
What the death of the CRT display technology means for classic arcade machines - zdw
http://venturebeat.com/2017/03/03/what-the-death-of-the-crt-display-technology-means-for-classic-arcade-machines/
======
zellyn
I've been working on an existing Apple II emulator, OpenEmulator, which takes
an interesting (and as far as I know, unique in the Apple II emulator world)
approach: it renders a fairly raw NTSC-like signal, and then uses GPU shaders
to convert to colors, while adding fairly realistic CRT effects, like
persistence, curvature, dot masks, etc.

The result is an emulation that is incredibly close to what I see when I walk
downstairs and run my test code on the real Apple IIe in my basement. I guess
that's what happens when a DSP person writes an emulator :-) (The original
author has disappeared themselves from the internet, unfortunately.)

~~~
tlb
I made an attempt at this around 2001, as part of the XScreensaver collection.
See video at
[https://youtu.be/p3QZqhp67l8?t=30s](https://youtu.be/p3QZqhp67l8?t=30s). It
generates an NTSC signal, adds noise, and recovers the H and V sync and color
in a DSP implementation following the schematic of an old TV. It reproduces
the color fringing of text and many other cherished artifacts of Apple ][
computing.

~~~
zellyn
Awesome! I've actually seen people reference that as the most accurate
emulation they'd ever seen. Perhaps we should add noise to the OpenEmulator
one too! :-)

[Edit] the bending, and shadowing to the right of the characters is amazing
:-)

------
laumars
What this article doesn't touch on but I have found an issue with classic
consoles on non-CRT screens is:

1\. Light guns

Even on consoles as late as the Sega Saturn, the light guns were design around
the timings of CRT refresh rates and thus many (albeit not all) LCD screen are
not compatible. I would imagine this could be a real issue for collectors /
restorers of cabinets as shooting games (eg Virtua Cop) were quite popular in
arcades.

2\. Early 3D systems as used on Sega Scope for the Sega Master System; and the
Nintendo 3D System for the Famicom (Japanese NES)

These devices are less common and as far as I'm aware only available on home
consoles. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, it's active
shutter glasses (ie disabled one eye at a time) and was timed around the
interlacing on CRTs. At 50/60Hz (depending on your region) the effect can be a
little unpleasant. But it's also pretty amazing to play when you consider the
devices are approximately 30 years old.

~~~
ChicagoBoy11
WRT to the light guns, I never quite really understood why you couldn't
somehow simulate this with LCDs. Isn't the refresh rate on LCDs higher? So
couldn't you work around that somehow? Obviously the answer is prob. not since
no one (that I know of) has done it, but I was genuinely curious of what
precisely the technical limitation is.

~~~
PeterisP
The way light guns work, they rely on the fact that a white frame is not
displayed all at once but "drawn" by the CRT ray - if you flash a single white
frame, one location will flash white slightly later than other, and you can
infer the location from the timing.

LCDs, well, change all the frame at once. The issue isn't with the frame rate
but at what happens when the device is drawing a single frame change.

~~~
wang_li
>LCDs, well, change all the frame at once.

Is this true? It doesn't seem like it is, if it were then we'd not experience
tearing in games, etc.

~~~
to3m
Tearing is a property of the output from the GPU. The data takes time to send,
and the GPU can be directed to send different data halfway through the process
(or the memory it's in the process of sending can be modified, etc.). The
display just shows what it's sent... it shows it as it receives it (CRT), or
it buffers it up and draws it later (LCD), but if there's a tear, you'll see
it just the same.

~~~
wang_li
There may be intermediate buffering, but the panel is still updated in a
scanning fashion.

------
wimagguc
Have you guys seen Musee Mecanique in Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco [1]?
It's a collection of older-than-old slot machines and games, I want to say
I've seen some 100 year old ones, but the point is: there's Heavyweight Champ'
style boxing, there are all sorts of sport games, and even a mechanical road
runner [2].

The gameplay is obviously changed with technology, but for some games the core
idea survived some heavy decades of transitions. The originals would probably
be less engaging for today's kids, so it's only fair to ship them a
3D/VR/mobile version, and keep our nostalgia from trying to sell mechanical
road runner to all arcades. CRTs will phase out in favour of everything else,
and that should be ok.

[1] [http://museemecaniquesf.com](http://museemecaniquesf.com)

[2]
[https://www.facebook.com/museemecaniquesf/videos/vb.51627194...](https://www.facebook.com/museemecaniquesf/videos/vb.51627194717/10151480936271635/?type=2&theate)

