How Games Used to Look: Why Retro Gaming on a CRT Looks WAY Different

[@projectz975]

all of this is why i seriously think that CRT filters in emulators are genuinely an important feature for game preservation. a lot of games used the flaws of CRT sets to actually generate new colors that weren't possible on the system running the game.

[@Crow_Rising]

While you are correct about the usage of CRT screens back in the day, most modern CRT filters amount to little more than scanlines that do not otherwise function the way CRT screens did back in the day. There are some genuinely good filters out there which function correctly on modern screens, but few emulators and even official releases include them. Personally, I'm more of the mindset that while the inclusion of good CRT filters is something to be appreciated whenever they are there, I'd rather see as many re-releases as possible remade to resemble how they appeared on CRT screens, such as adding new colors to the color palette and replacing dithering with additional shades to smooth things out. Effectively, the lack of old hardware limitations should be taken advantage of to faithfully redesign the pixel art in games with modern hardware in mind. Take Sonic Origins for example. The games are full remakes in that collection, yet simply reuse the existing pixel art for the graphics. They missed out on the chance to fill in the gaps in the waterfalls and make them actually transparent, adding shades to the sprites and backgrounds to smooth out the dither shading, etc. As such, the collection generally looks more ugly than it should.

[@maggo1003]

@@Crow_Rising Which filters would that be? The genuinely good ones

[@Crow_Rising]

@@maggo1003 I don't know any by name, but I do know that someone posted some really good reshade filters as a mod for Sonic Origins, replicates several types of old screens to give you your favorite CRT look. I'd also look into Shaderglass. I think there's also some good filters someone made for a Genesis/Mega Drive emulator, but I don't remember which one.

[@DreamFireNostalgia]

Yes. It is somthing i nver thought about untill a little bit ago as i still use all my old crts, even for newer consoles. My only modern moniters are for my pc. I hooked my old SNES to my lcd screen when trouble shooting somthing and was horrified at the loss of "quality"

[@salttrader4113]

​@@maggo1003 Magabezel in retroarch and arcadeview, can find the later on Emuline is based on the reshade

[@Majimba_Enjoyer]

i could never believe people that said "omg crt is so much better than modern screens" until i recently went to an arcade in an amusement park and saw some sega rally game running on one and GOD DAMN yall were so right

[@jimbotron70]

Always trust the boomers, lol

[@rainbowterra]

I have a CRT, and this video inspired me to turn down the sharpness, everything looks smooth and curvy again! There's something to be said about having a slightly "blurrier" experience.

[@mr.cantillasz1912]

I use reshade to add scanlines to every pixel games like terraria,old skullgirls(the encore uncensored and no pantyfilters),final fantasy on gba emulator and pixel piracy

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Isn't the high voltage needed for sharpness mostly? Our scope is blurry in comparison because it uses electrodes to bend the beam. Hmm. bending happens before the main voltage. Stil, I guess that you need to accelerate more directly after the gun to spread out the charge.

[@ETO_Tusk]

@@mr.cantillasz1912How can you get that version, was it an old one you had saved? I thought they scrubbed all of the pre-censor stuff from the internet

[@justanotherlikeyou]

The younger generations today that are into retro gaming or pixel art generally don't understand how we who were gaming in the 80's and 90's experienced those retro games. It seems to be a common misconception today that super sharp pixel graphics is the preferred method to display 2D sprites, but this just wasn't the case back then. Super sharp pixels were not wanted because it made the graphics look blocky, jagged, and unattractive. The natural smoothing and blurring of CRTs back then made the games look much better than they appear on an LCD screen. That natural blurring and smoothing made games appear more hand drawn and cartoon-like which was definitely preferred by most at the time. I remember when the Sega Saturn and PS1 came out and how ugly 3D games looked. I much preferred 2D games to the 3D games back then. It wasn't until N64 in 1996 that 3D graphics began to look acceptable to me, and it wasn't until the Dreamcast era of 1999-2000 that 3D games finally looked incredible, especially with the VGA adapter and a CRT monitor.

[@ReviewUSA-ri5dv]

Exactly. a perfect example is the Secret of Mana title screen. It translates horribly to LCD.

[@litjellyfish]

Yes and even back then we complained the pixels was to blocky. While we also parodoxally complain the CRT TV image was not sharp enough. Basically we wanted higher resolution with more colors.

[@toddjones1480]

I actually hate the cheap CRT look because it reminds me of being almost the poorest kid in school, among other reasons. It seemed like every other kid had a Trinitron. If it wasn't because their parents were loaded then it was because their parents worked at the local Sony CRT factory. And I have absolutely no nostalgia for VHS because... 1. I didn't have a VCR until just before I started high school. 2. I saw far more movies in theaters than I did at home. That was mostly split between US Navy theaters, second-run double features and drive-ins. Even awful theater quality just demolished VHS.

[@mrmaxaxl]

I still prefer 2d over 3d, old or new 😃

[@skycloud4802]

I see a similar problem with the way younger generations of people think of the graphics of old portables. Those gameboy screens were generally not meant to be backlit cast to an external monitor. So when people emulate gameboy games they don't get that natural soft ghosting or that hazy green hue from an original screen. On Gameboy Advance, the colour on games look badly crushed and saturated on modern TV screens, because artists creating those graphics tried to deliberately overcompensate the colouring, knowing that the non-backlit displays are harder for gamers see the image in poor lighting. So when that GBA image gets played on a bright backlit screen with big contrast, it looks all wrong.

[@Pensive_Scarlet]

I don't see how anyone can be aware of what's discussed here and not at least see why some people consider games to be art. Mediums, canvasses, palettes, techniques, etc. And that's just touching on the visual elements. Being able to use a basic 2A03 to create the wide libraries of sounds we know of today was truly a talent. Understanding mediums really helps people realize the kind of effort and creativity that goes into any given work of art. It's clear that early dot-art was adjacent to the impressionism that came before it, and that alone should count for something. Thanks for this.

[@alejandromoran4590]

talent is not art

[@Pensive_Scarlet]

@@alejandromoran4590 semantics is not an argument

[@alejandromoran4590]

it is not semantics, it is differentiation@@Pensive_Scarlet

[@Pensive_Scarlet]

@@alejandromoran4590 You're nitpicking at the semantics of my statement. I mentioned talent as one of the many elements involved in what people usually classify as "art". At no point did I say talent and art are the same thing.

