• frunch@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      27
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      What was wrong with them? They served their purpose just fine for many years

      • marx2k@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        104
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        The weighed a ton, they were limited in size, their resolution was terrible, they sucked down electricity…

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          58
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Their screen was curved the wrong way until they released flat screen TVs

          4:3 resolution meant you lost some of the content from movies or you watched them with black bars

          • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            24
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Except movies keep changing so now if you want imax at home you need 4:3.

            Whatever isn’t available at home is what movies will change to to keep themselves unique.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              9
              ·
              1 year ago

              Widescreen has been the movie industry standard for how many decades now? IMAX is its own beast but most movies aren’t filmed in real IMAX resolution and now there’s digital IMAX which is basically 19:10 which is the same as many TVs…

              • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                Movies used to be all 4:3 before tv. It’s called the academy ratio. Movies now do 1.85:1 and even 2.39:1. A few even do anamorphic 2.76:1. Anything but the dominant home format.

                • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  7
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Major movie studios have mostly used widescreen since the 1950s and all the different ratios you mentioned except 4:3 are better watched on a widescreen TV than a 4:3 TV.

          • Steve@startrek.website
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            4:3 resolution also means that a lot of good shows will never be watchable in the proper 16:9 format

        • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          We had four channels and loved it!

          And most people were lucky to have a TV. You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!

        • nottheengineer@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          22
          ·
          1 year ago

          Have you compared NES games on a CRT with the same games on a modern screen?

          CRTs just look miles better.

          • amio@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            36
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            EDIT: OK, it’s ackchually not technically “resolution” per se, I get it. :p

            That’s because the graphics were tailored to CRT resolution - which is to say, [things that just so happened to have] low/outright bad resolution.

            CRTs have advantages over more modern stuff but that’s mostly about latency.

            • Sylvartas@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              28
              ·
              1 year ago

              It’s not as much about resolution as it was about exploiting the quirks of CRT. Artists usually “squished” sprites horizontally (because crt screens would stretch them) and used the now famous “half dot” technique to have more subtle shading than what was actually possible at the pixel level. So if you just display the original sprites with no stretch and no “bleed” between pixels, it doesn’t look as good as it should.

            • grue@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              7
              ·
              1 year ago

              That’s because the graphics were tailored to CRT resolution - which is to say, low/outright bad resolution.

              No, it’s because the graphics were tailored to the analog characteristics of CRTs: things like having scanlines instead of pixels and bleed between phosphors. If they were only tailored to low resolution they’d look good on a low resolution LCD, but they don’t.

              I admit I’m quibbling, but the whole thread is that, so…

            • nottheengineer@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              6
              ·
              1 year ago

              CRTs don’t have pixels so the resolution of the signal isn’t that important. It’s about the inherent softness you get from the technology. It’s better than any anti-aliasing we have today.

                • grue@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  That image is a digital rendering of the raw data, not a photo of how a CRT would render it.

                  CRTs were nothing if not the opposite of jagged.

              • frezik@midwest.social
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                CRTs do have pixels. If they didn’t, you could run an SVGA signal (800x600 at 60 Hz) directly into any CRT. If you tried this, it would likely damage the tube beyond repair.

                The exact mechanism varied between manufacturers and types: http://filthypants.blogspot.com/2020/02/crt-shader-masks.html

                I certainly saw aliasing problems on CRTs, though usually on computer monitors that had higher resolution and better connection standards. The image being inherently “soft” is related to limited resolution and shitty connections. SCART with RGB connections will bring out all the jagginess. The exact same display running on composite will soften it and make it go away, but at the cost of a lot of other things looking like shit.

                • grue@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  CRTs do have pixels. If they didn’t, you could run an SVGA signal (800x600 at 60 Hz) directly into any CRT. If you tried this, it would likely damage the tube beyond repair.

                  Would it, though? I’m skeptical.

                  If it did, it wouldn’t be because they have “pixels,” though; it would be because overdriving the deflection yoke with higher-frequency signals would generate too much heat for the TV to handle.