~~~
drzaiusapelord
This is my thinking as well. Hamfisted attempts to make LCD's look like CRT's
by artificially curving the screen and messing with colors is just nostalgia.
It doesn't add anything to game and 1980s designers were most likely pissed
they had to deal with these limitations like color distortion, curvatures,
ghosting, burn-in, etc. Pac-man isn't better on a shittier screen. Pac-man
succeeds because it had novel game mechanics for 1982.

Outside of lightguns not working this seems like a non-issue to me. I'm sure
the emulation community can find a work-around for this for the few people
actually using lightguns under emulation.

>Have you guys seen Musee Mecanique

I live in Chicago and have access to all sorts of barcades as well as one of
the largest, if not largest, arcades in a nearby suburb, so I'm pretty well
versed in the arcade experience today as well as from my childhood. I went to
Musee a few years ago and was expecting an experience like that, but instead
the game floor was mostly these near turn of the century mechanical games. I
was fairly disappointed, from a gameplay or mechanical perspective they were
kinda terrible and largely uninteresting. They had historic value but that's
about it and probably better off in a proper museum and lovingly maintained
than beaten up for quarters. I think in 20-30 years this is exactly how CRT's
will be seen. Kids will marvel at how terrible their low resolutions,
framerate, color accuracy, and ghosting are.

~~~
glhaynes
_This is my thinking as well. Hamfisted attempts to make LCD 's look like
CRT's by artificially curving the screen and messing with colors is just
nostalgia. It doesn't add anything to game and 1980s designers were most
likely pissed they had to deal with these limitations like color distortion,
curvatures, ghosting, burn-in, etc. Pac-man isn't better on a shittier screen.
Pac-man succeeds because it had novel game mechanics for 1982._

I mostly agree, though I think it gets a little muddier when you consider that
the artists of the day — while doubtlessly wishing they had access to "more
perfect" displays — were often designing their art to take advantage of those
distortions to get effects they wanted. So, if part of why we're doing
emulation is for history's sake, we have to keep that in mind. The painters of
ancient Roman frescoes probably wanted more vibrant pigments than they had and
it might even be interesting and attractive to "enhance" one with modern
pigments, but it's ahistorical.

That being said, I've never personally found added distortion in emulators to
improve the experience. I'm always constantly aware of its artificiality and
that far outweighs any potential gains in "authenticity".

~~~
jhbadger
Or the (fortunately no longer common) trend in the 1990s of "colorizing" black
and white movies under the misconception that this would make them better,
ignoring that people filming in black and white took advantage of the medium
for things like shadows that actually worked better there than in color.

------
rmason
They don't really say how large the market might be. Or if there are patents
that would block a startup.

I'd be willing to bet that you could find or train people in Detroit right now
to build these CRT's. All you'd need are a couple of people to train them for
a few months.

They said the same thing about vinyl records, soon the industry would die.
Detroit has become a hub for pressing records and as old machines become
scarce they're now supporting a company making new machines.

[http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/inside-jack-
white...](http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/inside-jack-whites-new-
vinyl-pressing-paradise-w468376)

~~~
plorkyeran
I would guess that up until now the biggest thing preventing anyone from
investing in small-scale CRT manufacturing is the simple fact that there was
an inventory glut that covered the world demand for CRTs for nearly a decade
after the last one was made. Now that we're apparently getting close to the
point where there's actually demand for new CRTs is when we can find out if
it's something that you can build a business around.

