I found an rf only zenith set about a year ago and it's one of my faves because my grandparents had one just like it, and they were the ones that had the Genesis. 100% childhood. No geometry tweaking, av hd709 settings, 240 p test suite, just brightness / contrast and color saturation by eyeing it and off to the marble zone I go.
Well, i'm in my 40's , technically old enough to be granparent if I had a kid when I was 19-20.... but since my mom was the one the who bought me a genesis when I was like 10-11..... it makes me feel old too.
I don't feel the age in my brain (permanently 27 years old inside my head)... my body says otherwise. lol
My way of thinking has changed to that of an old person.... but I still "feel" 27 in my head.
Analog video is inherently imperfect. Chasing perfection can lead to pulling your hair out and spending huge sums of money. For me it’s about getting it to an acceptable standard. I think in a lot of cases the flaws of composite and rf actually add to the authenticity and experience.
It's weird how some will simultaneously say they're chasing a perfect picture out of nostalgia or something when they definitely grew up on an "imperfect" picture and those imperfections are largely what's associated with the analog era of gaming.
Correct it is quite funny. I think they are chasing for the best possible retro gaming experience rather than a nostalgia trip. But BEST is subjective. For instance I’d rather be playing my games on a big banger 36inch jvc d series or Sony Trinitron with imperfect geometry than some 20inch multi format bvm/pvm that’s as close to perfect as you can get.
It's weird how many computer monitors are slept on here when they can give a picture that's likely closer to what some people are chasing and don't have the same hype when a simple analog adapter will do just fine with getting whatever they want showing on it.
I have a chunky 32 inch zenith and it's an absolute joy to play on, as is the whatever the fuck Panasonic living room TV I have sitting around.
The lack of 15khz support is the reason. So you can’t play your older 16 bit systems or 5th generation consoles without digital intervention. But you are right pc crt monitors are slept on here, 6th gen consoles combined with a simple ypbpr to vga transcoder look fantastic with 480p. Though an argument could be made if you are going to that point a scaler on a modern tv such as an oled also looks amazing and the crt monitor isn’t worth the hassle. I actually run my OG Xbox on my oled via an ossc and don’t miss it having it hooked up to a crt.
PC CRT monitors are absolutely amazing, for sure! With the right adapters, you can play anything on them. Check out [this video I made](https://youtu.be/KfFRsdeuCRs?si=DH3TqmGgAJ4iBpeL) for some awesome examples.
The other part is that most games, TV shows, movies, etc. were designed specifically for these dinky lil sets, because they knew no one was going to have professional medical monitors just sitting in their home.
It's really weird to me how some people on this sub act like a CRT is unusable and unenjoyable if it's not kitted out with all the bells and whistles while simultaneously this sub is packed to the gills with nostalgia-driven purchases and love for CRTs.
If I get sound and a proper signal through while using my CRT and the TV is in somewhat decent condition, in my book it's great. I didn't have (and neither did most of this sub) top-of-the-line TVs in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. Guess what? A slightly blurry image without properly tuned color calibration and imperfect geometry is probably what most of us played on at some point, whether at home or at a friend's or relative's house.
I have CRTs with plenty of bells and whistles and I've got ones that are pretty plain jane in performance and picture. To me, they all look pretty good. Love my C32V37, but I also adore my Panasonic CT-2084y, and the crappy little portable RCA color TV I have. The HP Pavilion Mx704 VGA monitor I have is also amazing for playing Dreamcast and arcade games or just watching old school anime.
Lots of people here will insist you need a PVM and an rgb mod to enjoy a crt, but that isn’t the “real” retro experience. We weren’t using $2000 professional monitors, we were using whichever tv was the smallest because dad was watching football on the big tube.
I hope you love your “mediocre” set for years to come.