                  Otherwise (if it didn’t overheat), it should “work.” The result might look weird if the modulation of the signal didn’t line up with the apertures in the shadow mask right, but I don’t see any reason why sweeping the beam across faster would damage the phosphors. (Also, I’m not convinced a black & white TV would have any problem at all.)

          • echo64@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            1 year ago

            CRT filters exist now, and with HDR output (or just sending an HDR-enable signal to get tv’s to use the full brightness range) and 4k displays it honestly as good at this point. or better because the only good CRT’s you can get now are pretty small P/BVM and my tv is much bigger than those

          • frezik@midwest.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            There are plenty of upscalers with minimal latency that fix that.

            There also isn’t just “CRT” in this space. Professional video monitors give a very different picture than a consumer TV with only the RF converter input.

            If one more under 25 retro fan tells me that RF tuners are the “true experience”, I’m going to drink myself to death with Malort.

            Edit: please don’t tell me you believe CRTs have zero latency. Because that’s wrong, too.

          • marx2k@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Compare a PS5 on a modern day large screen 4k TV vs a CRT of your favorite brand from any year.

            If your only use case is playing old consoles, there’s filters for current emulators that fill that need adequately.

      • Empricorn@feddit.nl
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        Are you serious?

        • Curved (the wrong way)
        • Massively heavy
        • Noise (just from the unit itself
        • Very low resolution
        • Noticably hot (might be a benefit in the winter)
        • Small picture, especially relative to weight
        • Depending how far back you go, no/shitty remote, only has 1 port for video
          • nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Sometimes I think about how some technologies could have evolved if they didn’t get out of fashion. I always thought it’s a bit unfair to compare products made decades ago with new ones and use it as a comparison for the whole technology.

            In the case of crts, it would be totally possible to make them with modern aspect ratio and resolutions. The greatest challenges would probably be size, weight and power consumption.

        • grue@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Very low resolution

          For TVs, that’s just because they didn’t need any more resolution because the signal they were displaying was 480i (or even worse, in the case of things like really old computers/video game consoles).

          My circa-2000 19" CRT computer monitor, on the other hand, could do a resolution that’s still higher than what most similarly-sized desktop flat screen monitors can manage (it was either QXGA [2048x1536] or QSXGA [2560x2048], I forget which).

          And then, of course, there were specialized CRT displays like oscilloscopes and vector displays that actually drew with the electron beam and therefore had infinite “resolution.”

          Point is, the low resolution was not an inherent limitation of CRT technology.

      • new_guy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        They were great until you had to move them. They were clunkier than a sofa because they had no place to hold and weighted as much as a refrigerator

      • Maiznieks@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        They did break, You know? My father fixed those things, it’s that they were actually fixable back then and it was cool. Or maybe it was just russian tech that broke, we lived in one of those ussr sattellite countries.

    • Steve@startrek.website
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      1 year ago

      Stupid false nostalgia, just like the old c10 pickup trucks. They are rare now because they are SHIT and nearly all of them were scrapped like they deserve.

      • grue@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        My ‘96, quarter-million-mile Ford fuckin’ Ranger is still running. I love it partly because it’s shit. It’s incredibly cheap, it hauls stuff, and I don’t have to care about it. Similarly, anybody coveting a C10 knows exactly what they’re getting into.

        Also, I’ve still got a CRT TV in my back room and a couple of CRT monitors stored in the basement. I’m well aware that they’re not as good as my LCD TVs and monitors in every single way, except that they’re good for accurate retrogaming, so I keep them around for that purpose and that purpose only. (I’m also under no delusion of them lasting 50 years, contrary to the meme.)

        • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          My ‘96, quarter-million-mile Ford fuckin’ Ranger is still running.

          FFR Member Checking in! 1993 SuperCab with the 4.0l V6 and twin sticks!

          • grue@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Mine also has a manual transmission and lever-operated 4x4 transfer case, but is a regular-cab 2.3L.

