How did the world allow lcd's to take gamers a step backwards and away from CRTs?

fraggle said:

Haven't used a CRT in years, and I don't miss them. I'm not convinced they have any kind of advantage over modern displays.

Same. I really don't miss using a CRT at all. I was very glad to change from a CRT to having a nice widescreen LCD. Now I have dual LCDs which is great when you're level hacking some Doom or fracking about with Skyrim's Creation Kit or just playing some game and have your messenger on teh other screen.

I'm also fucking glad that TVs went LCD / LED. The olde bigscreen CRT TV I got from my dad when he and mom got a 50" widescreen TV was fucking heavy as hell. Me and my bro hated moving that heavy son of a bitch. When we took it to the depot and dude said to put it in this huge metal bin, we dropped it in and the noise almost made buddy shit his pants and he said ' could you have dropped that a little harder?' and everybody in there stopped to see what the crashing noise was. I fukken lol'd walking back to the truck. Stupid heavy piece of shit.

I never ever had the desire to falcon punch my screen despite getting annoyed at computer related issues. I think I rage slapped my desk once and blew up a HDD tho. :p

Maes said:
A CRT ALWAYS works with real-time signals, in pure analog style, and reacts as fast as the time it takes to draw a single pixel (this is what made some visual tricks on arcade games possible, BTW).

This is sort of like assembly code vs C. It's always more work to write assembler but execution is straight to metal. People are always going to use C for convenience and simplicity, even if it's worse code.

Maes said:
For the rest, CRTs certainly do have their flaws, though mid 2000s models really had most of them ironed out (Samsung and Sony monitors KICKED ASS, and still kick).

Still using a Samsung 955df. Got mediocre reviews but it's still one of the best CRT's IMO. No geometry issues like trinitron tubes (they had two stupid horizontal lines across the screen, scrolling screens looked warped, and too bright (required resistor mod to get pure black), pure black, it actually looks flat, built like a tank, and it's not that heavy. Sharp as a razor though I've had to play with focus pot a couple times (dot pitch is better than supposed to be).

Maes said:
LCDs also suffer from lamp aging and dead pixels over time, with a planned lifetime of no longer than 3-5 years.

Dead pixels is the stupidest thing about LCD's. Funny I've never had dead pixels in any LCD I've seen. Guess LCD's will still get lots of loven from others.

Some shots of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 from MK Arcade Kollection running in MAME (in Slackware Linux) on Samsung 955DF. 400x254 @ 109.4HZ native game rez (double refresh rate to sync with 30khz minimum requirement; no filtering or interpolation, and scanlines are hardware generated by CRT; not emulator):
http://i.imgur.com/8dZaaRP.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/mHfHiRi.jpg

Edit: Holy fuck, link that huge shit!

Bucket said:

>Winblows
>CRT

Fucking hell, Slashdot left the basement door open again.

It's like taking a trip back to 1998!

I think it's the first time I see images that big in this forums. Seems like someone didn't read the FAQ.

Zed said:

I think it's the first time I see images that big in this forums. Seems like someone didn't read the FAQ.

Yup. My mistake (didn't mean to). Sorry.

Holering said:

Some shots of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 from MK Arcade Kollection running in MAME (in Linux) on Samsung 955DF. 400x254 @ 109.4HZ native game rez (double refresh rate to sync with 30khz minimum requirement; no filtering or interpolation, and scanlines are hardware generated by CRT; not emulator):
http://i.imgur.com/8dZaaRP.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/mHfHiRi.jpg

Fuck scanlines in the ass with a sandpaper dildo.
I don't use a piece of shit AT keyboard with a max keypress of 2, or a ball mouse that gets full of gunk every month, or 2-watt speakers just for the sake of nostalgia, so I don't need bullshit scanlines, either. I want my retro gaming experience to be BETTER than it used to be. Scanline nerds are high school kids trying to recapture an experience they never had.

