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[Xdrive05]

Nintendo Switch on a 22" VGA CRT PC monitor (ViewSonic G220f). Incredible colors and black levels! Apologies for crappy off-screen iPhone SE photography not doing it justice; it looks WAY better in person. This is with a $30 HDMI to VGA converter.

Some observations from dinking around with this setup:

• CRTs completely get around the common Switch limitation of needing upscaling to 1080p (and then upscaling again up to 4k if you're on a 4k set). Games that run sub 1080p still look amazing and have none of the pixel stretch needed to fill the fixed panel of a flatscreen. It just displays what's there with none of that fuzzy jank.
• Colors really pop and black levels are great. This is probably familiar to folks on OLED?
• Motion clarity is better than even my Switch OLED screen, presumably because of no sample-and-hold to deal with. This is most apparent on 60fps titles, but you can even see better motion clarity at 30fps like TotK.
• Absolutely zero input lag.
• I really wish I had a proper camera that could show you what this looks like to the naked eye. These phone pics are not even close. But hopefully they give some idea.

 

[LordOcidax]

CRT>>>>>>>LCD

 

[RetroGamingUK]

CRT>>>>>>>LCD

Yup, CRT was such a downgrade.

Hopefully OLED costs can come down enough to make them mainstream.

 

[near]

Dated hardware looks good on dated hardware. Colour me surprised.

 

[Senua]

Everything is awesome on a CRT

 

[Topher]

CRT pics and a 56k warning?

 

[Xdrive05]

CRT pics and a 56k warning?

Hol' up, I got the macarena too loud on my walkman rn. Gotta get laid before Y2K drizzops.

 

[Physiognomonics]

Yup, CRT was such a downgrade.

Hopefully OLED costs can come down enough to make them mainstream.

You mean LCD obviously.

 

[Hudo]

Man, I need to get the old Trinitron from my parents' house...

 

[intbal]

Man, I need to get the old Trinitron from my parents' house...

Too late.
They sold it to fund a Caribbean cruise holiday.

 

[HyperSeg]

I just recently reacquired a CRT after over 20 years, and I knew I missed it the moment I saw the BIOS splash screen on my Windows 98 PC.

p.s. I used to have 56k but my current internet speed is about 9821 times faster
.

 

[Hudo]

Too late.
They sold it to fund a Caribbean cruise holiday.

I'll just need to hunt down the buyer. John Wick 5.

 

[cireza]

Anything on a CRT looks 10 times betters than on shitty LCD.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

My only issue is that I'm collecting too many CRTs. I think I have 6 or 7 in the house by last count... can't pass up decent ones (especially smaller color CRTs with a nice strong curve; I actually prefer that to later models) when I spot them for a few bucks out there. It's the only way I'll play any retro games.

I always worry that they'll gradually die out. Speaking of which: does anyone in the world manufacture new CRTs today? Even for some specialty purpose? Or is it entirely a dead technology with no more manufacturing?

 

[FoxMcChief]

CRT’s were the best. My 150 lbs. 13” screen in 1998 was better than any tv today.

 

[buenoblue]

Oh no, I'm gonna be searching CRT tvs and monitors all night on eBay again

 

[FoxMcChief]

This was my first tv that was all mine and in my bedroom.

I played SNES, PS1, N64 and Dreamcast on it. Yeah. Probably my favorite tv I ever owned.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

Dated hardware looks good on dated hardware. Colour me surprised.

It may be dated, but Switch has more amazing games on the platform then both of it's rivals and it runs a very very high chance of beating the GOAT in overall sales.

 

[StereoVsn]

I have been eying Retrotink 4K partially to get Switch to upscale better on 4K TV. It’s expensive AF thought.

 

[tommib]

CRTs are amazing.

 

[CherryFalls]

OLED > CRT

CRTs are waaay overrated imo.

Even playing old school games like ps1 look insane playing them on a 65" oled tv emulated and upscaled to 4k, compared to 'native' hardware on a crt

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

Even playing old school games like ps1 look insane playing them on a 65" oled tv emulated and upscaled to 4k, compared to 'native' hardware on a crt

awful, imo

Blowing up games meant for medium-sized screens to play on giant wall-sized screens is the ugliest thing imaginable. Play it nicely on a 20 to absolute max mid-20-ish inch CRT and that's exactly the top level of fidelity the games were built for. Anything bigger distorts to the point of ruining the entire visual design.

