Checkmate 19" IPS Retro Monitor | Hacker News Reader

Checkmate 19" IPS Retro Monitor

checkmate1500plus.com

67 pointsmanicennui59 comments

Fundraisers and waiting lists aren't really on topic for HN. There's nothing wrong with them—they just don't fit the mandate of this site, which is intellectually curious conversation. For that, it's much better when the thing exists and is available, and then there's more interesting and specific information for discussion to get into.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

This appears to be a standard LCD monitor (albeit a 4:3 aspect ratio one) in a retro styled case.

Neat, but no substitute for a real period-accurate display. An actual CRT will make retro stuff look so much better, as it was intended for that type of display.

Eizo and other still make high-quality IPS displays in those sizes and form factors (and even more exotic ratios like 1:1), so I'm not sure what the supposed market is.

you not understanding the market means nothing. every display has a market, because non-standard displays are made to order.

ok, we'll all just go to the CRT store, where CRTs are sold, because they're still made.

They're not, but all-digital 17" 4:3 displays with input lag and a need for external A/D converters to hook up retro systems are still being made.

The authors of this ask for a pretty hefty premium to hide all the off-the-shelf components in a custom-made case.

(And CRTs are still around aplenty on ebay and the likes.)

I was thinking maybe 4:3 panels might be hard to come by today, but looking on amazon, they seem to be available, so ya. Might be neat if they had a built in CRT "filter", like running it through a raspberry pi with one of those CRT emulators or maybe FPGA to automatically give it more of a CRT feel.

Filters like that would look cool, but would introduce at least 1 frame of latency, which isn't great, especially if the input is 30i or similar.

Do CRT filters actually need to buffer an entire frame, or is that just commonplace because it's the easy way to do things when you're implementing them in software? It seems like if FPGA based upscaling with CRT emulation is in scope, it shouldn't need to delay the signal by more than a few scanlines.

You don't need to add that much latency if the display is capable of some kind of GSYNC-like mechanism and a high data rate.

They don't need CRT filters. They need pamels able to display more than 16 bits of colour. (my UHD TV comes close, my old TN monitors are crap in this respect)

I would love it for some kickstarters to lean into what this product is actually selling: the retro design.

Seriously: build this, but shaped like a Lear ADM-3A ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A ) , and TAKE MY MONEY.

... or just introduce the set designers from "Loki" and "Starfield" to the supply people at Restoration Hardware. That's what I want in my nerdCave.

There was a guy who helped his daughter build a computer in an ADM3A-styled case (except pink because preteen girl).

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PpshgGD0aac

I think the case is available on Thingiverse or similar. Go nuts and print your own!

awesome. nothing on thingiverse has ever search-matched for "ADM-3a" for me. cheers!

I appreciate that they’re trying to build something with the form (4:3) and input selection of a retro display. Unfortunately, most people interested in a CRT will not be interested in this. The whole reason to get a CRT is because you’re interested in the specific look of glowing phosphors as well as the extremely low latency of the raster scan which produces a responsiveness and fluidity for retro games (which were designed for these monitors) that is tough to match.

There’s also the softness of CRTs which have an anti-aliasing effect that increases the perception of detail in retro games (by interpolating colours between adjacent pixels). This effect was really important for game designers because they were working with both very limited colour palettes and resolution (so both dithering and antialiasing were at a premium on the asset end).

I don't know why people keep saying that CRTs have uniquely high responsiveness, a high refresh rate OLED display is going to leave a CRT in the dust. A 60 Hz CRT is going to take at least 1/60th of a second to draw a frame (16.66 ms), while a 240 Hz OLED will take 1/4 the time (pixel response times of OLEDs are less than a ms)

That's an oversimplification of the physics. CRT televisions have very low persistence phosphors. If you look at high-speed video of a CRT during a raster scan, the line is visible for far less time than the entire frame [1]. This technique relies on persistence of vision [2] to create the illusion of a complete frame. If you want to calculate the response time of a single dot on the phosphor, it is way down into the microseconds.

