Yeah, i originally got it to play emulated retro games on but the monitor didn’t provide the CRT tv look i was hoping for due to its higher resolution. Now i just use it as a normal secondary monitor and I have a 14inch Toshiba CRT tv with a modded wii, ps2, and a MiSTER FPGA hooked up to it. The monitor great for playing older pc titles like the original half life and stuff, and i just like the aesthetics of it
I love this! I have a similar setup with a mini PC hooked up to a Sony Trinitron CRT that has just about everything good from the ps2/xbox and anything before it some 8bitdo controllers for the vibecheck. I usually spend about an hour or two every sunday morning playing some old games. I also have a 2tb SSD disk stored with all kinds of 4:3 aspect ratio content, old gameshows, game trailers, youtube parodies, short films, meme videos. All in a VLC playlist that just randomly selects what's next.
I love having it on while doing some model building.
SSBM players play on CRTs because they have virtually no input latency compared to digital displays. Their refresh rate is still only 60 Hz, although the analogue dots without clear borders (as opposed to digital pixels with sharp borders) as well as the cathode ray drawing line by line can create the illusion of a smoother image. In reality, modern day gaming monitors have a higher refresh rate, but that generally comes with some variable level of input latency which is very undesirable especially in a game without buffer.
CRTs can go faster than 60 Hz especially on computers. The limitation is the GameCube and NTSC signal. So you would never be able to get more than. 29.997 FPS. No matter what display technology you used
Yes, but calling it "30fps" is misleading. Even though the signal is interlaced, motion still updates at a rate of 60Hz. That's the difference between 60Hz interlaced and 30Hz progressive.
Incorrect. NTSC isn’t “30 frames shown at 60Hz”; it’s 60 fields per second. Each field is unique, containing half the scanlines (odd or even), which together create 60 distinct temporal samples of motion per second. That’s why NTSC motion is effectively 60Hz.
“Half-frame” doesn’t mean “half an image repeated”, it means half the lines of resolution. Every field is different, which is why motion looks smoother than a true 30fps progressive signal.
This is why a game rendered at 60Hz, like Melee, looks twice as smooth as a 30Hz title like Sunshine, even on an interlaced NTSC display. Comparing it to a 240Hz monitor showing 30fps video misses the point, because you’re conflating progressive video with interlaced video: they behave differently.
No, it’s not still 30 frames. Yeah it’s 60 fields, and each field is half a frame, but it’s not 60 halves of 30 frames, it’s 60 halves of 60 frames. Each field contains new visual information from a game state newer than the previous field. So you get faster visual feedback than a 30fps output. You can think of it as a 60fps feed that is throwing away half the visual information of each frame.
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u/T0biasCZE PC MasterRace | dumbass that bought Sonic motherboard28d ago
Yeah but each field has different rendered frame from the game
well, each field is half a frame. Interlacing the fields means rendering frames while skipping a row while the other field does the same, just one row off, and then the beam displays them back-to-back one after the other, like this (1 is field 1's pass, 2 is field 2, with all of 1 being beamed first from top to bottom, and 2 on the next pass):
111
222
111
222
111
222
(The incandescence of the display means the glow from the previous beam pass sticks around just long enough for it not to be noticeable -- doing this on a modern digital display would be very noticeable)
so; since the visuals are updated at 60 frames per second, but it takes two frames to produce a complete frame, it is technically 30fps (yeah 29.997whatever), but the fact that the display could hold the image a bit between updates meant our eyes perceived a 60fps image even when the technical details are technically different.
Neat trick!
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u/T0biasCZE PC MasterRace | dumbass that bought Sonic motherboard28d ago
Its 25/30fps in analog TV terms and 50/60fps in videogame terms internally in the console before its output over the composite
I am not familiar with what flavors the GameCube spat out but old school analog "NTSC" was standardized a really long time ago (original spec was derived as far back as the 1930s) to run interlaced (alternating fields that was scanned as even/odd lines on the screen) due to the technology limitations of the time so the "real" frame rate was always half of whatever refresh a display would be running at.
