The Consumer Electronics Hall Of Fame: Sony Trinitron (2018)
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
Sony PVMs (professional video monitors), such as used in a tv production studio have been increasing in market value. Similar tubes but with more advanced electronics.
To the best of my knowledge there are zero remaining manufacturers of CRTs in the world.
TVs are especially bad, in the default mode some of them have ~200ms input lag. "Game Mode" usually brings it down to more like 20ms though.
Edit: did a google, don't know how accurate these are: https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/inputs/input-lag
It seems most get under 20ms lag when put into game mode, which I'd think is what matters to most people. At that point, when it isn't daisy-chained with any other lag (so a wireless controller delay will make a difference), it's imperceptible to me. I am not a professional gamer though, and from what I understand the higher refresh rates that pro gamers use (such as a 240 Hz monitor) have measurable improvements in their performance as gamers.
This seems to just be TVs too - monitors get much better numbers. I find higher input lag to be much less of an issue when using analog sticks vs a mouse.
For me at least the difference between ~2ms and ~10ms input lag is very noticeable when aiming with a mouse, but basically imperceptible with say a wired 360 controller (I'm assuming the 360 controller isn't adding significant input lag itself though).
A 20ms response time still means the signal is dropping every fifth frame in a 60 fps game.
Could you reword this?
Many TVs buffer several frames for video processing in their default mode, which is why they can have 100s of ms of latency when not in game-mode; the response time is identical regardless of which mode it is in though, as the response time is purely a property of the panel.
An excellent gaming screen like a PG258Q might have GTG of 1 ms but at the full 240 Hz it still has about 5 ms of input lag.
Such a setup isn't cheap, but it's far more reliable and space-efficient than a giant CRT.
That said, I still generally prefer to use my PVM CRT monitor for gaming for reasons already discussed in this thread. It really can't be beaten.
Lag might still be an issue depending on the electronics, but the screens have a roughly 10us response time.
Of course these are things we won’t see for decades.
https://www.lg.com/us/experience-tvs/oled-tv/features
https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/a9g-oled
That criteria has been available to consumers (at a premium) for a few years now. I suspect 240 Hz is only a few years away, but I admit that is a shot in the dark.
The panels will get cheaper, but the links will start to become seriously cost prohibitive. If you want 10 bpc 4K240 you're looking at 60 Gbps. I'm curious when the consumer optical renaissance will hit. 2030?
Not much can output that, but it's here.
I have seen plenty of stores selling (small) CRTs in stores in Asia. They are usually quite small, and I bet they are quickly disappearing, but they are still around.
https://www.cnet.com/products/sony-kv-36fs12-wega-36-crt-tv/
(It's 222 pounds for those who don't want to click the link).
I used to lug around a 27" CRT by myself every time I moved, and it was a giant pain in the ass. It was worth it though for the picture quality.
And for that matter, 36" ≅ 91cm, 27" ≅ 69cm, although strangely TVs are still advertised in inches in many otherwise-metric countries.
I guess I'm Americentric.
You are probably pretty close based on the details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FD_Trinitron/WEGA
When we moved from a 3rd floor walk-up to our house, one mover used several straps to strap it to his front and carried it down the stairs by himself. He was a beast, as broad as he was tall.
Only as anecdata, I stil have and use daily a "huge" Sony 32" trinitron as TV:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16060031
that is 75 Kg/165 lbs, so 100 Kg or more for a 36" seems just right (as said on the other thread I have a special table/support for it).
And BTW the only reason why I changed my good ol' (as well trinitron) 20" inch computer monitor with a "flat" 22" screen is because aging I see better the screen at a slightly increased distance (i.e. thanks to the reduced thickness I can have the screen some 30-40 cm farther on my desktop).
Yeah, not for very much. And certainly not for an amount worth dealing with the "You should take money off that because it doesn't have HDMI. Hurr-durr." crowd on fleabay.
When I see my Sony GDM-FW900 boat anchor actually selling for more than $1000, then I'll believe you.
Specifically the BVM-D24E1WU & BVM-D32E1WU. They usually go for a few thousand dollars un-calibrated, with tube issues, and without the required addon cards (broadcast trinitrons have add-on cards giving different features like PCs) and master broadcast remote control receiver. The RGB module for these specific models is practically un-obtainium, with less than 150 produced globally, and everyone looking for these monitors now needs one. They sold for over $20k when they were new twenty years ago.
If you're looking to get one fully-loaded and in proper shape, expect to drop 6-8k. And there's only one guy still doing routine service of these who has adequate spare parts & knowledge, he's in Southern California and he won't ship the best models because of the huge risk of damage.
It's more a matter of the guy doing the service personally not being comfortable shipping these rare items.
I'm sure you could do it and indemnify him against potential loss/damage, but he goes out of his way to discourage you from using shipping.
https://youtu.be/DzIPGpKo3Ag - video of actual modification of zapper to LCD compatibility, with demo of how the Zapper actually works.
Are the products they sell different in some important way?