            I picked it on purpose because I wanted the most efficient 4x4 truck I could find, but now (with kids and with towing/hauling more than commuting) I’d be better off with one like yours.

        • Mossy Feathers (She/They)@pawb.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Okay, so technically CRTs implode, but the result of the implosion can be an explosion. What happens with a CRT implosion is that the the glass gets sucked into the back of the tube with so much force it’ll bounce off the back of the tube and come out the front. So they kinda implode and explode. Combine that with the glass being leaded and there’s a reason you really shouldn’t go out smashing CRTs.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    90
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    I will not break for 50 years

    Yeah as a guy who used to repair these with his dad as a kid, hells no. The average crt TV had a lifespan of about 10 years without breaking

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      32
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yup. A lot of survivor bias going on with the remaining crop of CRTs out there. Granted, there were probably a lot of perfectly good tubes that got thrown out back in the 2000’s. But the ones we have left still need repair now and then.

      • frezik@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        And a lot of them don’t have the brightness they did back then. These aren’t going to last forever, which is why good upscaling solutions for modern TVs are important.

    • theangryseal@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I am still rocking my old Apple color monitor and it has never needed a repair. It does need a slap on the top to get the picture right from time to time though.

      That thing was my primary tv from the time I was 10 until I bought an hdtv in 2008 (so 13 years), and it was a monitor in a school for an Apple IIe before that. I had two badass old pc speakers I hooked into my ps2 for dvds and gaming back in the day. Now I have my classic consoles plugged into it. It hasn’t seen much use in the last 3 years, but it was constantly being used before that.

      I know we threw some out from time to time when I was a kid, but we also had some in the family that lasted forever. We had this really pretty black and white floor model from the early 60s that we finally threw out in the early 2000s, but it worked just fine. No one wanted it any more I guess. I still have dreams about that tv for some reason.

  • DavidGarcia@feddit.nl
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    78
    ·
    1 year ago

    All I want is a dumb devices brand.

    So sick of smart devices that don’t need to be smart. The more unnecessary things something can do, the more it can break.

    I wonder if we’ll ever get reliable, long lived products ever again or if planned obsolescence has won forever.

      • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Gotta hope that stays viable. But as we saw with Windows 11, if there’s a financial incentive to push you online to harvest information and force-update trash onto your screen, they will eventually find a way to strong arm you into doing that.

    • Onii-Chan@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Short of undoing decades of neoliberal globalism and free trade agreements that destroyed a litany of domestic industries by sending them offshore, and as a result, collapsing an economy of ‘repair, don’t replace’, we’ll never ever see the days of buying anything for life again.

      Welcome to the future. It sucks.

      • DavidGarcia@feddit.nl
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, this disposable economy is in large part thanks to the destruction of the middle class. If the bottom 80-90% got their “fair share” of the economic pie again, people could actually afford quality (and save money in the long term).

        I’m not as doomerish about the future. If people can be educated on what the real problems are, it can be fixed. As long as social media stays relatively free and unmanipulated, it is inevitable. What I’m seeing currently is an educational revolution, even if everyone likes to rip on social media.

        AI is a wildcard however, not sure how it will change things, could go either way. Since open source models are just a few months behind at worst, things could go better than expected.

        Another factor is that once technological development starts to slow down, companies have to compete on quality. The gap between cheap smartphones and flagships used to be huge, but since smartphones mostly don’t change anymore the gap has become really small.

        Basically as technologies mature, the only unique selling point that is left is quality and reliability. Once we run into the physical limits of computation by the end of the century (unless efficiency growth slows down), devices will stop being so disposable. Then a device you buy 30 years later won’t be significantly better than the 30 year old one. In the past a 30 year difference roughly translates to a 30k times difference in performance. That’s why electronics are so disposable.

        I think smart devices will eventually either mature to reliablity and minimum necessary features or we’ll return to dumb devices again.

      • DavidGarcia@feddit.nl
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        Thanks, that’s great and useful advice.

        It would be cool if all TVs were just dumb displays + a standardized dedicated spot for a module for whatever internals you want to put in it.

