The Evolution of CRT Technology: A Journey from Color Distortion to Modern Displays

The advent of color television brought about significant improvements in display technology, but it also introduced new challenges. The use of phosphor-coated cathode ray tubes (CRTs) to create images on the screen led to a common problem - stray electrons hitting nearby phosphors would unacceptably distort the image with unintended colors and fuzziness. This issue was further exacerbated by the need for the CRT to block stray electrons from hitting the wrong phosphors, leading to a metal sheet full of tiny holes known as the shadow mask.

The solution to this problem came in the form of the Trinitron technology developed by RCA. The Trinitron used an aperture grill made up of vertical slits instead of a metal sheet with tiny holes. This design allowed for much more energy to reach the screen, resulting in a brighter display. Sony even won an Emmy award for this innovative technology.

However, the aperture grill also had its disadvantages. As Linus mentioned earlier, Adam was initially hesitant to purchase a monitor with visible elements of the aperture grill. But as he put it, "those lines there are completely normal." Experienced users have reported that they become almost invisible after a few hours of use. The LTT store even has a strong magnet in its screwdriver and magnetic bit, which can be used to interact with magnetic fields like electron beams.

The issue of price was also a significant factor for some potential buyers. While it's possible to find TVs, especially if they're not in great condition, for significantly cheaper than what the author paid for this monitor, finding one in good shape is becoming increasingly challenging. As a result, prices are only going to go up.

Another challenge facing CRT enthusiasts is the cost of transporting these devices. Shipping a single CRT can be expensive, especially without original packaging. The author himself had to pay an employee for 10 hours of driving and reimbursement their mileage rather than shipping it via mail.

As with any electronic device, CRTs also have limitations. Unlike projectors, which can be easily replaced or upgraded, CRTs are not lamps. After years of service, they simply stop working. The author noted that the electron gun is what actually wears out, making it difficult to repair or replace.

In contrast to modern TVs and monitors, CRT technology has largely been surpassed by newer display technologies like OLED and QD OLED. While these displays have their own set of drawbacks, including burning and fixed resolution, they offer significant improvements over traditional LCDs. The author notes that if you're looking for a high-quality CRT experience, it may be worth investing in one.

For those who are still interested in exploring alternative display options, the Lenovo Legion Slim 7 is an excellent choice. This laptop offers excellent performance, fantastic battery life, and a professional-level gaming experience. With its AMD Ryzen 9 5,000 series mobile processor, it's perfect for gamers and professionals alike. The author notes that making this laptop was thoughtfully designed to ensure the maximum audio-visual experience while getting the most game time out of its battery life.

