Unpopular opinion - CRT>LCD?

[Aereldor]

After watching these Digital Foundry video-
 

I decided to plug into an old cheap LG CRT display I had knocking around from the 90s, and boy was it good. CRT's don't have a native resolution, so unlike rendering 720p content on a 1080p panel, which causes unbearably ugly pixel stretching, running anything from 800x600 to 1440x1080

The response time is fucked up too, damn near instantaneous, especially when I subbed out my wireless MX Master for a low-latency wired mouse. And motion rendering is incomparably better, I conclude this is because a CRT doesn't just render one frame at a time using LCD's sample-and-hold technology, but renders the screen in a series of lines, often encompassing multiple frames in one pass. It also handles a higher refresh rate no prob, you can set all these manually. It's astonishing.
 

I thought the colour gamut would be lacking, but after some tweaking... It really wasn't. Sure, CRT monitors usually don't even cover the entire sRGB colour space, but I managed to get it adjusted to nice, natural colours. It's actually on par with a few of the worse TN panels I've used so far, although not as good as my BenQ EW2440L VA monitor, and far from the OLED panel on my laptop. But from someone used to an OLED display, calling the CRT colours acceptable after calibration is high praise.

Am I switching to CRT? Hopefully. Currently I don't live in my tiny meme NYC apartment and have the space to keep mine around. Unfortunately I'm giving my desktop to my sister, and my laptop only does HDMI out. Time to buy an HDMI to VGA adapter?

Furthermore, I'm inclined to test Ray Tracing on my 1060 through DXR, now that I can render my games at 800x600 and they still look good, and my GPU isn't even hitting 50% usage at max settings. Thinking of buying Control, Rise of the Tomb Raider, or Battlefield V to test the ray tracing, should be completely duable at a resolution that only has 10% the pixels of 1080p.

What are your thoughts. Anyone doing the Russian Counterstrike Pro setup of a CRT monitor, 80s PS2 keyboard, and a lawn chair?

[Aereldor]

Just now, NZgamer said:

CRT's are lovely but the whine hurts my ears. E-Waste from them is bad too

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this is a big reason I'm using my CRT - because I do NOT want to throw it out. As for the noise, I just use noise-cancelling headphones or earphones with exceptional acoustic isolation.

[Shammikit]

If u r playing for long hours then u could get a big electricity bill at the end of the month. I remember our electricity bill went down by a considerable amount when we switched from our old Sony CRT to an LCD TV.  

[Aereldor]

Just now, Shammikit said:

If u r playing for long hours then u could get a big electricity bill at the end of the month. I remember our electricity bill went down by a considerable amount when we switched from our old Sony CRT to an LCD TV.  

I currently qualify for an electricity bill subsidy by using almost no power for the better part of 2 years, so I get free electricity up to a certain point (I think September). I understand the concern though, especially when I run it at a higher resolution and refresh rate, the power draw is monstrous. I can't even plug it into a UPS without problems. 

[Origami Cactus]

Not an unpopular option, objectivly they are better than any LCD. 

They just have their own unique drawbacks, which make LCD more fit for the general consumer.

[Aereldor]

1 minute ago, Origami Cactus said:

Not an unpopular option, objectivly they are better than any LCD. 

They just have their own unique drawbacks, which make LCD more fit for the general consumer.

Thicc girls made a comeback in the last decade, why not thicc monitors.

[emosun]

11 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

What are your thoughts.

i thought they were good till i wanted to sit farther away

[Origami Cactus]

3 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

Thicc girls made a comeback in the last decade, why not thicc monitors.

 

Spoiler

 

Now that's THICC

Dream monitor right there.

[Aereldor]

2 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Now that's THICC

I wanna hear from people who actually used that monstrosity, apparently it weighed over 100lbs, that stand must be made from a chunk from the international space station

[RejZoR]

I'm gonna stick with LCD. At least I can have it on the wall and thus sit more than 1m away from it. I literally can't physically do that with CRT coz they are so fat.

[PeachGr]

I used one recently and caused me migraine. It's a relic from the past.

[Kilrah]

41 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

Time to buy an HDMI to VGA adapter?

You'll lose all the advantages of the CRT if you use one.

[NineEyeRon]

Unpopular from an environmental perspective yes! 
 

The shift away from CRTs was not driven by experience but a wide variety of factors, including marketing!

 

If you ask anyone who used to game on a CRT TV or monitor they will tell you there were great! Not perfect but certainly better than the other options until size and weight issues became too much.

 

In general yes an unpopular opinion, but not for all the reasons one would immediately think of.

[D13H4RD]

Not really that much of an unpopular opinion. There are genuine advantages to using a CRT for some enthusiasts.

 

Just that for most people, there are many more reasons to dump them in favor of flatscreens and the CRT’s advantages doesn’t matter for their applications.

[Aereldor]

1 hour ago, D13H4RD said:

Not really that much of an unpopular opinion. There are genuine advantages to using a CRT for some enthusiasts.