        Maybe I should petition the EU for this lol. cuts down on e-waste.

    • Large Format Displays like those made by NEC are my secret tip, they usually don’t have any “smart” garbage, they’re great for wall-mounting and you can even get them with an anti-reflective coating

        • wrath_of_grunge@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          i mean, i get his point. but most of these smart devices need an internet connection for any of their smart stuff to work. so long as you don’t give it your wifi pass, or wire it in, it’s just going to be a dumb device.

          i have a newer LG TV i use with my PC. it’s just wired to my PC. at some point i connected it to internet to see how the IP Channel stuff worked on it. it would let me watch stuff for about 10 minutes before it prompted to download an app. that shit got disconnected quick. never again.

          all this ‘smart’ stuff needs to be granted access to your network to serve ads and recommend apps. don’t connect it.

          • BB69@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            I had a Sony TV that was an early 4K device. It got an update that allowed it to be 4K/60FPS compatible. So updating them isn’t all bad.

            My LG OLED got an update for Dolby Vision I believe.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          It won’t break out of the blue, don’t use the features and if it works out of the box it will continue working without updates and worst case if something is problematic you plug it, update and unplug it.

          TVs aren’t mechanical devices like a washer where they switched metal parts to plastic to save a couple of dollars here and there.

          Heck, you can even just buy a PC monitor or a projector if you’re just against smart stuff!

          • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            First of all, you’re still paying for all those features you don’t need, that’s bad.

            Second, these “smart” features almost always slow down the devices, so even simple tasks get sluggish.

            Finally, electronics absolutely do break, and the more of it you’re having, the likelier it is for something to break. Memory and CPUs can overheat, capacitor can (and do) leak, especially in very thin TVs that’s a common problem, and solder joints can break.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              You don’t pay for those features, you pay less than the device would sell for without them because it’s a trade-off, sell for less but profit off features, that’s why the cheaper models have more bloat.

              • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                If these features wouldn’t be implemented in the first place, they would be even cheaper.

                In the last about 5 years there was no innovation whatsoever in the TV market. Yet, there’s more and more bloat, more “smart” shit nobody needs and higher prices.

                • DaGeek247@kbin.social
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  If these features wouldn’t be implemented in the first place, they would be even cheaper.

                  No. They would not. The bloat that comes with any new tech device is there specifically because it gives the company selling it more money. Windows is really easy to install with no bloat, but practically every laptop manufacturer installs a bunch of junk like mcaffee on it. They sure as hell don’t do that because they tibk it’ll actually help the laptop work better.

                • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  No innovation? TVs have better picture quality every year and you pretend nothing’s changed in the last 5 years? 🤔

      • ares35@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        some ‘smart’ ones need the internet just to do a ‘setup’ when its first turned on.

  • jacktherippah@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    79
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    This is your nostalgia talking. CRTs were absolutely awful. I think my family still had one of lying around in the mid aughts. It was heavy, ugly, big, with truly awful picture quality and sucks down on power. Even the cheap LCD TVs we upgraded to were so much better than that crap.

    • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      1 year ago

      They’re might be awful to you, but those people at CRT gaming community would literally dive into a dumpster if they spot a Trinitron/Wega there.

      • frezik@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        I had to toss a Trinitron about a year ago. Was taking up too much space. I tried finding someone to pick it up with no takers, and had to junk it instead.

        It’s not a large community.

        • theangryseal@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Damn.

          I’m happy with my old Apple color monitor for the IIe, but I would’ve happily taken it.

          I had to give up an early 1080p CRT recently. It broke my heart, but I have toddlers.

          They’re always messing with this 2lb giant flat thing. That would’ve crushed them if they had managed to knock it over. It needed a professional degaussing any way. Who the hell does that these days?

          • Juvyn00b@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            I had an old Radio Shack bulk tape eraser that I got good at using as a degausser. Cable TV installer came in and moved my speakers too close to the TV and it cast an off color to the side. Tried my hand with the big electro magnet and got rid of the discoloration.