[@alejandromoran4590]

Video games are transactionable products, a piece of marketing, and follow a bussiness model. They ARE DESIGNED AND CREATED to be liked and purchased. Art is something meaninfull for the human mind, and does not want to be liked, or accepted. Art is mostly transgressive and proactive, not just a fine piece or work with a lot of talented work put into its creation. It's not about semantics.@@Pensive_Scarlet

[@krnivoro1972]

Love your explanation but LCD are not actually LEDs turning on and off. They are just white light filtered, first by the Liquid Cristal to dim that light, and second by R, G or B filters to give them color. What you're describing is actually OLED.

[@thehuggz-i9k]

Yea... I picked up on that too. I'm sure he knows the ins and outs of LED and LCD displays. When he said "LEDs" I think he was just relaxing his language a bit and trying to lean on the concept of an LED status light or something like that, which less technically inclined viewers may have an easier understanding of.

[@cormano64]

@@thehuggz-i9k If that was the case, he leaned way to close to misinformation for it to still have value as a learning analogy.

[@lander77477]

It drives me nuts that modern LCD screens are marketed as "LED screens" just because they replaced the old cold cathode fluorescent tube backlight with an LED backlight. Its still an LCD screen

[@ztune3945]

LCD are non emissive displays (doesn't produce its own light)

[@DIeem2042]

OLED do turn on and off and make their own light though.

[@SalveMonesvol]

We needed more people making this knowledge widely available 20 years ago, now 90% or more of all tubes have been destroyed. Now it might help slow down the destruction rate, but it mostly makes the few good ones unreasonably expensive. By the way, one thing I like about tubes that nobody mentions is the kind of anti-aliasing you get from running a higher resolution than the dot pitch "allows". At about a total 2X pixel to dot ratio, small details are smoothed out in a unique, very natural way.

[@sayerslayer1854]

Dude I'm a camera technician I can attest to what he is saying, what the hell are you talking about ? Make sure you don't have it wrong before calling someone else out for being wrong, it makes you look like a complete idiot lol

[@relo999]

I've got 8 or 9 in storage. Ranging from real budget but most are near professional quality. CRT's are still really easy to get, especially TV's (monitors not so much, especially good monitors) But realistically speaking the difference between a good one and a bad is not that great, outside of inputs. It's noticeable sure, but not "I pay 300+ euro for this over the 5 euro one" level of difference. I'd say upwards of 95% of people wanting a CRT are perfectly well off with any random CRT as long as it has the input you want (or you have the ability and knowledge to mod it). This fetish a load of people have with PVM's and other high quality CRT's is rather silly. As the vast majority of users back in the day used cheap sets with poor video-out with nearly all systems. It only get a bit different when you get in the realm of Amiga and such, but most people hunting for CRT's are going to play some NES and Megadrive on it. In most cases the high end CRT obsession is akin to the obsession some people have for getting "fresh" fries at McDonalds.

[@teksyndicate]

my goal was to explain the principle of the light going on and off and the trailing amount of light that is left over after this. I probably could have explained it better, so you're right there... but I also didn't want to devote an overwhelming amount of time to it and confuse people who do not want too many details. If you want a separate video where I go into detail and explain TN, IPS, VA, and OLED technology, we can do that... but you probably already know all about it, so the video wouldn't really be for you.

[@spookymunky1]

Even back then it was known, lol.. the move to lcd and later led with only now quantum led finally bringing us back in line to CRT was not instant and for most it was just annoying since compared to decent crts the quality was obviously worse, we still had eyes in them good ol days haha. The problem was and still is the sheer size and weight and complete waste of manufacturing materials to produce them combined with the ever increasing need of bigger tvs and monitors made them simply unfeasable to continue with as a mass produced tech. The reason CRTs in most countrys where LCDs took over and became the world that we now live in were destroyed were the reason they were so annoying and unweildly and just a giant pain in the a$$ even to store them, lol... like think about it, I can easily pick up my now old and "fat" cheap but nice 43" not so smart panasonic tv that I use purely as a monitor these days and can carry it up and down stairs and room to room on my own, it got delivered by a single dude where it took up a tiny portion of his van, to get to his van it went through many shipping centres and countries etc, all where a single person could lift it up like it was nothing hehe. CRT tvs / monitors kind of maxed out of the ability for one average person to comfortably enough carry them without putting your back out at around 19-21" hehe, and that hasn't changed. There are still countries where CRTs are widely used and I don't think that the technology has changed in any significant way to alleviate these issues. I would not be surprised if they were the countrys that manufactured the ones that we all used to have such fond memories of due to the actual shipping costs it makes zero sense to have one "giant" crt tv or monitor delivered internationally now. Like a whole 32" or so takes up the space of something like fifty 40-50" lcds in a shipping container and still weigh an order of magnitude more that needs a foklift for each tv at every point, and multiple people to get it on and off delivery trucks, and then even more at the other end to try and get them into your house etc, lol. Not to mention the physical size limit of silly things like doors where it started to become common for houses to be built with the big ass tv inside it hehe... great until.. well.. you need to replace it hehe. I still regret taking my old IIyama 19" crt monitor that I loved to hell for work for so many years down to the skip, but hehe... it was literally taking up a large portion of storage in my parents house that was better suited for toys for my sisters kids etc, lol. And honestly it hadn't been touched once in who knows how many years... it could handle every resolution up to 2048*30hz I guess if you wanted your eyes to bleed, with the refresh increasing significantly the lower you went hehe.. sigh. I also wish that I still had my old sony trinitron 21" hehehe... but what can you do... giving up things like that pained me but heh, you couldn't even give them away for free since .. lol.. the same reasons as above, just someone paying the shipping for things that fragile and heavy made zero sense to anyone at the time. For years I would accept everyones old CRTs, but then it just became stupid also, rofl. Especially since my eyes had started to see the refresh lines on them all even before they became scrap after so many years of lcds combined with using 166 hz / 200 or whatever or so on my one crt that I kept hehe. Ultimately they died out for a reason, and the planet is a hell of a lot better off for it I guess.