You know what I run my NES/DOS games with? 2xSai rendering, a DualShock 3 and a 2.1 speaker system. It's like my first preteen orgasm all over again: magical and milky white.

2xSai is awful.

Holering said:

and scanlines are hardware generated by CRT; not emulator

Scanlines are a plus?

CRTs make it easier to monitor people, should the need arise.



Also, there's a big quality difference in 100 € LCDs and 500 € LCDs. As usually, you get what you pay for. It's not like the cheap CRTs were any good.

Holering said:

http://i.imgur.com/8dZaaRP.jpg

Visible scanlines have never been a good look and that screenshot is the fugliest I've seen for some time. It's almost like viewing the screen through a matchstick bamboo blind.

It seems pretty obvious that you're not spending enough money on your monitors. Not to mention there are different types of LCD panels suited for different tasks. IPS panels provide better colour and viewing angles which is good for CGI and design but have slower response times and the majority have a refresh rate of 60hz which make them a poor choice for gaming, whilst TN panels provide faster refresh rates and response times which makes them better for gaming but suffer when it comes to displaying colours

Also punching a CRT monitor so hard it breaks will do more than fuck up your hand

So after all that leet ranting... this is what you like looking at? That's pathetic.

sgt dopey said:

It seems pretty obvious that you're not spending enough money on your monitors. Not to mention there are different types of LCD panels suited for different tasks. IPS panels provide better colour and viewing angles which is good for CGI and design but have slower response times and the majority have a refresh rate of 60hz which make them a poor choice for gaming, whilst TN panels provide faster refresh rates and response times which makes them better for gaming but suffer when it comes to displaying colours

Also punching a CRT monitor so hard it breaks will do more than fuck up your hand

I bought an IPS monitor earlier this year, its a Dell S2340L and it looks fantastic. The refresh rate is 60hz, but it seems to be working fine for me for gaming. It has a 7ms response time, could that have something to do with it?

Gez said:

Scanlines are a plus?

Scanlines are a weird case of "retroactive zeerust", fueled by a lot of hipsters/wannabe that want to be "retro" without understanding what they are about. Most of the time they are trying to recreate something that wat not even there to begin with.

Scanlines were an artifact visible mostly on old TV-grade monitors used in arcade machines and home computers. Any decent multisync RGB monitor (including early SVGA monitors) DIDN'T have them unless you found some weird demos that (mis)handled the refresh timing controls directly and experimented with weird resolutions.

They were NOT an element of the games themselves, though, unlike what some scanline neo-hipsters seem to believe (e.g. that graphics were designed with the scanlines in mind etc., probably confusing them up with interlaced TV fields, which really use some sort of analog/visual scanline mixing).

The scanline thing is hardly new. I remember Nesticle defaulting to turning them on back in the late 90s/early 00s. Always thought they were hideous myself. I never noticed the scanlines on any of my TVs - they certainly weren't thick pitch black bars obscuring the game graphics.

Holering said:

even if it's worse code.

You are just so precious

caco_killer said:

I bought an IPS monitor earlier this year, its a Dell S2340L and it looks fantastic. The refresh rate is 60hz, but it seems to be working fine for me for gaming. It has a 7ms response time, could that have something to do with it?

Yes, you will get ghosting. There is a test to see how bad it actually is http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/testsoftware/ghosting.html

Oh and don't forget CRT radiation

I remember the day I switched from an old CRT to an LCD (eeeeeeons ago) and I will never go back, maybe one day for curiosity sake, I have an old amstrad vga monitor that can only do 640x400, kept it as I may want to sell it :P

I don't know how anyone can feel nostalgic for CRT monitors.

Good riddance.

I don't think I ever really noticed scanlines much until people on the internet started talking about them. They certainly don't do anything for me in terms of nostalgia.

I agree with boris that you get what you pay for. I remember using a cheap POS CRT screen where the screen size was dependent on how bright its contents were. Thing would literally, visibly bounce in and out when you alt-tabbed between windows. At least even cheap LCDs don't suffer from that kind of bullshit.

