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Comment by jjeaff | Hacker News Reader

But is there really a small cohort of CRT nostalgics out there? I mean I get the records, the sound is unique and music is absolutely ubiquitous. Arcade gaming is a much smaller market and I find it hard to imagine that there are enough CRT purists out there to warrant a business.

Especially considering a nice new OLED could be fashioned to look like a CRT.

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I use CRT as my main screen. Some reasons for it:

1. I can choose any resolution without blurring... problem now worse with 4k screens (lots of angry posts in Stellaris forums due to UI that is hard to read in 4k and become blurry if you lower the resolution...)

2. Ridiculous response speed... playing Crypt of the Necrodancer or Super Hexagon is much, much more fun on CRT, all mistakes feel like it was purely lack of skill, instead of feeling something unfair happened. Ditto for fps... CS community in fact is hogging all CRT, the ones I knew for sale all ended in some CS player home willing to fudge settings to end with crazy refresh rate and response speed (there is even a video of a guy pulling 200+ fps by using interlaced mode!)

3. Better blacks and whites... in fact, this was the main reason, when CRTs died I also abandoned them, but all screens I had after had colour or contrast problems, I had to fiddle with settings constantly, one day my screen broke and a CRT was available nearby, when I plugged it in, I was blown away by the image quality that required only geometry settings, no endless messing with gamma, colour profiles and whatnot.

4. Not valid anymore, but until recently CRTs were much cheaper than flat panels of equivalent quality, at least on my country... but now with "new" stocks empty, used prices around rising, I even own a CRT tv that now on eBay costs more than the price it has when it was new... (this particular model is also the one used as reference for some SNES emulators CRT "filters")

Out of curiosity, color CRTs do have a kind of native resolution. It's the RGB pattern used to show colors.

See: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3a2tx6/do_old_c...

You can get all sorts of Sony Trinitrons off of sites like Craigslist for free... just turn up and haul them away

And CRT are just a giant light bulb, bombarding you with not so good radiation. Add to this the fact that the corner are never going to be perfectly square. I get the attraction for some of the superior quality of the CRT, but once this technology has been overtaken by a superior one, there is little sense to look back.

> And CRT are just a giant light bulb, bombarding you with not so good radiation.

In other words, you do not know how a CRT works.

Educate yerself, it's free: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube

The article is a poor source for your argument, because it does at length argue about the health risks of X-Rays emitted by CRTs.

It's more helpful to put it into perspective with other radiation sources:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Radiatio...

IOW, radiation dosage of using a CRT for a year comparable to ten bananas.

I don't see the "does at length argue about the health risks of X-Rays emitted" in the article. It discusses them and concludes that they are widely considered safe.

> CRTs can emit a small amount of X-ray radiation as a result of the electron beam's bombardment of the shadow mask/aperture grille and phosphors. The amount of radiation escaping the front of the monitor is widely considered not to be harmful. The Food and Drug Administration regulations in 21 C.F.R. 1020.10 are used to strictly limit, for instance, television receivers to 0.5 milliroentgens per hour (mR/h) (0.13 µC/(kg·h) or 36 pA/kg) at a distance of 5 cm (2 in) from any external surface; since 2007, most CRTs have emissions that fall well below this limit.

> Especially considering a nice new OLED could be fashioned to look like a CRT.

Except for all the old cabinets that just won't work with it I guess.

Ah, but it would be less "vibrant" and "nostalgic", according to the article.

vinyl : digital audio as crt : lcd

That's an interesting comparison, particularly now. Until the last few years CRTs certainly had better image quality than the alternatives.

And vinyl forces a better mastering where digital audio allows loud and compressed sound...

Vinyl, nokia 3310, vintage clothing, furniture. The whole Etsy phenomenon... Nostalgia and older stuff is a huge market. Just look at vintage gaming in general. You still cannot buy a NES classic edition for less than double retail recommended pricing. Also CRTs have 'something' that no panel will ever have. The curve, the thick glass edges, the static buildup, the scan error, the whole heavy tactility, the legendary white noise. And as gen X ages, they'll get nostalgic, and willing to pay. I'd invest.

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