[@spookymunky1]

@@teksyndicate you could just send people to the slow mo guys vid from years ago if they want to see exactly the differences at camera speeds and aperatures that nobody else can hope to achieve hehe, unless you have extortionately expensive cameras at hand :) I like your way of looking at it in this vid, it does make me feel nostalgic. How artists worked on these old games was also how I would have to work for cg projects made for tv adverts etc even 5-10+++ years after them, lol.. like yes eventually we would have fancy high res crt monitors and even early lcds etc after a while, but always to get any idea of what we were doing we would have just normal cheap crts since that was literally the target audience and the final output, somewhere... It was very different and difficult to keep in mind sometimes, especially when things started needing to be made in 720p also heh. It was difficult to not notice the aliasing artifacts that are blaringly obvious on your monitor that you spent 99.99% of your time working on when looking back no tv would have shown haha :).. that and also interlacing and de-interlacing etc when combining cg with cameras made for crt tvs etc, lol.. ugh 🤭 Still, I think much of my early production tv work was done on 14" 65hz crt monitors now that I think about it.. seems impossible now with hindsight.. I do remember doing one job completely on my 21" sony trinitron since my monitor had died and I had to finish the job with any hopes of replacing it.. I think that was when I got the iiyama. sorry, emm.. sigh.. drunk nostalgia ☺🤫

[@Pocket_Fox]

PS1 prerendered backgrounds look incredible on a CRT. Everything from Final Fantasy to Resident Evil. It's crazy.

[@benmcreynolds8581]

I find CRT TV's so facinating. The fact that THEY CAN DRAW the moving images as you control a game or watch a movie. A literally electron beam, being bent by magnets. I'm glad I was born in 1989. The technology that has evolved and adjusted in just my lifetime is mind blowing and I really do miss a lot of things from the 90's

[@faequeenapril6921]

Me too. I remember getting a "portable" CRT for xmas in like 1997 or 1999 and I loved it, had a VHS player built in because at the time all my movies were VHS and I kept it and used it until like 2008 and it had zero issues. I used it with my PS1 and then used it with my gamecube and xbox 360 and from what I remember everything looked great, but I did remember noticing blurry image with the 360, it had a scart connector in the back and an RGB connector in the front. I use to take it to my dads with me every weekend, to play games on my gamecube but I dont miss the weight of them. In 2010 me and a friend was moving his big CRT up some steep stairs, by the time we did it we all threw our back out and we were barely 20 at the time lol it was heavy af!!

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

You missed how CRTs got color. I think that even the Trinitron technology was sold from USA to Japan before your birth. The evolution you got to see was digital technology in the TV and just sticking with flat windows glass for the screen ( super heavy ).

[@chopwasp]

CRT displays have been around since the 19th century

[@drunkensailor112]

Yeah crt technology is so much more interesting than that of modern tv's

[@DannyDorito504]

Born in 84 and I miss the 90s and early 2000s. It was such a great time to be alive. Things were more laid back and fun. Games had so much more soul and developers took chances.

[@iwantagoodnameplease]

A filter guide would be good, simply because there's a huge number of shaders and filters and you've obviously been through the process, so you can save us all time by sharing :)

[@teksyndicate]

These videos have become a side-project and I haven't been putting as much time into them. So, I could have said a few things differently. Sorry about that. I'll list corrections here. Corrections: 1. I described LCD technology, but what I said is more like OLED. LCDs have liquid crystals that literally change shape. It's a bit more complicated, but they are still slower than CRTs. If you are curious I could make a video going into a lot of detail, but I'm sure this already exists... and it's a bit of a tangent for the main subject matter. 2. Electrons don't move at light speed. They have mass. They are so fast that it's almost not worth mentioning this, but still. The speed response time of a CRT is still usually around 0ms. 3. Another thing that contributes to the better perception of motion is the fact that after the phosphors are illuminated, they return to black before being illuminated again. So, they are essentially cleared and your eyes are seeing new information all the time. Some OLEDs are experimenting with adding black frames between each normal frame... I don't think it's there yet, and it can darken the image a bit... but it's a good step forward.

[@Moises-ri3yd]

Great video! Finally a video about CRT that really talks about how you can´t capture the actual look of a CRT with a camera. People who never played retro games using a CRT TV they all watch these videos and think that looks bad because of this. I remember back in the day when LCD TVs came out that some stores used to desaturate colors in the CRT TVs to attract more customers and sell the more expensive LCD TVs also they never displayed games only movies and tv shows.

[@crestofhonor2349]

Early LCDs sucked and were worse than CRTs in every manner. Even HD CRTs were leagues better despite that they couldn’t do 240p

[@todesziege]

Video compression on KZbin then also butchers the image even more, creating artifacts that weren't there on the original video.

[@msd5808]

6:13 Glad to see these qualities better appreciated now. I used to take photos of the same game running on a CRT and an LCD and then examine them in an image editor to get a sense of the true color output you were seeing. In every case the CRT photo was a larger file when saved and seemed to show a lot more color shades when examined with the eye dropper tool.

[@anthalas9]

Analog Antialiasing… love it!

[@KasumiRINA]

And if you add random static noise the photo will take even more space. The more grainy the image the more space it takes. Complete static will compress way worse than sharp, clean lines and shapes.

[@puredruid]

Anyone else remember touching a CRT screen after turning it off and getting a bunch of tingly static?

[@zepplin839]

I used to wipe my arm on it for that

[@capitanwinters4422]

😵‍💫yeah,😵

[@U.F.O_0908]

Dude. A Retroarch filter video would be amazing. These videos have been a blessing on rainy days. I use either the "scanline" shader or the "phosphor" shader depending on the system I'm emulating. They go amazing with arcade "MAME" roms as well. And Symphony of the Night and DoDonpachi on PSX look amazing with the scanline shader. For all the peeps, make sure Retroarch video is set to GL Core for best shader compatability. Vulkan may work as well. Cheers again for these videos man.

[@Haste666]

Did you try the Cyberlab shader?

[@meyonoplay8558]

👀 a fellow shader like myself. We need to talk so we can play around with these shaders I think I have the perfect “global” shader settings but I want to experiment and play around and see what I can get but there are just so many shaders and then options and ways to pay more than one on top of each other and depending the order different results etc it’s a lot

[@gars129]

S Viideo filter is the best for PS1 games like Mega Man X, Castlevania. While Composite is great for games that mix 2D pre rendered assets with 3D models or backgrounds, even more so if models are jagged.