~~~
jjeaff
But is there really a small cohort of CRT nostalgics out there? I mean I get
the records, the sound is unique and music is absolutely ubiquitous. Arcade
gaming is a much smaller market and I find it hard to imagine that there are
enough CRT purists out there to warrant a business.

Especially considering a nice new OLED could be fashioned to look like a CRT.

~~~
speeder
I use CRT as my main screen. Some reasons for it:

1\. I can choose any resolution without blurring... problem now worse with 4k
screens (lots of angry posts in Stellaris forums due to UI that is hard to
read in 4k and become blurry if you lower the resolution...)

2\. Ridiculous response speed... playing Crypt of the Necrodancer or Super
Hexagon is much, much more fun on CRT, all mistakes feel like it was purely
lack of skill, instead of feeling something unfair happened. Ditto for fps...
CS community in fact is hogging all CRT, the ones I knew for sale all ended in
some CS player home willing to fudge settings to end with crazy refresh rate
and response speed (there is even a video of a guy pulling 200+ fps by using
interlaced mode!)

3\. Better blacks and whites... in fact, this was the main reason, when CRTs
died I also abandoned them, but all screens I had after had colour or contrast
problems, I had to fiddle with settings constantly, one day my screen broke
and a CRT was available nearby, when I plugged it in, I was blown away by the
image quality that required only geometry settings, no endless messing with
gamma, colour profiles and whatnot.

4\. Not valid anymore, but until recently CRTs were much cheaper than flat
panels of equivalent quality, at least on my country... but now with "new"
stocks empty, used prices around rising, I even own a CRT tv that now on eBay
costs more than the price it has when it was new... (this particular model is
also the one used as reference for some SNES emulators CRT "filters")

~~~
touristtam
And CRT are just a giant light bulb, bombarding you with not so good
radiation. Add to this the fact that the corner are never going to be
perfectly square. I get the attraction for some of the superior quality of the
CRT, but once this technology has been overtaken by a superior one, there is
little sense to look back.

~~~
throwawayish
> And CRT are just a giant light bulb, bombarding you with not so good
> radiation.

In other words, you do not know how a CRT works.

Educate yerself, it's free:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube)

~~~
creshal
The article is a poor source for your argument, because it does at length
argue about the health risks of X-Rays emitted by CRTs.

It's more helpful to put it into perspective with other radiation sources:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Radiatio...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Radiation_Dose_Chart_by_Xkcd.png)

IOW, radiation dosage of using a CRT for a year comparable to ten bananas.

~~~
throwawayish
I don't see the "does at length argue about the health risks of X-Rays
emitted" in the article. It discusses them and concludes that they are widely
considered safe.

> CRTs can emit a small amount of X-ray radiation as a result of the electron
> beam's bombardment of the shadow mask/aperture grille and phosphors. The
> amount of radiation escaping the front of the monitor is widely considered
> not to be harmful. The Food and Drug Administration regulations in 21 C.F.R.
> 1020.10 are used to strictly limit, for instance, television receivers to
> 0.5 milliroentgens per hour (mR/h) (0.13 µC/(kg·h) or 36 pA/kg) at a
> distance of 5 cm (2 in) from any external surface; since 2007, most CRTs
> have emissions that fall well below this limit.

------
bentpins
As someone who missed most of the classic arcade games on CRTs, I was blown
away trying out Asteroids on a machine with a CRT Vector Monitor. Because the
electron beam can focus longer in one spot, it could pull off ridiculously
bright bullets. I don't think you could get the same effect on any modern
display.

~~~
pjc50
The low input latency of original Tempest is also amazing - I think it's the
most fluid game I've ever played.

~~~
neckro23
Tempest is my favorite "golden age" game, and I've been trying to find a
working copy (to play!) with a vector monitor. Sadly the monitors that were
used in Tempest are (apparently) particularly failure-prone.

I came close once, at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, where they had
real hardware but, sadly, an LCD screen.

~~~
wang_li
With proper amounts of determination any CRT is vector...

