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I just treated myself
to the greatest monitor that money can buy.
20 years ago.
Whoo ow
Oh, wow.
- [David] Wow.
- But even today, this absolute unit
of a desktop display goes
for more than $3000.
Why, what could a CRT from 2002 do better
than a state of the art gaming display from 2022?
Did I just waste my freaking money?
(upbeat music)
When LCD panels arrived on the scene
they had some big pants to fill.
The development of the CRT display
had a 60 year head start.
And what's crazy is that modern displays
are still playing catch up
to your grandma's old TV in some ways.
Especially when you compare to one
of the best consumer CRTs ever.
The Sony GDM FW 900.
But why is this thing so big?
Well it's because of the actual CRT
the cathode-ray tube.
In the back of this big box
is a heavy glass vacuum tube
with electron guns inside it.
The electrons are shot at a layer
of phosphorus on the glass screen at the front.
Now phosphorus are materials that emit light
when they're hit with electromagnetic radiation.
Remember those glow in the dark stars
you had on your ceiling as a kid.
Well, it's the same fundamental principle
but to create a color image,
we've got three electron guns
one for red, one for blue, and one for green
and each has their beams aimed
by magnets to hit the corresponding
section of your screen.
Illuminating the phosphor.
This whole process happens very fast
at full resolution on this display.
It redraws the entire screen, 80 times a second
but that's not even close to 240 Hertz
let alone 360 Hertz
like the fastest displays today.
Why pay over three grand
for a monitor that looks like it belongs
on the back of an underfunded public library.
Why do people want this?
This is where we get to my first experience with it
because I haven't actually gotten
to play with it yet.
Ooh, it's on.
There are two basic camps.
There's retro gamers like Anthony
and sweaty gamers like David,
sorry, David.
- [David] I'm a retro game.
- David's also a retro game.
You're more sweaty than sweaty
- [Adam] Sweaty retro.
- [David] That's not true.
Take it back.
- [Adam] Your a sweatro gamer.
- Sweatro.
- [Adam] 92 lbs.
- 92 Pounds.
Let's talk about what makes this CRT so special.
It was sorry.
No is a top of the line product with rare
for the time features
like a 16 by 10 aspect ratio
and a nearly undrivable rated resolution
of 2304 * 1440.
Add in that it's equipped with an SRGB mode
for super accurate colors
and a high vertical refresh rate.
And there is pretty much nothing that this thing
couldn't do better than early LCDs
and even many modern ones.
Like how about zero pixel response time
or wait how can pixel response time be zero?
In an LCD light shines
through crystals that physically shift
and turn to a allow the light through
that process takes time.
But in a CRT, when an electron hits the phosphor
it instantly produces a photon
and then stops once the electron gun
is no longer blasting it.
What actually makes the image stay
on the screen is a limitation
of our own human monkey vision.
When you point a high speed camera
at a CRT you'll actually see
that the entire screen is drawn line by a line
by a single point.
But when we scale time back
to the human perception level
it appears that the whole screen is lit up.
And that's actually why this video
is gonna look a little
bit funky because we have to play around
with our shutter speed in order
to make the screen stop flickering
and looking weird.
It's so crisp.
I haven't seen a CRT of anywhere near this grade in
man, I had LCD in 2004.
You see that slow moving line,
going down the screen.
That's due to the desynchronization
between the frame rate of our camera
and the refresh rate of this display.
Let's put it back to 80.
That better David.
- [David] That's so much better.
- Wonderful.
Oh,
(beep)
I forgot to explain why we're using a GTX Titan X,
because that's the last Nvidia card
that still included analog outputs.
That's why you chose it right.
Is there anything after that?
- [Adam] No, that's the best card.
- Crazy.
This is the best CRT gaming setup you can have.
Can you do DP to VGA active conversion?
Probably. Right.
- Okay.
That was interesting.
Is that I looked
for like a good way to try to switch to analog.