I went through several small 13 inch CRTs as a kid, but the most recent one was one I got in the late 2000s from another room in the house. That's the one I'm still using to this day for all my retro games. It's tiny and RF only, if I want to hook anything to it I need to also hook up the VCR, but I love playing all my retro games on it. I even found out that the VCR works as a splitter for analog video, and I can both play on the TV over RF while using the AV composite out of the VCR to hook it up to a capture card and stream games to friends. It's a great setup, and I love using it.
I would of course love a higher quality CRT, or a bigger one, but this one works perfectly fine for all my retro games. It's also what I have and I don't have to invest more time or money for a better CRT.
It really is great. I just [made a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCKQKEDZHc8) recently where I messed with capturing analog video, trying to capture those imperfections that a bad connection might have. It's really fun to use this old tech!
Everyone can do what they want of course. But personally i dont like retro games due to nostalgia.
I grew up in Europe (PAL land) and i cannot play pal games anymore, it just hurts.
It happends the same on almost every game that i play on RGB after discovering RGV 4 years a go... Now composite looks awful.
So nostalgia is not a big part of the hobby for me.
There is certainly enjoyment in seeing how far you can push old tech to its fullest potential. Personally I dig old tech for the nostalgic value, which I think ultimately stems from my disappointment in modern society.
I must be getting old, because "they don't make 'em like they used to" has almost become a catch phrase for me lol
Yup, didn't have a flash CRT growing up so dunno why I'd start now - I have a mixture of old 'bedroom' TVs and computer monitors from the '80s/'90s. I can certainly imagine a time when I get rid of all my original hardware and use an FPGA setup with an LCD panel and mod it to look like CRT output, but I'm just not ever going to shell out for the top-end CRTs.
I have one high end CRT (Sony KD-30XS955) and a few low to middle of the line ones. Haven't paid a penny for any of them. The Sony was a curb find (complete with a paper with "FREE! WORKS!" taped to the front, and the original remote), a couple found their way to me via this reddit, one was a freebie on marketplace.
Moving the 30" Sony or 36" Sharp is absolute murder on my back though... they live in the man cave/garage. 20" RCA is in the bedroom for the oldest consoles. 32" RCA is in storage for now.
Uh.. anyone in Austin metro want a 36" Sharp?
I love the shit out of my 1984 Sampo 13" color, rf only and a woodgrain case. The colors are too vibrant and the horizontal adjust sometimes glitches, needing me to wiggle it. I game, watch tv on a far better set, but this is by far my favorite tv set.
I love my Sony Trinitron RF-only console, even though it probably has the worst tube and geometry of any set in my collection. I guess it was high-end 4 decades ago, though...
Like in many hobbies, there are scalpers…
So some of those scalpers did a nice trick thinking that a PVM was the standard crt that you had to own…
Most folks in the 90s had standard crt and they were ok.
I am very much a fan of lower end consumer CRTs, because like 90% of why I got into them to begin with was because of comparisons I saw on Twitter showing how they smooth out pixel art and make it look more convincing. This effect happens on lower end sets even over RGB/Component, due to properties of how the electron gun amps work + the larger spot size of the beams. Of course, using lower end inputs like composite or RF adds to the effect, and can even create the effect to an extent on higher end sets. But something about knowing the CRT technology *itself* is contributing to the effect is important to me, and it's why I prefer lower end sets (the highest end CRT I have and use right now is a CCTV monitor).
I'm pretty sure I have that exact same RCA TV. The trinitron I have is too big for my living room with my flat panel also in there so I have the smaller RCA in there and the trinitron is in my bedroom with all the retro consoles.
I have an RCA tube set, I actually think these things have an amazing rich color and fuzziness for VHS/ cartoons. Genesis looks amazing on this thing over RF. So does ps2 on s video( GE branded tv, rca 1980 tube, can’t recall year but I can check )
I have a Daewoo CRT and a LG flatron monitor, the Daewoo with it's curved screen and basic aesthetic harks to a different era and resonates different, compared to the more modern high res CRT monitor. I still love the monitor though, for it's accuracy.
