I distinctly remember gaming on CRTs and then LCD screens and it was night and day difference, in favor of LCD. Monitors have only gotten better and I certainly don’t miss CRTs, least of all how hot they were.
I distinctly remember gaming on CRTs and then LCD screens and it was night and day difference, in favor of LCD. Monitors have only gotten better and I certainly don’t miss CRTs, least of all how hot they were.
Agreed a 100% CRTS were wobbly flickery mess. Especially in the 60Hz era. Everyhting below 90Hz on a crt gave me horrible migraines when working longer than 4 hours.
LCDs that were just constantly lit were so much easier on the eyes than a CRT where every bright pixel is flashing at 60Hz.
But one thing is true: a low res game designed to look good on a CRT looks much worse on a low res LCD. CRTs being a blurry mess gave you free 'antialiasing'.
I'm curious what the primary causes of that are. Like, I had a similiar experience growing up in the 90's. I think it was just the sheer increase in resolution. Text looked so much better, and you could fit more on a screen.
And then they got BIGGER.
Same here, I very distinctly remember the first time I got to use desktop-class LCD monitors (it was at a new job at the time) and four things stood out:
- The screen size. Going from a 17” or maybe 19” CRT at home to a 19” LCD but without the CRT bezel — the screen looked HUGE.
- The clarity and flatness. The lack of smudging on text, the consistent geometry, being able to see the screen edge right up to the bezel without any wasted space (which you often had on a CRT if you wanted an image without excessive pincushion / bulge).
- The relative lack of ghosting when compared to laptop LCD screens I’d used in the past.
- The colour gamut. Looking back I think those monitors I first saw were relatively wide gamut monitors being used with Windows XP and no colour profiles. The colour saturation was impressive (not accurate, but striking).
I never remember CRTs looking better than any desktop LCD from that point on overall, but I dare say I just didn’t have access to any high-end CRTs at the time.
I also never remember CRTs having true black levels close to OLED, which is another thing I hear people say sometimes. I mean you could get deep blacks, but you’d be sacrificing brightness and white/gray detail at the white end. Again though might have just been the CRTs I knew of at the time.
I went from a 19" CRT capable of 1600x1200@75Hz to a 17" LCD capable of 1280x1024@60Hz, basically because that CRT would've taken up a huge chunk of desk real estate in my dorm.
My first impressions were that the screen was bright as hell, sharp (but I was torn on whether that was good or bad, given the blockiness that it introduced), thin and light (awesome!), and sucked to run at anything but the native resolution. After a few hours, I realized that my eyes weren't getting tired looking at it, and that it was nice not to have the subtle hum around anymore.
The CRT was a decent screen (for 1999), and the LCD was a decent screen (for 2003). Of course, I just got used to the differences, since the LCD was much more practical in my life. I still have it in storage right now.
You forgot one thing: flickering. At 60 Hz, a CRT is murder on the eyes. A few years ago I used a CRT for the first time in like ten years and my eyes hurt almost immediately.
I was never incredibly disturbed by 60Hz though I did notice it.
You reminded me of something I had forgotten though — remember when 100Hz / 120Hz TVs first became a thing? That I noticed!
I think most of my PC CRTs ran at 72Hz / 75Hz IIRC. At least with the monitor I had I remember pushing it to 90Hz but that would add bluriness / lose clarity so I never used it at that rate.
I'm a _bit of a snob_ when it comes to that both due to my film & tv background as well as my game collection (jesus, that's a lot of games including full snes, n64 sets, mega drive, nes, etc). I have various broadcast monitors from PVMs to BVMs as well as some of the finest consumer ones including B&O etc. I can say that now with ultrafast OLEDs (240Hz) we're 95% there now, finally. With high quality shaders or hardware gadgets it's really nice. For that 5% more I think those things like ultra high DPI OLEDs and phosphor dot level emulation shaders with black frame insertions will get us there. Until then - good ol' Trinitron is still superb choice if you want 100%. Another thing, outside of actual display is that old console + CRT are almost zero lag input to screen experiences which I actually think plays significant role in the overall experience.