I'm not sure if there really is one
that actually allows you to access all
of the settings in here.
Cause if you're just do like a plug and adapter.
You can only do 60 Hertz.
You're limited by like the HDMI spec
or whatever.
- Pooh.
- [David] Hey that's a good tech tip.
- I love it.
Well, if it's on the wrong monitor
windows shift arrow key,
and you could, whoops
you can move it around between the monitors.
Amazing.
Adam just tech tipped me.
We have to kind of fool around
with all displays connected
because if this one turns off
it takes 45 minutes to warm up.
- We were gonna check the refresh rate you.
- Yes.
- Currently it's running.
- 300 Hz,
is that like a G sync limitation or something?
What is that?
Oh, you know what it probably is.
This is a Titan X we're running DP. 1.2.
- [Adam] Yeah.
- Can't have the best of all worlds.
That's okay.
We'll settle for 300.
Really?
What we're gonna be looking at here
is brightness which is obviously
into completely different leagues.
And of course, image persistence.
Now here's something I didn't miss.
The phosphor layer is actually
like this far behind the front pane of glass.
So you kind of have this perception
that you're looking through a window at your monitor
as opposed to just at your monitor.
It's like your monitor sitting in a shadow box.
the slight blur of having round phosphor,
light emission rather than square pixels
you really don't need any aliasing at all.
It looks so clean
- [Adam] Flick around
(beep)
- This thing is crazy.
Why do they not still make these things?
Does it ever look good?
I mean, we probably had to reduce our shutter speed
so much that you're not
even getting - The sharpness
The sense of how sharp and crisp it is.
The motion is just flawless though.
Another thing that's really cool
is subtle gradients.
Like this cloudy sky to the clear blue sky up here
you don't get any of that blocking
or banding that you would potentially see on an LCD.
- There's a Twitter account that has like side
by side comparisons of 2D sprites
from the 16 bit era.
And it'll show them on a like crisp LCD display
as well as on like a cheaper CRT.
And it makes a huge difference
in how things look.
Like they have a one shot of Dracula
from Castlevania on an LCD.
He has these tiny little beardie, little red eyes
but when you put it on a CRT,
they are like natural kind of blur
makes it fit up the whole space in his eyes.
And it looks so much more painterly
and like it's crazy.
- [Adam] Windows shift arrow key over
to the other monitor.
- Yeah is that gonna work?
- [Adam] Yeah.
- Was I just imagining how much better it
looked going back to 10 ADP definitely sucks.
Although fun fact actually driving that thing
at the rated resolution back
when it came out basically impossible.
And it's still doesn't look as clean.
The additional brightness
is definitely a plus though.
And guys LCDs have improved a lot
to the point where under normal circumstances,
I would be whipping the mouse around on this thing
going man LCDs have gotten great
for image persistence,
but even this is not quite there.
I would choose the LCD.
- [Adam] What? why
- I've grown very accustomed to this level
of smoothness of animation
and the response time difference
at my level of play is just not enough to matter.
- [Adam] Do you think you can feel a difference
between this and the monitor
or is that all just that's you wouldn't know?
- I doubt most humans would feel a difference.
There is win.
I didn't even see an opponent.
(Adam chuckles)
And immediately upon switching to the QD OLED
this is using Samsung's latest panel technology
in this alien wear monitor.
The last thing I said was a big fat lie
because no I would definitely
go with this man that brightness
that contrast that pop.
OLED is a super cool technology
because it marries some
of the biggest advantages of both CRT and LCD.
One of the big problems
with early LCDs in particular was awful black levels.
While with OLED, you can turn the pixels off entirely
just like a CRT where you just don't eliminate that section.
No.
How I miss crap.
That sucked.
Another big advantage is
that due to the nature of OLED displays
the pixel response time is near instantaneous.
So you get that excellent persistence of the image
even when you're moving around rapidly like this.
Although I do have to note
that without black frame insertion,
it's not quite the same, is it?