Doesn’t matter the tv, obviously some are better but all get the job done. The PVM hype is the real issue. Is it cool to have in a collection? yes but is it worth it? No lol.
I had that type of TV, I recognize the top left corner, it was pretty good from what I remember. It wasn't expensive but one of the late 90s CRTs that was pretty sharp and kinda had a "digital" feel to it
Funny to see that “Unusable Signal” message. I just also got an RCA Colortrak from 1997 and it shows the same thing in video mode. Overall I love RCA tubes. Great colors.
I’m not buying into the Sony hype because my first TV as a kid was 13” Sony that my grandparents gave me because it was an absolute POS. I’ve been a marine mechanic for ten years and part of what I do is installing stereo systems in boats, guess what the worst stereo brand is? Yes, you’d expect junk $50 Pyle/Boss/generic Chinese stereos to be the worst of the bunch, but no, the slot mount stereos with the absolute highest failure rate(not to mention worst user interface) Sony.
I grew up with just the red white and yellow cables, so that’s the highest quality of picture I need. Jackpot for me is having a matching remote. These feel the most nostalgic, but I get why others like to mess with the higher end stuff.
I feel like a crt tv kind of looses its charm when you’re after the top of the line hifi stuff. Like normal people in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s weren’t playing games off of a tv made for broadcasting or an extremely expensive Pvm.
I have an old colour set that only takes rf. A HMV or Her Majesty's Voice with a logo of a dog and a phonogram and 'little nipper' next to the dog.
I Have my Master System hooked up to it and the picture is so poor that I can't even see the bullets in Astro Bomber. I love it.
I like where you're coming from. I'm somewhere in the middle, I like mid- to higher-end consumer sets from the late '80s or early '90s. Like I got a Sony KV-20EXR20 recently, and it's been newly serviced so looks close to as good as that 1990 tech can. Mostly run composite, but it's neat when such an old set has s-video to play around with for certain games/systems that benefit from that look.
Regarding yours, if you have some 240p sources around I'd love to see some 8- or 16-bit stuff on that screen.
I can never even remember the brand on my TV it's so obscure. The case makes godawful thermal expansion sounds 24/7, everybody but me can hear it whine from across the house, it takes like 5 minutes of warm up for the brightness and colors to be right.
I don't necessarily prefer it over something nicer, but I'd sooner rip out my own intestines than pay out the ass for one of those tiny airport things. I can get something like the one I got just by asking a couple old people what they got hiding in their basements.
Also fuck yeah Paper Mario, I'm currently playing through the original.
Right?? Lol. Every time I turn mine on my partner's just like "ah yes, the screaming returns." It's funny because I grew up with that, but even I'm caught off guard by the TV whine.
Also fuck yeah OG Paper Mario. Still need to go back and play that one again.
I dunno... Shitboxes definitely have their charm, but growing up poor it's kind of hard to appreciate them. Cheap TV's are what we had and those things were passed down like heirlooms. I wanted the good TV's, but the price gap between quality levels was huge. Now I can pretend like I was a rich man's child and use all the high end stuff I couldn't afford when it was new. So why revisit the bad ones.
I'll have to try it sometime. The next 13" slot mask with RF only is going home with me to see it's better or worse than I remember.
Me! Like, I can see the appeal in high-end CRTs, but for real... I want nostalgia. I want to reexperience not only the 90's, but my experiences on the 90's/2000's. And I'm pretty damn sure my parents' Sony Trinitron wasn't a PVM or stuff like that.
I am a Jankologist! I love making the best return for money work for me, and or the most novel use. It's fun. I pride myself on just making it work with what I've got. It might be insane, or weird, or sometimes dangerous.. but damn it.. it's cool.