Finally, as a nod to their loyal fans, the author invites readers to subscribe to their channel and check out other videos on their platform. They also acknowledge that some viewers may have spent too much money on unnecessary items, but they appreciate the enthusiasm and dedication of their audience.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Thanks, Lenovo and AMDfor sponsoring a portion of today's video.Lenovo's slim 7 laptopoffers excellent performanceand fantastic battery life.All powered by AMD Ryzen 95,000 series mobile processors.Click the link in the descriptionor watch till the end to learn more.I just treated myselfto the greatest monitorthat money can buy.20 years ago.Whoo owOh, wow.- Wow.- But even today, this absolute unitof a desktop display goesfor more than $3000.Why, what could a CRT from 2002 do betterthan a state of the artgaming display from 2022?Did I just waste my freaking money?(upbeat music)When LCD panels arrived on the scenethey had some big pants to fill.The development of the CRT displayhad a 60 year head start.And what's crazy is that modern displaysare still playing catch upto your grandma's old TV in some ways.Especially when you compare to oneof the best consumer CRTs ever.The Sony GDM FW 900.But why is this thing so big?Well it's because of the actual CRTthe cathode-ray tube.In the back of this big boxis a heavy glass vacuum tubewith electron guns inside it.The electrons are shot at a layerof phosphorus on theglass screen at the front.Now phosphorus arematerials that emit lightwhen they're hit withelectromagnetic radiation.Remember those glow in the dark starsyou had on your ceiling as a kid.Well, it's the same fundamental principlebut to create a color image,we've got three electron gunsone for red, one forblue, and one for greenand each has their beams aimedby magnets to hit the correspondingsection of your screen.Illuminating the phosphor.This whole process happens very fastat full resolution on this display.It redraws the entirescreen, 80 times a secondbut that's not even close to 240 Hertzlet alone 360 Hertzlike the fastest displays today.Why pay over three grandfor a monitor that looks like it belongson the back of anunderfunded public library.Why do people want this?This is where we get to myfirst experience with itbecause I haven't actually gottento play with it yet.Ooh, it's on.There are two basic camps.There's retro gamers like Anthonyand sweaty gamers like David,sorry, David.- I'm a retro game.- David's also a retro game.You're more sweaty than sweaty- Sweaty retro.- That's not true.Take it back.- Your a sweatro gamer.- Sweatro.- 92 lbs.- 92 Pounds.Let's talk about whatmakes this CRT so special.It was sorry.No is a top of the line product with rarefor the time featureslike a 16 by 10 aspect ratioand a nearly undrivable rated resolutionof 2304 * 1440.Add in that it's equippedwith an SRGB modefor super accurate colorsand a high vertical refresh rate.And there is pretty muchnothing that this thingcouldn't do better than early LCDsand even many modern ones.Like how about zero pixel response timeor wait how can pixelresponse time be zero?In an LCD light shinesthrough crystals that physically shiftand turn to a allow the light throughthat process takes time.But in a CRT, when anelectron hits the phosphorit instantly produces a photonand then stops once the electron gunis no longer blasting it.What actually makes the image stayon the screen is a limitationof our own human monkey vision.When you point a high speed cameraat a CRT you'll actually seethat the entire screenis drawn line by a lineby a single point.But when we scale time backto the human perception levelit appears that thewhole screen is lit up.And that's actually why this videois gonna look a littlebit funky because we have to play aroundwith our shutter speed in orderto make the screen stop flickeringand looking weird.It's so crisp.I haven't seen a CRT ofanywhere near this grade inman, I had LCD in 2004.You see that slow moving line,going down the screen.That's due to the desynchronizationbetween the frame rate of our cameraand the refresh rate of this display.Let's put it back to 80.That better David.- That's so much better.- Wonderful.Oh,(beep)I forgot to explain whywe're using a GTX Titan X,because that's the last Nvidia cardthat still included analog outputs.That's why you chose it right.Is there anything after that?- No, that's the best card.- Crazy.This is the best CRTgaming setup you can have.Can you do DP to VGA active conversion?Probably. Right.- Okay.That was interesting.Is that I lookedfor like a good way totry to switch to analog.I'm not sure if there really is onethat actually allows you to access allof the settings in here.Cause if you're just dolike a plug and adapter.You can only do 60 Hertz.You're limited by like the HDMI specor whatever.- Pooh.- Hey that's a good tech tip.- I love it.Well, if it's on the wrong monitorwindows shift arrow key,and you could, whoopsyou can move it aroundbetween the monitors.Amazing.Adam just tech tipped me.We have to kind of fool aroundwith all displays connectedbecause if this one turns offit takes 45 minutes to warm up.- We were gonna checkthe refresh rate you.- Yes.- Currently it's running.- 300 Hz,is that like a G synclimitation or something?What is that?Oh, you know what it probably is.This is a Titan X we're running DP. 1.2.- Yeah.- Can't have the best of all worlds.That's okay.We'll settle for 300.Really?What we're gonna be looking at hereis brightness which is obviouslyinto completely different leagues.And of course, image persistence.Now here's something I didn't miss.The phosphor layer is actuallylike this far behindthe front pane of glass.So you kind of have this perceptionthat you're looking througha window at your monitoras opposed to just at your monitor.It's like your monitorsitting in a shadow box.the slight blur of having round phosphor,light emission rather than square pixelsyou really don't need any aliasing at all.It looks so clean- Flick around(beep)- This thing is crazy.Why do they not still make these things?Does it ever look good?I mean, we probably had toreduce our shutter speedso much that you're noteven getting- The sharpnessThe sense of how sharp and crisp it is.The motion is just flawless though.Another thing that's really coolis subtle gradients.Like this cloudy sky tothe clear blue sky up hereyou don't get any of that blockingor banding that you wouldpotentially see on an LCD.