[http://spritesmods.com/?art=bwidow_fpga&page=2](http://spritesmods.com/?art=bwidow_fpga&page=2)

------
kibwen
_> We’re looking at a situation where playing Donkey Kong in the way that its
creator intended is reserved only for the most dedicated collector. It will be
prohibitively expensive to recreate that experience._

While this is a bit sad on some level, the art itself will survive the
transition. After all, nobody these days experiences _Romeo and Juliet_ in the
way that its creator intended, yet it endures. What I'm more worried about are
those games that are going to be completely lost once the hardware expires; we
can preserve the game data itself all we like, but without proper emulators
you're SOL (and unless CPU speeds start doubling again, we're never going to
be able to even semi-accurately emulate anything past the Xbox 360/PS3
generation). To say nothing of online games that will vanish into the mist
once the servers get taken offline...

~~~
daurnimator
> unless CPU speeds start doubling again, we're never going to be able to even
> semi-accurately emulate anything past the Xbox 360/PS3 generation

Luckily all the new consoles use x86_64 processors for their main processors,
so no low level emulation will be required.

~~~
WaxProlix
Is that true? The prospect of emulating a console on similar-gen PC hardware
is super appetizing, but this is the first I've heard of the possibility.

~~~
Sanddancer
Yep. Both the PS4 and XBox One are using semi-custom AMD chips with 8-core
CPUs and 1152 shader GPUs. So managably beefy.

~~~
masklinn
The XB1 has only 768 GCN cores (12 compute units of 64 cores, versus 18 for
the PS4), but both CPU and GPU cores are clocked slightly higher than the PS4
(1.75GHz v 1.6 for the CPU, 853MHz v 800 for the GPU).

The PS4P increases everything except the CPU cores count: CPU clock to 2.1GHz,
compute units to 36 (hence 2304 cores) and GCN frequency to 911MHz.

------
cr0sh
I see plenty of comments here about how LCDs will have to be the replacement,
but there's a big issue about LCDs as replacements for CRTs (bar specialty
ones being made):

The fact that most of the 80s arcade monitors were 4:3 ratio.

Sure - you can get 4:3 ratio LCD monitors today - but they are becoming harder
to find. Furthermore, good luck finding them in a larger size than about 17
inches (19 inches, maybe). They never made them larger, from what I remember.
The larger LCD screens were all widescreen (16:9?) - and still are. Even most
of the smaller LCDs are wide format.

And you can't just stick a wide format LCD into an arcade cabinet and add
"borders" \- because there likely isn't room. So at best, you'll get an LCD
stuck in, with a matte board around it, and the display smaller than the
original. It'll look like crap, to be honest - and that's before the look of
the display on LCD vs CRT...

~~~
VLM
More likely you'll have a 16:9 projector with black borders projecting unto
flat black side walls, resulting in a full size back projected image.

The CRT people like grainy low res distortion so projecting onto the back of a
purposefully bent and distorted piece of plastic should appear extremely
similar to a CRT.

Of course this turns the problem of a CRT with finite filament life into a
problem of a projector with a finite bulb life but presumably it would be easy
to swap out the entire projector.

With considerable plywood hacking you MIGHT pull off attractive forward
projection onto a screen for some games (not many of course) Or if you allow
really ugly plywood hacking you can just place a projector screen in place of
the CRT, ceiling mount the projector, and call it good.

------
0xcde4c3db
> Additionally, Ware explained that the refresh rate on an LCD may not play
> well with an old game’s code that is expecting a much more responsive CRT
> monitor. It could cause unsightly screen tearing that looks like one half of
> the screen is occasionally redrawing before the other.

Does this really happen with LCD arcade monitors? It happens with PC-based
emulators because they usually can't make the OS/drivers/GPU/monitor switch to
a refresh rate that matches the emulated hardware (which, despite the quoted
"more responsive CRT" bit, is just as likely to be below 60 Hz as above it,
and usually not by a large amount either way) but I don't see how CRT vs. LCD
is a major factor if we're talking about monitors that are actually made for
arcade machines.

