Support NeoGAF

[OmegaSupreme]

So I was thinking of picking up a good old tube tv for PS2 and back games. I last had a crt tv about a dozen years ago. A great one. Sony xbr 960. One of the best ones you could get back in the day.

Have any of you tried looking for a good condition CRT lately? What were you able to find?

 

[Comfortgel]

I have a widescreen HD CRT that is an absolute BEAST that I got free from FB marketplace. Usually the heavier and more unwieldy they are, the more likely people are willing to part with them for free. Good luck finding anything under 27" for a decent price though.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Found a good 32" Trinitron with barely any effort for like 50€. I don't live in a city but in a small town, and yet I was able to get one. I consider myself lucky tho, there were other ones on offer but weren't near as good.

Look at 2nd hand places, like ebay or whatever is popular where you live. Bring a friend if you can, those things weigh a lot. And good luck!

 

[Dacvak]

Check Facebook marketplace. But don’t search for “CRT” or “retro TV”, since those results are usually from people who want a lot of money for their shitty set.

 

[BlackTron]

Check Facebook marketplace. But don’t search for “CRT” or “retro TV”, since those results are usually from people who want a lot of money for their shitty set.

This is wise. I have a 28" Toshiba that came out of a local basement. The listing was just "Old TV". If they're dumping a CRT for free/twenty bucks, there's a good chance they don't even know what CRT means.

 

[nush]

Anyone else get excited when you see a CRT out in the wild? Bonus points if it's still used and functional.

 

[BlackTron]

Anyone else get excited when you see a CRT out in the wild? Bonus points if it's still used and functional.

I get so excited that I took this crappy, dirty 19" one with nothing but a coaxial input because it was free. Taking up space.

I guess it's my spare/backup plan, so 20 years from now if I never find another CRT again I can still play Melee with a milk carton. Yea, I'll probably never use it.

 

[TexMex]

So I got a couple recently.

For me, it’s Facebook marketplace these days and there’s two camps of people. Those who know exactly what they have and want an absurd amount of money. And those who are just getting rid of some extremely heavy junk and would be happy to let you take it off their hands for next to nothing.

In my experience, finding the latter isn’t too hard. But it is getting more difficult over time, so if you really want one now is the time to get it.

 

[RoboFu]

FYI you always take a chance getting one shipped. Try to find one at a pawn shop or like a face book posting nearby, but even a lot pawnshops are not carying them these days.

 

[El Muerto]

Check Facebook and Craigslist first. If your city has big trash day i'd drive around the night before and see if someone threw one out. Also drive behind goodwill at night, some people just dump stuff there, Goodwill trashes CRTs anyway. But definitely check yard sales/estate sales.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

I was able to get one recently off Facebook Marketplace. It's a 19" Toshiba that they had calibrated and cleaned both the inside and the outside. He also had one of those like 36" WEGAs but I didn't want to pay $150 even if it's a good price as I don't have the space. Plus the Toshiba looked great and was only $40. It's only composite, but it looks pretty good and I at least have the higher quality OEM composite and component cables.

I ended up "building" a small cart for the CRT that's on wheels. I cable managed everything and I have my OG PlayStation 2 (with the horizontal stand even lol) hooked up as well as cables for hooking up our Gamecube and my PS3. I even managed a extra power cable for my Sony PlayStation 3D Display as I still play PS3 games pretty regularly and it allows me to just move this cart out of a closet, pull the display out from under the couch and play some games while she uses the tv. Everything is hooked up to a surge protector that sits in a box and the cable just gets pull out and hooked up wherever I take it.

That being said while I'm glad that I have it all, but I don't play older games nearly as much as I used to and in my constant pursuit for minimalism I've thought about just emulating. I've currently settled for the boxes for my PS1-3 games in the basement with a binder of the discs and a 60Gb BC PS3 hooked up to my TV for most of my gameplay.

 

[JayK47]

I tried to get rid of an old 1080p CRT. Nobody wanted it's heavy ass. Ended up just recycling it.

 

[Ozzie666]

Usually getting them serviced is the expensive part. Recently had my Commodore 1084s serviced and the power switch fixed. Worth every penny though still fantastic.

 

[consoul]

I tried to get rid of an old 1080p CRT. Nobody wanted it's heavy ass. Ended up just recycling it.

The Sony BVM-F24 is the only CRT TV that did 1080p. If you recycled one of those, goddamn, that's a shame.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

I still have SD CRT for my retro consoles, but with how good 240p/480p can look on a modern screen thanks to CRT phosphor emulation, I no longer feel the need to play on the real thing, because I can get better sharpness (PVM like) thanks to shaders (SD CRT blurs the image too much). PS2 games have never looked better on my SD CRT.