- There's a Twitteraccount that has like sideby side comparisons of 2D spritesfrom the 16 bit era.And it'll show them ona like crisp LCD displayas well as on like a cheaper CRT.And it makes a huge differencein how things look.Like they have a one shot of Draculafrom Castlevania on an LCD.He has these tiny littlebeardie, little red eyesbut when you put it on a CRT,they are like natural kind of blurmakes it fit up thewhole space in his eyes.And it looks so much more painterlyand like it's crazy.- Windows shift arrow key overto the other monitor.- Yeah is that gonna work?- Yeah.- Was I just imagining how much better itlooked going back to 10ADP definitely sucks.Although fun fact actuallydriving that thingat the rated resolution backwhen it came out basically impossible.And it's still doesn't look as clean.The additional brightnessis definitely a plus though.And guys LCDs have improved a lotto the point where undernormal circumstances,I would be whipping themouse around on this thinggoing man LCDs have gotten greatfor image persistence,but even this is not quite there.I would choose the LCD.- What? why- I've grown very accustomed to this levelof smoothness of animationand the response time differenceat my level of play isjust not enough to matter.- Do you thinkyou can feel a differencebetween this and the monitoror is that all justthat's you wouldn't know?- I doubt most humanswould feel a difference.There is win.I didn't even see an opponent.(Adam chuckles)And immediately uponswitching to the QD OLEDthis is using Samsung'slatest panel technologyin this alien wear monitor.The last thing I said was a big fat liebecause no I would definitelygo with this man that brightnessthat contrast that pop.OLED is a super cool technologybecause it marries someof the biggest advantagesof both CRT and LCD.One of the big problemswith early LCDs in particularwas awful black levels.While with OLED, you canturn the pixels off entirelyjust like a CRT where you justdon't eliminate that section.No.How I miss crap.That sucked.Another big advantage isthat due to the nature of OLED displaysthe pixel response timeis near instantaneous.So you get that excellentpersistence of the imageeven when you're movingaround rapidly like this.Although I do have to notethat without black frame insertion,it's not quite the same, is it?Of coursethat's not to say OLEDdoesn't have its advantages.You probably noticedit's quite a lot brighterthan our CRT.Well, that's for a couple of reasons.One is that this used to be ratedfor 125 nits of peak luminance.And it has aged down to mare 69,which is not as nice as it might sound,but turn off the lights.- Uh.Well, how do I do that?- So now's all grossbecause the blue phosphorushave probably worn out a little bit more.So after calibration.- Wooh.The thing about luminanceis that it's all relativeto the dilation of your pupil.That's why the standardfor theater level HDRis what like 80 nitsor something like that.- It's not a lot.- In a light controlled environment.You don't need a ton of luminance.Wow.Has that never been more clear?How am I supposed to decide?See, I could neverafford this kind of thingback when I was a gamer teenager,this is what..- I have something.If you're still strugglingto make a decision.- Oh, see, that's the thing.All right.OLED and CRTs share a lotof the same advantagesbut an OLED will never draw in scan lines.It is absolutely mindblowing how immediatelybetter a retro game that was designedfor a display with scan lines lookswhen you fire it uphow did this lose to the PlayStation?Oh, look at that grinding maybeBut it's been so longsince I've seen retrocontent on a proper display.I forgot how good it looked.There is no way that I would guess 4ADI.4 ADI is half the vertical resolutionof 4 ADP theoretically.Right? Cause they're interlaced.I mean, there's some trickeryso that it doesn't look like it.And that's exactly what we're seeing here.- Look at the cobblestone.Like look at how good that texture looks.- I know, right?Like this brick obviouslyby modern standards, right?This brick is not that amazing.But with proper scan lines in your displaywhich is something that you can't reallyreplicate on modern hardware,fake scan lines are a thing.You can buy adapters that will sit inbetween your retro consoleand a modern displayand will kind of mostly addthe effect of scan linesor what you can do is you can run itin emulator and many emulator supportfake scan lines to getmore of that retro look.But boy, is it ever not quitethe same men in a dark room?And here's another thingthat's really incredible.The dreamcast outputs at 4 ADI,like I mentionedbut this isn't a 4 ADI display.It runs at 2304 by 1440, 80 Hertz.CRTs don't have a native resolution.You see LCDs and OLEDshave physical pixelsthat cannot be relocated.So when you run them at anythingother than the resolution,the number of actual pixels,it's more of a pixel countthan a resolution really.They look blurry or they have artifacts.CRTs you can put in any inputwithin their supported rangeand they will run it natively.So there's no drawback to using a consoleversus a computer with this thing.It'll just look flip and awesome.No matter what.Oh, and another cool thingis that the limitationof what resolution or what refresh rateyou can run comes down to the speedwith which the gun can go back and forth.So you could lower your resolutionand up your refresh rateor lower your refresh rateand increase serve resolution.The choice is yours.Within