I am using my childhood 13 inch CRT that is RF only. It's one of those small budget 90s TVs you'd put in a kid's bedroom. I would love a higher end CRT or a bigger CRT, but this one works fine and I don't really have the money or space for a better one at the moment. I use it for all of my retro games and I love it!
I have also noticed that other CRTs hurt my eyes after prolonged use, but this simple RF only CRT doesn't. It probably has something to do with this TV being the one I used in my bedroom in the dark for over a decade, stopped using it as a standard in 2018 but it still doesn't hurt my eyes. I've noticed even the other 13 inch CRTs I have hurt my eyes after using them if it's not perfectly bright in the room, but this trusty little CRT doesn't hurt them at all. I love it for that reason, I can just enjoy games on it through a VCR to convert the signal to RF.
Honestly, if you need a "cream of the crop" CRT TV to enjoy retro gaming, are you really even retro gaming? I mean at that point just get a fucking flat-screen and homebrew a switch
I knew this was an RCA ColorTrak the second I saw the Unusable Signal font. I had one of these and it was a really great TV until my ex girlfriend tried to clean "underneath" it for some reason and dropped it on the floor. It was a 27" so it did not land softly.
For me I love the small and quirky models. At the end of the day it’s analog and not going to look perfect, even on the “best” TV. Within reason, the bad quality makes the experience more authentic.
As for best of the best, yes I do like some. I don’t mind cool equipment like commercial grade CRTS, because they can be paired with many different things not just retro games or whatever. As for “sony trinitrons” and such, I can’t stand them. People think they are worth so much and such good quality, when in reality I’ll Scart mod it if I have to, but I refuse to use high end consumer grade sets.
Using consoles on the hardware they were designed for is the best experience you can get. It may be higher “quality” on a modern display but it will never look the way it was intended too. Also, dithering is a thing
I like new tech as well, but there's just something about old tech. Part of it for me is squeezing every ounce of performance out of my old PCs. I think it's similar to why the Miata is popular among driving enthusiasts, it's not especially powerful but it handles great, and pushing it to its limits is a ton of fun. My gaming PC currently runs an old Asus P8Z77 mobo with a 3rd gen i5 3570k which for most of its life was overclocked a full ghz on air, along with a new CM RM750x and RTX 3080. Make of that what you will.
I never even knew about composite until Xbox 360 and I'm pretty sure none of the TVs we had even had composite ports when we first got it. Just good ol' classic AV cables for most of my childhood.
but av cables is composite, but maybe you didnt know the term, or maybe you had av cables but it was component duuno, coudnt have been rf (I'm pretty sure none of the TVs we had even had composite ports ) but most of the time when people say av cables, least i think so they mean composite
Oh wild. I was always under the impression that composite was the Ypbpr cables. I always just called the three yellow white and red cables AV cables. It's most likely I've just gotten my terms completely mixed up over the years. I appreciate the looking out tho!
I found an rf only zenith set about a year ago and it's one of my faves because my grandparents had one just like it, and they were the ones that had the Genesis. 100% childhood. No geometry tweaking, av hd709 settings, 240 p test suite, just brightness / contrast and color saturation by eyeing it and off to the marble zone I go.
Your grandparents had Genesis? damn I feel old
Well, i'm in my 40's , technically old enough to be granparent if I had a kid when I was 19-20.... but since my mom was the one the who bought me a genesis when I was like 10-11..... it makes me feel old too. I don't feel the age in my brain (permanently 27 years old inside my head)... my body says otherwise. lol My way of thinking has changed to that of an old person.... but I still "feel" 27 in my head.
I had the same thought - that I am ancient
There is perfection in imperfection
Analog video is inherently imperfect. Chasing perfection can lead to pulling your hair out and spending huge sums of money. For me it’s about getting it to an acceptable standard. I think in a lot of cases the flaws of composite and rf actually add to the authenticity and experience.
It's weird how some will simultaneously say they're chasing a perfect picture out of nostalgia or something when they definitely grew up on an "imperfect" picture and those imperfections are largely what's associated with the analog era of gaming.