Try to guess which is the real CRT and which is the CRT shader.

You need a 4K HDR display to get the most accurate results, because only HDR allows you to have a phosphor mask at 100% opacity.

Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

The Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor was the greatest CRT Sony never made. Story At the end of the 90’s in an underground R&D bunker located several kilometers below the Sony Tokyo HQ , Sony engineers were developing a revolutionary new screen for CRT’s that could morph its physical...

forums.libretro.com

 

[JayK47]

The Sony BVM-F24 is the only CRT TV that did 1080p. If you recycled one of those, goddamn, that's a shame.

It may have been 1080i. It was a Samsung full screen TV that I purchased for the Xbox 360, which basically required an HD TV. Two man job to move it.

 

[polybius80]

you can still find CRT TV people discard but as time passes is harder and harder to get good ones for free, last 2 TVs I found this year just in the street are small ones(14") and have some problem and dont work, have not opened them to check if they are easy to repair but in the last couple years I found a 21" LG flat panel in perfect condition(I use it with a Wii and a PS2 ) and a curious sony small tv already modded for RGB(have not tested with a console, but it turns on )

 

[LRKD]

Founda fairly decent 32" Toshiba on Craigslist? Or maybe FBMarket 6 years or so ago. Heavy af, so it was free. In the past 3 years I found that the Thrift store at my place has started selling them on occasion again, and for really good prices. I don't think I've seen a single one for over $30, and they're all the smaller ones so they aren't crazy heavy. I imagine, this isn't the same everywhere though, I think I'm just lucky and someone at this thriftstore must've finally smarted up and realized there is still a market for these.

I got a 12" Philico Black & White just for fun, and a really really good 13" SOUNDDESIGN tv, from what this YouTube video said, apparently, they just repurposed arcade machine screens for tvs, so they have some incredible picture.


Best advice really is though just scrounging any local listings. Facebook, craigslist, Mercari, check your local classifieds long enough and you will find a good one for free. Just get in the habbit of checking it daily while on the toilet or at work break or something. And if you really want to go the extra mile supplement that with trips to thriftstores, yardsales, moving sales, estate sales ect

 

[Hoddi]

I still have SD CRT for my retro consoles, but with how good 240p/480p can look on a modern screen thanks to CRT phosphor emulation, I no longer feel the need to play on the real thing, because I can get better sharpness (PVM like) thanks to shaders (SD CRT blurs the image very noticeably). PS2 games have never looked better on my SD CRT.

Try to guess which is the real CRT and which is the CRT shader.

You need a 4K HDR display to get the most accurate results, because only HDR allows you to have a phosphor mask at 100% opacity.

Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

The Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor was the greatest CRT Sony never made. Story At the end of the 90’s in an underground R&D bunker located several kilometers below the Sony Tokyo HQ , Sony engineers were developing a revolutionary new screen for CRT’s that could morph its physical...

forums.libretro.com

That looks fantastic. Which shaders are you using?

I had no idea Retroarch supported HDR until now. My monitor is only 1440p so it loses a bit of definition but it otherwise looks fantastic with that main sony-megatron shader.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

That looks fantastic. Which shaders are you using?

I had no idea Retroarch supported HDR until now. My monitor is only 1440p so it loses a bit of definition but it otherwise looks fantastic with that main sony-megatron shader.

The problem with 1440p monitors is that the vast majority of shaders are either optimized for 4K or 1080p, so the image is too dim (because the 4K phosphor mask is too compressed and that results in a loss of brightness), or not very well defined (because 1080p does not allow for a convincing phosphor mask).

However, the Cyberlab Shader Pack has CRT shaders optimized for 1440p resolution.




I recommend to use this shader:

MBZ__0__Smooth-Advance_Full_Reflections

And here are my settings, because the default settings have extremely washed out colors for some strange reason, and I was trying to match my SD CRT.