~~~
donatj
Many games knew exactly where the beam was and played tricks on your eye.
These don't translate well to LCD.

~~~
matthewwiese
Bogost & Montfort's _Racing the Beam_
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam))
is about that very practice, though concerning the Atari 2600 in particular.

~~~
mgkimsal
Loved that book! Loved all the behind-the-scenes stories and the deep-dive in
to some of the tech issues (it was past my ability to comprehend it all, yet
"not enough detail" for a friend of mine).

------
PhasmaFelis
> _“It’s just not gonna feel as nostalgic,” Ware tells GamesBeat when we asked
> him about the problems with the modern display technology. “The pixels will
> be sharper on an LCD, but they may not be 100 percent accurate. Colors won’t
> be quite as vibrant.”_

The absolute loss of dead online games bothers me. I can't get too fussed
about arcade games that are still 100% playable but with less nostalgic
pixels.

~~~
khedoros1
I've never cared for most online games, although it bugs me on an intellectual
level that they'll stop working. CRTs are connected to my childhood and early
adulthood, and I get warm nostalgic feelings seeing one still in use. If I had
space at home, I'd have a 30" CRT sitting next to my main LCD TV, to connect
my older game consoles to. They work on the LCD. Then again, so does emulation
on a PC. Not quite the same.

~~~
donatj
I have all my pre-HD systems (NES - Dreamcast) hooked to a round 32" CRT in my
spare room the way I remember growing up.

------
simonlc
I own a Japanese arcade machine, and while they are still somewhat common in
Japan, and the US, it was not easy to find in Canada.

The nostalgic feeling and experience of playing not only on a CRT, but actual
machine from the 1990's can't be replicated on an LCD.

Static on the screen, the hum of the monitor, the flickering of the colors,
the look of the glare on the surrounding arcades, the sound of coins dropping
down the chute, are the little things I bought my arcade cabinet for.

I dread the day that my monitor fails. As it'll mean the death of this
experience for me without traveling to another country.

~~~
Keyframe
I own a few of pro broadcast monitors for consoles. I would really like some
contingency when they go belly up.

------
sehugg
You can see what one custom arcade builder does with their LCDs here,
correcting aspect ratio and adding shaders:
[http://www.paradoxarcades.com/monitor/](http://www.paradoxarcades.com/monitor/)

They have light guns too (it uses a Wii-like infrared tracker):
[http://www.paradoxarcades.com/lightguns/](http://www.paradoxarcades.com/lightguns/)

Nice emulations, but nothing is going to match the latency of a board hooked
up directly to electron guns.

------
Tepix
So playing a classic arcade game will look different than it did back then.

But if you think about it - if the screens we have today would have been
available back then, what do you think would the game designers have
preferred?

Also, screens will continue to get better. Gaming on [an arcade machine with]
a HDR OLED screen could be amazing.

~~~
phkahler
>> But if you think about it - if the screens we have today would have been
available back then, what do you think would the game designers have
preferred?

The best example of design-to-the-CRT by far is the original Star Wars. For
starters it's a vector game - electron beam is deflected in lines to directly
draw the objects. Vector monitors start with a very distinct look. Then they
went further. For the enemy bullets (snowflakes or whatever you call them)
they overdrive the electron gun which causes the tube voltage to drop, which
in turn defocuses the beam and creates a wide-soft vector for those objects.
And finally when you lose a shield (get hit) they draw a very much oversized
square so far off screen that the electrons scatter off the back of the tube
and flood the entire screen with a haze or fog as you take the hit. Oh, and
the death star explosion also has a bit of a unique look as it involves more
vectors than the hardware can quite keep up with.

That game was designed for the medium and is the pinnacle of genera. There is
no substitute.

~~~
Tepix
I agree that there are games that were made for CRTs. Asteroids is another
great example.

However, most games do not take advantage of being displayed on a CRT.

Do you think it's better to play Donkey Kong or Galaga on a CRT vs a LCD? If
so, why? Just nostalgia?

------
grapeshot
It's only the best quality arcade CRTs that are going to become unavailable.
The US still has warehouses full of worthless CRT televisions that are too
expensive to recycle because of the lead content in the glass.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/us/disposal-of-older-
monit...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/us/disposal-of-older-monitors-
leaves-a-hazardous-trail.html)

------
userbinator
I was under the impression that there are still a few small companies in China
making CRTs --- a search of Alibaba shows a few sellers still advertising CRT
TVs, but I'm not sure if those are NOS.