      • optissima@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Can confirm, I was just getting into it when someone was giving it away for free and arrived in time to see 2 people in a very heated argument that started to get physical… and I just got in my car and left.

        • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          They also made a high pitched whine from the flyback transformer. My parents couldn’t hear it but even as an adult I could.

        • theangryseal@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          I was very sensitive to that noise. Walking down the street in my neighborhood, I could always tell when someone had a tv on in their house. My friends were amazed by that.

          My hearing isn’t what it used to be though.

    • bruhduh@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      CRTs are great for retro gaming because they made low resolutions looking better than any other tech can (by low resolutions i mean 240-360p)

    • Mossy Feathers (She/They)@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Are you sure it was a CRT and not a projection TV? CRTs were limited in size, and they have a reputation for being between lcds and OLED in terms of picture quality (ignoring resolution). Projection TVs, on the other hand, had a reputation for being garbage and the only reason you’d buy one is because you wanted something bigger than a CRT could handle.

      • ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        There were big CRTs. They were just expensive. We had a Proton that was pretty big. Maybe 40"? There were bigger TVs, but we didn’t have the money for them.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        There were 40+" CRT TVs (my father got one thrown in for free when he bought his place some years ago and kept usings it because “waste not”) and those things had a big back and were pretty heavy, which makes sense because the entire screen area has to be covered by a single electron gun at the back, so bigger screen means it has to be further back as the angle of the electrons can be made to turn when they exit the electron gun is limited, plus it all has to be happenning in vacuum (so that gas molecules don’t stop the electrons on their way to the screen) so you end up with the whole screen assembly being a big thick glass vacuum shell, so very heavy.

        Even the smaller CRT TVs had quite the big back, partly because of the whole electron gun and max angle thing but also because firing electrons in a vacuum requires more than 1000v, which have to be generated from mains on the TV, and high voltages means big chunky components (plus back in the day the components were naturally bigger than they are now for the same capabilities), so even the smaller screen ones were still quite large in the depth axis because of the space needed for high voltage electronics.

        Meanwhile the screens for LCD, OLED and so on are basically sandwiches of thin film forming a grid of cells that get activated/deactivated with reasonably small voltages (depends on the tech but if I’m not mistaken they’re all less than 20v) with only the detail that those techs which do not emit light by themselves (such as LCD) need a bit more space for backlighting, all of which can be made way thinner than “enough depth for the electrons from an electron gun to reach the corners of the screen”, much lighter than “requires a vacuum shell for all that space” and then again smaller and lighter because it doesn’t have any high-voltage electronics inside.

    • Classy@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah they were all those things but they also made your hand tingly when you ran it over the screen and it smelled like a Tesla coil

    • paultimate14@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      One of the problems is survivorship bias.

      The CRT’s that survive today are mostly the cream of the crop. Professional monitors that were used for decades at local TV studios. HD CRT’s from the 2000’s that were some of the last ones made, were prohibitively expensive at the time, and have been lovingly cared for by enthusiasts.

      I think a lot of retro gaming enthusiasts who are in to CRT’s today are either too young to actually remember what the average CRT was like or are old enough that they were enthusiasts back even in the 90’s, only buying the absolute best of the best.

      I would literally take my phone over the console TV I grew up with in my parent’s living room. I remember setting stuff down on it (it was pretty much a table), like an empty can, and the picture would go crazy. I think part of why we got rid of it was because my mom got new, wireless handsets for the landline phone that caused interference (and it was also around the time new technologies we’re replacing CRT’s).

      At one point as a kid i got a 19" Zenith CRT in my bedroom. That thing was absolute garbage. Colors all over the place, the image noisy and warped. It was loud, deeper than it was wide or tall, and weighed probably 40lbs. The only two inputs were RF and RCA, but only mono because it only had one speaker.

      I think most of the retro gaming community has just forgotten how bad the average CRT was.