Spoiler: My shader settings

MBZ__0__Smooth-Advance_Full_Reflections / 1440p / CyberLab_Aperture_Grill_IV_OLED
My tweaks to the shader parameters:

In CRT "Brightness & Gamma" section
-gama in 2.05
-gama out 2.4
-post CRT brightness 2.0

In "Brightness Settings" section
-magic glow 0.4
-bloom strength 40
-gamma Correct 0

In "Digital Controls" section
-brightness 0.15

In "Signal Color Space"section
-Display Color Space 0
-Signal Type 0
-Gamut Compression 0

In "Guest Color Tweaks" section
-Saturation Adjustment wp_saturation 1.05
-Brigthness Adjustment 1.08

In "G-sharp Resampler" section
-G-Sharp ON 1
-Sharpness Definition 0.50

On 1080p display I recommend CRT royale shader, or TV flickering shader (from CRT kaio shader pack)

retro consoles and 240p / 480p resolution - sometimes less is more

Where's the best place to find them these days? Facebook marketplace is usually a decent bet. Don’t search for “retro” or “crt”, though. People who list sets like that are usually looking for more money than their sets are worth.

www.neogaf.com

Spoiler: Tv flickering shader settings

EDIT- After some testing I think TV flickering shader (from KAIO shader pack) work well in most games. I'm however using some tweaks to the shader parameters to make it look even more pleasing to my eye:
-Disable FXAA
-In the section Hi resolution scanlines handling I tweak flicker power to 0.15 to make it look comparable to my SD CRT (you can turn it down completety if you dont like this interlacing simulation effect)
-In the section low level phosphor gird I tweak overmask to 1.10 to make the image a little brighter.
-In curvature border section I turn down warp X / Y

As for the HDR shaders, I use Sony Megatron PVM-2730 shaders and only change the resolution pattern within the shader parameters. For 240p games 300TVL looks best and for 480p games I'm using 600TVL.

 

[Shake Your Rump]

So I was thinking of picking up a good old tube tv for PS2 and back games. I last had a crt tv about a dozen years ago. A great one. Sony xbr 960. One of the best ones you could get back in the day.

Have any of you tried looking for a good condition CRT lately? What were you able to find?

It's definitely become more rare to see good CRTs. I was drowning in them 10 years ago. When I went looking last fall, I only found a few worth investigating, and 3/5 of them ended up being sold off as they had critical flaws.

I now have a fantastic JVC D-Series that I use for PS1, PS2, N64, and GameCube. I also have a 32" curved Trinitron stored in the basement as a backup.

The JVC cost me $25. The Trinitron was $60 with official stand. It replaced a Retrotink 5x, which I sold for $700.

It's definitely worth looking for a good condition JVC, Sony, or Toshiba CRT for any consoles that use s-video or composite.

 

[fart town usa]

Goodwill doesnt carry them and grandkids are over pricing them on facebook marketplace, RCA-only being listed as "retro gaming TV" for like $150

So glad I snagged a trinitron wega for $7 back in 2012.

One will turn up eventually. Just stay on the hunt

 

[butane bob]

Sony's are massively overrated and absurdly over-priced. They also tend to be really susceptible to severe geometry and convergance issues, which are an absolute nightmare to fix, and the bigger the screen is the worse they are in that regard.

As long as you get any decent brand, and it has the connections you want (component/scart/s-video etc), you should be fine. So don't think like many people that you absolutely have to get a Sony.
You should be able to find something dirt cheap if you look at places like facebook market place and things like that. Maybe stick up a wanted notice and someone will probably be looking to get rid of one.

t- owner of 2 sony's, an lg flatron and a wells-gardner arcade monitor

 

[unclbenn]

I have a Panasonic and don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.

 

[ShirAhava]

Should be a lot easier than a few years ago as most hardcore CRT buffs have figured out CRT Monitors are the way to go

I got rid of my two 27 inches with component now I'm using high end crt monitors with component/scart adapters so much better and easier on my back

I still kept my 13 inch Panasonic w/ vhs for nostalgia sake and certain games (hello genesis) were really made with composite/rf in mind

 

[Badlucktroll]

I use a CRT Sony Wega that was a spare bedroom tv that never got used back in the day

 

[Cao Cao]

I am already dreading the day my CRT breaks.
I play a lot of PS1 and PS2 games on it, looks so much better than on HDTV.
My whole family threw theirs away 15 years ago lol ffs

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

I am already dreading the day my CRT breaks.
I play a lot of PS1 and PS2 games on it, looks so much better than on HDTV.
My whole family threw theirs away 15 years ago lol ffs

That's only true if you're upscaling the 240p/480p image without any kind of effort to make it look good. With CRT shaders (phosphor mask emulator) old games look even better on high resolution display becasue you can emulate PVM display as well. Standard CRT TVs simply blured the picture too much, making the mini-maps in GTA SA on the PS2 console nearly unreadable. The same PS2 game on PVM has perfectly readable minimaps and look much better in general. You can get the same results on a modern display thanks to phosphor mask emulation on PC (CRT shaders), or buy retrotink 4K upscaler if you want to play on the original consoles. Retrotink 4K is expensive, but it has amazing CRT pshosphor mask emulation. The only advantage a real CRT has is better motion quality.