[@melody3741]

I FUCKING LOVE DODONPACHI

[@meyonoplay8558]

@@gars129 nice! I haven't tried those yet there's a stock shader that if you set it to nearest it makes everything look better just don't use it on psx or N64 as it seems they have a built in shader? I'm not sure maybe you can get different results. I'm going to start playing with combos and taking screenshots and uploading them keep in touch so I can show you what I get

[@BSpears]

I would def be interested in CRT filters that match CRTs from the early 90s. I'd also like to know your top SNES games to see if I may have missed any hidden gems!

[@convexcornet2169]

Mattias CRT shader in retroarch I think is the closest you can get to CRT. Combine that with Mdapt for a transparent waterfall in sonic 1 (all passes of mdapt should come first in the shader passes list, and remember to apply settings to see the difference. Sometimes shaders don't apply properly, so you might want to do it again if this happens, or even apply shader passes one after another). You might want to change the shader scale on mattias shader. I use 5x, but set it to your preference. It looks pretty close to me. Yeah, setting shaders in retroarch is a pain, but look online on how to do it, instead of asking me. I'm sure online tutorials can explain better than I.

[@GURken]

crt royal is the best shader that can replicate this look

[@gilbert6181]

@@GURken I have the sf2 collection but prefer the shaders on retroarch, CRT royal is definitely one of my favorites.

[@hihosh1]

Just use reshade with some filters, it does wonders

[@convexcornet2169]

@@hihosh1 Combining gdapt or mdapt with 6xBRZ frescale is my favorite way to play megadrive and snes games. I know it wasnt you who suggested it, but I can't stand CRT royale lol. It's mattias for me, if I want CRT shaders.

[@ratone1983]

Great video! Totally agree with the "don't buy a Trinitron if you didn't have one as a child". And I'd really like a video on getting a good CRT filter on RetroArch.

[@NOTaStranger-H2O]

i've never bought a trinitron but you can find lots of good working condition crts and plasma tvs at thrift stores or on places like facebook marketplace locally for $50 or less, sometimes with component and s-video input. they can look surprisingly good, provided it matches the aspect ratio of the console you're using. my ps2 for example stretches the image like a bloated whale if i use it with my plasma, but looks just as good as any other way of using it with my 4:3 crt.

[@Bubba__Sawyer]

CRT Royale Fake Bloom is the best CRT filter on Retroarch.

[@cormano64]

@@Bubba__Sawyer Aside from CRT Mattias, of course.

[@Juanknes]

Very nice video. i have a CRT only for retro gaming. After playing on original hardware plugged on a CRT, it's not easy to go back to the LCD, not only because of the picture quality, but also because of the input lag. Gaming on a CRT feels like your fingers are hardwired on the screen, it's a great experience.

[@mhenrique4860]

2:41 lcds does not have tiny little lightbulbs... does not have little leds... the dots on the lcd are just tinted (RGB) transparent windows that can be closed.. they dont emit light like the crts...

[@Brad-cb2dt]

Yeah, I too found this distracting. It's one thing to explain it this way to a layperson as an illustration, but unfortunately it was not portrayed as an illustration. Whether Tek Syndicate's intended it as an illustration or whether it was an honest mistake, it still comes across as an authoritative voice on the subject while stating something that is inaccurate. That said, he does do a great job explaining why the image displayed on CRT's looks very different. This part was well stated and accurate (other than saying latency on CRT's is 'instant'... technically no, but it might as well be, so there's really no issue with that statement imo). He might have left out the 'unnecessary deinterlacing' issue on modern TVs (i.e. they assume composite input is always 480i, even though 240p through composite was a supported signal on CRT's and other SD TV's), but perhaps I just haven't gotten to that part of the video yet.

[@mhenrique4860]

@@Brad-cb2dt Agree!

[@SoloWing88]

Just found this video, and I remember videos like this in the 12+ years ago and all of those are buried by the algorithm Nice to see this history preserved and not just the crt lore. Also, a retroarch filter video would be cool. I only have arch on my vita so it would be neat to have that filter set on the go :)

[@angrygnome4304]

I've been getting heavy into going back and playing my old playstation games and I even have a CRT to play them on but some of my discs no longer work so I turned to emulation. Reshader with CRT Royale is the closest thing I've seen to matching the look on a modern display it's amazing.

[@mitchconner6316]

This is probably my favorite tech person on KZbin. He's always super knowledgeable and seems like a genuinely awesome dude

[@PatMcCarthy420]

We played NES and SNES on old IBM CRT computer monitors. My grandpa was a computer technician for IBM for 30 years from 1955-1985 and he loved video games. He would stand as far back as the light gun cord would allow him to play Duck Hunt and I would catch him playing F-Zero from time to time before he passed away in 1993

[@CyberRetroTube]

I have loved video games for as long as I can remember, I'm a Software Developer and was born in 1993 - I might be your Grandpa reincarnated.

[@knight0fdragon]

One important piece of information you missed between CRT and any fixed display is the variable dot width difference that is done by using different resolutions. Pixel artists utilized many different pixel resolution widths (256,320,352 being common) to thin out the pixels when displayed on a CRT . To provide correct pixel aspect ratios on fixed width displays would require an insanely high definition of pixels, so almost all fixed width displays are going to get you a compromising image where the artwork is displaying far too distorted (Either more fat or thinner) than what would appear on a CRT, and this is assuming your LCD is presenting at the same aspect ratio (4:3) as a CRT.

[@ArmandoDoval]

A bit of horizontal interpolation makes this a non-issue.

[@MadameSomnambule]

I have a feeling you're talking about the nes and snes's aspect ratio as those systems, while designed with 4:3 in mind, had a really square resolution kinda like a scaled up gameboy. I noticed that when I started getting into emulation as a kid. Only way to correct it on ye olde ZSNES was with the crt shader in newer versions (kinda funny since everyone in my family used a crt monitor back then lol). However, when I first read your comment, I ended up thinking about old Commodore 64 games and Sierra's older adventure games for DOS and the fact that due to the tiny resolution used non-square pixels that looked squished and stuff yet always turned out making nice looking images without distortion. Now, if I played those same C64 games or a copy of King's Quest 1 on a widescreen monitor that doesn't have aspect ratio correction, I'd get an actually distorted image and it'd bother the living CRAP out of me.