 

Just that for most people, there are many more reasons to dump them in favor of flatscreens and the CRT’s advantages doesn’t matter for their applications.

I had to do it after my last unpopular opinion thread blew up and got 200 replies and I received threats lol.

[Aereldor]

1 hour ago, NineEyeRon said:

Unpopular from an environmental perspective yes! 
 

The shift away from CRTs was not driven by experience but a wide variety of factors, including marketing!

 

If you ask anyone who used to game on a CRT TV or monitor they will tell you there were great! Not perfect but certainly better than the other options until size and weight issues became too much.

 

In general yes an unpopular opinion, but not for all the reasons one would immediately think of.

Well, environmentally, I think making the case for CRT monitors means people will be less inclined to throw them away. It elevates them from an artifact to a novelty to a legitimate modern option.

[Tan3l6]

I remember how was 120Hz Diamondtron (or was it even 100Hz) for playing FPS games, no comoparison with 280Hz IPS Gaming monitor.
Diamondtron was better, yet the LCD's have much-much sharper image at native resoultion...

[Aereldor]

Just now, Tan3l6 said:

I remember how was 120Hz Diamondtron for playing FPS games, no comoparison with 280Hz IPS Gaming monitor.
Diamondtron was better, yet the LCD's have much-much sharper image at native resoultion...

I disagree. I feel like they have a more jagged image and they don't handle motion very well. The primary user experience improvement is the improved colour gamut, power consumption, and primarily - form factor. 
 

Also CRT monitors don't have a native resolution, and thus look WAY better at lower resolutions. So you can run 120fps full ray tracing on like a GTX 1060 rendered at 800x600 and it looks more clear and pleasant than a 144op IPS monitor.

[Tan3l6]

11 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

I disagree. I feel like they have a more jagged image and they don't handle motion very well. The primary user experience improvement is the improved colour gamut, power consumption, and primarily - form factor. 
 

Also CRT monitors don't have a native resolution, and thus look WAY better at lower resolutions. So you can run 120fps full ray tracing on like a GTX 1060 rendered at 800x600 and it looks more clear and pleasant than a 144op IPS monitor.

LCD fixed pixels are perhaps "too sharp" if no ClearType (or any other type of aa) is used for smoothing fonts.

Without native resolution things do get blurry, as the edges are not defined sharply.

So let's agree to disagree?

 

http://www.displaymate.com/crtvslcd.html

[Aereldor]

4 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

LCD fixed pixeld are perhaps "too sharp" if no ClearType (or any other type of aa) is used for smoothing fonts.

Without native resolution things do get blurry, as the edges are not defined sharply.

So let's agree to disagree?

 

http://www.displaymate.com/crtvslcd.html

Yeah but the hard edges on an LCD panel means the lower the resolution, the more you need to invest in anti-aliasing, which makes things more demanding to run. So then you're making a case for a 900p or 720p LCD screen but anti-aliasing is important, or a high-resolution screen, which is difficult to drive.

[Tan3l6]

Anyway, not going further with differences, to me the lack of any kind of ghosting on CRT might be the best feature, by design...

[Tristerin]

This thread, and a few others about CRT Ive read over the last couple months is bringing me to buy one and try it.  I had a 27" CRT (like 250 lbs lol) way back in the day.  I bought it from a pawn shop and I remember it was good for what it was, but didn't understand tech specs at all or what CRT was etc.

 

Imma do it and report back, time to hit up some good wills/recyclers.

[Aereldor]

Just now, Tristerin said:

This thread, and a few others about CRT Ive read over the last couple months is bringing me to buy one and try it.  I had a 27" CRT (like 250 lbs lol) way back in the day.  I bought it from a pawn shop and I remember it was good for what it was, but didn't understand tech specs at all or what CRT was etc.

 

Imma do it and report back, time to hit up some good wills/recyclers.

Send me a message when you get around to it

[TetraSky]

Back when LCD replaced CRT, I used to wonder what was the deal with LCD before, other than them being "flat" compared to CRT. They are slower than CRT in refresh rates, are limited to specific resolutions and what not...

 

Then, 2 years ago, I had use a CRT in one of my workplace and I literally couldn't use it for more than 10 minutes without my eyes hurting. Had to take constant breaks and all.

[PlayStation 2]

I actually have a CRT display made late into that era (in mid 2005, to be specific, so it's older than a decent amount of users here).

Up against the monitor I use for everything (a Dell 3008WFP), it just didn't have much going for it that wasn't displaying analog video from proper analog sources at 640x480. Latency was lower, but my own response time (in terms of how quickly I respond to things on screen) is pathetic, so a little bit of what my monitor has in latency doesn't affect me at all, while I also lost out on text clarity and overall visibility for extended periods of time. I'm generally not one where my eyes hurt when using most displays, but staring at text on a CRT is quite annoying and hurts after a while.