I think some younger people might have never really seen a CRT. And they're positively rare now. I encountered a CRT TV in the hospital waiting room recently and was a bit startled to see one. So for those only passingly familiar, if you get the opportunity, spend a bit of time experimenting with it visually. Jiggle your eyes, look away suddenly, and then back, and try oblique angles. Maybe you'll see what they mean about "you just can't recreate that glow".

It's hard to describe but the image is completely ephemeral. All display technologies involve sleight-of-hand that exploits visual illusion and persistence of vision to some degree, but the CRT is maybe the most illusory of the major technologies. It's almost entirely due to persistence of vision. With colour TV and fast phosphors the majority of the light energy is released within a few milliseconds of the spot being hit by the beam. If you had eyes that worked at electronic speeds, you would see a single point drawing the raster pattern while varying in brightness.

A bit of TEMPEST trivia: The instantaneous luminosity of a CRT is all you need to reconstruct the image. Even if it's reflected off a wall or through a translucent curtain. You need high bandwidth, at least a few megahertz, but a photodiode is all that's necessary. The resulting signal even has the horizontal and vertical blanking periods right where they should be. Only minor processing (even by old school analog standards) is required to produce something that can be piped right into another CRT to recreate the image. I'd bet it could be done entirely in DSP these days.

Sometimes I think about the bizarre path computer technology took.

For instance, long-term storage. It would stand to reason that we'd invent some kind of big electrical array, and that's the best we could hope for. But hard drive technology (which relies on crazy materials technology for the platter and magnets, crazy high-precision encoders, and crazy physics like floating a tiny spring over the air bubble created by the spinning platter) came in and blew all other technology away.

And, likewise, we had liquid crystal technology since the 70s, and probably could have invented it sooner, but no need, because Cathode Ray Tube technology appeared (a mini particle accelerator in your home! Plus the advanced materials science to bore the precision electron beam holes in the screen grid, the phosphor coating, the unusual deflection coil winding topology, and leaded glass to reduce x-ray expose for the viewers) and made all other forms of display unattractive by comparison.

It's amazing how far CRT technology got, given its disconnect from other technologies. The sophistication of the factories that created late-model "flat-screen" CRTs is truly impressive.

The switch to LCDs/LEDs was in a lot of ways a step back. Sure, we don't have huge 40lb boxes on our desks, but we lost the ultra-fast refresh rate enabled by the electron beam, not to mention the internal glow that made computers magical (maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, like people in the 80s who swore that vinyl records "sounded better").

Someday, maybe given advances in robotics and automation, I hope to start a retro CRT manufacturing company. The problems, such as the unavailability of the entire supply chain (can't even buy an electron gun, it would have to be made from scratch) and environmental restrictions (lead glass probably makes the EPA perk up and notice).

Some images to demonstrate how retro games look on CRT vs unfiltered on a modern display:

https://x.com/ruuupu1

https://old.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/owdtpu/thats_why...

https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/anwgxf/here_is_an_e...

Modern emulators have post-processing filters to simulate the look, which is great. But it's not quite the same as the real thing.

I regret taking all my old tube monitors to Goodwill back in the mid-2000s. I saved a Commodore 1942, at least, but I sent all the rest away to die.

I appreciate the CRT modeling in emulators, but a hardware device that passes thru a display signal and provided sub-frame CRT artifacting and phosphor modeling (particularly if it supported 240P) would be bitchin'.

I’ve been searching for years for the old CRT Viewsonic Mac monitor that used RGB inputs. (Might have been CMYK). You plug in the DIP head to the video out and you attach each individual connectors to the color connectors on the back. The thing was massive, easily over 24”. Beige plastic that we all love.

Growing up my dad was a Mac guy and he had all kinds of Apple stuff. The weird page sized monitor, performa 600, trackball mouse, ergonomic keyboard. Granted my father was in software and this was the early 90s but it would _definitely_ define my initial passion for computers.

I’ve been looking for this monitor so that I can restore his setup. I have his Performa, peripherals, and restored those. I just need that giant monitor he used to use.

My father passed away last year. My world has been different ever since.

If in the Toronto, Canada area, the television museum may be worth a visit:

* https://mztv.com

Pre-WW2 televisions seem to be quite rare:

> To put this special set in some context, there are more 18th century Stradivarius violins in existence than pre-World War II TVs and, to make it that bit rarer, this TV has only had two owners. “I’ve handled 38 pre-war tells and this is the finest and even comes with the original invoice,” said Bonhams specialist Laurence Fisher. “It cost a huge amount and the owner must have had wealth and means…It is a very rare thing and there are collectors who would love to have it.”

* https://newsfeed.time.com/2011/04/05/do-not-adjust-your-set-...

Back in the 80s, as the home computer revolution got going, computers were typically wired up to small, cheap, portable TVs as a display device. These TVs used shadow masks, and the computer video output was typically modulated to a TV signal, and the TV was 'tuned' to the computer. All of this added large amounts of blur and distortion even before the signal was displayed on the TV.