[@knight0fdragon]

@@ArmandoDoval LOL no it does not.

[@krnivoro1972]

New shaders use 4K displays and HDR. I think that is enough for a fair simulation of a standard resolution of a CRT. Off course that does not mean is perfect, and those shaders are always evolving.

[@knight0fdragon]

@@krnivoro1972 do you know what shaders and hdr are?

[@robbyrobot3303]

The texture CRT adds is more important than the rounding of edges I think. It's most apparent when a game has larges patches of a single color. That's what looks the worst to me on modern displays

[@todesziege]

Yeah, it looks much more "natural" on a CRT.

[@austinstillwell]

I’ve seen dozens of videos explaining crt’s the past few days and this is the easily the clearest, most concise, most informative, and easy to understand video I’ve seen.

[@blarghblargh]

LCDs are slow for various reasons. but the reason CRTs give a feeling of being "fast" has more to do with the way the old school CPUs and video signal path are tied together than how fast the tube scans. they were able to hit 60fps 100% of the time, and were synced directly to the display via hardware interrupts so they could reliably poll input every frame, and do so at an exact time during the frame. those consoles were also able to sync to the scanline level, due to the rock solid CPU clock and exact parity of the system clock and RAM access. however there were pretty much no games were taking any advantage of the fact that the hardware could predict the exact scanline, at least from an animation or input latency standpoint. in fact, some games managed to screw this all up and introduce latency (e.g. NES ninja turtles - see the Displaced Gamers video on this subject). the best advantage most games took of the per-scanline syncing was raster graphics effects, scanline triggered tile mode swaps, or taking advantage of the HBLANK interval to squeeze a few more CPU cycles out. if we're saying that the blurring/remnance/"ghosting" isn't present on a CRT, then yeah that's true. however we'll have decently priced qd-oleds within the next 3-10 years, and all early reports seem to point to those being darn near exactly as good as CRTs at solving those problems, with better contrast ratio to boot. if we're saying latency is the problem, then there's ways to deal with this on current LCDs. using something besides the built-in scaler is the first line of attack. using real hardware or FPGA emulation instead of software emulation is another big help. we may not hit frame-perfect latency, but it's possible to get it close enough for the vast majority of people. as said in the video, if we don't like the pixel look, we have shaders. those aren't really very perfect replications now, but the more display resolution we get, the closer we can come to a full replication of the look. 8k may end up having some use in consumer applications after all. the fidelity bias is also a bit revisionist history/romanticism. we don't know that most game devs were taking the horizontal smudginess of pixels strongly into account in their game's look, just that some were. some artists were producing games that looked pretty crappy, and that looked worse on TVs than on a display with cleaner pixels. there also is not a lot of evidence (that I know of) that artists were specifically intending for us to have that crawling dot look that RF modulators and composite connectors had. TBH, most game devs didn't know what they were doing, and were winging it, especially back then. we also don't know that they all had well calibrated displays. most people also didn't calibrate their TV very well, so there wasn't really any way for the artist to target exact colors. we also have proof that palette would vary from console to console, depending on which components they managed to source when manufacturing that batch of consoles. I get it. CRT good. new stuff bad. nuanced take doesn't make a good social media post for anyone but a flipping nerd. but if we want to learn about these things and preserve history instead of looking at them with rose-tinted glasses, let's actually dive into the nuance here. and yeah, I love CRTs. they're also awful for the e-waste aspect, and I think we will eventually get something basically superior, with many fewer downsides.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Modern games sync to the frame rate. On low detail you can run 120 fps. So even with double buffering, you have less mean latency than on a perfect 60 fps 2d game. See KZbin video about 60 fps games on N64, PSX, and Saturn. The nintendo DS needs to transform vertices, but then renders on the fly, just like in the old days. I was amazed when I found out that this Texas Instrument VDP chip could filter out all sprites which overlap the next scanline. Like you draw 40 chars or tiles of background and meanwhile the circuit picks out up to 8 sprites for the next scanline out of 40 on screen. So you have like 2 scanline latency max. The slowest thing on old consoles was game logic, collision detection and physics. The "Behind the Code" videos explain how this adds a frame of latency to NES games. Blast processing on genesis was better.

[@Chu_the_Master]

Clean CRT can be REALLY clean. Those scanlines do not make the screen blurrier and dimmer at all. I like scanline emulation not exactly because of nostalgia, but because clean scanlines can fit the pixel arts of the retro games really nicely even by today's standard.

[@kekethetoad]

I applaud your passion in these videos. One thing that is very rarely mentioned regarding what makes CRT's so special is the quality of light that their phosphors produce. Colour Referencing Index (CRI) is what is most commonly used to guage the quality of scene lighting in photography and videography. Sunlight is reference @ CRI 100, CRT is 90+, Plasma 70+, LCD 50+, QD/OLED 40+, microLED is die to be even worse maybe 30+. In order to reproduce a scene accurately the subpixels need to emit wavelengths that would naturally accompany the dominant wavelengths that sensors/film capture (like an entourage effect). Burning phosphors in CRT and Plasma emit a broad-spectrum range for each of the RGB subpixels. LCD/LED, OLED & QDOLED are all narrow-spectrum emission for energy efficiency and more precise control for higher colour bit depth. A high quality CRT displaying 8-bit SDR is akin to a fine vinyl record playing on a stellar hi-fi system, while a flagship OLED displaying 8-bit SDR is akin to a 192kbps MP3 playing through a set of clinical studio monitors. It's a crying shame as the pleasant broad-spectrum light truly did bring things to life in ways that will likely never be seen again.

[@kekethetoad]

Just an afterthought: perhaps someday in the case of resolution upscaling old SDR 8bit content to 4K or 8K, maybe there could be some kind of upmapping interpolation used to convert it to HDR 12 bit, giving some of the colour diversity and additional perceived dynamic range seen with how CRT's produce an image.

[@lacroustinette5299]

When i plugged my megadrive to a CRT again i was shocked by how great the colors looked. Almost like if they were out of the range of what my LCD could do. 16 bit games are also very colorful (especially Sonic), so colors are even more impressive

[@TheTrueNorth11]

Vinyl sounds worse than digital. Objectively, by every measure.

[@kekethetoad]

@@TheTrueNorth11 Vinyl sounds worse than 192kbps mp3? lol ok brainlet

[@TheTrueNorth11]

@@kekethetoad Yes.