reason.To compare our nativeimage quality with an LCD.We actually had to go find an older onethat still has a VGA input.And it should be noted that dependingon the scaler built into the panel,that VGA input could behavevery very differently.This particular BenQ wasa fair high end display.Wow does that ever look like dog crap?The craziest part of how much worsethis looks to the eye is thatthis CRT for low res games like thisactually isn't necessarilyyour best case scenario.Having your pixel pointsand not quite a pixel, more of a dothaving your dot.So pinpoint accurateactually takes away someof the softness that lowresolution consoles benefited from.It was kind of a natural anti aliasing.So if we had a CRT TV,we might even be havinga better experience.Look at what this bricklooks like in comparison.It looks like trash.Okay, let's go back.Let's go back to the CRT way better.Like it even looks more 3D.Do you guys see how,like, it just has moreof a 3D pot.The color, it doesn't shift at all.I forgot.- Wow.- It's absolutely perfect.One of the things thatmakes this particular setso accurate is that it uses the technologythat Sony developed in the sixtiesthat they called Trinitronto improve the videoquality of the televisions.When electron guns were developedthey weren't entirely accurate.And often electrons would strayfrom their intended path causing them toactivate other unintended phosphorus.It wasn't a big issue withblack and white televisionsbut once colors got involvedstray electrons hitting nearby phosphoruswould unacceptably distort the imagewith unintended colors and fuzziness.To solve this RCAdeveloped the shadow maska metal sheet full of tiny holesthat would block stray electronsfrom hitting the wrong phosphorus.But the downside to thiswas it greatly reduced display brightnessbecause the metal panel blockeda lot of the energy.The Trinitron thoughuses an aperture grillwhich is instead madeup of vertical slits.This was accompanied by achange in the arrangementof electron guns from a triangleto a straight line.And it allows much moreof the energy to make it to the screen.And thus, a brighter display.Sony actually won anEmmy for this technology.So apple isn't the only Emmyaward winning tech companythe disadvantage of aperture grill.So my old view Sonic P 95F pluswas an aperture grill display.Are we connected to the computer still?(indistinct)Okay let's switch over.(bright upbeat music)And there's one up here as well,right there.Those lines there are a visible elementof the aperture grilland they're noticeable enough that Adam,when this thing arrived, came to me,he is likeLinus I think you spent $3,000on a monitor with visible defects on it.Actually they're completely normal.And I can tell you from experiencedaily driving and aperture grill monitorthat you completely forget about them.After the first couple of hours.The LTT store screwdriverhas a super strong magnetin it and a magnetic bit.And the funny thing about electronsis they interact withmagnetic fields, right?So woo.What's going on here?It's about actually all you're doingis just taking the electron beamsand deflecting them.So I'm supposed to talkto you guys about whypeople don't buy these.One obvious one is price.Although you can find TVs, especiallyif they're not in great conditionfor significantly cheaper thanwhat we paid for this.The issue is that finding onein good shape is getting moreand more challenging.And as that becomes more and more truethe cost are only gonna go up.Even this one, which we paid a lot forsuffers from degraded phosphorusand some nicks in the anti glare coating.Another big one is cost.Even if the price isn't high,transporting these thingscan be a nightmare.How much does it costto ship one of these?Especially without the original packaging,it was cheaper for me topay an employee for 10 hoursof driving and reimburse their mileagethan to ship it via mail.And then there's voluminous.CRTs just don't get as brightand as they're used, it only gets worse.And so unlike a projectorthere's no way to change out the lamp.It's not a lamp.It's an electron gun.After years of servicethis thing just ain't gonna look the waythat it used to.So what's the answer in my opinionmodern TVs between OLEDand particularly QD OLEDwhich is in TV's nowand on the horizon for monitors.We no longer have to dealwith the shortcomings of LCDs.And while they do havesome drawbacks themselvesthe biggest one which is burningis actually shared with CRTs.There's also the fact that they runat a fixed resolutionbut from my personal experienceas we've gone to 4k and beyond,it's become far less of an issuebecause the pixel density is so highthat especially from couch distance.It doesn't make that much of a difference.But if you want the ultimatetracking down a high quality CRTmight be worth it for you.For the rest of you.Maybe you should just stickto checking out our sponsor.Thank you for sponsoringthis section of the video.The Lenovo Legion, slim 7is thin lightweight.And one of the most portable laptopsin the Lenovo Legion lineupyou can experience excellent performanceand fantastic battery life poweredby its AMD Ryzen 9, 5,000series mobile processor.And it's thoughtfully createdto ensure the maximumaudio visual experiencewhile getting the most game time outof its battery life.Making it an ultimatemobile gaming machine.The Legion slim 7 allowsfor a professionallevel gaming performanceno matter who you are and where you are.And you can click the linkin the description to learn.Thanks again, to Lenovo and AMDfor sponsoring that section of the video.Guys enjoyed this videoand you like watching mespend way too much moneyon stupid stuff.Go subscribe,cause that's a major partof our content strategy.Also you can check out this videowhere I bought a giganticthe first ultra wide displaywhich was actually arear projection display.We still have it.It still works.A shoot out, this versus that.The king of the ancient Kings.- Oh my God, we have to.\n"