Turning a Classic CRT into a Smart TV | Hacker News Reader

Turning a Classic CRT into a Smart TV

nickmchardy.com

31 pointsboyter19 comments

You can get pretty close to an HDTV with nothing but a dumb VGA monitor.

Context: as late as 2012, I had nothing but two Sun Microsystems (rebranded Sony) 19" Trinitron CRTs. The picture quality on these monitors was _phenominal_, and I kept it as long as I could, before the siren song of more desk space got me to give them up.

To get from component video to VGA, I had a color space converter. Then I hooked up a 3x component switcher to give me a few more inputs - for the game consoles, of course.

To get television, I had an old DirecTV tuner with a VGA output. I didn't actually have DirecTV service, but it had an NTSC/ATSC tuner, to which I had a pair of rabbit ears hooked up.

To get composite and S-video input, I had an RF modulator. The DirecTV tuner tuned to channel 3 would show whatever was on that.

The weak link, of course, was HDMI - an HDMI to analog converter was, at the time, more expensive than real televisions (this article appears to show that this is no longer the case).

Analog video converter projects appear to be still picking up steam. It's really a retro renaissance if you have a serious budget and are okay with dumpster diving and cold calling.

15 kHz to VGA is still a bit of a trick since VGA's minimum horizontal frequency is 30 kHz. Line doublers are the standard way to get around this, but even the best deinterlacers are trading off fidelity and latency.

I actually did something a bit similar[1], but with a Raspberry Pi 4, which has native composite out. I have it looping through Plex playlists of media that was originally released towards the end of the SD era (although most of it is high-quality HD rereleases that get naively cropped to 4:3 by VLC). I do also happen to have a Miyazaki playlist, but it starts at Nausicaä instead of The Castle of Cagliostro. I'd love to replace my cheap thrift store CRT with a nice PVM/BVM though!

[1] https://twitter.com/dstaley/status/1406385596185006085

It's just a shame that field combination is the normal deinterlacing paradigm for modern encodes of SD media, so it's hard to get digital copies that will make full use of a setup like that since the only interlaced encodes are generally like 15+ year old terrible-looking DiVX ;-) rips. I think most people don't even realize what's getting thrown away since it's been so long since they saw interlaced media on a CRT and have probably never compared them side by side to a 30FPS Handbrake-deinterlaced DVDrip.

For a non-infringing example of what I mean, check out my personal 60FPS HEVC encode of the Netscape "Code Rush" PBS documentary that was released freely online in 2008 as an interlaced MOV: https://mega.nz/file/QhtHzBZD#Z8eUnBgmk3lsjRgKQsiSaGD_gAnRgN...

Huh, I guess I kinda beat this article by a couple years when I set up my in-laws old CRT TV with a Roku Express+. It comes with composite out, so no need for an external downconverter.

yes... First Gen Roku too had analog outputs. :)

This is a fun little project, and I am happy it got posted. I have to laugh a little, though, considering that many of my clients have started asking for unsmart, just-a-display units!

Personally I think there's possibly an intersection of people who want a "dumb" tv and people who would do something similar to this, I for example, would love to have a "dumb" tv and just hook up one of those firestick/chromecast/other-product dongles into one of the available HDMI ports.

I really see no point in having an integrated computer in my TV that's just gonna be stop being supported a couple of years down the road, might as well have that part be detachable for when it becomes obsolete, I'd just buy a new one, the display would still be good.

I do this with a PC monitor and some powered bookshelf speakers. Works pretty well since I live in a tiny place and have no room for a TV and PC setup. You can even get 40" ones these days. They do lack some TV features like I wish it had an optical out. Mine has a headphone out but the DAC makes everything sound like turds. A cheap HDMI switch solved that issue though.

I used my CRT for long time as smart TV. First Gen Roku had analog outputs. :)

I'm clinging to a cheap PoS TV that has bad pixels and a blurry smear in the panel, just because it's big, not-smart, and only 1080p. I don't need 4k, although I have nothing against it per se, and I like the fact it usually means better FPS in games. But I don't want a bunch of "smart" stuff constantly getting in the way of what I want my tv to do, which is show the pictures being piped in by devices I actually trust.

You know that moment when TV started getting too smart that it displayed ads when changing volume, or whatnot. Or even connect itself to open WiFi network.

I actually tried the same thing with a raspberry pi and osmc. The darn thing had screen resolution issues, the screen would need to be offset manually every time the device restarted. I put in the coordinates in the config file but no dice.

Secondly, there was this whine when I pressed a button on the keyboard or even a Bluetooth one or a WiFi remote. Thirdly, the text looked yuck terrible compared to the composite in satelite TV running at the same time. I dropped the idea after a week of wasted efforts. Oh, I had used a 3.5 to composite cable for output, no HDMI

Not sure if it’s easy to do in most CRTs, but with a little engineering, it is possible to enable RGB inputs.

Most (all?) CRT TVs eventually turn everything into an RGB signal before it goes to the tube itself, this is generally what most on screen displays feed into. So you could add something in that also feeds into that line.

Some people mod RGB into composite only CRTs this way for retro gaming.

Some old consumer Trinitrons (possibly other brands; I'm unsure) even have an unpopulated SCART header on the input board. Saves them from having to make custom hardware for the European market.

8 Bit Guy did a video on this. I pretty surprised how easy it was to do on an inexpensive compact TV set from the 90’s.

https://youtu.be/DLz6pgvsZ_I

Inexpensive, but requires balls of steel to work on a naked CRT.

Of course it is reasonably safe if you do it properly, but as an amateur it's something I'd like to do but scares the shit out of me.

My favourite take on this is that people only say it's reasonably safe because anyone who has reason to think otherwise has already been fried.

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