Retro topic: CRTs

I did the whole 60" plasma move a couple of times recently. I love my Samsung Plasma, but it sure is fragile and awkward to move.
 
Wired sharing the love:

https://www.wired.com/story/crt-tube-tv-hot-gaming-tech-retro-games/

In the end, everyone's gaming preference is theirs alone, and there's no wrong choice for how you like your retro games. Whether you're chasing PVMs, RGB, and the highest possible fidelity, or happy with the vintage experience of composite on a consumer set, CRTs continue to be one of the absolute best options for playing old video games.

CRT tech is like rose-colored glasses for the retro games we've become accustomed to playing on our flatscreens. Like those glasses, it smooths out the experience, hides the flaws, and fills us with all the warm fuzzies we crave when we boot up our favorites.
 
Well I finally took some photos of my collection. Starting in my sunroom, basically a kids play-room that I also keep a ton of video games in... beware though 'cause it's a bit of a pigsty, despite my best efforts to keep things clean and orderly.

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  • Mostly lower-end consumer sets in this photo, 14-20inch... None of the VCRs work, which is sad. I've actually come to love these little 14inch tvs especially, cause they fit anywhere.
  • Far right: A good-quality 20inch Trinitron, with component hookups that I use with an RGB2Comp from Retrotink for my SNES. I prefer the curved tubes, but I'll take what I can get when I find it on the sidewalk.
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  • Left: A cheap Insignia tv, but actually a good quality tube and component inputs.
  • Right: 20inch Toshiba Timm, which is the most rare & sought after set in my collection. It's basically a hybrid tv & computer monitor, sold mostly in Vietnam. It's absolutely glorious running VGA or Scart. I was very surprised to find this one on the sidewalk in my neighborhood.
  • Everything on this shelf needs a good cleaning, as it's all covered with a ton of dust... that's my next project.

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  • Left: 27inch trinitron. Great set, no component hookups though. Eventually I intend to attempt an RGB mod on this unit.
  • Middle: 32inch Sharp tv with component inputs. 480i content looks gorgeous, and it even has a widescreen feature.
  • Right: 27inch Sharp tv... won't power on. I'll poke around inside a bit and see if I can save it. It's got a built-in dvd player and VCR, which is intriguing if I can get it to work.
Then my office:

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  • 14inch tube with working VCR. I currently have my TurboGrafx hooked up , and it has a surprisingly clean picture over composite.
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  • Left: 46inch Samsung LCD, reasonably nice display for my xbox, xbox360, xbone, PS2, PS3, PS4, Wii, & WiiU.
  • Middle: 27inch trinitron. Actually there's currently nothing hooked up to this, as I've moved most everything out to the sunroom.
  • Right: Couple of vintage Macs... I'll do something with these eventually, right?
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  • A vectrex is technically a CRT, right?

Most everything here are sidewalk rescues, except the vectrex and the LCD.

I've been working for some time on getting everything set up clean & tidy, but it is a fairly large project, and every time I rearrange anything it basically resets. I'm not sure it'll ever be 100% perfect, but I'm making progress... which is good because imo, keeping things clean is the difference between collecting and hoarding... and you can see that I'm somewhat borderline with this stuff.
 
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Cool tubes. I would love to try them all out and see the difference in quality.

But for the love of the video game gods, dust off those Sega consoles!
 
Wow dude that's awesome. You even have the Japanese Famicom if I'm seeing that correctly.

Question; do you have the weird purple super nintendo or the 'correct' one :bleh: with coloured buttons in your collection - don't think I saw one.
 
while the collection itself is cool, the current state of the consoles is ... lacking ... or even terrible. Kinda reminds me of a lady in our neighborhood who also collects all kind of stuff only to put in a barn with a leaking roof. It's a bit heartbreaking so see all the stuff getting ruined over the months/years.
 
demo said:
Wow dude that's awesome. You even have the Japanese Famicom if I'm seeing that correctly.

Question; do you have the weird purple super nintendo or the 'correct' one :bleh: with coloured buttons in your collection - don't think I saw one.
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I have the standard USA snes with the purple slider buttons. It's not shown in any of the photos.
 
Silent-Runner said:
while the collection itself is cool, the current state of the consoles is ... lacking ... or even terrible. Kinda reminds me of a lady in our neighborhood who also collects all kind of stuff only to put in a barn with a leaking roof. It's a bit heartbreaking so see all the stuff getting ruined over the months/years.
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Nothing's getting broken or water damaged... I'm always fighting to keep things as tidy as possible, and sometimes that feels like a losing battle. Dust does accumulate pretty quickly out here, but dust can be cleaned off... Eventually I want to buy some dust covers for the consoles.
 
SubCog said:
Nothing's getting broken or water damaged... I'm always fighting to keep things as tidy as possible, and sometimes that feels like a losing battle. Dust does accumulate pretty quickly out here, but dust can be cleaned off... Eventually I want to buy some dust covers for the consoles.
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i was just trying to say, that a collection like that deserves a (indoor) room dedicated to it. Whatever. It's still a very impressive collection, no doubt about that. Gratz!
 
Silent-Runner said:
i was just trying to say, that a collection like that deserves a (indoor) room dedicated to it. Whatever. It's still a very impressive collection, no doubt about that. Gratz!
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You apparently don't know how much an indoor room dedicated to game consoles costs in the SF Bay area. My sun room is as good as it's going to get here.
 
SubCog said:
You apparently don't know how much an indoor room dedicated to game consoles costs in the SF Bay area. My sun room is as good as it's going to get here.
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of course i don't, how would i? :confused:

As i've said before, it's your stuff, you can do with it what you want. How did you came across so many consoles? Yardsales? I'd be interested in the story behind your collection if you don't mind sharing.
 
Shapeshifter said:
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one of the best videos I have seen showing off the motion differences a crt has
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Just recently I spent some time adjusting the white balance on my TVs. One is a 2012 Panasonic plasma, the other is a 2015 Samsung LCD. I was able to get them quite close in terms of color, but the plasma easily wins for contrast and depth of blacks, though the Samsung VA panel is deeper than many LCDs. But where the plasma really shines is motion resolution. Static images look nearly identical on both, but as soon as the image moves, the LCD loses clarity and the plasma stays sharp, which adds a significant amount of clarity to moving images. Engaging the LCD's clear motion strobing backlight helps a little, but still no where near plasma motion response. And I think the individually lit pixels on the plasma provide better highlight detail as well.

OLED has many of the same strengths as plasma, but with luxurious perfect blacks. I've never been a fan of LCD technology for moving images, though they are great for text, photos, and other uses.
 
Every time I see this thread I think of my old Sony. I want to say it was a Trinitron, don’t remember other than it weighed ~120lbs or so. My daughters 10 year old friend gave me a game called Half Life and I played it on a PC I bought for $10 at a yard sale.

Good times, until I had to move the monitor :p
 
Lazy8s said:
Every time I see this thread I think of my old Sony. I want to say it was a Trinitron, don’t remember other than it weighed ~120lbs or so. My daughters 10 year old friend gave me a game called Half Life and I played it on a PC I bought for $10 at a yard sale.

Good times, until I had to move the monitor :p
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Probably the same Trinitron I have, which I'm about to sell so I don't have to move it cross country :lol: Huge, heavy thing, but the picture and inputs cannot be matched on a CRT.
 
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