[@kozlorog]

6:00 HOLY SHIT. Old games literally looked better back in the day. MUCH better. That's mind blowing.

[@handznet]

CRT has the charm that LCD cant replicate. I am currently on a hunt for some nice CRT TV (harder than ever here) and cant wait to hook my old consoles to it.

[@0ffaI]

Thanks for this video, it unlocked an appreciation for retro games I never had before. I always dismissed games released before ~2004 for being too ugly, I always thought CRTs were just like LCDs but with scanlines. These games really do look amazing when you use the proper hardware or filter, it was a joy to see all the gameplay footage you used in this video.

[@fintux]

You probably know, but not all the viewers do, that the CRT draws using a continuous signal, and the beam doesn't really hit the dots. It can hit anywhere between the dots, and the signal intensity can also change mid-dots. They don't even try to draw individual dots, the dots are just a side-effect on how the colors are reproduced. A black-and-white CRT doesn't even have any of the dots, it's just surface of phosphorus. Also, the phosphorus does not go dark instantly (you can e.g. "draw" to it with a light in a dark room), but yea it does lose a lot of its light intensity way before the next redraw.

[@shattywack]

I've always said that I actually prefer composite/ S video over component for the exact reasons you explain in detail here. I have component cables for my ps2 as well as really fancy and expensive retrovision component cables for the SNES and the Sega Genesis. Although component does have a really nice picture I tend to prefer composite especially for the PS2 as those games tend to have a lot of jaggies that get covered up with composite. The SNES and the Genesis are a bit of a mixed bag for me on what I'd prefer as I like the clarity mixed with the smooth motion of a CRT but at the same time I still like to have things blend together. I'm also someone who grew up on the N64 so there isn't as much of a nostalgia factor when it comes to the generations before it. As for the CRTs I prefer for me it's always curved tube shadowmask. I have three CRT's be a I'm a nut job, one being a 32" JVC D Series that I had to grab as soon as I saw it listed, Another JVC but it's a 26" as well as a lower end model only having composite and S Video. Despite it being a lower end model than the famed D series it honestly has one of the most beautiful pictures I've ever seen on a CRT. It honestly makes me want to unplug my genesis from the retrovision component cables plugged into the D series and just run it on this lower grade CRT through composite. Don't get suckered into the hype for component cables, they're nice but probably not what you want. The third CRT I have is a little 13" SV2000 because I'm a sucker for tiny CRT TVs. I was honestly surprised how good PS2 games looked on the tiny thing. It was also the only small CRT I could find that was stereo instead of just mono. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

[@ArmandoDoval]

It depends a lot on the console too. Sega Master System and Genesis relied on composite color artefacts far more often than NES and SNES; on the other hand each of those consoles had multiple revisions with varying video quality so that's also a factor. Almost every single N64 game had really low res textures and anti-aliasing built in while PS1 didn't, so composite on N64 just made things double blurry. Composite could help 3D PS1 games but wasn't going to do much for you in a 2D game like Rayman. The Saturn could also benefit from composite for 3D because it had limitations around transparency so it often used dithering to fake it.

[@MadameSomnambule]

I'm with you on the small crts because whenever I'd go to my grandma's house, she'd have a small tv set up on the wall in the kitchen near the breakfast table and me and my brother and cousin would always play our Gamecube games on that thing back then. My cousin would also play his ps1 upstairs on a bigger tv in grandma's computer room, and then a ps2 downstairs in the living room when he got that. I especially remember playing Yugioh: The Falsebound Kingdom on that tiny kitchen tv back then alongside those plug-and-play Atari games. I was always weirded out by how different the plug-and-play Atari games sounded compared to the games on grandma's actual Atari 2600 as I used to play that a lot too when I was a wee kid when I went to her house. As simple as Atari games looked, they tended to look pretty neat on a crt compared to a flat screen.

[@Mogura87]

I mainly use a trinitron PVM for retro consoles and I always use the best signal possible, RGB or S-video, because the image quality loss when stepping down to composite is massive. The fact that there are some effects that work best on lower grade signals, like the waterfall in Sonic the Hedgehog, doesn't make up for the quality loss. I don't buy the "worst signal on the cheapest and oldest tube" narrative as some sort of choice, even though playing the games like that is perfectly fine for the CRT benefits of low lag and motion clarity. The sharpest, cleanest analogue signal rivaling a digital signal on a trinitron tube is simply the best of both worlds and will be never be matched. I also strongly dislike how some people laud filters as some sort of CRT-killer, when they are not even remotely able to replicate the motion clarity, luminance and perfect presentation of lower resolutions without scaling. It's very important to stress how CRTs and only CRTs can give you the complete CRT experience, even if CRTs too differ amongst themselves. Now that's not to say I don't play retro on modern displays but when I do I never delude myself into thinking it's as good as the CRT experience.

[@Enol666]

I'm glad you're still around, and making cool videos, after all these years.

[@LordAteag]

You don't need those commas.

[@Enol666]

@@LordAteag You're correct. I've really gotta cut out the comma overuse. One would've sufficed.

[@QuantumCairo]

​@@Enol666 not to be "that guy" but really no commas in that above statement are necessary. For example; you could've said "I'm glad you're still around and making cool videos...after all these years." This would give pause to the first part of the statement, while it's sinking in then the second part of the statement hits to finish off the sentence. Seeing as it's just one sentence composed of two different statements and you use "and" to join them no commas are necessary at all. Now, I 💯 agree with your first statement! I'm really glad to see he still exists; I found some cool info and music from watching through the years. I don't check in as much as I used to...but it's nice to have that reconnect comfort.

[@Enol666]

@@QuantumCairo Thanks for the feedback man! I always like to keep on top of my writing and grammar and sometimes feedback's the only real way. Definitely don't feel like you're being "that guy". I agree that my statement reads far smoother with the single elipses than another comma. Thank you for reminding me that I don't need commas to connect two statements when I'm already using "and" to accomplish that. Big ups! Have a good one brother!

[@LordAteag]

@@QuantumCairo You're both awesome. I'm going to smoke a bowl to you dudes.

