CRT madness!

o1s1n wrote: »

If I gave you a list of the CRTs I've sold over the last few years you'd cry. The I'd cry!

And I'm looking at some of them right now

They had one in one of the Microsoft canteens when I worked there many moons ago, big 29 inch cube thing. It was there on a trolley playing a music station every day. They also had an original Xbox kiosk which was sitting there broken.

Kept meaning to ask them if they wanted to get rid of both (and I'd happily oblige to help!) but never got around to it. One day they were both just gone.

Didn't really fully comprehend what the monitor was back then, thought it was just a cool looking big Sony CRT! (to be honest I was more interested in the kiosk)

In other news I was searching for B&O CRTs on adverts and got quite excited, until I saw the chessboard floor...

https://www.adverts.ie/tv/bang-olufsen/21741697

o1s1n wrote: »

In other news I was searching for B&O CRTs on adverts and got quite excited, until I saw the chessboard floor...

https://www.adverts.ie/tv/bang-olufsen/21741697

Jack burton wrote: »

https://www.blessthisstuff.com/stuff/technology/tv-video/lg-retro-classic-tv/

Just seen this on Instagram, only in Korea at the moment

Looks like a CRT attached to a digital tuner/inputs - thats mad, wonder who is making the tubes still or is this very limited edition

Jack burton wrote: »

https://www.blessthisstuff.com/stuff/technology/tv-video/lg-retro-classic-tv/

Just seen this on Instagram, only in Korea at the moment

You sure this is recent ? Didn't lg sell these before 10 -15 years ago?

Ah wait, no SCART? https://youtu.be/JEDXMzG2n5E?t=301

Something like that absolutely should be saved. Not very often you find a genuine link to childhood like that :cool:

Inviere wrote: »

Something like that absolutely should be saved. Not very often you find a genuine link to childhood like that :cool:

Exactly! All of my other childhood CRTs are well gone at this stage.

I think the last game I remember playing on it was Goldeneye.

Just sent on a photo, looks to be a Philips 28PT4503/20. Ugly ass stand but they look nice enough when the stand is removed. Decent set of speakers on it.

My first tv was a 14" Trinitron.....I still have it! It's quite old, and from memory doesn't support 60Hz, so will remain a preserved relic!

o1s1n wrote: »

You had a trini as your first tv? La-de-dah! Started off on some high note

Managed to hold onto it all these years? That's amazing - was it ever almost destined for the recycling centre?

Yeah, came from the same Nan who bought me my first console too (2600 Junior). She had good taste :cool:

Yeah it was loaned out to another family member a good few years back, and was largely forgotten about. Some time later then they offered it back as they no longer needed it, & from there, gained 'protected status'. It now lives out in the shed, covered over, alongside a 21" crt that was the main living room tv when I was a teenager.

Anyone ever have to deal with the horror of trying to calibrate 'line gain' pots on a CRT?

These two here:



I would suggest not going near them if your geometry looks correct!

I noticed the other day while playing Alien 3, that when you go up a ladder (and the screen scrolls up) the image got oddly distorted towards the top. Like the ladder you're going up stretches when it gets to the top of the screen.

It was incredibly nauseating and is kind of subtle in a way, so you kind of see it in your peripheral vision but not so much when you look directly at it.
Surprised I hadn't noticed it before.

In the Strike games, the screen scrolls a lot in all directions, so it was even worse in that. You spend a lot of that game scrolling up diagonally, so you're getting these strange diagonal stretches in your peripheral vision.

Decided to try to figure out what was going on.

Basically if you think of the whole screen as a grid with a load of squares, you want all the squares to be of equal size, both vertically and horizontally for correct geometry.

Line gain lets you resize the squares across the screen.

So the issue I was having (could see it when I bought up a test grid) is that the vertical line gain was set to give the top squares on the screen more vertical size than the middle ones.

So when a sprite traveled up the screen, it was being stretched slightly when it hit the top third.

You'd think this was an easy fix, but it's very difficult.

The line gain vertical pot doesn't just resize all of the squares uniformly. If the pot is all the way to the right, more of the top squares are bigger and if you go all the way to the left, the bottom squares are bigger - so you've to fiddle with it somewhere in the middle to get it uniform across the screen.

It's extremely hard to do though as you've to measure by eye (I tried with a ruler, didn't work!). Sometimes it might look right static on a grid, but when you put a scroll test on, you're still getting stretching. Turn the pot and get the top part looking right and then the bottom of the screen is out.

And that's just vertical configuration, there's horizontal too!

After about an hour sitting in front of the screen with a test grid and scroll tests at varying speeds, I got it spot on.

Not joking though, I actually felt like being ill at the end of it, watching vertical scroll tests with an incorrectly set up vertical line gain does strange things to your brain if you stare at it that long!

That's it exactly - for anything with a mostly horizontal only movement like Street Fighter, you'd never see it. I usually play vertical shmups and the likes on the smaller monitor in tate mode so that might be why I haven't really noticed it now.

I tell you what, the more I mess about with these things, the more I have to tip my hat to CRT engineers and anyone who calibrated a monitor in a factory before they went out for sale!

Wow, if only I had the space! Looks to be a later production one with a cut down footprint. I really like the overall aesthetics of it.

Only problem with these as I'm sure you know is the actual picture quality isn't very good. They're very blurry, have bad convergence and suffer from burn in easier than regular CRTs (I think the brightness is up extremely high on them which probably aids in this)

It's sad in a way as I think it's going to be a lost technology soon enough. CRTs are a lot easier relatively speaking to retain - these behemoths will probably all be gone to the dumps.

Yeah they depend a lot on how many hours they have on them, hopefully you got a fairly low hour model what make/model is it?

Forgot you could use them for Lightgun games! That's actually not a bad solution for playing lightgun games on a big screen at home, I suppose just try to play games that don't have static images on the screen to avoid that dreaded burn in.

Something actually I'd never thought of before but it came up on a discussion I was reading about CRT projectors being used for retro gaming - scanline burn it!

Not sure how much of an impact it would make on a rear projection CRT, but apparently it can actually be pretty bad on those big monster projector CRTs.

I used to have a Sony Grand WEGA 50" rear projection TV years ago(I think 2005). Was a lovely screen for the time, but it suffered very bad temporary burn in. As in, the image would burn in quickly and then take a few seconds to mins to disappear depending on what it was.
If you were a normal person sitting 5-6 feet away from the screen you probably wouldn't notice. But for me its the only thing i noticed no matter where i sat, so it had to go after a year or so.

very nice design. and is that a RPTV to the right