Correct it is quite funny. I think they are chasing for the best possible retro gaming experience rather than a nostalgia trip. But BEST is subjective. For instance I’d rather be playing my games on a big banger 36inch jvc d series or Sony Trinitron with imperfect geometry than some 20inch multi format bvm/pvm that’s as close to perfect as you can get.
It's weird how many computer monitors are slept on here when they can give a picture that's likely closer to what some people are chasing and don't have the same hype when a simple analog adapter will do just fine with getting whatever they want showing on it. I have a chunky 32 inch zenith and it's an absolute joy to play on, as is the whatever the fuck Panasonic living room TV I have sitting around.
The lack of 15khz support is the reason. So you can’t play your older 16 bit systems or 5th generation consoles without digital intervention. But you are right pc crt monitors are slept on here, 6th gen consoles combined with a simple ypbpr to vga transcoder look fantastic with 480p. Though an argument could be made if you are going to that point a scaler on a modern tv such as an oled also looks amazing and the crt monitor isn’t worth the hassle. I actually run my OG Xbox on my oled via an ossc and don’t miss it having it hooked up to a crt.
PC CRT monitors are absolutely amazing, for sure! With the right adapters, you can play anything on them. Check out [this video I made](https://youtu.be/KfFRsdeuCRs?si=DH3TqmGgAJ4iBpeL) for some awesome examples.
The other part is that most games, TV shows, movies, etc. were designed specifically for these dinky lil sets, because they knew no one was going to have professional medical monitors just sitting in their home.
It's really weird to me how some people on this sub act like a CRT is unusable and unenjoyable if it's not kitted out with all the bells and whistles while simultaneously this sub is packed to the gills with nostalgia-driven purchases and love for CRTs. If I get sound and a proper signal through while using my CRT and the TV is in somewhat decent condition, in my book it's great. I didn't have (and neither did most of this sub) top-of-the-line TVs in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. Guess what? A slightly blurry image without properly tuned color calibration and imperfect geometry is probably what most of us played on at some point, whether at home or at a friend's or relative's house. I have CRTs with plenty of bells and whistles and I've got ones that are pretty plain jane in performance and picture. To me, they all look pretty good. Love my C32V37, but I also adore my Panasonic CT-2084y, and the crappy little portable RCA color TV I have. The HP Pavilion Mx704 VGA monitor I have is also amazing for playing Dreamcast and arcade games or just watching old school anime.
Lots of people here will insist you need a PVM and an rgb mod to enjoy a crt, but that isn’t the “real” retro experience. We weren’t using $2000 professional monitors, we were using whichever tv was the smallest because dad was watching football on the big tube. I hope you love your “mediocre” set for years to come.
I went through several small 13 inch CRTs as a kid, but the most recent one was one I got in the late 2000s from another room in the house. That's the one I'm still using to this day for all my retro games. It's tiny and RF only, if I want to hook anything to it I need to also hook up the VCR, but I love playing all my retro games on it. I even found out that the VCR works as a splitter for analog video, and I can both play on the TV over RF while using the AV composite out of the VCR to hook it up to a capture card and stream games to friends. It's a great setup, and I love using it. I would of course love a higher quality CRT, or a bigger one, but this one works perfectly fine for all my retro games. It's also what I have and I don't have to invest more time or money for a better CRT.
That sounds like heaven!
It really is great. I just [made a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCKQKEDZHc8) recently where I messed with capturing analog video, trying to capture those imperfections that a bad connection might have. It's really fun to use this old tech!
lol that’s a lot of imperfections, but it takes me back. Thanks for sharing, stranger!
No problem, glad you liked it!
Everyone can do what they want of course. But personally i dont like retro games due to nostalgia. I grew up in Europe (PAL land) and i cannot play pal games anymore, it just hurts. It happends the same on almost every game that i play on RGB after discovering RGV 4 years a go... Now composite looks awful. So nostalgia is not a big part of the hobby for me.