~~~
dep_b
The arcade CRT's are different from TV CRT's, the voltages are a lot higher (I
heard 10.000 volt somewhere) and therefore quite dangerous to handle even.
This is also the reason the colors were much brighter in the arcade then on
your home system connected to your TV.

~~~
c3833174
The voltage is related to display size, a 17" monitor might run on 27kv while
a 32" might run on 34kv, but at higher voltages more X-rays are emitted so
most TVs have safety mechanisms to limit voltage.

As for the safety I'd expect anybody servicing arcades to know what they're
doing.

------
kristopolous
All this is saying to me is hoard discarded CRT monitors in a storage locker
for 3 years then sell them off for good money on ebay. Am I mistaken?

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Have fun with the shipping costs on those...

~~~
kristopolous
I don't think it's reasonable either. The eBay market is strange: 1GB 50 pin
scsi drives go for hundreds of dollars, 486 machines can go for $150 and ISA
sound cards can be auctioned for hundreds of dollars
([http://www.ebay.com/itm/Roland-SCC-1-ISA-Sound-
Card-/1623420...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Roland-SCC-1-ISA-Sound-
Card-/162342001502?hash=item25cc565b5e:g:pPAAAOSwImRYaVqZ)).

Don't get me wrong, this is a total waste of time - but the market is probably
there for someone who wants it.

------
crttvcomeback
Do not give up on CRT arcade monitors. There is still one manufacturer left in
this world making new CRT TV's today in India. Do not give up hope. If we get
together, we will find a way to rebuild or manufacturer new CRT Arcade
Monitors in The United States or Imported to the United States. CRT technology
is not dead. Find ways to learn how the CRT works and do simple Cathode Ray
Tube experiments using a glassblower and other tools. If people do this,
eventually, we can make custom CRT's one by one for video game and arcade
collectors. Yes, this way might cost alot, but there will be collectors
willing to pay that price. Another way is to make CRT rebuilding equipment to
rebuild CRT arcade monitors. Early Television Foundation and museum will be
rebuilding a 1950s B&W CRT TV Tube in May. Please don't give up on CRT
displays. Have hope that New CRT displays will come.

------
tombert
I'm not asking to troll or be annoying, but couldn't we conceivably have LCDs
in the future that have really high refresh rates? I'm not saying this year or
anything, but is there a technical limitation to the max refresh rate to LCD?

------
epx
Do audiophiles watch movies in "tube" (CRT) screens? :)

~~~
throwanem
Videophiles, and I gather they're more likely to use projectors with their
vintage LaserDiscs.

~~~
amyjess
Or for that matter, projectors with actual film.

------
vermontdevil
If anyone can fix and maintain classic arcade machines, it would be these
people:

Museum of Play - International Center for the History of Electronic Games
[http://www.museumofplay.org/about/icheg](http://www.museumofplay.org/about/icheg)

If you are in the area, you should stop by. They have every cool toy possible
from many many years back. Brought back many memories.

Plus you can play many old arcade or pinball games!

------
gthtjtkt
You can already see the rapid appreciation starting in the console CRT market.
All the most desirable monitors have doubled or tripled in price over the past
year. A 20" monitor easily sells for several hundred dollars, and the larger
ones run into the thousands.

More and more people are starting to realize that emulation is no substitute
for the real thing, and the supply of functional, high quality CRTs will only
continue to decrease.

------
kozak
As a person who is more sensitive than average to sub-85Hz flicker of CRT and
plasma screens, I'm happy to see these technologies dying.

~~~
WWLink
I'm more sensitive to the really high pitched eeeeeeee that comes from CRTs
and their flyback transformers.

~~~
kozak
That sensitivity goes away "automatically" with age.

