Almost nobody. While I agree with your general sentiment, CRT displays are still being used in some professional settings. High end movie production will maintain some for color grading, for example.
As for "retro nerds", we are seeing a generation, who were last to use the CRT as kids, seek them now. They care, at least for a while. They want to pass their roots along to the next generation.
My own kids have asked about it, and I am gaming with my granddaughter on both a high end CRT and a very low hour consumer set that is just sweet for retro gaming. She is 6 and notices.
I also scored an awesome Disney VHS collection, that is basically the catalog plus a few notables, like Rugrats. Bright orange VHS tape, BTW. The reports are in!
She hates rewind. She likes all the noises and that the machine will take a tape and give it back to her when done playing. She did ask whether one says thank you.
Cute as all get out. I said her call, and she does thank it. "Thank you movie machine."
I happen to know a ton about TV's from the tube era, up through the 00's. Consumer circuits got really good near the end. The big difference was the CRT itself. One can connect a VGA tube to a consumer set and, for the most part, get a much higher resolution image. That was my first "PVM."
I agree with you on availability. The consumer grade sets are running strong. The reality is enjoying the pro grade gear is a real treat. The people modifying US sets to take RGB are going to put high quality within reach of many more people. And there are plenty of buyers.
A well aligned consumer set from the 00's will look great for gaming. In my opinion, the pro gear can deliver a bit better and or can handle signals from around the world. That's why I have mine. PAL viewing of games and movies is interesting and does explain a few differences in preferences I have seen between the EU and US.
My problem was that I was always around professional gear. I got into video production while still in high school. Once I got to college, I started working at a film lab/post house. Everything was the high end gear. I saw what the image looked like straight from the film negatives in the transfer suites while being recorded to digibeta. The images at that point looked amazing for SD. You'd then see the content you worked on in the edit bays at home on consumer TVs, and it'd look like total crap.
Consumer gear and media sources really were crappy. In my case, I was not around pro gear much, but did see it some. I was good at electronics and would get consumer grade devices, sometimes swap tubes in, and other times optimize the device for the single purpose it would serve.
In the case of computer display, that might be adjusting everything to work well for a computer, but you might not want to watch a movie on it. Even some of the older tube type sets I worked with could perform reasonably, hitting 400 lines or so. Just enough to work with 80 column text reasonably, but not with excellence. At the time though, it was pretty nice compared to the default many people worked with.
As for "retro nerds", we are seeing a generation, who were last to use the CRT as kids, seek them now. They care, at least for a while. They want to pass their roots along to the next generation.
My own kids have asked about it, and I am gaming with my granddaughter on both a high end CRT and a very low hour consumer set that is just sweet for retro gaming. She is 6 and notices.
I also scored an awesome Disney VHS collection, that is basically the catalog plus a few notables, like Rugrats. Bright orange VHS tape, BTW. The reports are in!
She hates rewind. She likes all the noises and that the machine will take a tape and give it back to her when done playing. She did ask whether one says thank you.
Cute as all get out. I said her call, and she does thank it. "Thank you movie machine."
I happen to know a ton about TV's from the tube era, up through the 00's. Consumer circuits got really good near the end. The big difference was the CRT itself. One can connect a VGA tube to a consumer set and, for the most part, get a much higher resolution image. That was my first "PVM."
I agree with you on availability. The consumer grade sets are running strong. The reality is enjoying the pro grade gear is a real treat. The people modifying US sets to take RGB are going to put high quality within reach of many more people. And there are plenty of buyers.
A well aligned consumer set from the 00's will look great for gaming. In my opinion, the pro gear can deliver a bit better and or can handle signals from around the world. That's why I have mine. PAL viewing of games and movies is interesting and does explain a few differences in preferences I have seen between the EU and US.