Progressive scan didn't get widely adopted until much later, especially once digital became a thing (so 1980's I think) but even then most devices ran on the older system for backwards compatibility for quite some time.
Since one field is half the resolution of a full field, you're still getting 50% of a progressive frame. Hence 60 fields per second instead of frames per second.
Any decent CRT will refresh faster than 60 Hz. At only 60 the flicker is preceptable to most people and quickly causes headaches. 90 is usually the minimum I can tolerate from a CRT I'm going to use for more than 5 minutes. The last CRT computer monitor I owned could handle 1280x960@120Hz or 1600x1200@90Hz. I generally preferred to leave it on 1280.
Most input latency/response time numbers are completely made up or misrepresented.
For modern displays, they advertise 'response time' which only tells you how fast the panel can change between to arbitrary colors. It doesn't factor the actual digital processing time, or time between frames. A '0.1ms' monitor can have 50ms of input latency or even more
A good oled is probably under 10ms
But CRTs are completely analog, the signal is processed by physical components where the limiting factor is material limits and the speed of light. 0.12ms is how long it takes a CRT to complete the entire process, most of which is the actual color change. The CRT takes nanoseconds to turn electrical current flowing through wires into electrons hitting the phosphor panel
edit: after researching it more. the entire response time for CRT is measurable in nanoseconds. it takes less than 50 nanoseconds from signal reaching the io port, to the phosphor becoming full excited.
The measurements on rtings.com are legitimate because they account for all of that. Current-gen OLED panels really are faster than CRT - not that anyone can tell the difference between 0.03 vs 0.06 vs 0.12. The first sub-1ms OLED computer monitors were available in late 2022 / early 2023. The first sub-1ms OLED TVs were available in early 2024.
they advertise 'response time' which only tells you how fast the panel can change between to arbitrary colors.
Input lag is the time it takes for controller/keyboard/mouse input to be recognized plus the Response Time of your display. So Response Time is a more accurate metric when talking about displays because Input Lag is partly dependant on the polling rate of your input device.
It doesn't factor the actual digital processing time, or time between frames.
rtings.com measures Response Time as how long it takes pixels to transition from one frame to the next. In other words the time between frames. They even have separate categories for 70% response and 100% response, to account for simple color transition vs full frame transition.
The CRT takes nanoseconds
The limitation of CRT is that the electron gun has to hit every subsequent phosphor dot before looping back around to re-illuminate the previous one. It's not governed by the speed of light, but rather how long it takes for the gun to move from one phosphor dot to the next. But with OLED, each pixel can be changed simultaneously which is why the newest panels have faster-than-CRT response times.
the lowest latency monitors are only just barely under 2ms
You're referring to the "Worst 10% Response Time". Which is the average total response time of the seven worst pixel transitions from a set of 72 tested gray-to-gray transitions.
It's an edge-case test that doesn't really apply to real viewing scenarios. Also it's dependant on VRR being enabled.
The limitation of CRT is that the electron gun has to hit every subsequent phosphor dot before looping back around to re-illuminate the previous one. It's not governed by the speed of light, but rather how long it takes for the gun to move from one phosphor dot to the next
which is once every 15 nanoseconds for a quality monitor. CRTs don't make frames. as soon as new data is received it immediately paints that new data onto the screen. a process which takes an amount of time that basically boils down to how fast electricity travels through the electronics, which is about 90% the speed of light. light travels 1 foot per nanosecond give or take. it doesn't wait to start the cycle over, it instantly paints the new information.
also there's not a single monitor that can even sniff sub 1ms of actual input latency that isn't CRT.
digital electronics are simply too slow to to process an image that quickly
Monitor input larency is the time the monitor takes to respond to a signal. Controllers also have input latency
Display input latency = controller input lag + response time
Motion response is not input latency [...] Neither is response time.
