
The Last Scan: Keeping old TVs alive - Hooke
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16973914/tvs-crt-restoration-led-gaming-vintage
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tomku
Reluctant CRT owner here. I have one because it was cheapest and easiest way
to get a low input lag display for speedrunning. I paid $30 for my 27"
Trinitron on Craigslist and had to drive a bit to pick it up. It's a monster
of a TV, requiring a sturdy rack to sit on and a couple strong friends if I
want it somewhere else. The picture quality is great and the scanlines
definitely add an old-school feel but it doesn't look better than my SNES
Classic on my generic HDTV.

It's not that you CAN'T speedrun on LCD displays, it's that it's expensive and
inconvenient. Connecting a retro console like a SNES to a modern display
requires converting one of composite/S-video/component/RGB SCART to DVI or
HDMI, and most of the devices that do that aren't designed with latency in
mind. If you search on Amazon you'll find a bunch of cheap knockoff upscalers
that, if they even work, add 50ms+ of latency. The cheapest acceptable option
is the OSSC, a custom-made upscaler for retro gaming that costs about $200.
Many people who built their setups before OSSCs were easily available use XRGB
Minis/Framemeisters, which run about $320 and add very slightly more lag. Both
the OSSC and Framemeister expect SCART input, so there's some extra cost there
for cables/converters.

After you buy an upscaler, you'll still need a monitor with acceptable latency
after all the extra image processing is disabled. The Melee community uses
particular models of Asus monitors that people have checked, but it's
difficult to find good information on input lag in general because it's not
something manufacturers care to advertise. If you're buying new, figure about
$200 for something like an Asus VG245H.

Lastly you'll need DVI/HDMI capture and splitting/passthrough. Not an issue if
you're already capturing modern consoles, but S-video capture for retro
hardware is dirt cheap. A good 60fps HDMI capture setup is easily $100-200.

So, overall it costs $500-600 to replicate the CRT experience from a retro
speedrunning perspective and the results are a mixed bag - slightly (although
imperceptibly) higher latency but higher video capture quality and some space
savings. For comparison, my CRT setup cost $30 for the TV, $35 for a GV-USB2
capture dongle and $20 for a S-video/composite splitter, under $100 total.
Unless something happens to make low input lag HDMI more cost-effective,
expect retro speedrunners to continue using CRTs as long as they're viable.

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Santosh83
Is there an international effort to document and preserve human knowledge so
if/when disaster strikes, we can get back on our feet sooner rather than
later? In this case the simpler technologies need to be documented with more
importance because they will be far easier to reconstruct than more advanced
ones.

This might seem like a frivolous effort, but this, along with documenting and
conserving the planet's biodiversity are honestly two of the most valuable
things humanity can do. We musn't recklessly rush ahead without even planning
fallback scenarios or preserving valuable buffers that will cushion the impact
of potential setbacks.

~~~
yoodenvranx
> Is there an international effort to document and preserve human knowledge so
> if/when disaster strikes, we can get back on our feet sooner rather than
> later? In this case the simpler technologies need to be documented with more
> importance because they will be far easier to reconstruct than more advanced
> ones.

This is one of the things I have been thinking about lately a lot. Our current
society is very fragile because of all the high tech.

If there is a single large disaster we can be easily thrown back a few decades
from a technological point of view because the knowledge of high tech (e.g.
creating computer chips, hard drives, ...) is concentrated in a few places. If
those places and people are gone then we will have a serious problem.

We are not even able to produce solar cells after a disaster but we have to go
back to burning coal and wood for electricity.

There needs to be some sort of book series which teaches our basic knowledge
(medicine, electricity, math, physics, ...) in a way that it can be restored
rather easily after a large disaster.

~~~
Retric
Physical chips would be a huge starting point to redeveloping computers a
second time. The population loss associated with that kind of knowledge loss
seems like a much bigger issue.

We need vast economies of scale to continue current chip production. A world
population at say 1% our current size would have issues building and
maintaining modern equipment.

PS: Also, with a smaller population hydro power would easily meet our energy
needs. Long enough to bootstrap wind / solar again.

~~~
yoodenvranx
> We need vast economies of scale to continue current chip production

They don't actually need current chips, but recreating something along the
lines of an early Z80 would be an enormous win for a society which is
rebuilding itself from scratch.

> Long enough to bootstrap wind / solar again.

wind power might be actually better for local development. You just need some
magnets and some coils and you have electricity to power a few lightbulbs
(well, actually someone has to build lightbulbs or leds...)

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petecox
I would suggest that the biggest group to mourn CRT technology would be our
feline overlords. I had several cats that used to perch themselves atop a
screen, trying to capture my attention and keeping warm but blocking an air
vent in the process.

The switch to DVB-T from PAL saw us recycle our last CRT telly. I threw out my
Trinitron computer monitor some years earlier. Its sharpness had deteriorated
over time. Text became too fuzzy, perhaps something to do with electrons
mentioned in the article.

I miss the vertical pixels - 1600x1200 was a standard but LCDs embraced 1080
panels from the Blu-ray craze. Luckily I have a 1024*1280 LCD (rotated) for A4
documents.

~~~
yoodenvranx
> I miss the vertical pixels

This HD craze (especially for notebook displays) was one of the worst mistakes
in recent computer history!

If I use a computer for reading and writing then I need a lot of vertical
space and pixels! I don't care about the width at all!

