Hi im making this thread as a crt discussion, since i cant really find a good one out there. I've been looking for a crt with rgb scart input that is region free (ntsc/pal 50/60hz), sounds simple enough as about 99% of most modern tv's have that, but i cant for the life of me find a good crt that has it! if a crt says 50hz on the back, does that mean it only accepts pal at 50hz? because my lcd tv says the same, and it can do ntsc at 60hz... Im just really confused about the whole thing, and googling "rgb ntsc crt" doesnt bear any good results..
Where are you located? It's possible the "50hz" on the back is related to the power supply. I think that would be more likely. From what I recall hearing, in many PAL areas most TVs made after a certain point tended to be multi-system. Probably any late model CRT should do. I don't think you'll find any markings on the TV itself that will state support for NTSC. But if you are using RGB with NTSC systems, all that matters is that the TV supports 60hz, since the NTSC color encoding won't even be used.
Simple - read the model name and google for specs. And yeah, most recent (not more than 15-17 years old) TVs don't have any TV system markings, because 99% support any system by default.
I really wish there was a company that still made CRT's on an order basis, because most trinitron's these days are on their last legs! How easy is it to fix a crt thats on its last legs?
I do too. The only silver lining is that the tubes themselves are a lot tougher than most people give them credit for and that it's usually the circuitry around them that goes bad. So, if you know how to repair the electronic portions, you can get way more life out of them than people think.
I hear that working/opening up CRT's is a big no no unless you definitley know what you are doing (even if it isn't plugged in there is a risk of electricution) Take care
Plenty of CRTs are given away here in the UK, usually see the 32" beasts from Sony/Philips/Panasonic on offer.
That is true, mainy due to the tube itself holding a VERY high charge. It's not too difficult to avoid getting zapped, but you do need to take proper precautions and have the right tools. There's a great series of arcade repair videos on youtube that goes very in depth with regards to crt monitor repair. Smartest thing to do is not mess around if you aren't sure. Just remember, as the monitors get more and more scarce, so too will professional repair people. This will either have to give rise to a DIY community, or an unfortunate extinction. Hopefully a new non fixed resolution, raster scanning technology will replace them (doubtful) or some dude will figure out how to make DIY CRTs. That one is doubtful too, but then again, who thought that we'd have homebrew RGB ppus for our 80's NESes?
There are three signal types used commonly with CRTs in PAL regions, RF, composite (scart) and RGB scart. Forget about RF for most purposes. To play NTSC games in full colour on a PAL CRT using composite cabling the TV must support 60hz, otherwise the image will be displayed in 50hz and play in black and white. Any CRT that supports RGB will play NTSC games in full colour even if the TV its self doesn't support 60hz. I think you'd be hard pushed to find a PAL CRT that didn't support RGB, I don't think I've seen any in my life time other than perhaps really early or really cheap obscure TV units. If composite is a requirement that's going to be a little more difficult and you're better off looking for a newer unit like the many flat screens that came out late in the CRT life time, but for the most part many TVs support RGB and you can get really good picture quality out of some random units. I personally like 4:3 screens from 19" - 28", I think that's where you find the best resolution and picture quality for retro games, but wide screen CRTs produce equally great results, perhaps even crisper at the sacrifice of unnecessary stretching or black boarders. Personally I'm thinking of trying to acquire a Sony PVM for older consoles (pre-2000) and keep using my Panasonic widescreen for the 128 bit generation.
. New technology is a possibility. It's being developed now, but don't expect anything commercial before 30s or even 50s. Dunno anything specific but it's indeed raster scanning (to lower power consumption) and there's no backlight (each pixel just displays needed color, so no RGB triads either). DIY CRTs - i don't think so, as it requires extremely expensive and huge equipment and materials that aren't easy to acquire and very expensive too. It's almost at same level as building a SSTO spaceship in a garage. PPUs is a different story as you can simply design the chip and order it somewhere. And with current technologies it's easy to make FPGA version of 8-16bit consoles or arcade boards (it will be more expensive than original though)
In other words, in a couple of years, we'll be forced to play our retro games on shitty LED or LCD tv's with display/input lag? The smash bros melee community wont be happy with that.
I've swapped arcade monitors (tubes and chassis') in the past and can confirm that the tubes will last ages - keep the circuity and chassis in good repair, and you'll get plenty of life out of them. Just be sue to work safely with them - the tubes are like a massive capacitor full of charge. You'll get a helluva zap if you aren't careful.
As long as there's no screen burns involved... also, phosphor will eventually wear out. Still, the oldest of the 3 crt I keep (mid '90) is in great shape. I can't even imagine an lcd lasting half as long while being minimally useful.
Do you have anywhere I can read about this new technology? I'm very interested in this subject. No replacement technology or emulation has been satisfactory to me. They all seem too square. They lose that lit glass look and lack the non-square pixels that help smooth out diagonals and whatnot.
Nobody is going to manufacture new CRTs any time soon (the world largely stopped 7 years ago), but that doesn't mean the many existing unwanted CRTs out there can't be repurposed. Personally I'm interested in developing an original ~20" CRT tri-sync chassis from scratch using discrete components instead of the "jungle" ICs which are commonly used in the deflection systems of practically all displays. This would be in all ways better than a SCART TV as there is a true high-bandwidth analog signal path from input to gun, like an arcade monitor, but with more attention to detail. CRT simulation is something else I like. It's very possible to accurately simulate the look of 240p the CRT in 1080p and higher resolutions. The existing CRT filters for emulation I've seen only implement naive first-order approximations, but they illustrate to me just how good they could look if someone were to implement a more advanced model. This kind of work is highly parallel so it could be feasible for average computers before long. I believe any 4K/2160p display with deep color, especially at a "retina" dot pitch, should outperform a true CRT with simulated models. It's even possible to implement the display's electronics via digital signal processing to achieve "analog viewing accuracy" beyond possible with analog implementations and far far better than the crappy processing algorithms currently in TVs or even the XRGB units (which use standard TV video decoder chips and likely very basic image processing).
I play console like snes, md and pc engine via rgb with a commodore 1084s monitor, I have it from my childhood and picture is still perfect get a 1084s or a sony pvm or a sony fd trinitron, here in italy you get a nice trinitron for 20,30 eu
It's likely that in the distant future, all physical displays will become obsolete. Eventually we'll all have brain implants that will allow us to have images/sound/tactile information/etc sent directly to our brains. That's probably not going to happen to a sophisticated degree any time soon, but it seems inevitable that it'll happen eventually (if we don't kill ourselves first). But the same thing about simulating the look of a CRT through software still ought to be possible - and in the future, new software and hardware should make that kind of work even more accurate. Another cool feature would be adding an audio effect that simulates the hum of a CRT, as well as the warm-up and power off phases.
I make sure to check every month to see the progress of CRT Emulation, and despite some great advances that take it well beyond fake scanlines, it's not even close to the real thing on a CRT monitor. In the upcoming days I'll take some pictures and post them here to point out some of the things that I feel are lacking about the current methods of faking it. I can tell you right now that it has nothing to do with hum, transformer squealing, warm up or power off phases. I'd love to turn this into a serious discussion that can perhaps help the emulation authors really nail it rather then just have it be me bitching about it not being good enough.