By the mid 80s, it was maybe more typical to buy a dedicated CRT monitor, and the computer connected via composite, or maybe even an RGB feed to the monitor, allowing higher resolution and much improved quality.

For the well healed, this route also led to the holy grail, a trinitron tube!

At each of these changes, the aesthetic of the display technology changed, but probably the best memories come from the original blurry stuff as the magical moment of actually getting something out of a home computer.

I’ve got a 27” CRT right next to my 65” LG OLED C9 (which is starting to feel ancient, too).

It sits in a cabinet that currently holds an NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, and PS2.

It doesn’t get a ton of playtime, but when my now 21- and 18-year-old sons were young, I’d play on them quite a bit (they were already retro even then), and as they got older, they would too.

My oldest is particularly fond of the retro consoles and playing on the CRT, so he’ll hop on it when he gets the itch for something retro.

I feel like there’s a charm that will never fade, not only with retro consoles, but also playing them on a CRT.

I’ll never get rid of our CRT.

My oldest son wouldn’t let me, even if I wanted to.

My favorite TV of all time was a 65" Panasonic plasma.

4k OLED looks really good in dark scenes, but something about turning that plasma up to its full 800 watt+ vivid mode is a completely different universe.

Practically unusable during the summer in Texas though. The efficiency is really bad and you essentially need a custom hvac solution if you want to put it in a proper "theater" room. The noises it made in high brightness scenes were also a bit distracting. It had to move a lot of power very quickly.

My son who is 12 has gotten into collecting old Nintendo. Just the other day, I managed to find one of the consumer CRT holy grails on our local equivalent of Craigslist. A B&O MX4200. It's one of the last CRTs that B&O made from the mid 00s. It has an excellent picture, nice onscreen menus for calibrating the tube, and supports NTSC over composite so he can connect his early 80s Famicom that's been modded for composite out.

I’ve hunted down a couple old school big screen TVs, the fresnel lenses are awesome toys, you can melt just about anything using them as solar collectors.

I host monthly retro gaming meetups and we use CRT TVs that we store at the local library. Luckily, more than enough are still given away for free here. Right now we have around 25.

They're just surprisingly good when paired with a good signal and an old gaming console. I still would love to have a professional monitor but they are too pricey for me. I also need to get myself a CRT monitor.

When I used to run super smash brothers melee tournaments in my old apartment basement I had 4 CRTs.

I still have one tiny CRT, the size of the screen is very small - roughly a banana from corner to corner.

CRTs are absolutely required for in person melee tournaments. Playing not on CRTs introduces input lag of a few frames.

There are 60 frames in a second in melee - so it's roughly one frame per millisecond.

You may not think that is that big of a deal - but when a specific move has a 4-7 frame window, input lag becomes a problem.

If you ever watch a melee tournament on YouTube or in person, you will either see CRTs everywhere, or computers emulating melee.

When emulated there isn't input lag. The lag comes from the conversion needed to display melee on a non CRT TV I believe.

Have a look at https://github.com/mausimus/ShaderGlass it seems promising an emulating the CRT. I don't run windows so have not testet it myself.

you may enjoy this. My daughter is 10 years old, couple of months ago we went to an airbnb which had a crt tv and some vhs tapes. she looks at a vhs tape and asks, what is this? She had a look on her face like if she had just found a dinosaur egg.

Those aren't old TVs.

When I was a kid, I'd go to the TV repair shops and take old "unrepairable" vacuum tube TVs (no transistors!) off their hands. At home I tried to fix them. I had no idea how to fix them. But I had a lot of fun trying.

One of the fun things was to randomly swap around the vacuum tubes and see what would happen. Very entertaining! I used to have a box full of scavenged tubes. Sadly, I eventually tossed them out, never realizing how valuable they'd be in a few years.

My mom was convinced I was going to electrocute myself, and finally made me get rid of the sets.

My first HD TV was a tube. The picture was flat, but it did have overscan. Compared to today's TVs, it was small. (~30")

Even though there were some aspects of the tube that were nicer, I'm not going back. I don't want the giant box, and now that I have a 70" OLED, I don't want to go back to a tiny screen.

i have a 55" panasonic LCD. no apps or wifi.From 2003. Still works.

We have roku, which at some point in the last 4 years, it went rogue and auto updated itself for who knows what telemetry . We almost never use it now.

I plug my laptop via HDMI and the possibilities are still there.

I'm not really a CRT fan tbh but my neighbor was throwing away a working 24" Sony Trinitron and you don't just let one of those hit the dumpster lol

Hooked up my spare PS2 and got a light gun for it. Wish i had a way to play duck hunt though.

Guilty. I just love analog TVs.

one of the best for shooter games because of the high refresh rate. There is virtually no lag for quick scoping or fast playing. there is very little computing happening inside.

I collect CRT TVs. I try to limit myself to only special ones. I own a clear RCA SecureView TV from a jail cell, and several Sony Professional Video Monitors.

I started this hobby JUST as it started to become a little more popular. Terrible timing.

Wow, do I feel old right now.