The difficult part isn’t to believe the superiority of crt… the difficult part is to go to a store and buy one. Not to mention find a shop to service an old one. The last shop that I knew that they did it… has been closed for a couple of years.😢

I am crying right now. My dad used to have a huge ass Sony CRT TV in the basement which he threw out a week ago. Now that I watched this video, I found out that it was the Sony KV-40XBR700 which is one of the Holy Grail's of CRTs.

I would love to see a new 1440p CRT at 200hz. I'd buy it

Great video. To my understanding, the reason CRT computer monitors have more visible flicker at 60hz than their television counterparts is due to the choise of phosphors. Shorter persistence phosphors dont leave as long trails, but result in more visible flicker.

Sub pixel light scatter is something no other technology has been able to recreate... there is something so realistic and true to the light that emits from the phosphorous grid... skin looks like skin in a way that has depth, unlike oled or even led. It's like comparing the light of an incandescent light bulb, with an led bulb that runs the light at the same colour... one fills you with warmth (yes, physically also, but... not my point), and the other just feels cold, even though the colour of the light is warm. Incandescent light bulbs emit more light in the spectrum... making it also healthier for us, and... I wonder if light from a cathode ray tube also has that...

The amount of hate in the comments is a bit sad. CRTs totally rock!

I hate that they didn't keep even one factory running...WE GET FREAKING TN PANELS that are basically e-waste, but not CRTs which are basically required hardware for retro gaming and TV

My favourite feature of CRTs was turning them off to make the screen go static, then holding it and touching someone to give them a static shock. That was truly the best feeling. Also I learned that rubbing your hand across a SCART connector gives you a small shock. A lot of my CRT experiences involve electric shocks.

Finally I understood the benefit of black frame insertion, subscribed.

I remember when LCD monitors started to become widespread in offices in the early 2000s. Boy were they shitty. Grainy, blurry and un responsive. They only made the beancounters happy, due to less energy consumption (also for the air con) and more real-estate on the desk.

Great video mate. I've in the past few years accumulated a few CRTs and I can definitely say a few things as a regular 4k 120hz OLED user as a our main TV. 1. 60hz VGA screens have 100% noticeable flicker, 72-75hz+ does not. I run mine at 85hz. 2. At 85hz i don't suffer any eye strain. 3. Consumer sets at 50hz have no flicker whatsoever. I regularly play games in PAL as that's my local region. No eye strain there either. 4. Sony Trinitron's are over priced or over rated. A PVM isn't worth the money or complexity to maintain and their VGA consumer sets have the damn visible damper wire which i seem to constantly notice. 5. Be prepared to pickup some technical maintenance skills as many of these items are well used and even more are tired. Be sure to test units in person before buying something, especially if you're picky or are paying a large sum for a desirable model. I'm quite curious as to why 50-60hz consumer sets have no flicker and VGA sets do. Do you have an explanation for this? Not sure if you covered it in the video.

man i love watching stuff on the old tube, they should really start making CRTs again

One thing that this video doesn't mention about disadvantages of CRTs is their power comsumption and influence of "environment" on the image quality. I remember from my childhood that CRT in comparison with even early LCDs looked like washed out crap with non-existing black levels and pain-inducing flickering. The reason is that during daylight CRTs were not able to produce bright enough image to win against the power of the sun, so the whole image became a grey mess. It wasn't an issue during the nighttime, but let's be honest as a kid you could not use a PC that late, or even be awaken and most people work during daylight hours. So the issue of crappy image quality was prevalent in circumstances when CRTs were meant to be used.

crts are not uggly. They are very charming

Good job dude this is actually great. Definitely will be checking in from time to time

I wonder how awesome crt monitors would be today if they were still in development today. It would be awesome if there were brands that would take up manufacturing crt monitors again and put time into developing thinner and lighter than they used to be would be cool if it was possible.

Edited the dat file on my monitor to run at 240hz 480p and the smoothness is insane. I wish CRT tech kept being improved.

CRT monitors are not bad and they are not ugly. They have personality and they are robust. People say they are fragile but they are not, you just have to be careful not to drop them like you have to be careful not to drop your flat monitors. Honestly I am wondering if I should invest in a nice CRT Monitor because I rarely play any FPS games.