I don't know enough about OLED displays to comment. I do know that LCDs don't even come close to the speed of CRTs at transitioning through high contrast images, the key to producing fast and responsive motion of sprites (which are high contrast against the background by design in most retro games).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BJU2drrtCM

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_of_vision

Sure, but single pixels are irrelevant if the responsiveness is dominated by the time to draw a frame. OLEDs have gray-to-gray response times below a ms as I said (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GH6ngr-wws&t=269s)

This whole discussion we’ve been talking about displays for playing retro games, so 240Hz refresh rate in the display does not apply. All of the games and the console hardware are hard-coded to run at 60Hz.

Anyway, have you looked at a game running on a CRT side by side with an OLED? You can’t compare the numbers on paper. Even though it takes 1/60th of a second to draw the entire frame, the beam is travelling much much faster than that. Since the frame is completely dark the rest of the time, and the human eye has persistence of vision, the perception of motion is dramatically enhanced by the effect.

Furthermore, lightgun based games such as Duck Hunt rely on the precise timing of the CRT raster scan to operate and earlier games (such as on the Atari 2600) do so as well, because they use “racing the beam” as a rendering technique to get the most out of slow hardware.

Lastly, all of these games are designed to run on 4:3 monitors. Are there any 4:3 60Hz OLEDs designed for retro gaming?

I think a lot of people might be missing this part:

"Modular inputs - it’s also modular in the sense that we can add inputs (via cartridges we call 'pods') to add all old and new and future display inputs: RGB, composite, SCART, S-Video, RF, HDMI and everything else. Either we have a solution now or there’s one in the pipe for later."

Yep, I thought this was the killer feature of the product.

Couldn’t you get an external convert box for many of these formats and hook it up to a standard HDMI monitor?

I never get this retro gaming stuff. If I really want to play an old game from my childhood I use an emulator that probably has some neat features that make the experience better then it was back in the day and I do not need to buy any overpriced hardware. All the "modular" shit sounds like just a artificial sales tactic. Why not just build it with all the 90% of the possible ports needed or something that makes sense and sell some adapter for the rest rare 10% like 3 different slots for shit seems just overkill and just an excuse to sell more expensive stuff for "enthusiasts" who want to get everything possible.

And its not even CRT, that would actually make sense. Size also way to small. Again I rather fire up an emulator and I have something better for $0.

The emulators can be pretty good, but for people looking for the nostalgia, it might not really cut it. It doesn't fully send you back to your childhood, so if you have money to spend on this, and are passionate about it, it actually makes sense to get the full experience.

It's not too different from wanting to experience old music in vinyl rather than digital.

Right. These Checkmate folks seem to be doing it the right way, IMO. The housing matches the look of old CRTs while adding new capabilities, and the pricing is practical.

I spent the better half of my youth trying to make CRTs look as crisp as what we take for granted with LCDs. I have no desire to go back to those days (and no desire to lug my 32" CRT up and down stair cases). So to all retro enthusiasts: let's celebrate those older systems but let's also appreciate what we have. Old systems have never looked better than they do on modern screens.

As someone who does often play retro games on a CRT TV, this monitor wouldn't cut it either. Same reason I never understood those "retro consoles", even the official ones made by Nintendo/Sony. At the end of the day it's just a plastic shell made to look like the old thing around something new.

The Nintendo ones are plug-in-and-start-playing, come with controllers as good as the originals (I can side-by-side them—the new ones are excellent reproductions) and that feel exactly the same, and have a UI that a kid can figure out and that you don't have to set up or configure yourself, at all.

The SNES Classic in particular was one of the best deals in gaming I've ever seen. So much zero-hassle entertainment in one package, all ready to attach to a TV and go. No downloading, no updates, no horse-shit, it just plays like 30 amazing games providing hundreds of hours of entertainment for around $100, and you didn't have to do anything to make that happen (that you can do nerd-shit and add dozens more games to it is simply a bonus)

Other retro consoles I've seen have kinda been shit, but the Nintendo ones are great. Not everybody wants to or knows how to screw around with computers in their spare time so they can play Mario.

