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Comment by anotherhue | Hacker News Reader

I recently dusted off my mid-90s CRT and with a HDMI/VGA adapter have been using it on my main system. Call it nostalgia, refresh rate, phosphor hypnosis, whatever, but it feels simpler and quieter and less intimidating than a 32" 4K.

Maybe the glass curve conveys a sense of the system being enclosed, as opposed to all around us as today.

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It's possible to go very far down this rabbit hole, and end up browsing Sony GDM-FW900s from 2003 for thousands of dollars.

Which is why I dusted off the old one :) -- can't justify 3k in any sensible universe!

Unlike most people, I found CRT more pleasing to use than LCDs. When LCDs started to become mainstream, they were making me dizzy after short use. After using the same screen for a longer period of time, I can somewhat get used to it, but I still feel queasy after more than few hours of use. But switching to another LCD still takes me some time to adjust to make it even usable.

Lots of people find CRTs more pleasing to use than LCDs, because of better contrast ratios and lower latencies. But--fascinating--I've not heard of LCDs making people dizzy, do you have any idea what it is about the LCD that makes you dizzy?

LCDs are actually infamous for making people dizzy, with the whole PWM thing. That's why many screens are advertised as "flicker-free". I am not an expert on the technical side of things but google "LCD displays PWM dizzy" and you'll get plenty of links. Commonly PWM is used for brightness management, so the screen might be flicker-free at high brightness (the blinding one like they use in computer stores), and suddenly it starts to flicker when you turn it down.

monochrome monitor here. something about that display that is so calming and work inducing

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