Such a good video my guy, ty for explaining this

I think the answer is in gray to gray ghosting. LCD is ghosting because of the time it takes to change a pixel from one color to another. Sometimes the time it take a pixel to change into whatever the next frame requires are longer than the time it takes for yet another frame instruction to arrive.

I remember when we all started to transition to LCDs from CRTs back in the early 2000's. Sure LCD's were new, sleek, and opened up your whole desk, but it was generally accepted that they looked way worse. The biggest issues were the worse black levels and the motion blur. There really wasn't much of a competition though, the heft of a CRT was just untenable. We all just stopped recognizing that CRT's even existed.

I wish I lived in an alternate reality where SED/FED tech took over LCD in 2005 and then the tiny electron emitters mimicked CRT strobing to lower motion blur.

The bad part is that people like us whom like 0 lag and blur are labeled as picky and fussy. The very first time I used an LED TV I felt the horrible lag. Unfortunately in the past my family forced me to get rid of my CRT monitor because of space, it was an LG Flatron EZ 17" (t730sh), I feel sad about it but thinking over and over will only make me feel worse. I will eventually buy another one. I hope that the industry will still manufacture some CRT Monitors and TVs as retro is slowly growing popular, the problem is that what dictates the trends is the mass and most don't care about purity of gaming experience. Hope never dies, I keep positive.

The best thing about crts is the thing you can't explain to someone who hasn't experienced it: the immersion in content. It's almost like vr when compared to lcd

Crt have been improved as FED and SED but it never came to fruition.

So to sum it up, you can push as many new frames to the display as you want but if it's not clearing/blanking the old frames first you've got motion blur.

I always ask myself why I always enjoyed to watch movies on CRT TVs or monitors. Something was right.

I think one of the reasons why crt got replaced very quickly in offices is because lcds have a more clear picture and is less blurry which helps with text.

These monitors are just for fun. An average guy shouldn't use them as a primary monitor. The eye fatigue is real and painful. All that flickering gave me so much headache that I remember why the hell I always had headaches while playing some games in my childhood.

It's a shame CRT monitors are no longer being produced or improved on

I think CRT monitors are beautiful, unironically.

My friend had a giant ViewSonic CRT and its still one of the best pictures Ive ever seen.

120Hz BFI on an OLED was the closest we get to good motion resolution. Guess what, they dumped it...

The best thing about CRTs over the other types: no latency. Zero.

The biggest drawback of CRT monitors is IMHO eye strain. I still remember having headaches and sore eyes after spending a late night in front of the PC during CRT days. Having to deal with image geometry and soft corners was also a bit of a pain with CRTs.

They were cool but my eyes never want to go back to flickering. I am perfectly happy with my 165hz IPS monitor

amazing video you deserve so much more

Honestly the video capture of the CRT screen makes it look like complete garbage. It doesn't really deliver the point being made.

My 20 year old 17 inch Dell CRT looks smoother than a 180hz freesync LCD that I just bought and returned. It's really frustrating.

Great video! I just honestly wouldn't downplay how great BFI modes are in a select few recent oled tvs, especially the LG CX/C1 and a few PC monitors tuned by Blurbuster. They can absolutely reach or surpass CRT's motion clarity. an LGC1 at 120hz with BFI maxed is incredible for videogames! It took basically 2 decades but we're getting there, finally.

I wish I could get my hands on a decent quality CRT that wasn't over $100

If you are ok with CRTs or Backlight strobing on modern displays, i honestly envy you. Here is my story. I used CRTs in school and university and i had headache after some time. Bigger and flat ones were better for me, but still painful after an hour. Some of them ran at 100hz at 768p, also not helping much. Not happening on TV, but i viewed them from quire far. Never had that on TN, IPS, OLED. Friends VA also was okay, but I didn't had them personally. On another hand, my cheap 144hz TN has noticeable motion blur. If i use Backlight strobing it does reduce blur significantly, almost to none. But my eyes hurt after a few minutes. I guess I'm sensitive to that thing.