 

[swaffles23]

Like everyone else said, FB marketplace is your best bet. I got lucky and got a Sony Trinitron for free earlier this year. Some dude was just throwing it out

 

[Shake Your Rump]

Retrotink 4K is expensive

Homie, it's around $1000 CAD, and it still doesn't handle interlaced video as well as a CRT (but nothing can in real-time anyway). If someone is paying $975 more (plus the cost of an OLED TV) over my CRT to see a mini-map a bit more clearly, then they are really dedicated.

I had an LG C1 with the RetroTink 5x for my PS1 and PS2. I'm fairly certain I wrote a Reddit post claiming that CRTs were dead, as this was all the benefits of real hardware on a TV with perfect geometry, almost no input lag, and perfect colours. Then I compared Sly Cooper (PS2) to a random Trinitron I picked up. The CRT was immensely better in motion. Sold the tink and picked up a few more CRT.

 

[CLW]

Lol I had a 27” one I could not GIVE AWAY ended up paying a junk company to take it and some other things

 

[AJUMP23]

I wish I would have kept a couple.

 

[Anthony Soprano]

I still have SD CRT for my retro consoles, but with how good 240p/480p can look on a modern screen thanks to CRT phosphor emulation, I no longer feel the need to play on the real thing, because I can get better sharpness (PVM like) thanks to shaders (SD CRT blurs the image too much). PS2 games have never looked better on my SD CRT.

Try to guess which is the real CRT and which is the CRT shader.

You need a 4K HDR display to get the most accurate results, because only HDR allows you to have a phosphor mask at 100% opacity.

Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor

The Sony Megatron Colour Video Monitor was the greatest CRT Sony never made. Story At the end of the 90’s in an underground R&D bunker located several kilometers below the Sony Tokyo HQ , Sony engineers were developing a revolutionary new screen for CRT’s that could morph its physical...

forums.libretro.com

The post doesn't say, but which emulators does this work with? Can I use it with retroarch?

edit: d'oh, it does say it works with Retroarch.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

I managed to find an amazing Panasonic Tau flat screen TV (CT-27SX12) on Facebook that someone was giving away for FREE. Component input, flat screen, the set itself looks bad ass, great sound, just all around perfect situation.

I finally plug it in and test out some games and the horizontal scrolling is very noticably wavy and I doubt it would even be fixable in the service menu. Kind of a gut punch because the screen looks amazing otherwise. Haven't tested 3D games yet, probably won't be noticable with them but I play so much 2D stuff I have a feeling I'm going to end up giving the set away at some point.

 

[Shake Your Rump]

horizontal scrolling is very noticably wavy and I doubt it would even be fixable in the service menu

Horizontal linearity is not adjustable on any analog CRT, unfortunately.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Horizontal linearity is not adjustable on any analog CRT, unfortunately.

Yeah that's what I'm reading. It's such a shame because the TV is so amazing other than that, but I just can't get past the swimming. Half the appeal of a CRT is the motion clarity, which is completely destroyed when half the screen is wobbling, even slightly, when scrolling.

 

[Shake Your Rump]

Flat screen CRTs are more prone, unfortunately. I had an otherwise god-tier condition Sony 27FV310, but playing 2D RPGs always brought out this flaw. I've had five flat Wega CRTs over the past year and all had the problem. I do have a 24" flat Toshiba that is perfect as well as my 27" bubble screen JVC D-series and 32" curved Trintron. It's part luck and part design flaw. To be fair, you don't really see it with regular video programming.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Flat screen CRTs are more prone, unfortunately. I had an otherwise god-tier condition Sony 27FV310, but playing 2D RPGs always brought out this flaw. I've had five flat Wega CRTs over the past year and all had the problem. I do have a 24" flat Toshiba that is perfect as well as my 27" bubble screen JVC D-series and 32" curved Trintron. It's part luck and part design flaw. To be fair, you don't really see it with regular video programming.

Yeah, I actually always preferred curved screen CRTs but this just seemed too awesome to pass up for free. Now I'm just going to straight up avoid flat screens, no matter how great they seem.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

Sony's are massively overrated and absurdly over-priced. They also tend to be really susceptible to severe geometry and convergance issues, which are an absolute nightmare to fix, and the bigger the screen is the worse they are in that regard.

CRTs vary in quality a TON, and sony's tend to be among the best in my experience.
at least with monitors, geometry and convergence are adjustable, will probably take periodic tuning, will probably never be 100% right... but its not really that bad.

more annoying to me was seeing the damper wires.
bright scene? hooray, two or more horizontal lines across your whole screen are now visible.