"But the Switch et c. can play many of those games, and more" True, however, 1) The original controllers are really nice to have for the games, especially on the NES where they're far easier to learn than even the SNES controller for very-young new gamers, and you can get them for the Switch, but that's an add-on and getting two of them costs about as much as a whole NES Classic did, 2) Maybe you have two TVs and you don't want to buy a second switch for price reasons, or perhaps because you'd rather one of the TVs be more chill so you don't have to police it as much for the kids, or whatever, and 3) Playing those games on the Switch costs a subscription—with the Classic consoles, you pay once and it's yours until it breaks.

That's all fair, I definitely see the appeal (especially regarding the controllers, which is something third-party companies have struggled to get right for decades). They're a good way to play the games. But for me at least (and I've heard similar sentiments from others), a big part of the "retro experience" comes from playing on a real console and a CRT TV. Something about the built-in firmware and knowing it's basically just a raspberry pi under the hood puts me off the whole thing and I would rather just emulate on a PC because it's less hassle. But ultimately of course if you enjoy it then keep doing so!

Oh, sure, they're no substitute to a "hardcore" retro gamer. Folks who won't be happy with anything short of an FPGA recreation (if not original hardware) outputting to a Sony Wega, or a powerful modern computer getting a real workout doing fancy render-ahead tricks to fake real-hardware input latency (so: remarkably low, by modern standards) and neat multi-step high-fidelity CRT-mimicking shader output, won't be satisfied by the classic consoles. But they're damn good for what they are, and especially for folks who don't know WTF an emulator is, or do but don't want to mess with them—the Nintendo ones, at least, the rest seem to have fallen short on one or more important measures.

A lot of console and arcade games up through roughly the first Playstation arguably look better on a CRT than with any amount of upscaling or smoothing or whatever, even without factoring in nostalgia.

But of course we have shaders for that, now, that can get one pretty damn close and take up zero extra space in one's house.

What is your point? As I said that overpriced think is NOT CRT and I actually think the hype about is not justified. I do not own a CRT but I think they would cause eye strain and modern up-scaling and smoothing and all that stuff makes games look objectively better.

But then you might as well get a real CRT to go along with your real consoles, and get the actual childhood experience of zero-lag inputs and CRT blur smoothing out the image.

Why spend more money on an inferior experience? CRTs might be out of production, but there's still plenty floating on ebay.

> And its not even CRT, that would actually make sense

> Size also way to small

These statements are a bit of a contradiction since these old systems were commonly run on 14" CRTs.

No, not at all, as I would not be interested in replicating the exact experience as it was but have a better experience with a huge CRT instead.

I actually think the CRT hype is also not worth it but I at least can get behind that because its really a different and old school look. I think they cause more eye strain right? Just technically its good for different resolutions because modern screens should always run native res only. But again emulators can do so much more and have modern up-scaling techniques that make things look good so I think its a waste of money. To pay 300+ for some tiny screen that has nothing special to offer.

I like the practical approach of actually being able to ship something but for me in 2023 not CRT and not OLED is a tough sell.

> CRT displays of the kind we all grew up with are terrific displays, but they come with a price. They are not modern tech and as such they are expensive and difficult to maintain, like classic pinball machines or arcade games. We knew we had to come up with a better, more future proof solution going forwards

Has anyone heard of any attempts to bring back CRT’s? I imagine the manufacturing chain for that would be bigger than any reasonable kickstarter/the demand from retro enthusiasts and the like. I know I’ve been hunting for old TVs for circuit bending/glitch art and it’s tough, thrift stores nearby stopped taking old TVs and everything on Facebook Marketplace only has coax (less ideal than composite.) Ebay works but good deals get snatched up.

Have you considered RGB modding some of those coax only tvs? If they have RGB mods available you can get the best picture quality possible out of them. Also where you located? My marketplace in NY has loads of people trying to give their tvs away for free or super cheap. These things are heavy. I guess the smaller sets tend to command some cash (and some famous tiny models go for a lot). Possibly try expanding your search radius if you are willing to drive.