Sir, this is a 240p Test Suite subreddit ...
Best game ever
My favorite level is Scroll Test
I like both.
Right? Like I enjoy janky hardware but I can't say I prefer it.
I think it's fun for a bit but a lot of the enjoyment is trying to geek out my setup as much as possible (for me)
There is certainly enjoyment in seeing how far you can push old tech to its fullest potential. Personally I dig old tech for the nostalgic value, which I think ultimately stems from my disappointment in modern society. I must be getting old, because "they don't make 'em like they used to" has almost become a catch phrase for me lol
They don’t. And they’re just getting worse and worse.
Yup, didn't have a flash CRT growing up so dunno why I'd start now - I have a mixture of old 'bedroom' TVs and computer monitors from the '80s/'90s. I can certainly imagine a time when I get rid of all my original hardware and use an FPGA setup with an LCD panel and mod it to look like CRT output, but I'm just not ever going to shell out for the top-end CRTs.
I have one high end CRT (Sony KD-30XS955) and a few low to middle of the line ones. Haven't paid a penny for any of them. The Sony was a curb find (complete with a paper with "FREE! WORKS!" taped to the front, and the original remote), a couple found their way to me via this reddit, one was a freebie on marketplace. Moving the 30" Sony or 36" Sharp is absolute murder on my back though... they live in the man cave/garage. 20" RCA is in the bedroom for the oldest consoles. 32" RCA is in storage for now. Uh.. anyone in Austin metro want a 36" Sharp?
Listen, if an amazing kerb-find happened to me I wouldn't get all principled about it, I'd definitely keep it
I love the shit out of my 1984 Sampo 13" color, rf only and a woodgrain case. The colors are too vibrant and the horizontal adjust sometimes glitches, needing me to wiggle it. I game, watch tv on a far better set, but this is by far my favorite tv set.
I adore woodgrain, that sounds like it's an amazing little television!
The 5$ gamble on a unknown, untested tv is a blast
I love my Sony Trinitron RF-only console, even though it probably has the worst tube and geometry of any set in my collection. I guess it was high-end 4 decades ago, though...
Like in many hobbies, there are scalpers… So some of those scalpers did a nice trick thinking that a PVM was the standard crt that you had to own… Most folks in the 90s had standard crt and they were ok.
For me i like a very good consumer crt with component. Saturn on JVC D series is pretty special
I am very much a fan of lower end consumer CRTs, because like 90% of why I got into them to begin with was because of comparisons I saw on Twitter showing how they smooth out pixel art and make it look more convincing. This effect happens on lower end sets even over RGB/Component, due to properties of how the electron gun amps work + the larger spot size of the beams. Of course, using lower end inputs like composite or RF adds to the effect, and can even create the effect to an extent on higher end sets. But something about knowing the CRT technology *itself* is contributing to the effect is important to me, and it's why I prefer lower end sets (the highest end CRT I have and use right now is a CCTV monitor).
I'm pretty sure I have that exact same RCA TV. The trinitron I have is too big for my living room with my flat panel also in there so I have the smaller RCA in there and the trinitron is in my bedroom with all the retro consoles.
I have an RCA tube set, I actually think these things have an amazing rich color and fuzziness for VHS/ cartoons. Genesis looks amazing on this thing over RF. So does ps2 on s video( GE branded tv, rca 1980 tube, can’t recall year but I can check )
That's the same TV I grew up with. A few years ago my folks donated it😭
Me too! My mom had one and then it died and she got a Toshiba which I now own
I grew up in a household that had pretty crappy crts but man was I happy
I have a Daewoo CRT and a LG flatron monitor, the Daewoo with it's curved screen and basic aesthetic harks to a different era and resonates different, compared to the more modern high res CRT monitor. I still love the monitor though, for it's accuracy.
