the wall today, I guess its a nice evolution. But anyway, those fucking 00's era LCD they forcefeeded upon us (by not stocking CRT anymore, 360 and PS3 being CRT unfriendly... remember reading text in Dead Rising?) were gutter trash. They are FAR worse than CRT TV for nearly everything. Even broadcasts were considerably worse at the time on those things. I bought one for nearly 1000 bucks, and it was a shitty 27 inch Samsung with awful ghosting, horrible black levels, bad viewing angle, input lag (did have Game mode which muted the picture) and all the issues CRT... didn't have? Why the fuck did I buy this shit, to be able to play PS3 games at 600p lol.
Fast forward, 2009 I went Plasma. Panasonic G10. It was a piece of work. I think Plasma was closest to CRT, but it still had about 20ms of input lag I think. Plasma finally convinced me flat panels were better. But Plasma had its own issues. I replaced it with a V20 just a year later because I moved and that one held out for nearly a decade though. Around that time, I think Plasma had evolved to something nearly perfect and durable.
Then Plasma had to go. Because higher energy consumption (was that even true?), because too dim (lol no, but it looked more lifelike), because fuck know why but they forcefeeded us LED. And guess what? I wanted 4K, and my Plasma was at the end of the line. I bought a fucking KS9000. At first I was happy with it, but back were the awful viewing angles, black levels that didn't feel right, judder (typically during sports games, every 15 mins or so a huge judder for a second or 2). And Samsungs awful support on top. I didn't like it.
After 4 years I sold it and bought a LG CX. I have to say OLED is closest to Plasma. But bar 4k, 120hz and all that, I don't know if its really better. My Plasma was from 2010 and topped out at 1080p. I _think_ if you factor in a decade of evolution, the Plasma was further ahead. It doesn't really look worse. Its more like, OLED managed to reach Plasma quality. Thats how I see it. My 2016 manufactured KS was certainly not as impressive as my old Plasma.