My back is going to make me pay as they are about 160-180lbs for the 32" models
CRTs update in a nice, predictable order, can have crazy-high refresh rates, and don't do anything clever (or slow) with their inputs. This makes them perfect for experiments that require showing stimuli precisely and promptly.
More recent displays do all kinds of weird trickery that either changes what's actually shown (e.g., motion blur) or presents it at some hard-to-determine time.
Since then LCD studios made huge progress, but maybe still can't compare with CRT.
OLED magnitude faster than LCD, I'm wondering how these compare.
Many models now include "smart" features that do things like motion blur, contrast adjustment, etc that probably do make the picture look better (i.e., "more cinematic") when used normally. These features just clash with niche uses, like vision research and competitive gaming, that would prefer pixel-accurate, predictable updates.
It's surprisingly hard to figure which consumer monitors have what features. There are "research" displays that don't have these features, are calibrated, update in a predictable way, etc, but they're eye-wateringly expensive.
In some sense, we were spoiled with CRTs, which were too dumb to do anything but sweep from top to bottom, left to right, over and over. Of course, it was much harder to generate dynamic stimuli back then too, so it's a mixed bag.
Otherwise, there are a lot of threads like this where labs characterize stuff they've bought: http://visionscience.com/pipermail/visionlist_visionscience....
Do consider the OSSC (Open Source Scan Converter). It works line by line, so it adds virtually no latency to the chain. It is OSHW and FPGA based, getting regular updates.
It doesn't do s-video or composite, but otherwise it is imho much better than the closedhw framemeister, which buffers entire frames and is less flexible.
There's hope they'll add support for composite/s-video/rgbi to OSSC at some point, be it a new revision or a daughterboard. I'll survive until then... so far I haven't needed those inputs fortunately. If I can mod the source to output rgb I'll always do that.
These wires were needed in all Trinitron products, but the more exacting demands of high resolution (1024 lines!) meant the support wires were quite visible horizontally, especially on uniform backgrounds like a gray Windows desktop. They divided the screen into three equal areas.
Despite this apparent flaw, Trinitron still had huge market share amongst enthusiast PC owners. Maybe it was brand loyalty, or maybe they really were much better quality than any other CRT out there?
At least as I remember it, if you wanted to take (or be seen to be taking) color reproduction seriously, then you had to have a 21” Trinitron. I guess the black horizontal support wires became just as much a part of brand signaling as the RGB lozenges in the logo. Lots of people I knew had amazing Trinitron CRTs and all they did was edit Word documents!
Kind of like a Leica red dot, or the white spot on Dunhill pipes.
The trinitron monitors I had were running 1600x1200 or better and with a small font the convergence would give white text a purple shadow/etc. Very 1980's apple ][, which a lot of people seemed to be OK with, or maybe its just because they ran much lower resolution TV signals or much larger fonts.
Yah, by the mid/late 1990's when I had a pile of them at work/etc they were mostly "flat" screens because that was sort of the default for a midrange+ monitor in that timeframe.
Their flat panel TV died a couple weeks ago and they put that TV in their living room as a stopgap.
The picture tube on that TV is still so good after all this time, they now don't want to bother buying a new TV.
>Back in the day I spent an afternoon configuring my old 19" CRT like that. I ended up with settings like 800x600x167Hz, 1024x768x133Hz, 1600x1200x89Hz and 1920x1440x73Hz. Many refresh rates were much higher than the stated documentation, and I ran it for years like that.
I’m amazed at that those resolutions and refresh rates were achieved so long ago. LCDs were so thin as to ge unstoppable, but definitely came with trade offs.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/IBM_37RG...
edit: link
If the monitor had enough bandwidth you could push it past the standard VESA modes.
I used to run bespoke resolutions like 1600x1200 in the mid 90s on a big Trinitron monitor I bought at a surplus store.
IIRC the only limitation was that the resolutions had to be both divisible by eight.
I'm guessing you missed the whole Betamax thing?
That's tongue-in-cheek though. I think the Betamax experience is what motivated them to listen to consumers.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
Maybe it's related to the root-kit DRM, etc -- on looking back, maybe this reflected a mismatch of a company culture that was stuck in the hardware-focused customer experience (and where careful thought ended with the hardware), while the software was some add-on nuisance that would work itself out.
By the late 90s, Sony was such a huge company with so many competing interests that I'm surprised they didn't accidentally sue themselves during the digital music fiasco.
Of course we customers think image quality is important! Well, turns out, people are pretty cheap and were totally happy with sacrificing image quality of TV recordings in order to maximize the amount they could record on their, like, $20-in-1970s-money tape.
>Deeply cared about the customer experience.
>Cared
And then they started installing rootkits on their customers computers.
Eizo monitors are still very good and I use them. They are very ergonomic and their settings, especially preset values just work.
Incidentally why did europe get a last generation of widescreen CRT's but the USA basically went from humoungous 4:3 CRT's straight to wide flatscreens?
I don't mean hooking up to the RF or composite video input, but directly connecting to the guts of it to get a crisp bitmapped image.