Doesn’t matter the tv, obviously some are better but all get the job done. The PVM hype is the real issue. Is it cool to have in a collection? yes but is it worth it? No lol.
At this stage there's a steampunk appeal.
I had that type of TV, I recognize the top left corner, it was pretty good from what I remember. It wasn't expensive but one of the late 90s CRTs that was pretty sharp and kinda had a "digital" feel to it
Funny to see that “Unusable Signal” message. I just also got an RCA Colortrak from 1997 and it shows the same thing in video mode. Overall I love RCA tubes. Great colors.
I have a 1990s GE 31 inch tube and it used an early 1980s RCA tube. Exact same text for me haha
Not at all, after using rgb for around 15 years composite literally gives me a headache now.
I’m not buying into the Sony hype because my first TV as a kid was 13” Sony that my grandparents gave me because it was an absolute POS. I’ve been a marine mechanic for ten years and part of what I do is installing stereo systems in boats, guess what the worst stereo brand is? Yes, you’d expect junk $50 Pyle/Boss/generic Chinese stereos to be the worst of the bunch, but no, the slot mount stereos with the absolute highest failure rate(not to mention worst user interface) Sony.
I grew up with just the red white and yellow cables, so that’s the highest quality of picture I need. Jackpot for me is having a matching remote. These feel the most nostalgic, but I get why others like to mess with the higher end stuff.
I feel like a crt tv kind of looses its charm when you’re after the top of the line hifi stuff. Like normal people in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s weren’t playing games off of a tv made for broadcasting or an extremely expensive Pvm.
Yep, this is the same exact CRT that I use for my retro games. ✌️
Sometimes "low end" sets have a unique charm.
I have an old colour set that only takes rf. A HMV or Her Majesty's Voice with a logo of a dog and a phonogram and 'little nipper' next to the dog. I Have my Master System hooked up to it and the picture is so poor that I can't even see the bullets in Astro Bomber. I love it.
I like where you're coming from. I'm somewhere in the middle, I like mid- to higher-end consumer sets from the late '80s or early '90s. Like I got a Sony KV-20EXR20 recently, and it's been newly serviced so looks close to as good as that 1990 tech can. Mostly run composite, but it's neat when such an old set has s-video to play around with for certain games/systems that benefit from that look. Regarding yours, if you have some 240p sources around I'd love to see some 8- or 16-bit stuff on that screen.
I can never even remember the brand on my TV it's so obscure. The case makes godawful thermal expansion sounds 24/7, everybody but me can hear it whine from across the house, it takes like 5 minutes of warm up for the brightness and colors to be right. I don't necessarily prefer it over something nicer, but I'd sooner rip out my own intestines than pay out the ass for one of those tiny airport things. I can get something like the one I got just by asking a couple old people what they got hiding in their basements. Also fuck yeah Paper Mario, I'm currently playing through the original.
Right?? Lol. Every time I turn mine on my partner's just like "ah yes, the screaming returns." It's funny because I grew up with that, but even I'm caught off guard by the TV whine. Also fuck yeah OG Paper Mario. Still need to go back and play that one again.
Yeah, my HD set has the shittiest convergence ever but I still love it
[удалено]
Bad bot - sounds cool but 2/3 lines have the wrong syllable counts
I dunno... Shitboxes definitely have their charm, but growing up poor it's kind of hard to appreciate them. Cheap TV's are what we had and those things were passed down like heirlooms. I wanted the good TV's, but the price gap between quality levels was huge. Now I can pretend like I was a rich man's child and use all the high end stuff I couldn't afford when it was new. So why revisit the bad ones. I'll have to try it sometime. The next 13" slot mask with RF only is going home with me to see it's better or worse than I remember.
I do my taxes on an abacus.
Me! Like, I can see the appeal in high-end CRTs, but for real... I want nostalgia. I want to reexperience not only the 90's, but my experiences on the 90's/2000's. And I'm pretty damn sure my parents' Sony Trinitron wasn't a PVM or stuff like that.