[@icarusgaming6269]

You need to match your shutter speed to the refresh rate of your TV. If it refreshes at 30 FPS then the the shutter needs to be 1/30 so you're taking a picture at exactly the moment it renders. It's better to sync it with the TV than the media being played because otherwise you'll capture the artifacts that happen between renders, which will look much more janky than dropping certain frames

[@TacoTuesdey]

9:46 who else checked their computer for the streamlabs alert when you didnt see one pop up in the video? 😂

[@neonpop80]

The digital filters cant match my PVM, they're flat and dimmer, whereas my PVM is bright and "alive". It's alive because of the constant scanning I guess. And though it's lower res it feels higher because it diminshes the pixel edges, gives them a softness and makes them come alive through the scan lines. I think falling in love with pixels is the wrong idea. As a kid I always thought of videogames as magical because when I looked close at the screen it looked like they were made of light, if that makes sense

[@todesziege]

It makes a lot of sense! I loved watching the screen closely, watching the light move on the screen. It was indeed something magical about it, like fairy dust.

[@Mr.Plant1994]

I’m 30 years old and I can still hear the whine of a CRT and I don’t know how I lived with that for the first 19 years of my life. I cringe everytime I’m around one. It’s the only thing keeping me from getting and enjoying my very own CRT

[@user-tc5qc4ql8m]

lol i have a memory of being in 6th grade math class and the tell-tale whine suddenly emanating from the door to the neighboring classroom and my friend says, to no one in particular, "ms. C turned on her TV". like it was so unsubtle.

[@mikeledrew5830]

What game is that footage from at around 3:30?

[@WigWoo1]

I've always wondered why it is 30 years of emulators and we still haven't designed a perfect CRT filter that looks perfectly like CRT with accurate scan lines

[@ozzyp97]

We're now getting there thanks to 4K monitors, and there lies the reason: resolution. There's a lot going on to create the look of a single pixel on a CRT from bloom to smoothing and scanlines, and replicating all that in detail on an LCD requires a ton of real pixels for each pixel of the original image. That, and it's just hard to design such a complicated filter. There are still some things that are just straight up impossible replicate too. OLEDs are very good, but nothing can match a CRT for motion clarity and response time even now.

[@CyberLabStudio]

Very good video. I appreciate how difficult it must be to record video from a CRT. One thing I noted though is your video was recorded at 30fps. It should ideally be 60fps as that captures both fields in an NTSC signal. Next thing is that in order to preserve as much detail as possible, you might have to use as high a bitrate as possible. Your CRT Filter looks pretty decent. You can also take a look at CyberLab Mega Bezel Death To Pixels Shader Preset Pack, NESGuy's presets, Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor and RetroGames4K's CRT Shader presets for RetroArch.

[@jpetersongaming]

This is such a great explanation, thank you! Just picked up a CRT for my SNES. Nostalgia Fever.

[@TaimatCR]

Just a heads up, I think there's a slight audio delay on the talking head sections

[@y_s4021]

5:35 so the retro-style games we have today are an illusion, it seems. As in, we don't really have retro-style games that truly emulate the aesthetics of back in the day, the way they were supposed to be looked at. This matters because now we know the artists drew the images to look best in the old TVs. Not just that, they used the conditions of the old hardware creatively and some gradients and textures looked smoother, blending together. The curved forms looked more like curves and less like a collection of rectangles. This matters as much as which paper an artist uses in a drawing. It can have different feels and textures. Some look cheap, some add a lot of depth to the drawing. We thought the dots were supposed to look as sharp as possible, and that wasn't the intention at all with some of the artists. That makes me look forward to a game that can manage that look, with all the RGB "bleeding", blur, chromatic aberration or whatever you call it. Not just a layer that you put over the pixels and call it retro.

[@null140]

It pains me that many pixel-art games by indie devs are very good... because I only want to play them if I can 'correct' their visuals to a smooth, 240p CRT presentation. I can do that with Zero Sievert on my PC with a Windows program called ShaderGlass. Going back to 'pixels!' just kind of makes me feel sad. It's a reminder of the cultural memory we've lost. Happy to see videos like this one proliferating; every person who learns about this represents a potentially better direction for retro game preservation, and image quality/ resolution obsession.

[@the_skotts1110]

Growing up we had a 32 inch CRT TV and that thing was a 2 person job to move! I'd like to see a video on setting up that Retroarch filter. I've messed around with it before, but never got one looking that great.

[@volvo09]

I once helped move a widescreen Trinitron (I forget the size) but it was staggeringly heavy. 2 people and we both had to take it easy. I found one on the side of the road once, but I had to pass it by because I didn't have help. I have a 27" Trinitron now and it's heavy, but I can move it myself. That widescreen set was unbelievable.

[@Peremptor]

@@volvo09 Yeah we had a lovely 32 inch set we gave away had to help them load it into the truck... moving that thing up stairs was torture.

[@kyler247]

the best way to illustrate this is with small details like bricks and stones in final fantasy 6 for example, without the crt it just looks like a mess of pixels, but when you add the filtering qualities crts bring, it magically looks like bricks and stones.

[@solocamo3654]

Link to the Past's visuals are still awesome

[@Wanted797]

It’s important to remember the artists were also using crt monitors to create their designs.

[@kenzosref-zj5nq]

Please do a video on your shader settings! I've played around with crt shaders but in the end found I lost too much brightness.

[@SoyLuciano]

9:46 Found an audio mistake in the video.

[@SoyLuciano]

Also, where did the game over screen from 5:37 come from?

[@andyboxish4436]

nothing beats a CRT when it comes to motion resolution, to this day. I use a CRT daily, and not just for retro games. I still love watching content on it, everything from movies to youtube

[@crestofhonor2349]

PC CRTs are great for that

[@andyboxish4436]

@@crestofhonor2349 yep they are incredible. But even a standard set limited to 480i is still great too. I use a 20 inch CRT in the spare bedroom to watch dvd's on a PS3. And the KZbin app is still supported on the ps3 too. It's quite an experience watching KZbin on that thing. Looks surprisingly good when hooked up with component

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Why don't you turn on TV-mode of your LCD for motion in 24p movies?

[@sniglom]

4:59 "It doesn't draw the entire thing at once like an LCD". That's not how LCDs work. LCDs refreshes row by row, just like the CRT, you can verify this using a slowmo camera. If you look at specs for HDMI, DVI or Display Port, you can see that they send video data line by line and with blanking, sure they may be digital, but video is transferred just like with VGA.

