A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)

> I can pretty much assure you that with a 240Hz refresh rate 4K LCD monitor it will look better than your CRT :-)

Since you bring up the refresh rate, then i'd assume that you include motion in the "look better" - in which case, i can easily respond with "no, it absolutely does not".

I have a CRT next to me which can do 120Hz at 640x480 (which is a low resolution but the CRT is also very small and i use it on a mid-2000s PC for playing some older games, so it doesn't bother me). It is a Samtron which is basically poor man's Trinitron, so not even among the best out there (i also have a Trinitron but that was also not among the best out there... it was one of the cheaper models).

Despite that, motion on this thing at 120Hz can only be described as liquid butter smooth. Just moving the mouse around makes you want to... well, keep moving the mouse around because it feels so good. FPS games feel amazing.

It is so good that i decided to buy a high refresh rate monitor for my main PC. I avoided that for a long time for two reasons: a) good monitors use high resolutions like 2560x1440 often at huge sizes like 27" and i do not really like high resolutions nor huge monitor (huge in terms of viewable area) and b) all flat panels have persistence issues so chances are they wouldn't be that good.

But you know, having that CRT next to me and using it from time to time really made me want to have a similar experience on my main PC. So i decided to find something that would be close enough and bought a (rather expensive) 165Hz monitor. I mean, ok, how bad can it be?

I rarely get disappointed with new purchases i make and i can't say i was completely disappointed, but i can easily say that if i hadn't experienced using a decent CRT for years (like many that seem to praise modern display tech do - assuming they ever experienced a CRT at all, things aren't getting younger) i'd probably be much more enthusiastic.

The thing is however, i had experienced a CRT and my brand new expensive monitor is far from being as good as the CRT i bought for barely 15 euros.

It is day and night. Not just something that you need to go back and forth to compare - i realized how worse the new monitor was the moment i tried to move some windows around and launched a game i also had played on the older PC and that even though i hadn't used the older PC since a while. All it takes is using both once to realize how better the CRT is.

And it isn't like the new monitor doesn't feel smoother than the 60Hz, but it just isn't as good at the old CRT i have next to me. At best it brings back some of the responsiveness i lost when Windows forced a vsync'd compositor on me. But i never used vsync in games so that sort of responsiveness in games wasn't something i lost and i disable vsync for almost two decades now, so any tearing not only doesn't bother me - it barely registers.

Also, aside of motion, CRTs (at least the decent ones) have much better contrast than any tech outside OLED (which isn't available in PC monitor form, at least not at a non-ridiculous size, non-ridiculous resolution and non-ridiculous price).

Sadly it isn't just a matter of older or cheaper monitors. It is just that modern monitor tech simply sucks at most things outside being flat and having high resolutions. It is fine for office work, etc, which is how i guess they became popular, but for gaming they just aren't as good as the better CRTs (sure there were many crappy CRTs out there - and i am certain that anyone who complains that they dislike CRTs because they flickered used a crappy one - but people who say that they prefer CRTs do not refer to the crappy ones as i'm certain that people who say things are better nowadays do not refer to crappy TNs with washed out colors either).

> So many ways to optimize for particular markets.

I'd like an optimization for a high end CRT please :-/. The article mentions $500, i'd actually pay $1500 for a brand new (not old stock, i mean truly new) good CRT like those mentioned in the article.

How about a display that had a large e-ink screen plus a small LCD of maybe 2-4 lines at the bottom?

Go old school for editing. Use something like TECO or ed or Rob Pike, David Tilbrook, Hugh Redelmeier and Tom Duff's Unix version of QED [1].

The small LCD is for seeing the command you are currently typing and a little command history.

With those editors you entered editing commands but did not see the results until you asked for them. You'd tell the editor to show you the current line plus say 10 lines before and after. Then you'd give it commands to edit the current line, such as telling it to change the text "float" to "double", or telling it to insert a new line before the current line, and so on. When you had done enough changes that you needed to refresh your notion of the current state of the file, you'd ask it to show you again.

Even the older generation, slower e-ink screens would be fast enough for that kind of work.

Maybe instead of putting the small LCD display at the bottom of the e-ink screen, make it a separate unit that can attach to the e-ink screen or attach to the top of your keyboard or stand alone somewhere if you prefer.

[1] https://github.com/phonologus/QED

Interestingly enough the LG CX 48 inch TV has been pretty much targeted at gamers and has received some really good reviews. This was targeted at Nvidia setups. Granted at this size they don't work well on desktops

One Review https://youtu.be/IR6RnZI2uoY

Yeah, CRT was amazing. In my childhood I experimented with my 320x200 black and white CRT monitor and 4-color CGA, and went over the 720px resolution by manipulating the registers of the video adapter.

Please don't let CRTs come back in style. After a while they tend to develop this headache inducing high pitched tone almost akin to tinnitus that is emitted constantly while they're powered on. It seems to be so high pitched most people cannot hear it at all but if you're one of the lucky few who can it can actually be really disruptive. Unfortunately it's also often loud enough to hear through doors, walls, etc... Please be mindful of this before setting up a CRT if you go down this path. For example a house might be better for this setup vs an apartment or condo.