I liked the great explanation of motion blur.

if you ever want to use these i suggest to get a sunglasses and an eye drop to use every 5 minutes because i remember these was painful to look at for more than 1 hour

Honestly I would pay real money for a nice CRT monitor. I rarely play super competitive games.

you point around 7 minute mark is exactly why I push for black frame insertion in modern displays. because these MF dont realize increasing refresh rate doesn't matter if you can't drive it. currently on the oled_gaming subreddit, you can find people literally buying $800-1400 OLED displays but their computer can't even drive them properly. And its just insane. I could drive a 360hz OLED playing counter strike 2 or hunt showdown or world of warcraft, but most gamers cannot. What would be superior is having an LCD/OLED that mimics a CRT in terms of pixels on vs pixels off, giving that same illusion to our eyes that give us such perfect motion clarity. If they developed an OLED that was say 240hz and included a true black frame insertion mode that kept the full refresh rate, it would be pretty sweet. As it stands, modern BFI will generally double your visual performance. 120hz + BFI looks exactly the same as native 240hz. 240hz + BFI would look like native 480hz.... and obviously having less fps, BFI helps improve. Sure, new 4k monitors are coming that are 240hz, and have a 120hz BFI mode (runs in 240hz mode, but only every other frame is displayed, so frame black frame black frame black and so on). sure, for console, that 120hz + BFI mode might be awesome, but most people already have 120hz OLED gaming TV's with BFI.... not to mention television BFI is superior because both LG and SONY (the top brands for oled tv's) use a "rolling scan" black frame insertion. and it works. hell my sony xperia 1 mark 2 uses a rolling scan BFI and its only 60hz but feels like 120hz. its amazing. watching movies/anime on my phone in bed is way nicer than watching anime/movies on my PC gaming monitor, simply because my aw3423dw 3440x1440 175hz oled doesn't have BFI. so you get extreme judder in panning shots and its clear as day in anime.... yet on my phone which is oled + BFI you can't even tell it exists.... I would kill for a proper 240hz+BFI oled gaming monitor. sadly, we aren't getting it yet. i had that shitty ips viewsonic blur busters certified 1080p display which had BFI at 60, 120, and 240hz.... 60hz bfi made my eyes hurt. it was atrocious. 120hz + bfi wasn't bad, but looked like native 240hz.... and then 240hz vs 240hz+bfi was no difference because pixel response wasn't good enough to show a difference. so technically its ;capped to 240hz with or without BFI. however OLED actually has TRUE sub 1ms pixel response, so any BFI at any level would be amazing. I really want 240hz+BFI.... true 240hz BFI. a solution to the native aliasing on crt displays for LCD/OLED? honeycomb subpixel structure. instead of a subpixel of red/green/blue we need a technology where 1 subpixel can produce the entire range of color in one subpixel. have it in a honeycomb/hexagonal setup. and since the subpixels would be so small, you end up with a sharper display as the PPI would be much much higher.

What a great video thanks for the cool information

Nothing beats a crt! And I have an oled c1, a crt and a plasma so I can say it because I am always comparing... specially the movement of cameras that are very noticed on oled/lcd but not at all on a crt...

I really hope we'll get SED/FED monitors one day although I doubt it... Great video btw!

I wish I still had one. I used to have a 21" Mitsubishi. I miss it. I would even take a 21" ViewSonic that's how much I want one.

LCD/LED has always been inferior but could you imagine how deep a 100” crt would need to be. I still have a CRT monitor for retro gaming, but you need a deep desk, modern monitors take up so little room.

The PS3 on my widescreen 480p crt at 30fps plays smoother than many PS5 games on my Oled. Not even kidding, just try Resistance, amazingly smooth 30fps.

I love CRT tvs. I still have my "40inch" Toshiba CRT. Play my PS4 on it. The image clarity, sound (bass/treble/theator quality surround sound), color depth, contrast, etc are amazing to me. One of the many things I love about my CRT (and it's a major plus) is that the image & sound quality have not decreased at all over the years. Nor has the image started to look washed out/overlit. Every HD tv I've had (top brands too) have always lost image & sound quality as they start to age & always end up looking washed out. My CRT Toshiba still looks & sounds just as great as the day I bought it. Great video!

Yeah when you go back to crt from playing on a flatpanel, plugging in like a Mega Drive into a CRT and pressing jump buttom feels like the character is jumping slightly before you press it. Not a joke it genuinely feels like that. Obviously impossible but its more of a feeling thing, must be something to with your brain being adjusted to lag.

I think this vid and your channel are destined to blow up. This video is excellent!

