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Why aren't we all using CRT gaming monitors?

W

Wowfunhappy

Member
...or, at least, why aren't CRT gaming monitors being manufactured for a certain market segment?

It's been years since I've used a high quality CRT, and because I'm only 21 years old, I don't really remember what they were like. However, the more I learn about the types of screen technologies currently in use today, the more CRTs seem like the perfect type of screen, at least for gaming.

CRTs:
-Had virtually no input lag, at all.
-Maintained color accuracy at different viewing angles.
-Didn't have issues with aliasing.
-Could cleanly scale down to lower resolutions.
-Didn't have issues with screen-tearing/vsync. I'm not sure where I read this, but it's not true.

Furthermore, while most CRTs were standard definition, HD CRT's did exist. Most CRT monitors were at least 1024x768 (low by today's standards, but a lot higher than 480i!), and I've read that some were as high as 1080p.

The only downside, as far as I can tell, is that CRT's are large and heavy. While this could definitely be a problem for some people, I'd imagine that a lot of dedicated gamers wouldn't mind the extra space.

Can anyone explain why CRTs have fallen almost completely out of use? I've been having trouble finding information on this. Thanks!

Edit: I am not talking about CRT TV's! CRT TV's are huge and weigh a ridiculous amount. Monitors, by contrast, are rarely more than 24 inches, and generally much better quality. What use is the empty desk space behind your computer monitor, anyway?
 
T

Terbinator

Member
Wowfunhappy said:
Can anyone explain why CRTs have fallen almost completely out of use? I've been having trouble finding information on this. Thanks!
Click to expand...

You answered it yourself
The only downside, as far as I can tell, is that CRT's are large and heavy. While this could definitely be a problem for some people, I'd imagine that a lot of dedicated gamers wouldn't mind the extra space.
Click to expand...
They were also expensive to manufacture I think.
 
D

djplaeskool

Member
I still keep a CRT for older rhythm games.
Other than that, there's a considerable convenience, cost, and technology factor that goes into the phasing out of CRTs.

I mean, I can move a 40+" HDTV by myself.
I'd be in a hospital if they were CRT.
 
T

Tain

Member
Geometry can also be an issue.

Is there anything technologically mutually exclusive about CRTs and gsync/freesync? cuz if so I'm good forgetting about CRTs for future games. Of course, for older games made for CRT SDTVs, I use a CRT SDTV (HD CRT TVs are bad news for SD games).
 
H

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
Wowfunhappy said:
...or, at least, why aren't CRT gaming monitors being manufactured for a certain market segment?

It's been years since I've used a high quality CRT, and because I'm only 21 years old, I don't really remember what they were like. However, the more I learn about the types of screen technologies currently in use today, the more CRT's seem like the perfect type of screen, at least for gaming.

CRTs:
-Had virtually zero input lag.
-Maintained color accuracy at different viewing angles.
-Didn't have issues with screen-tearing/vsync.
-Didn't have issues with aliasing.

Furthermore, while most CRTs were standard definition, HD CRT's did exist. Most CRT monitors were at least 1024x768 (low by today's standards, but a lot higher than 480i!), and I've read that that some were as high as 1080p.

The only downside, as far as I can tell, is that CRT's are large and heavy. While this could definitely be a problem for some people, I'd imagine that a lot of dedicated gamers wouldn't mind the extra space.

Can anyone explain why CRTs have fallen almost completely out of use? I've been having trouble finding information on this. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Because the mass market was 99% normal users so it didnt make sense to spend R&D and production costs on it.
Also CRTs were doing 1600x1200 75Hz+ before LCD's knew how to walk. I had a dual CRT setup, but eventually two hulking power monsters that took up your whole desk had to go.
They've been replaced by the $700 gaming panels now like the Acer XB270HU, so there's little point to them.

Acer XB 27" monitor features WQHD resolution (2560 x 1440) presenting stunning, high quality images with excellent detail that not only enhances users' working efficiency, but creates outstanding visual enjoyment.
NVIDIA G-SYNC technology synchronizes the monitor's refresh rate to the GPU render rate providing the smoothest, fastest gaming experience.
A rapid 144Hz refresh rate and blazingly fast 4ms response time deliver ultra-smooth motion scenes enhances the in-game experience. No matter how fast-moving the action is, transitions are rendered smoothly without the annoying effects of smearing or ghosting.
Click to expand...
 
V

Valnen

Member
I miss my CRT. Rhythm games are damn near unplayable on most LCD screens for me, which is why I probably quit playing them.
 