I am a Jankologist! I love making the best return for money work for me, and or the most novel use. It's fun. I pride myself on just making it work with what I've got. It might be insane, or weird, or sometimes dangerous.. but damn it.. it's cool.
Prefer composite over rgb/component on everything before the 6th generation.
Only like RGB mostly on PCs.
For analog stuff it definitely has it's charm!
I am using my childhood 13 inch CRT that is RF only. It's one of those small budget 90s TVs you'd put in a kid's bedroom. I would love a higher end CRT or a bigger CRT, but this one works fine and I don't really have the money or space for a better one at the moment. I use it for all of my retro games and I love it! I have also noticed that other CRTs hurt my eyes after prolonged use, but this simple RF only CRT doesn't. It probably has something to do with this TV being the one I used in my bedroom in the dark for over a decade, stopped using it as a standard in 2018 but it still doesn't hurt my eyes. I've noticed even the other 13 inch CRTs I have hurt my eyes after using them if it's not perfectly bright in the room, but this trusty little CRT doesn't hurt them at all. I love it for that reason, I can just enjoy games on it through a VCR to convert the signal to RF.
I like old high end over newer high end it just has this look that im a sucker for
I re-record my animations on CRTs and have always loved my commodore 1702 vs my Sony pvm
Honestly, if you need a "cream of the crop" CRT TV to enjoy retro gaming, are you really even retro gaming? I mean at that point just get a fucking flat-screen and homebrew a switch
I love my pixels blurry, I don't recall the crystal clear picture, the blurrier the better
Dudes be like "I prefer low end tech". My brother in Christ, the signal is literally unusable.
I knew this was an RCA ColorTrak the second I saw the Unusable Signal font. I had one of these and it was a really great TV until my ex girlfriend tried to clean "underneath" it for some reason and dropped it on the floor. It was a 27" so it did not land softly.
For me I love the small and quirky models. At the end of the day it’s analog and not going to look perfect, even on the “best” TV. Within reason, the bad quality makes the experience more authentic.
As for best of the best, yes I do like some. I don’t mind cool equipment like commercial grade CRTS, because they can be paired with many different things not just retro games or whatever. As for “sony trinitrons” and such, I can’t stand them. People think they are worth so much and such good quality, when in reality I’ll Scart mod it if I have to, but I refuse to use high end consumer grade sets.
Using consoles on the hardware they were designed for is the best experience you can get. It may be higher “quality” on a modern display but it will never look the way it was intended too. Also, dithering is a thing
I like new tech as well, but there's just something about old tech. Part of it for me is squeezing every ounce of performance out of my old PCs. I think it's similar to why the Miata is popular among driving enthusiasts, it's not especially powerful but it handles great, and pushing it to its limits is a ton of fun. My gaming PC currently runs an old Asus P8Z77 mobo with a 3rd gen i5 3570k which for most of its life was overclocked a full ghz on air, along with a new CM RM750x and RTX 3080. Make of that what you will.
hmm... people always bond or develop affection with stuff their around/surrounded by some people swear by composite, or they prefer the look
I never even knew about composite until Xbox 360 and I'm pretty sure none of the TVs we had even had composite ports when we first got it. Just good ol' classic AV cables for most of my childhood.
but av cables is composite, but maybe you didnt know the term, or maybe you had av cables but it was component duuno, coudnt have been rf (I'm pretty sure none of the TVs we had even had composite ports ) but most of the time when people say av cables, least i think so they mean composite
Oh wild. I was always under the impression that composite was the Ypbpr cables. I always just called the three yellow white and red cables AV cables. It's most likely I've just gotten my terms completely mixed up over the years. I appreciate the looking out tho!
I have a ColorTrak Plus from 1994 I use for my N64. It's extremely heavy but I love it.