Of course
that's not to say OLED doesn't have its advantages.
You probably noticed it's quite a lot brighter
than our CRT.
Well, that's for a couple of reasons.
One is that this used to be rated
for 125 nits of peak luminance.
And it has aged down to mare 69,
which is not as nice as it might sound,
but turn off the lights.
- [Adam] Uh.
Well, how do I do that?
- So now's all gross because the blue phosphorus
have probably worn out a little bit more.
So after calibration.
- Wooh.
The thing about luminance is that it's all relative
to the dilation of your pupil.
That's why the standard for theater level HDR
is what like 80 nits or something like that.
- [Adam] It's not a lot.
- In a light controlled environment.
You don't need a ton of luminance.
Wow.
Has that never been more clear?
How am I supposed to decide?
See, I could never afford this kind of thing
back when I was a gamer teenager,
this is what..
- [David] I have something.
If you're still struggling to make a decision.
- Oh, see, that's the thing.
All right.
OLED and CRTs share a lot of the same advantages
but an OLED will never draw in scan lines.
It is absolutely mind blowing how immediately
better a retro game that was designed
for a display with scan lines looks
when you fire it up
how did this lose to the PlayStation?
Oh, look at that grinding maybe
But it's been so long
since I've seen retro content on a proper display.
I forgot how good it looked.
There is no way that I would guess 4ADI.
4 ADI is half the vertical resolution
of 4 ADP theoretically.
Right? Cause they're interlaced.
I mean, there's some trickery
so that it doesn't look like it.
And that's exactly what we're seeing here.
- [Adam] Look at the cobblestone.
Like look at how good that texture looks.
- I know, right?
Like this brick obviously by modern standards, right?
This brick is not that amazing.
But with proper scan lines in your display
which is something that you can't really
replicate on modern hardware,
fake scan lines are a thing.
You can buy adapters that will sit in
between your retro console and a modern display
and will kind of mostly add the effect of scan lines
or what you can do is you can run it
in emulator and many emulator support
fake scan lines to get more of that retro look.
But boy, is it ever not quite the same men in a dark room?
And here's another thing that's really incredible.
The dreamcast outputs at 4 ADI,
like I mentioned
but this isn't a 4 ADI display.
It runs at 2304 by 1440, 80 Hertz.
CRTs don't have a native resolution.
You see LCDs and OLEDs have physical pixels
that cannot be relocated.
So when you run them at anything
other than the resolution,
the number of actual pixels,
it's more of a pixel count
than a resolution really.
They look blurry or they have artifacts.
CRTs you can put in any input within their supported range
and they will run it natively.
So there's no drawback to using a console
versus a computer with this thing.
It'll just look flip and awesome.
No matter what.
Oh, and another cool thing is that the limitation
of what resolution or what refresh rate
you can run comes down to the speed
with which the gun can go back and forth.
So you could lower your resolution
and up your refresh rate
or lower your refresh rate
and increase serve resolution.
The choice is yours.
Within reason.
To compare our native image quality with an LCD.
We actually had to go find an older one
that still has a VGA input.
And it should be noted that depending
on the scaler built into the panel,
that VGA input could behave very very differently.
This particular BenQ was a fair high end display.
Wow does that ever look like dog crap?
The craziest part of how much worse
this looks to the eye is that
this CRT for low res games like this
actually isn't necessarily your best case scenario.
Having your pixel points
and not quite a pixel, more of a dot
having your dot.
So pinpoint accurate actually takes away some
of the softness that low resolution consoles benefited from.
It was kind of a natural anti aliasing.
So if we had a CRT TV,
we might even be having a better experience.
Look at what this brick looks like in comparison.
It looks like trash.
Okay, let's go back.
Let's go back to the CRT way better.
Like it even looks more 3D.
Do you guys see how, like, it just has more
of a 3D pot.
The color, it doesn't shift at all.
I forgot.
- [David] Wow.
- It's absolutely perfect.