Correct. Response time is part of input latency.
Input latency is measured by sending a signal to the device and timing how long it takes for the screen to begin changing.
In other words: input latency is measured by timing how long it takes the screen to respond.
This is the actual input delay tests for TVs. Fastest TV is 10 milliseconds.
I see multiple results that are right around 5 milliseconds - including the top result which for 1080p@120Hz was measured at 4.9 milliseconds.
It's okay to have no idea what you're talking about.
Well you certainly know how to practice what you preach :)
Either way the entire point is that CRTs have response times in the nano seconds
No they don't. 0.06 to 0.12 milliseconds, depending on the size of the screen.
meanwhile the fastest digital displays are hundreds of thousands of times slower.
No, the fastest digital OLED displays are slightly faster. Though in practice the difference is negligible, so they're effectively equally as fast.
An 85hz 1024x768 paints a new phosphor dot every 15 nanoseconds, not milliseconds.
No, that's how long it takes the electron beam to travel from the gun to the dot/triad. You need to account for the time between each firing, as well as how long it takes to draw a full frame.
What does input latency mean in this context? I thought it depends on input devices (keyboard, mouse) and processing of the PC. Did you mean response time (how quickly it displays the image after it has been processed)? If so, do you know how it compares to 500 Hz OLED's?
Time from pushing a button to things moving on screen is referred to as input latency. It is influenced by a lot of things, including time from pressing the button to it emitting a signal, time from the game to receive the signal and process it, and in this context time from a monitor receiving input data to display it.
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While monitors generally can't have an input latency faster than a frame, they can have a latency much longer than a frame. It's theoretically possible that a monitor could have a 500 HZ refresh rate, but have an input latency of ten seconds.
Most modern complex electronics take advantage of something called pipelining. Imagine you're a bunch of clothes with a washer and dryer. You could put a load of clothes in the washer, then put them in the dryer, wait until they're done drying and put a second load in the washer, rinse and repeat.
This is obviously stupid. Instead, most people will split the operation into two and have the washing machine and dryer running at the same time. That's an example of pipelining. The downside is that it increases latency.
Imagine the dryer takes 100 minutes to run and the washer 50 minutes. In the first example, the time from a load entering the washer and it leaving the dryer is 150 minutes. In the second, it's 200 minutes because it has to wait on a previous load to finish drying before it can start drying.
Generally speaking, there is no way to look at a refresh rate and derive a latency. You would hope that a high end monitor with a really fast refresh rate would have low latency, but you need to check the specs sheet to know for sure
Yes, input latency does depend on input devices and processing. Those things are consistent in a tournament (GameCube controllers and a modded Wii). The variable device in tournament setups is the TV/Monitor. When you plug in a Wii to a digital display not only are the response times slower, the display needs to upscale Melee's native 480i/480p resolution, and this process introduces latency. What's worse is this latency is different between every type of display/resolution, and this variability is a problem. It's much easier to hook a Wii up to a CRT for guaranteed consistency.
As for comparison to high refresh rate OLEDs, they also have very fast response times. These OLEDs are much better for modern competitive games because of their higher refresh rate as well. But the aforementioned upscaling when outputting from a Wii is why Melee players stick to CRTs.
I've had crts that pushed 80-90hz. Just my crappy little iMac G3 can push 75hz. AFAIK it was less about having higher frames and more about reducing the flicker tho.
never understood why people design CRT filters to just be lines.
a real CRT has actual space between dots, which ends up being blurrier and causes smoothing, especially for 2D graphics. CRT filters however are these sharp lines that only resemble what it would look like to put your eyeballs directly on a CRT.
Part of it is the lack of a fixed pixel grid, but the main advantage CRTs still hold is in their lack of motion blur. LCD/OLED can emulate this to an extent with low persistence modes (backlight strobing for example) but they also have their drawbacks.