 

[MAX PAYMENT]

Reviving a dead thread to ask some questions about HD CRTs.

Trying to do a bit of research. Arent HD CRTs basically useless? I would think the pursuit of retro gaming on CRTs would be to chase the best image quality possible. And, in turn, would be trying to game at native resolutions with no scaling, correct?

Wouldn't 240p/480i content scale terribly to 540p/1080i? Or even 720p native consoles scaled to 1080i on an HD CRT sounds like a scaling nightmare.

Wouldn't the ideal solutions for retro gaming be:

480p native SD CRT: NES to PS2 era for 240/480 content

720p native lcd: 360 and ps3

4k/latest displays: Ps4/X1 and beyond for 1080p and greater resolutions

 

[Shake Your Rump]

Arent HD CRTs basically useless?

Yes, they are. It isn’t even the image quality that is the issue, it’s the display latency.

Rule of thumb: Use SD CRT for anything without an HDMI port.

 

[Dural]

Reviving a dead thread to ask some questions about HD CRTs.

Trying to do a bit of research. Arent HD CRTs basically useless? I would think the pursuit of retro gaming on CRTs would be to chase the best image quality possible. And, in turn, would be trying to game at native resolutions with no scaling, correct?

Wouldn't 240p/480i content scale terribly to 540p/1080i? Or even 720p native consoles scaled to 1080i on an HD CRT sounds like a scaling nightmare.

Wouldn't the ideal solutions for retro gaming be:

480p native SD CRT: NES to PS2 era for 240/480 content

720p native lcd: 360 and ps3

4k/latest displays: Ps4/X1 and beyond for 1080p and greater resolutions

It depends on the TV and whether it's doing any digital to analog conversion. I have an RCA MM36110 that can display 240p/i, 480p/i, 1080i, and the VGA can do 640x480 and 800x600 natively with no digital to analog conversion. A lot of the HDTVs that had HDMI inputs would be doing some sort of digital to analog conversion.

The RCA MM36110 is a beast for retro gaming. I bought it about 12 years ago off Craigslist for like $50, but it's unbelievably heavy. It has multiple composite, s-video, component, and two VGA inputs. The VGA works amazing for Dreamcast. I've been meaning to setup a retro gaming room in our basement with it as the centerpiece but haven't gotten around to it.

 

[Kupfer]

Got a Bang & Olufsen MX 7000 Type 8700 for 35€ like 4 years ago.
Complete with VHS recorder, auto-rotatetable stand, remote, manual.

It was a pretty descent TV back then, the TV alone cost 1790GBP in 1999 which is around 3300€ today.

Sometimes I see such TVs for free, sometimes people want way too much money because of *rEtRo GaMiNg*

I think if you have some time and don't rush things you can get a pretty good CRT for cheap.

EDIT:
here it is

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

So I was thinking of picking up a good old tube tv for PS2 and back games. I last had a crt tv about a dozen years ago. A great one. Sony xbr 960. One of the best ones you could get back in the day.

Have any of you tried looking for a good condition CRT lately? What were you able to find?

Good Will (if you live in the states) have most of the back walls of their stores filled with CRT's.
If you live in a larger area that has multiple stores consider making a weekend out of going to all the ones in your area and scoping out what they have for sale.

 

[m14]

Wouldn't the ideal solutions for retro gaming be:

480p native SD CRT: NES to PS2 era for 240/480 content

720p native lcd: 360 and ps3

An argument can be made for connecting the original Xbox to the 720p lcd via component cables.

 

[Kagoshima_Luke]

Good Will (if you live in the states) have most of the back walls of their stores filled with CRT's.
If you live in a larger area that has multiple stores consider making a weekend out of going to all the ones in your area and scoping out what they have for sale.

Really? I thought Goodwill stopped taking them. At least in my area, that was the case years ago.

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

Really? I thought Goodwill stopped taking them. At least in my area, that was the case years ago.

This weekend I saw a few in a store in my area. I have never tried to take one there, maybe they did?

 

[Kagoshima_Luke]

This weekend I saw a few in a store in my area. I have never tried to take one there, maybe they did?

I thought they stopped taking them and also flat out were destroying any existing inventory. Maybe they are back to taking them since there is clearly a demand. I may go out this weekend and check some of my local stores.

 

[MAX PAYMENT]

An argument can be made for connecting the original Xbox to the 720p lcd via component cables.

Why is that?

 

[m14]

Why is that?

Because the OG Xbox can output at 480p, 720p and 1080i. It can display pretty well on a HD tv.
Although PAL Xboxes are locked to 480i / 576i and need to be softmodded to unlock the HD resolutions.