Krappadizzle

Krappadizzle

Member
Hazaro said:
Because the mass market was 99% normal users so it didnt make sense to spend R&D and production costs on it.
Also CRTs were doing 1600x1200 75Hz+ before LCD's knew how to walk. I had a dual CRT setup, but eventually two hulking power monsters had to go.
They've been replaced by the $700 gaming panels now like the Acer XB270HU, so there's little point to them.
Click to expand...

This. I picked one of these up about 2 weeks ago. Never going back. The best monitor I've ever seen or used. It's been a fantastic experience.
 
W

Wowfunhappy

Member
oldmario said:
size? tvs now are thin as paper and no one wants a big screen anymore
Click to expand...

But monitors are rarely more than 24 inches anyway.

My memory of CRT's is that were essentially cubes—as deep as they were wide. That's a lot deeper than a modern LCD monitor, yes, but not so large that one wouldn't fit on a desk.

It's not like desktop PC's are tiny to begin with.
 
J

jotun?

Member
- large
- heavy
- not sexy
- noticeable flickering
- getting a good picture requires more tweaking
- probably more expensive to manufacture
 
G

Gormenghast

Member
I'm writing this on my CRT. It has at least 15 years and has been on like 12 hours a day.

The image quality is still MILES better than every LCD I tried (but not high end LCDs, I didn't have an occasion to try those). This CRT has MUCH better colors, not even comparable. On LCD you see very, very ugly color banding everywhere, this monitor is perfect, no banding at all on the same source.

On top of the aliasing. The CRT smooths the picture naturally without blurring too much. It was a shock after so many years on a CRT moving to LCD and noticing how games are TERRIBLE without anti aliasing. I always thought AA was a negligible feature, but on a LCD it is INDISPENSABLE. Yet, the picture is still better on CRT with no AA compared to LCD with AA.

In the end a lot of the huge, huge gap in quality might depend on two factors. The first is that the CRT compromises actually deliver better subjective quality in spite of worse objective quality. So a softer image looks better to the eye even if it actually loses definition. Same as color banding, the CRT lacks completely the banding, but it might be because it has less definition, simply.

And the other factor might be due to pixel density. The bigger the screen the uglier the image simply because the pixels get larger. That's why when I'll have to buy another 1080p monitor I'll actually try the smallest size available (and that will also help with the aliasing).

But anyway, to this day I haven't found an LCD that is even comparable to this CRT.
 
eot

eot

Banned
I'm still using a CRT, but tbh it's slightly too bulky, the phosphorous gets worn out over time and it's quite common for games to only support 4:3 with letterboxing. If I could get a new CRT I'd probably buy one though, but I'll be getting an LCD soon.

Borman said:
Find yourself a working FW900, that thing was a beast.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00004YNSR/?tag=neogaf0e-20

22.5-inch viewable screen
2,304 x 1,440 maximum resolution
Click to expand...

Easier said than done.

jotun? said:
- large
- heavy
- not sexy
- noticeable flickering
- getting a good picture requires more tweaking
- probably more expensive to manufacture
Click to expand...

Not above 60 Hz. Any decent CRT has a refresh rate way above that.
 
n0razi

n0razi

Member
For as great as they are in some aspects (similar to plasma), they are niche... LCDs just have a better all around appeal (cheaper, easier to produce, lighter, more efficient, durable-ie no glass)... hardcore and niche products do not sell well and rely on high margins to a small market

Geforce GTX 960, Toyota Camrys, Taylor Swift albums, and Mario Kart sell well

not

Geforce Titan Z and Maseratis



also, good luck finding (or affording) a 50" CRT... you can get a decent 50" Vizio LCD for $500... shipping alone will be $500 for a 50" CRT. What warehouse is going to want to stock a bunch of thousand pound big screen CRTs when you can ship and sell 5 times the amount of LCDs for the same space/rent. There is almost no money to be made in it, if there was an actual niche market for something like this, we would have seen a kickstarter for it by now. No one really wants one.
 
I

inner-G

Banned
My iMac has a 27" 2560 x 1440 IPS display.

I don't even want to think what having a 27" CRT on my desk would be like (it sure as hell wouldn't be a glass desk though) and the entire computer is built into the current one.

Would there be a tad less ghosting, yes, but for the size and clarity I'd definitely say IPS is worth the logistical trade offs of CRT.

That said, I do also have a 27" Trinitron for retro games. It's not sitting on my desk though it's a beast.

Gormenghast said:
The bigger the screen the uglier the image simply because the pixels get larger. That's why when I'll have to buy another 1080p monitor I'll actually try the smallest size available (and that will also help with the aliasing).
Click to expand...
If you want pixel density, get a 1440p or 4k screen instead of a 1080p one
 
K

KojiKnight

Member
Because tech has evolved, and it's not really that hard anymore to find a non-CRT monitor with negligible input latency (>1ms).