Let's hear some more about plasmas. I do everything on a 50" that sits about a metre in front of me on the couch.

http://www.planet-elektronik.eu/en/sheet/Maxdata/108080

My 30 kgs of awesome.

Dual LCDs are great for work though.

I remember I always used to be very impressed with CRTs that could go up to 120Hz refresh rate. Everything was... so smooth. For the first couple of years that I had an LCD monitor (keep in mind this was well over a decade ago), yeah... it was a little disappointing. My monitor's refresh rate was a complete disappointment, and there was ghosting.

Shockingly, LCD panel technology has gotten way better over the course of the last decade! Woah! Now I've got a 27" LED-backlit LCD display (this one to be specific) with 3ms response time. It's gorgeous. Gaming on it is wonderful (when I actually do game these days), and HD media looks fantastic. I'm trying to imagine putting a 27" CRT display on my desk, only to throw out my back trying to lift the damn thing, and then finding out that it doesn't even fit because of how huge it is.

Yeah, I think I'll stick with my LCD displays. No offense to those who still love CRTs... they certainly still have their place in the tech world if you ask me, but I much prefer having a widescreen display that I can pick up and move around with one hand.

LCDs are cheaper for the manufacturer aren't they?

invictius said:

Let's hear some more about plasmas. I do everything on a 50" that sits about a metre in front of me on the couch.

For a desktop? Image retention must be a pain.

I do very much like that 50" Panasonic plasma I bought for my parents' household last Black Friday, but even after doing the "breaking in" that should mean it'll never get permanent burn-in, I noticed some games like the XBLA port if Banjo-Tooie can cause some pixels to get "stuck" showing inverted afterimages of the HUD for a few minutes (eg: if I'm shooting those cyan eggs of Kazooie's a lot such that the ammo counter for it is present on the HUD, there will be a red egg-shaped discoloration present at that location on the screen for a short while once I finally stop shooting eggs everywhere). A little worrisome, even knowing that it won't be permanent - and that's from a game that only shows HUD details as they become necessary, not an OS which has an ever-present Start bar or similar somewhere on the screen.

I dont miss crts. My friend had crt way longer one might expect and I'm glad he got rid of it because crts are only good for workout or for crushing enemy troops from rampart

They're also great for testing your hearing. Those common 17" Dell CRTs always emit a really annoying hum at 60 Hz. Lots of people can't hear it, but it drove me crazy and had me changing the refresh rates on coworkers' systems when they weren't looking. The hum itself was never 60 Hz; it was high pitched.

fraggle said:

I agree with boris that you get what you pay for. I remember using a cheap POS CRT screen where the screen size was dependent on how bright its contents were. Thing would literally, visibly bounce in and out when you alt-tabbed between windows. At least even cheap LCDs don't suffer from that kind of bullshit.

Heh, I've got one like this still, as an emergency monitor.

Aliotroph? said:

They're also great for testing your hearing. Those common 17" Dell CRTs always emit a really annoying hum at 60 Hz. Lots of people can't hear it, but it drove me crazy and had me changing the refresh rates on coworkers' systems when they weren't looking. The hum itself was never 60 Hz; it was high pitched.

That's the horintal scan frequency you're hearing (vertical frequency * number of lines, usually in the 15-30 kHz zone ;-)

However, badly tuned LCDs can be just as annoying as poor quality CRTs. with visible color noise ("snow"), visible out-of-phase wobbly picture artifacts, cable noise, flickering backlight etc.

But OTOH LCD is the only practical way to get screens with ratios other than 4:3 on the desktop with reasonable dimensions, and I think it was also that element which contributed to their domination. The sad thing is that there are no realistic alternatives (plasma failed, OLED is still far, etc.)

This is sort of like assembly code vs C. It's always more work to write assembler but execution is straight to metal. People are always going to use C for convenience and simplicity, even if it's worse code.

Good God, what on earth am I reading?