"best picture quality" is kinda subjective. Most consumer CRTs were kind of ass.

There's a reason that what's sought after these days are old broadcast reference monitors that cost $20,000+ when new.

I meant best picture quality that particular TV could produce.

ie. the limitation isn't the video signal anymore once you do the mod.

The limitation is the maintainability of the tube. Cheap tubes go out easily and their repairability is limited. Especially phosphor/beam issues.

Cheap tubes also don't have features that assist you in maintaining them or correcting for picture issues that develop.

What are you even talking about? We are talking about getting the best picture out of an existing TV set that works. RGB Mod > Coaxial

I'm saying most sets aren't worth the effort to keep around. You're talking about putting a pig in a dress.

I have been considering the mod! I’ve watched a video or two about that mod but I don’t want to rush into it with CRTs all having electrical bits on them that can kill me if I do something wrong. I’m entirely new to electrical tinkering but eager to learn for this circuit bending stuff.

I’m east coast but not near NY… maybe I can justify it by renting a U-Haul van and filling it with TVs ;)

making a CRT factory today would be extremely challenging. Only the retro video game market wants these things, and the lead requirements for the glass are considerable.

not worth the hassle. probably not even possible within a 1st world nation because of the environmental impact.

Is that lead as in time to wait before you get it, or lead, as in the metal?

lead the metal. CRTs are made of leaded glass to reduce x-ray emissions.

Lead is only used for the funnel of the CRT, not the front. The front is barium-strontium glass. Lead glass has a tendency to turn yellow/brown with use, giving an ugly picture if used for the front.

You actually don’t even need to make the funnel out of glass at all, since it doesn’t need to be transparent. Tektronix famously made a lot of CRTs out of ceramics [1], with barium-strontium glass used only for the front. This also let them produce a CRT with a completely flat and rectangular front.

[1] https://vintagetek.org/ceramic-strips/

Yes that's true, but good luck making large CRTs using that method. Those ceramic-walled tubes were fine when the screen is 5" diagonal, but for a 29" arcade monitor, that won't do.

CRTs will never again be made in the quantities required to make it feasible economically.

Lead is still allowed in applications where there's no suitable replacement. For example lead-acid batteries are still being sold for UPS and alarm systems. I don't think leaded glass in CRTs would be problem because it exists to protect the user from radiation.

AFAIK there aren't any CRTs being manufactured anywhere on Earth anymore.

It's been kinda wild seeing them go from basically free to sought after in the past few years. Real time supply and demand in action, kids

Sony sold its Trinitron manufacturing line to a plant in India but they were only using it to recycle CRT tubes for the local market a couple of years ago and I think they shut down too since COVID.

Making CRT tubes is art and skill and a lot of the technology would have to be literally redeveloped as there aren't the skilled hands left on the planet to produce the tubes we were producing in the early '00s.

I have a huge desire for this kind of equipment due to my arcade/gaming hobby but it's a long-term losing play to try and maintain this stuff.

So the 21" NEC and Hitachi monitors still cluttering up my home lab might be worth something? I could never bear to dump them because of what they cost me new. They work well when I need a console on my ancient server hosts because they all do VGA.

They likely are worth something. I'm kicking myself for taking most of my VGA monitors to Goodwill back in the early 2010's (mainly for not having them now, not for the windfall I missed).

CRTs went through a phase where you couldn't give them away for the cost of picking up to now where higher quality models are becoming pretty desirable

Do they say what the resolution of the panel is? The main thing that would be interesting is if it was a super high res panel that could accommodate many lower resolutions cleanly with scaling. Like the Analog Pocket for example.

One of the youtube video previews indicates both panels (17" & 19") are 1280x1024.

So basically no different than the old office LCD monitors that you can buy for like $20 today.

$369 is not bad for a very niche monitor. I wish it came with different sizes though.

I hate that I want this.

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