And don't even get me started on power consumption...
 
D

DyslexicAlucard

Member
I think you're just misinformed about CRTs, TBH. Sure, a bit of it was the bulk, for sure. But a lot of the positives you mentioned are just false.

Wowfunhappy said:
CRTs:
-Had virtually no input lag, at all.
-Maintained color accuracy at different viewing angles.
-Didn't have issues with screen-tearing/vsync.
-Didn't have issues with aliasing.
Click to expand...

-They were good for input lag, but so is any decent monitor nowadays.
-So do decent monitors, especially IPS displays.
-Yes, they did. The display makes no difference re: screen tearing. That's the fault of the input.
-Same thing here. If they seemed to not have as bad aliasing, it's because the resolution and quality of the entire image was so low.

Gormenghast said:
The image quality is still MILES better than every LCD I tried (but not high end LCDs, I didn't have an occasion to try those). This CRT has MUCH better colors, not even comparable. On LCD you see very, very ugly color banding everywhere, this monitor is perfect, no banding at all on the same source.

On top of the aliasing. The CRT smooths the picture naturally without blurring too much. It was a shock after so many years on a CRT moving to LCD and noticing how games are TERRIBLE without anti aliasing. I always thought AA was a negligible feature, but on a LCD it is INDISPENSABLE. Yet, the picture is still better on CRT with no AA compared to LCD with AA.
Click to expand...

I will gladly put my IPS display's colour against your CRT, any day of the week. And my display was $100 used.

And saying the image quality is better on a CRT because it's essentially worse (ie fuzzier) and therefore "hides the faults" is also weird to me. You're just making the entire screen look worse, so that the imperfections are hidden by... low quality. =/
 
T

Trace

Banned
Because my flat 24" 1080p 144hz monitor has basically no input lag and doesn't take up the entirety of my desk and I can actually move if I need to.
 
W

WickedCobra03

Member
Huge and hot. I still have my Sony Wega, but don't use it on the regular. If they kept going with those thin CRT's that Samsung was doing, I'd might of considers buy another. But even then, to have over 36 inches of glass, that gets heavy!
 
A

AppleSeason

Member
Curved desk from its weight, it was not easy on the eyes unless it had a high frequency (a pain in the eyes at 60hz), not enough eye to screen distance unless I separated the desk from the wall or made a hole on it, and a major pain to carry without an elevator if moving or carrying it for repairs. Also a higher energy consumption. Plus the fear it would explode when pressing degauss.

Their pros don't outweugiht its cons. I can deal with a CRT TV in a corner for retro gaming, but I will stick with flat screens for workinf
 
N

NeoFaff

Member
Practicality:
Size
Weight
Transition to wide-screen

Health issues:
Flicker and radiation
-Tire out eyes quicker compared to LCD
-Headaches if you're sensitive
 
C

Cleve

Member
My 21" crt weighed in at 93 lbs, my 60" plasma(which is heavier than an lcd) comes in at less than that.

CRTs could have gotten a bit smaller and lighter over time, but the tech focus is on LCDs because that matches what more consumers want.
 
Sanctuary

Sanctuary

Member
I would never want to go back to a CRT (my last was a 35'' Trinitron that weighed close to 400lbs), but I haven't seen blacks mentioned in all of the positives. Up until OLED, none had the blacks as good as a CRT, not even the Panasonic Kuro plasma did. It might not be worth the negatives now, especially with how good blacks are on some sets and how good they are on OLED, but until recently nothing could touch CRT black levels.

Also, overall my plasma blows my old Trinitron away in everything other than image retention and 240p/480p gaming. And of course blacks, but they are still better than what you see on most LCD panels. Even if consumer 1080p CRT TVs were made, almost no one would be buying them. They eat more power and take up too much space.
 
7

7DollarHagane

Banned
Everything before Xbox 360 looks so good on crt.

I was playing my ps1 yesterday and I'm so amazed how good it looks. People forget what a proper display does to these old games.
 
G

Gormenghast

Member
DyslexicAlucard said:
I will gladly put my IPS display's colour against your CRT, any day of the week. And my display was $100 used.
Click to expand...

I didn't say my CRT is more ACCURATE, I say it looks better.

The color banding is a pretty huge issue, the CRT will hide that completely even if it isn't technically more accurate.
 
Sanctuary

Sanctuary

Member
7DollarHagane said:
Everything before Xbox 360 looks so good on crt.