On the topic of latency, do hdmi or display port to vga converters add latency? If so would you know how much? On my CRT it doesn't feel noticeable but I'm just curious what penalty conversion brings

You're making me want to give my CRTs another try. I already knew about what you told in this video but sometimes, an ultrawide monitor is good.

11:11 I own both a CRT display @60 Hertz(It's a Sanyo VM4209) and a gaming monitor(BenQ EX2780Q @144 hertz) and I can affirm your claim. They both feel about as smooth to use despite being made about 45 years apart.

great video. i have a mitsubishi 2060u, 22 inch 120khz. running it at 800x600 at 160hz it has the smoothest image ive ever seen in person

Black frame insertion done well on modern tvs would definitely make crt obsolete

Great Video!

This is an excellent video. Very informative and clearly argued. Well done!

wow dude this is such a great video I can't believe it only has 33k views and you don't even have 2k subs... damn...

Very well made video. Like.

Crt started to died when there was a attempt at 29 inches TV that didn't last longer than the other small ones.

Does that mean someone would have to make monitors or TVs that have a flicker based on the screen literally turning off for a millisecond?? seems more eficient that the black frame thing because the blur will still be there even if its all black because the monitor isnt stopping image output entirely, like the CRT did with their flickering flaw.

Everything you said is indeed fact APART FROM.....when you said CRT's are ugly. They are beautiful goddessess.

15:13 IMO the Kega Fusion composite is a bit *too* blurry, should be a middle option that has ~213 horizontal lines and another that doesn't completely blur the image so you can still see dithering but it's less obvious.

You are a hero

according to first 3 minutes of video, there is actually anti blur technology which flickers on LCD panles but only on BenQ/Zowie monitors called "Blur Reduction" or newer "DyAC"

They really need to start remaking the CRTs

great video

I have a CRT monitor I got free from someone and I love it. It has downsides like, yeah, size and danger if dropped or if I ever need to repair to, but it works better for me. I game at 1024x768 at 118Hz (the best I can get out of it), and it actually works *very* well, I oftentimes forget that it's not 1080p. As long as I have antialiasing enabled, at least. I did have to scrub the damaged anti-glare coating off it because otherwise it was awful, so I can't really use it without having the curtains closed in my room. I will not be getting any new LCD or any flat panel monitor until I can get something that is as good as a CRT in picture quality and feel. And I do wish I could exchange resolution for refresh rate on modern monitors.

Extremely underrated channel.

165hz feels just perfect

I"m still using my CRT for playing games, sometimes i use the LED ones for some games and aplications such as Adobe Animate, Blender, Premiere but my main playing monitor is the CRT one, Motion Clarity even at 60 hertz is another level, there is no modern scream that come even close to what CRTs can make, there's no input lag, colors are great, natural bloom, black levels.. CRT is the king.

I forgot the name of the tech... it was supposed to replace CRT with a pixel grid structure like LCD, but, each pixel was a very small cathode ray tube like pixel... that would've been a good replacement... I think. Maybe, though, the motion blur would still be a problem with that as well.

Could you "emulate" a CRT with a 240HZ Monitor, if your PC/Console can only render 60Hz by only displaying an Image only every 4 Frames and leaving the other 3 Frames black?

I tried 120Hz + BFI on my OLED (the LG 65 G1 can do that). It passed the UFO test for me. Regardless of the speed I couldn't see any motion blur anymore. But 120Hz without BFI was already quite good.

I might have missed it but other advantage crt has over new monitors is that, because of the lower resolution you can choose, games at that resolution benefits in performance but at the same time they look better at that resolution in crt than a newer monitor because of how crt works. The only downside of them are maybe HUD elements that are programmed with higher res in mind being out of proportion

love the sudden pop 2008

I used a 17" CRT monitor next to a 22" LCD a few months back. The CRT would often develop a painful high pitched squeel. The CRT was dimmer & took a few seconds to reach peak brightness. The CRT's text was blurry. The CRT's image needed tweeking a bunch of settings to be mostly square and centered--and changing the resolution meant all those settings went wonky. I didn't really care about the weight and bulk when I later replaced the CRT with another LED monitor.

There is still aliasing, but I get what you mean about it. I went to check it on my CRT and I guess it seemed less noticeable, playing with 640x480 had the same amount of aliasing as playing 1280x720 on my other PC with a normal monitor; it may be because of the game though.