      However, I also wonder if this demand for CRT’s and that premium gaming experience is going to impact the market. Will there ever be enough demand for a Kickstarter to manufacture a few thousand high-end CRT’s? Probably not. Could there be new features or new technologies invented to try to sate this demand? Maybe. Projector glasses, retro gaming handhelds, TV’s and monitors with higher refresh rates, “gaming modes”. I wonder if some other new tech is going to come along to try to capture the benefits of good CRT’s in a modern package.

  • Patapon Enjoyer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    49
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    An automatic software update straight up corrupted my TV, I have to use it with no internet connection like God intended or it keeps trying to go back to the home menu for an error message. Factory reset and updates won’t fix it either. It wouldn’t even forget my wifi, I had to change the password to force it to disconnect.

    • Punkie@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      A friend of mine had an expensive LED TV set get bad RAM about 10 years ago after a firmware fix. You could watch TV for about 2 hours before it went blank. Only official fix via the manufacturer was to disconnect it from power, wait until the rechargeable battery went down, then it was fine again for another 2 hours. It seems like it’s overheating, but it’s not. Something to do with a memory leak and video buffering. It was a known issue among tech enthusiasts, there was a homemade wiki on how to replace the shitty low end RAM with a $30 stick of laptop DIMM and it worked! He still has it, I think.

  • 31337@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    43
    ·
    1 year ago

    The tech of CRTs seems almost futuristic to me. Bending electron beams with magnets to travel through a vacuum so they hit exotic materials at precisely the right locations seems much cooler than just miniaturizing LED arrays.

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s nothing. Look into how vacuum tubes work to achieve logic gates, rectify AC-to-DC, and more. Compared to solid-state electronics, the fundamentals aren’t even the same sport, let alone the same game. People really were living in a different world 80 years ago.

    • IndiBrony@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      1 year ago

      I find this about a lot of old tech. Like precisely etching a piece of vinyl in such a way that it vibrates just right to get the music you want vs bouncing a laser off a reflective disc to read a bunch of 0s and 1s.

      • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        We went from the end-product achieving something through great complexity, to the end-product being made with great complexity so it could active something simply.

    • Aux@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      First of all, LEDs are bloody insane in how they work. And last, but not least, LCD panels bend THEMSELVES!

  • Toneswirly@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    1 year ago

    CRT sets weighed about 40 pounds, blurry picture, and cost as much as a mid range PC. Modern TVs are 5 pounds, cheaper than most phones, and have nice crisp picture. Smart TVs suck but so did the past. Nostalgia is a lie. Things are always bad, they don’t get worse they just stay bad

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      1 year ago

      And most of them would not last 50 years without repairs. Maybe the 2000s single-chip ones could but not enough time has elapsed. TV repair shops used to be extremely common for a reason.

      And don’t forget the eyestrain!

    • Patapon Enjoyer@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      My 34" Trinitron weights literally 200 pounds.

      While that very much sucks, CRT was a very mature technology that provided excellent products for what was needed at the time. It’s still unmatched when it comes to motion in my book (some may disagree because of phosphor trails).

      The fact that my new fancy TV has to make the screen dark and flickery (and possibly add a little SOE) to look almost as clear as that clunker is pretty impressive.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      You clearly have never had a good CRT. It will cost you but its great for watching old movies and shows

      • tacosplease@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        And old video games. They were designed for CRT and look better than on a new TV. Plus CRT has basically no latency. New tvs cause input lag because they have to process the picture. It makes many old games unplayable or very hard to play unless you have a very expensive screen made for gaming.

        • frezik@midwest.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          If you’re measuring latency using the same methods as everything else, CRT has latency, and more of it than you might think.

          The standard is to measure at the point where the picture is drawn halfway down the screen. On NTSC with ~30fps, this is about 17ms of latency ( ((1 / 30) / 2) * 100 ). If you hit the button slightly before the screen is drawn, and the game processes it immediately and draws the frame accounting for it, then it will take about 17ms before we stop the clock on the standard method of measurement for latency.