One of the things that makes this particular set
so accurate is that it uses the technology
that Sony developed in the sixties
that they called Trinitron
to improve the video quality of the televisions.
When electron guns were developed
they weren't entirely accurate.
And often electrons would stray
from their intended path causing them to
activate other unintended phosphorus.
It wasn't a big issue with black and white televisions
but once colors got involved
stray electrons hitting nearby phosphorus
would unacceptably distort the image
with unintended colors and fuzziness.
To solve this RCA developed the shadow mask
a metal sheet full of tiny holes
that would block stray electrons
from hitting the wrong phosphorus.
But the downside to this
was it greatly reduced display brightness
because the metal panel blocked
a lot of the energy.
The Trinitron though uses an aperture grill
which is instead made up of vertical slits.
This was accompanied by a change in the arrangement
of electron guns from a triangle
to a straight line.
And it allows much more
of the energy to make it to the screen.
And thus, a brighter display.
Sony actually won an Emmy for this technology.
So apple isn't the only Emmy award winning tech company
the disadvantage of aperture grill.
So my old view Sonic P 95F plus
was an aperture grill display.
Are we connected to the computer still?
(indistinct)
Okay let's switch over.
(bright upbeat music)
And there's one up here as well,
right there.
Those lines there are a visible element
of the aperture grill
and they're noticeable enough that Adam,
when this thing arrived, came to me,
he is like
Linus I think you spent $3,000
on a monitor with visible defects on it.
Actually they're completely normal.
And I can tell you from experience
daily driving and aperture grill monitor
that you completely forget about them.
After the first couple of hours.
The LTT store screwdriver has a super strong magnet
in it and a magnetic bit.
And the funny thing about electrons
is they interact with magnetic fields, right?
So woo.
What's going on here?
It's about actually all you're doing
is just taking the electron beams
and deflecting them.
So I'm supposed to talk
to you guys about why people don't buy these.
One obvious one is price.
Although you can find TVs, especially
if they're not in great condition
for significantly cheaper than
what we paid for this.
The issue is that finding one
in good shape is getting more
and more challenging.
And as that becomes more and more true
the cost are only gonna go up.
Even this one, which we paid a lot for
suffers from degraded phosphorus
and some nicks in the anti glare coating.
Another big one is cost.
Even if the price isn't high,
transporting these things can be a nightmare.
How much does it cost to ship one of these?
Especially without the original packaging,
it was cheaper for me to pay an employee for 10 hours
of driving and reimburse their mileage
than to ship it via mail.
And then there's voluminous.
CRTs just don't get as bright
and as they're used, it only gets worse.
And so unlike a projector
there's no way to change out the lamp.
It's not a lamp.
It's an electron gun.
After years of service
this thing just ain't gonna look the way
that it used to.
So what's the answer in my opinion
modern TVs between OLED
and particularly QD OLED
which is in TV's now
and on the horizon for monitors.
We no longer have to deal with the shortcomings of LCDs.
And while they do have some drawbacks themselves
the biggest one which is burning
is actually shared with CRTs.
There's also the fact that they run
at a fixed resolution
but from my personal experience
as we've gone to 4k and beyond,
it's become far less of an issue
because the pixel density is so high
that especially from couch distance.
It doesn't make that much of a difference.
But if you want the ultimate
tracking down a high quality CRT
might be worth it for you.
For the rest of you.
Maybe you should just stick
to checking out our sponsor.
Thank you for sponsoring this section of the video.
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And you can click the link in the description to learn.
Thanks again, to Lenovo and AMD
for sponsoring that section of the video.
Guys enjoyed this video
and you like watching me spend way too much money
on stupid stuff.
Go subscribe,
cause that's a major part
of our content strategy.
Also you can check out this video
where I bought a gigantic
the first ultra wide display
which was actually a rear projection display.
We still have it.
It still works.
A shoot out, this versus that.
The king of the ancient Kings.
- [Adam] Oh my God, we have to.