I never stopped using them

My mom's old CRT television still works perfectly, meanwhile my 6 month old monitor keeps getting dead pixels.

11:05 PAL 50hz televisions are notorious for their noticeable flicker even on consumer TVs with relatively slow decaying phosphors (which, however, were good enough to display 60hz content without flicker). This was also the reason why 100hz european televisions with digital preprocessing were made (which is an absolute bummer and also the reason for HDTV CRT televisions being primarily in NTSC countries). This is an additional issue: the slower the phosphor decay is, the less noticeable the flicker on lower refresh rates is, and the more noticeable are blur trails on high contrast moving content (mouse pointer on a black background, for example) still much more bearable than any sample-and-hold LCD tho

A way around that is to just pulse the backlight to each new frame.

I use 21 inch crt monitor with 140khz...this monitor with 85Hz is faster than my gaming oled monitor with 144hz and g sync on.

Makes me wonder if there is a in between technology that could exist. Like what would happen if we remade crt monitors?

Yes, you have to use Virtual DVD-ROM/CD/Utility

Regarding anti-aliasing: Lack thereof isn't _that_ much of an issue in old games, but many games from the last 10 years or so require it, because there's so much fine detail going on, that only temporal anti-aliasing can get rid of. (With the side effect of introducing noticeable image blur, especially at lower resolutions ...) Rise of the Tomb Raider was the first game where I really noticed that. Even at 4k and with "classic" AA solutions (initially, it did not ship with temporal AA; DLSS was added later), you couldn't get rid of the flickering.

I have a 21" IBM P275 (fd trinitron tube) that can do 1024x768 at 120hz or 1600x1200 at 100hz, it's super awesome for retro gaming, and only paid like 10 bucks for it. Wish I could also get a FW900 to use for modern gaming but no luck so far

I am from the world of PAL

Didn't really get why Oled can't come close to matching CRT in motion clarity, the near instantaneous pixel response time and black frame insertion would create a very similar effect, at the cost of brightness, whilst having all those other benefits, and a 4k display can drop to 1080p losslessly, just dispay 4 of the same pixel. Yes Oled will never look exactly like CRT but is CRT the end all be all best technology?

I agree with everything but refresh rate with low fps. There is actually no connection between both. There is definitely a big noticeble difference between 60hz and 144hz at locked 30fps in game. So the main rule for the refresh rate - higher is always better, despite the fps. After about 20 years fast OLEDs are finally coming, so people would be able to see and feel how it was on CRTs back in the days in case of motion blur. My fav preferences were 800x600x120hz in the beginning of 2000s.

The issues with crts, while covered are underplayed here for sure, number one being you can only buy used and burn in can be an issue so the supply is dwindling. Noise causes by the crt is another issue. Also the claims of crts being cheap or free because you can only buy used is disingenuous. Lcd monitors can be acquired in the same way, and much easier imo. Finally you don't even mention how fatiguing the flicker can be for a considerable portion of people. This makes crt unusable in many situations for people, and is a major reason crts are dead. This video does a good job at sharing benefits of crts, but I mostly take issue with the title declaring then better.

why didn't i and most people notice these advantages back in the mid 2000s when we started moving to flat screens and it was seen as way better ?

we need brand new 24 inch CRT monitors and consumer TVs, bigger than 24 is not economic to manufacture. I hope one of the TV manufacturers finally sees the market for this kind of product and start producing them. I recently ran DOOM in PCem which emulated old 1980s and 1990s PCs, and it looks horrible on my display that's why I will definitely buy a CRT.

2:32 what game is this? looks very interesting

Well, there are two different FPS: one is displayed FPS and one is rendered FPS. Before Nvidia's G-Sync tried to make them the same this is how displays worked. If you turned off VSYNC in your game there would be tearing, and you could "display" 200fps on a 60Hz screen (sort-of, not really ofc.). The opposite is also true: you can render things at 30fps with say 90Hz refresh rate, each frame will be drawn 3 times then. Still, you make very interesting points in this video, and my 30kg of mostly glass CRT monitor indeed displays motion better than the S-IPS LCD I still use. I wouldn't say that the difference is huge, maybe my eyes aren't sensitive to the effect. It was far worse on a PVA monitor I had before: great for photos, perfect black, good colors, terrible for motion, despite also having a "60Hz refresh". Guess several frames got blurred together there.