          “But”, you might say, “the flatpanel can’t go any faster than it’s fed that NTSC signal, so its latency will be at least that much plus the upscaler plus its pixel response time”.

          Fair. A good gaming panel has around 2ms pixel response time. Upscalers can never be zero lag, but good ones like the OSSC and RetroTink are pretty damn close these days.

          This is already less than human ability to even notice the difference, but consider doing the same equation for PAL signals at 25fps. It comes out to about 20ms, which is 3ms slower than NTSC. The difference in latency between NTSC and PAL CRTs is about about the same as the difference between NTSC fed to CRTs or low latency flatpanels. It’s possible for flatpanels to be even less than PAL CRTs, and we’ll probably get there at some point.

      • frezik@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        A lot of it was covering up mistakes. Watching TNG on a modern display, you get to notice how they didn’t match the colors on the uniforms very well. It’s particularly noticeable with the extras uniforms compared to the main cast, though even the main cast uniforms aren’t all matched, either. Mostly happens with the remade uniforms from season 3 onward.

        For one example, look at Geordi and Data. I don’t think this is just a matter of lighting.

        It probably didn’t get noticed much on shitty broadcast quality TV back then, but once stuff got remastered for the digital age, it all popped out.

        • grue@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Watching TNG on a modern display, you get to notice how they didn’t match the colors on the uniforms very well.

          It could be worse: at least that makes it easier for cosplayers, unlike this shit on the Discovery uniforms that seems almost designed to thwart them!

          • frezik@midwest.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            I’ve actually been working on similar patterns for the Strange New Worlds uniforms. It looked like it might be 3d printed directly on the fabric. I tried a transparent TPU, but it’s hard to get consistent results out of it. The transparent PLA I tried didn’t stick to the fabric.

            They might have used a mask of some kind, or they tuned the hell out of a TPU printer setup and had an intern clean it up afterwords.

            • grue@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              I saw a video about how they were made! Let me look through my browser history…

              Ah, here we go. Here’s the bit where they talk about the deltas (on the Disco uniform, not the SNW one): https://youtu.be/xDthNAUMXYs?t=261

              The person in the video describes it as a “rubberized print” (screen-printed rather than 3d-printed) and “foiled on top.” She also describes it as “the cosplayer’s nightmare,” LOL.

        • whofearsthenight@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          On the other hand, I’ve noticed so, so much more intentional stuff that you just couldn’t see that the old resolutions. It’s one of the reasons it’s a damn shame that Boy/DS9 haven’t gotten a remaster (though, I think in this case the way it was filmed basically means this will never happen.)

      • SpeakinTelnet@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        I have a few PVM, I just recapped my pvm2030 and even then the electron gun is slowly dying which will require a brand new tube at this point. This is without even considering the amount of custom cables and modchip required to use an RGB signal on those.monitors.

        While I agree it’s great specifically for old content, it’s far from perfect and most people would get better enjoyment from something like an ossc plugged into a modern TV for the convenience alone.

  • BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    1 year ago

    Pro tip: Never connect your TV to the internet, just use it as a screen. Its easier to buy a new cromecast or Kodi Box when you need support for the latest streaming.

      • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        My wife and I bought a DVD/blueray player a few weeks ago, because we have just found it easier to buy physical copies of movies/tv shows than try to figure out what service it’s on.

        • dan@upvote.au
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          1 year ago

          Make your own personal streaming service. Rip the DVDs / Blu-Rays and put them on your own Plex or Jellyfin server :)

          • theangryseal@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            If I wasn’t so lazy I’d do that.

            So much easier to connect my Steam deck to the tv and pick one of the fmovies sites.

        • LifeInOregon@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          I had a friend call me crazy for ripping all of my old DVDs and Blu-ray Discs to a hard drive around 2009.

          “Why not just stream from Netflix?”

          Now he’s complaining about being subscribed to a half dozen services just so he can watch what he used to stream from Netflix. I kinda want to shake my Plex library with him for personal vindication, but I’m not sure he’d appreciate the irony in a way that would satisfy me.