I was playing my ps1 yesterday and I'm so amazed how good it looks. People forget what a proper display does to these old games.
Click to expand...

No they don't.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=637928&highlight=retroarch
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=630556

Gormenghast said:
I didn't say my CRT is more ACCURATE, I say it looks better.

The color banding is a pretty huge issue, the CRT will hide that completely even if it isn't technically more accurate.
Click to expand...

It probably looks better due to the blacks too. That's a lot more important for the overall picture quality than outright "accurate colors" most of the time. The contrast ratio of the majority of LCD panels are shit too, and way too bright. Most of them look okay in an office environment, but garbage in a dimly lit or dark room.
 
S

SneakyStephan

Banned
jotun? said:
- large
- heavy
- not sexy
- noticeable flickering
- getting a good picture requires more tweaking
- probably more expensive to manufacture
Click to expand...

Just no

The others couldn't matter less for the audience that would want a better gaming monitor.

on topic:
probably manufacturing cost.
LCD panels are dirt dirt dirt DIRT cheap to manufacture and people will apparently pay 800 euros for some 144hz TN panel with g4m3r branding.
Can't even imagine the hilarious margins on those things.

I'm sad too op, CRTs are amazing and have no downsides.
Geometry is a complete non factor unless you do visual design work.

The main (and enormous) advantage that CRT monitors have are for gaming.
You don't need 120/144hz + backlight strobing to achieve good motion clarity.
This means you don't need 1000++ euros worth of hardware and frequent upgrades to enjoy the best gaming you can get, 75hz on a crt is enough for flickerfree +perfect motion.

To get the same experience now (and there is an enormous difference) with an lcd monitor as with my old crt (rip :(:(:(:() I would need to heavily OC my cpu, buy gtx 980ti, buy an 800 dollar 144hz monitor, deal with the poor brightness of backlight strobing and upgrade the gpu every other year to make sure I can maintain this 144fps in all my games...
120 or 140fpsis a MUCH harder target than 75fps and costs wayyyyyyyy more to achieve. That's if it can be achieved at all (fps locks on a handful of games like MGS or just games that are stupid demanding where you're just cpu bottlenecked)

There's a market for mechanical keyboards, there's a market for old fashioned glass tube amps, there should be a market for CRT gaming monitors.

21" 1440p 100hz is all I ask for :(

NIN90 said:
My LCD monitor isn't large as fuck and can display 1080p at 120hz.

That's about the gist of it.
Click to expand...
ZZZZ
sony fw900 did 1440p at 80hz or 1080p at 100hz 12 years ago.
Like all crts It could scale without scaling blur so you didn't HAVE to play at 1440p in demanding games or if you had old hardware
You didn't need to care about refresh rate beyond smoothness and minor input lag improvements as even at 60hz it absolutely demolished your 120hz monitor in motion resolution.

I bought an iiyama visionmaster monitor in 2003 for 350 euros that did 1600x1200 @85hz
There was also a 500 euro visionmaster pro version that did :
2048 x 1536 / 87 Hz
1840 x 1440 / 92 Hz
1600 x 1280 / 105 Hz
1600 x 1200 / 110 Hz
1480 x 1024 / 130 Hz
1280 x 1024 / 130 Hz
1024 x 768 / 175 Hz
800 x 600 / 180 Hz
640 x 480 / 180 Hz

I always roll my eyes hearing people gush about how an lcd monitor can finally do 120 or 144hz or 1440p resolutions. It's like console owners discovering twitch or the ability to take screenshots in 2013 when people had been doing those things for 10 years:p
Does the sun hurt your eyes after leaving the cave you've been living in? :p

I'm just being cheeky nin.
 
D

Damaniel

Banned
Big, heavy, lack decent resolution, consume tons of power, impossible to dispose of if they fail...

CRTs definitely provide the best image for older consoles, but their drawbacks outweigh the positives by a wide margin. I still wouldn't mind a sub-20" display for my retro consoles though.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
As other people said, they're just too damn heavy, even if they had better latency, etc.

I used to have two IBM 1420x1080 (or whatever HD square resolution they were - all I remember is the 360 amazingly supported it) VGA monitors. One for the PC, one for the 360. It was amazing when I finally switched to two LCD monitors, I got like 90% of the desk back. The space they took up was a huge downside.
 
K

Kysen

Member
Cant even remember the last time I saw one. We did have a 60" crt back when I was a kid and damn was it heavy.
 
J

Jaagen

Member
As a graphic designer, CRT's were dope back in the day. They did everything. Nowdays, I have to choose color accuarcy over input lag and fast frame rates.
 
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