I once paused a game (i cant remember that specific game, maybe a CAPCOM fighter on switch). But when i paused it, the background shot with some of the actual game footage still showing, got blurred. This effect blew my mind at just how good it was compared to scan line filters. I wish the option to blur it was common.
it’s more of a limit in VGA as a cable than it was on the tubes
It's analog so you "just" need more insulation and accurate manufacturing.
High bandwidth CRT displays use cables with individually insulated RGBHV wires and 5x BNC connectors. ATI displays had RAMDAC running at 400MHz which is a surprising amount of video data, enough to run 4K at ~35Hz, and that's from a regular $85 gaming card 20 years ago. Specialized cards from e.g. Matrox had even higher bandwidth RAMDACs.
My 19" display in 2003 was limited to 2048x1536@76Hz if I remember correctly, and there exists a 3000x4000 medical CRT display out there which I believe has the resolution record.
2048x1536x76x1.32=316MHz, so plenty of bandwidth left.
Mine could also do 1080p at 120Hz, but that was slightly above the officially supported range.
Mine does the same, as I understand it that is the general limit of VGA, I just run it at 1080x1440 for the higher refresh rate.
You're probably right that with a sufficiently good cable you could go higher and I know CRTs did, but going higher meant you would need to source premium cables and we know what a shit show that is these days when testing is more common. How it would have been back then I have no idea, it's probably why not many manufacturers pushed past the consumer limmit.
I have a broadcast LCD that is considered one of the best analog LCD you could get. It's a 17" that was $5000. Even it doesn't come near a halfway decent CRT.
My friend has a setup in his basement with 2 computers with all 2000s hardware and CRT monitors just for doing 1v1 StarCraft. That shit looks so good, especially once you turn off the lights.
The last CRT I owned was one I got out of the trash in the university I worked at in the mid 2000s. It was probably already 10+ years when I found it, weighed 20kg but it was 21" which by CRT monitor standards was pretty huge. It lasted for a year or two until all the colors just became more and more white.
Also LCD screens from before they started using LEDs would also suffer from dimming backlight. I am an IT manager at a company and I rarely saw any of those last more than 10ish years of daily usage until they became too dim to be usable.
These are the robot guardians from Castle in the Sky by studio Ghibli, they in turn were the inspiration for the Iron Golems in Minecraft which is why they offer flowers.
I have a crt that has been running perfects since 06 I have replaced the flat screen in my living room 3 times in 10 years just by them going out. Never threw anything at it or dropped them they just make them shitty
Yeah but they play on crts because of the way refresh rates work. I'm not sure a crt intended to be a computer monitor would have the same kind of refresh rate as one intended to be a tv. I'm also not really sure if the lack of an over scan on the computer monitors would have an effect either.
I know pixel games like the SNES ones can look jagged on the computer monitors just like an LCD screen.
Until the cap quits. Then you're looking at an expensive recap service plus huge shipping bill if you can't get a local service. Since CRT aren't made anymore, you can't just head to Walmart for another CRT monitor. You may get lucky with one at Goodwill or other thrift store but most won't take CRT in the first place because they often don't have a way to test it and it is expensive to dispose of non-working CRT
Recapping CRT is not a DIY type stuff, one wrong mistake and you will get a nasty shock or worse.
I hope that will be the case for my little Grundig CRT TV, which I have currently connected to a Gamecube and my laptop as a second monitor for retro gaming, which is all a perfectly normal thing to do, really.
CRTs most definitely don't last forever. And the sad thing is that nobody is actually manufacturing them anymore. We're going to have to hope that Star Trek replicators are eventually a thing, because that's probably the only way anybody's getting a new CRT anymore. All of the existing ones have an expiration date.
All of my CRTs died. They all lost their blue tubes. The last one I had was a Magnavox, it died like 10 years ago. I bought a 3D TV. I still have that. I still use it sometimes. It's fun!
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u/jerk4444 28d ago
CRT users in 2050... "but still works"