        • grahamja@reddthat.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’ve been buying second hand dvds for awhile, and I also got a brand new Xbox finally. I threw a DVD in it, and it needed to download software to play it. I was a little irked, consoles used to be something that you could buy brand new and it just worked but everything needs a day one patch anymore. The smart TV is never going on the internet, but that doesn’t stop it from trying to talk to any smart phones that come into the house.

          • theangryseal@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            I don’t buy smart tvs. I have this ugly sceptre tv with a beautiful 4k picture.

            I mean, I’m sure there’s something better, but I plug what I want into it and watch it. The volume goes up and down sometimes if my router isn’t facing away from it, oh and there’s a line going across it now, but for less than 200 bucks I feel like it was a win.

    • whofearsthenight@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Eh, I have been running a pi-hole on my network for many years now. When I did it was purely because I find ads annoying, these days I’d consider it a basic necessity.

      also, I have a hard time complaining about privacy and recommending anything google, especially at the price point they sell Chromecast’s for. If you’re buying a consumer set top box, Apple TV is basically the only one that’s anywhere near privacy conscious. Kodi box or self-built PC though if you really care, and even then I’d still want a pi-hole or similar even if you run it on Linux instead of Windows because the services themselves are doing all kinds of shady shit.

  • frezik@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    1 year ago

    Also, hate how higher end features only come on screens over 55 or 60 inches. Have a small bedroom where 55 inches is just plain too big.

  • niktemadur@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    19
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    “To purée your boiled potatoes, this blender needs a valid email address and cell phone verification number, please update your personal information in the Settings option and try again.”

    (twenty minutes later, the bastards have your data and the boiled potatoes are still crammed inside the blender…)

    “Error code prompt error general ### task failed successfully undefined command. FOR HOT SHINGLES IN [your street name] WAITING TO GET NAILED BY YOU [your name] CLICK ANYWHERE TO REGISTER NOW!”

      • grue@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        knky

        I read this as “kinky” instead of “only” and it made just as much sense in context. I’m not normally one to kink-shame, but you’ve gotta be pretty fucking weird to want a Juicero.

      • frezik@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        AvE also did a teardown of that. It has a huge CNC machined plate that’s completely unnecessary. Rolling the bag to squeeze it would have worked fine for a fraction of the price. As it was, they were probably paying over $1000 of manufacturing cost when it retailed for $400. This necessitated making up the difference on the juice packets–the razer blade and printer ink model–but that didn’t materialize.

        That thing was a joke from so many different angles.

        • Resistentialism@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, I haven’t seen inside, I just know that even from someone who does like some smart products, that was a complete waste.

  • ParetoOptimalDev@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    1 year ago

    I just never agreed to the terms of my smart TV because their privacy policy is horrid.

    Been fine 3 or so years and counting.

  • Norgur@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    But could your old CRT you bought with your own money display advertisements in it’s menus? Hmm? HMMMM? Could it? See? Modern Television wins again!

  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    1 year ago

    Hey man, 50 years ago we went to the store and bought new vacuum tubes when our TVs went pop and hiss – you couldn’t fix CRTs like that.

    CRTs were witchcraft.

        • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Yes. Many people don’t realize this but it’s getting harder and harder to keep them off the Internet because within the last 12 months or so more and more TVs are able to connect to things like Amazon Sidewalk or carrier WiFi (WiFi built into your cable modem for example) in order to Phone Home. You may not have these things but many people have a neighbor who does!

          There’s ways to stop this but most people don’t even know these paths exist and so they’ll never do it.

          • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            A few years ago, when people think about peer-to-peer internet, they’ll think about providing internet to people who live without access any ISP. Fast forward to 2023, peer-to-peer finally saw wide deployment, but it’s used for analytics and ads instead :/

          • uis@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            There’s ways to stop this but most people don’t even know these paths exist and so they’ll never do it.

            There is solution that works: call EU legistative taxi

    • LostXOR@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      A few times a day it rolls 3 dice (that’s the rattling sound you hear) and if they all come up six an update is needed.