 

[Trogdor1123]

What’s the next big tv change? Certainly there must be something on the horizon out a few years (like 10)?

 

[Xdrive05]

What’s the next big tv change? Certainly there must be something on the horizon out a few years (like 10)?

I would hope that it's new flatscreen technology going after motion clarity rather than single image resolution, which is where almost all of the industry has been focused until very recently. I'm thinking OLED and tech like Nvidia Pulsar (and hopefully some non-proprietary version of that) should get us to the better future for gaming screens.

The industry seriously regressed going from CRT to flat panels, such that only now - twenty years later - are they starting to pour their R&D back into what matters for games in motion.

 

[AJUMP23]

I like it on my OLED too.

 

[tkscz]

OLED > CRT

CRTs are waaay overrated imo.

Even playing old school games like ps1 look insane playing them on a 65" oled tv emulated and upscaled to 4k, compared to 'native' hardware on a crt

Yes, EMULATED. The emulator would clean up the image way beyond what it's meant to look like but if you had the original console and managed to get it hooked up to an OLED, it would look awful. Unfortunately the true successor to CRT, Plasma, was too expensive and didn't last long versus LCD.

I miss my Panasonic 1080i CRT TV. Got the best of all worlds on that thing, heavy as fuck though.

 

[nkarafo]

OLED > CRT

CRTs are waaay overrated imo.

Even playing old school games like ps1 look insane playing them on a 65" oled tv emulated and upscaled to 4k, compared to 'native' hardware on a crt

But no matter what you do, you will still have that dreaded LCD motion blur whenever the picture moves.

So, enjoy your awesome looking still images.

 

[LordOfChaos]

Yup, this is the power level Switch was made for

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Black & White or Bust

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Yeah, I briefly tried MK8 and Celeste on a CRT. It’s glorious. Big-pixel games like Celeste especially get a completely different look, so different from the all-screen sharpness that is the norm on digital displays, and it makes them better.

 

[deriks]

Yup, CRT was such a downgrade.

Hopefully OLED costs can come down enough to make them mainstream.

You can't mess with the king, but OLED is great

 

[BlackTron]

I'll just need to hunt down the buyer. John Wick 5.

Plot twist: the buyer killed the family dog when he dropped the TV on it.

 

[intbal]

OP, which HDMI to VGA converter are you using and do you recommend it?

 

[TintoConCasera]

OLED > CRT

CRTs are waaay overrated imo.

Even playing old school games like ps1 look insane playing them on a 65" oled tv emulated and upscaled to 4k, compared to 'native' hardware on a crt

 

[HRK69]

 

[K' Dash]

Dated hardware looks good on dated hardware. Colour me surprised.

now that we have the low IQ reply out of the way, the real conversation can get started.

 

[StereoVsn]

But no matter what you do, you will still have that dreaded LCD motion blur whenever the picture moves.

So, enjoy your awesome looking still images.

If it’s a modern OLED high speed monitor that is fed by Retrotink 4K, it may be ok as long as the game targets 60 fps or more.

But that’s a very specific and expensive setup and it still won’t help games with frame rate issues on original hardware.

 

[near]

now that we have the low IQ reply out of the way, the real conversation can get started.

I deserve that.

 

[nkarafo]

If it’s a modern OLED high speed monitor that is fed by Retrotink 4K, it may be ok as long as the game targets 60 fps or more.

Motion blur on modern panels is never ok at 60fps. The scrolling/camera pan motion blur only start to clear up at 240fps or more, if you have a 240hz screen or better.

There are (supposedly) some technologies that can reduce this problem. Things like hardware BFI and the like. Personally, i only ever tested software BFI and it's atrocious. It does the job (100% cleans up motion blur to the same level as a CRT) but it also completely kills the colors and brightness.

I still personally haven't seen a single monitor or TV that gives the same clean result as a 60hz CRT. There's always some artifact that gets in the way. The only time i get close to CRT motion clarity is with my 240hz monitor and only when the content runs at 240fps. And even that is about 80% the CRT's clear motion. I think you need 360hz/fps to reach 100%.