I own a bunch of old IBM/Lenovo notebooks and I am convinced that a 14"
display with a 4:3 aspect ratio (for example 1400 x 1050) is still the best
type of display for a portable developers notebook.

Newer Microsoft Surface devices go for a 3:2 aspect ratio but if I would
design such a device I would make the screen even more square.

~~~
the_af
Agreed about the "HD craze", _especially_ because of the following facts:

\- "HD" in the context of laptop screens means "1366x768", which is unusable.
It's funny that "high definition" means "the lowest resolution available on a
PC". It makes explaining to family members which monitor is right for them
very hard, because of course "HD" must be a good thing, right?

\- Most entry level laptops come with said resolution (this may be starting to
change in the past few years).

\- Businesses, even software development companies, have a hard time
understanding that higher resolution monitors are not for gaming or watching
movies, but for actual work. In fact, they are _more_ useful for working,
because for watching movies a standard "HD" monitor is enough.

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dragonwriter
> "HD" in the context of laptop screens means "1366x768", which is unusable.
> It's funny that "high definition" means "the lowest resolution available on
> a PC".

Unmodified HD (without “full”) generally means 720p for other screens, that's
not a “laptop screen” specific quirk. (Well, I guess it is, in that 720p is
1280×720, but you aren't complaining that 1366×768 is a higher resolution than
it should be for the bare “HD” label.)

(Also, 1366x768 is not “unusable”, and I say that as someone who was
habituated to a 1600×1200 desktop display for years before starting to use
1366×768 laptops a lot in parallel with it.)

~~~
the_af
You're right, unmodified HD is 720p for all screens (you have to admit it's
funny "HD" means "low res"). It's just that I first encountered this annoying
resolution in entry-level laptops. Even more irritating, if you wanted higher
res you had to buy a "gaming" laptop, which is ridiculous since for gaming a
720p screen is more than enough.

I'm glad you don't consider it unusable for work, but you're in the
minority[1]. The resolution sucks and there's no excuse for it. You can barely
work with an IDE and it forces you to use an external monitor -- and I say
this as someone who finds the Jeff Atwood "I can't work without 3 external
monitors" kind of snobbery irritating.

[1] Likewise, there always used to be someone who didn't mind flickery low
refresh rates in CRT monitors. Their opinion can be ignored since pretty much
everyone else cares, even when they don't know what's happening and they just
know their eyes and head hurt after a while.

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jcadam
I remember my parents bought a 32" widescreen CRT HDTV (1080i) back when HD
was first becoming a thing. That was the heaviest TV set I've ever had to move
in my life.

They offered to give it to me a few years later when they upgraded to an
LCD... wish I would have taken it (no idea what happened to it now). It took
me forever to find a decent CRT on craigslist for retro gaming :)

~~~
eumoria
My brother was a bit of a home theater enthusiast when we were growing up and
he bought a widescreen CRT HDTV and you aren't kidding about the weight. It
took three of us tumbling it up the stairs just to get it up there (nearly
killing us twice). It was a beautiful set he gifted it to me when he upgraded
to an HD projector. Used it until I moved out. I wasn't moving that battleship
any further than the street by that time LED panels had started coming out.

In retrospect I wish I had hung onto it but with the size and weight it just
wasn't possible.

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Kelbit
I am surprised that an article on CRT displays mentions John Logie Baird but
not Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin. Baird's TV was electromechanical,
whereas the Farnsworth/Zworykin designs (the two were competitors) were all-
electronic. Zworykin, in particular, is credited with coining the name
"Cathode Ray Tube."

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MayeulC
Will we someday see some low-latency, low-persistence TV screens, like the
panels we can find in VR HMDs? These could easily replace most uses for a CRT
TV.

What I miss the most on a modern TV or computer screen is the low persistence.
Just look at some moving sharp edges on a CRT versus an LCD screen (glxgears,
for example). The difference is striking, as you can follow the edges on CRT
TVs, but not on a regular screen.

I actually suspect that the 144Hz gaming craze has more to do with persistence
than framerate!

~~~
theandrewbailey
OLED displays might be the answer.

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hnzix
What I miss most about CRTs are accurate light gun video games. I tried
Overkill on PS3 and while it was fun, the crosshair positioning was terrible.
Rail shooters seem to have vanished into history (much like Ruby on Rails) (I
kid! I kid!)

~~~
mrguyorama
The Nintendo Wii's cursor positioning was perfect, and was as intuitive and
direct as using a mouse. Instead of having to move a joystick to move your
entire view, you just point the remote at an enemy and shoot. I wish the Wii
was slightly more powerful so that its FPS games were taken more seriously

~~~
khedoros1
I'll agree that it's as intuitive as using a mouse. I'll strongly disagree
that the cursor positioning was perfect or that "you just point the remote at
an enemy and shoot".

Point the Wiimote generally at the screen, waggle it around a while to figure
out when the sensor bar is in view, and then use mouse-style relative motion
to get it pointed where you want. If I just point it at the TV, I don't know
where the cursor will be, but it won't be exactly where I pointed.

A CRT with a lightgun is _much_ more of a point and click situation.

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PeanutNore
I still keep a CRT around for my C64 - a little 13" Sony Trinitron. It might
see more use once I get around to replacing the electrolytic caps in my SNES
and getting it working again.

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theoh
Similar niche business keeping monitors going (catering to contemporary art)
in London: [http://www.the-block.org](http://www.the-block.org)

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davidjhall
Critical for Atari-fans. Some of the old systems, without mods, need cable
input or antenna screws.