[@RCD4444]

I have a HMV RF only set thats made from wood and is absolutely huge and it has a fantastic image, when i compare it side by side to my trinitrons I actually prefer the hmv. I use different crts for different eras of consoles.

[@benjaminyoung9694]

Im the same way lol

[@prolifik302]

RetroArc pixelart 2D games look devine with 'Upscale9x' shader. Its not a CRT filter but for me even better it makes ur old games look like modern HD pixel art for modern screens like my phone screen

[@wolfwangdelosmonteros7134]

I would also love a video on how to apply a good CRT filter, I been thinking about giving that a try.

[@Bubba__Sawyer]

Retroarch + CRT Royale.

[@Scripture-Man]

Good video. I really care about this stuff and I was one of the few people making a fuss about this back in the early days of emulation. I developed my own CRT simulation while most of the community was happy just to have alternating black lines for "scanlines" which looked horrendous. One detail that never gets talked about - but is SO important - is gamma. The gamma and color levels on CRTs were completely different to modern screens. Everything was much darker. Over the last 20 years I've been constantly surprised that so many TV stations will broadcast old TV shows that were designed to be watched on CRTs but don't adjust the gamma, so everything looks SO washed out and desaturated. It's crazy! They don't even add glow, and yet these shows were designed to be watched with glow.

[@capitanwinters4422]

🤓☝️ oooh

[@Malcontentmatt]

Yeah man, I'd love to see a video on CRT filters!

[@condor.67]

One thing I don't see people talk about CRT TVs is the intense BRIGHT of the screen, like the light is way more brighter than a regular LCD screen, it makes things more intense and realistic, the explosions, the sky, etc. Not to mention the natural anti-aliasing, it's like perfect for retro games

[@null140]

A very natural extremely high dynamic range, to be matched only recently by the most expensive OLED TVs :/ It's one of the reasons I always go back to my actual CRT for a lot of games; even with the most authentic looking CRT filter on an LCD, the actual *brightness* of a CRT can't be easily matched, and together with the smoothing, the deep blacks, the motion clarity etc., it really does make early 3D games with lights in the environment look a lot nicer. I always compare how the pre-rendered wall sconces in Resident Evil 2's Police Station Main Hall look on CRT vs say, an OSSC or Retrotink 5x -> LCD monitor/ TV, and that particular difference is a real clincher for me. Adds a lot of depth and 'pop' to the actual dimensionality of an image, which for earlier 3D (especially those with pre-rendered backgrounds) is quite important.

[@condor.67]

​@@null140 Dunno if you ever noticed but when you play some retro stuff on LCD the image is a bit darker, that's because of the intense light of CRTs that just bring balance for that. Retro stuff are made for CRTs IMO

[@null140]

@@condor.67 oh yeah, good point! coz the bright spots pierced through better!

[@StaySic4Ever]

I miss CRT monitor. Just motion wise I remember it felt odd once I got first LCD monitor. Hoping OLED keeps improving so I can jump and get one I want. Potentially extra optional filters for it would be great to emulate CRT look.

[@benjaminyoung9694]

Give up this "hope" its hopeless. Just get a crt.

[@dantasticmania8728]

I had very found memories of the last crt tv and it was a Samsung 31 in widescreen full 1080p. Unfortunately to get to move down into my basement at the time it took literally my uncle and my best to help.me. Now.I.have.oled and honestly I really wouldn't go back. The picture and response are amazing!

[@sulaimangari2745]

Out of topic, what game did he play at 3:27?

[@LITTLE1994]

As retro gamer who still uses a CRT, that's how they're supposed to work. They're built with those TVs in mind.

[@RyoHazuki224]

What I love about S-Video over RGB is that you eliminate a lot of dot-crawl that you get with basic TVs. I couldn't afford a Trinitron ever back then, but I had an okay TV. But the dot crawl was a bane of my childhood. Then I eventually got a TV that could support Component input... wow what a difference! That basically completely eliminated dot-crawl and I was in bliss!

[@fungo6631]

In Europe only higher end TVs had S Video. Low end stuff all had RGB SCART.

[@Oribaa90]

Such an interesting topic. I always thought that a sharp pixel look is the superior look. I was always looking for the sharpest image possible. But a couple of months ago I dicovered that a smooth less sharp image can be awesome too. Right now I am experimenting a lot with my Retrotink 5x. I also learned to like the smooth filter with scanlines. So now I think it is just a matter of taste and I am not sure anymore what the superior image is. I still love the perfect sharp RGB picture but some games look better with less sharpness. I think that's what I learned by using the Retrotink 5x.

[@ratone1983]

The main problem with sharp pixels was the non 1:1-ratio pixels! The SNES is 5:4 on a 4:3 display, so everything looks stretched. And in low res screens you have to double some pixels and get a blurry line every few lines, it was awful. 4K screens can do a great job, with high chances of getting integer multiplication of pixels and very tiny blurred lines, so that's mostly a part of the past which I don't think anyone wants to bring back ever.

[@litjellyfish]

@@ratone1983 still with 4K and perfect upscaling it looks blocky. And that is they issue. 320x200 or so looks better on CRT. A pixel Art game made in say 640x400 or higher look good on a LCD with 4K you can emulate the CRT or use other interpolation filter that make those games look better or at least more as they was designed to look. Something that was pixelated on a crt often looks better there. While stuff píxeled on LCD usually looks good on LCD

[@DynamicUnreal]

I remember when I first bought an Xbox 360 in 2007 and for the first month played on a CRT TV. I couldn’t believe how amazing and fluid everything looked on the new console. After that month I bought my first LCD TV, and it was not at all what was advertised. The resolution went up, yes, but everything else looked a lot worse.

[@ChenKen991]

Great video. I had a similar setup with an old set and a Wii with emulators on it. You'd think there'd be some chinese emulation machine that could do a good job outputting 240p since I think there's a market for it.

[@michall6454]

I owned an arcade in the late 90s, and the arcade games with 25" and bigger monitors on the flyback, there is a knob for focus. I would blur it a little to make the scan lines not so sharp, and I thought that looked good! All monitors and TVs have the focus on the flyback but bigger than 25" I just thought too much black in between lines.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Also wouldn't sharp scanlines burn in and create ugly Moire patterns after some time? You drive CRTs interlaced, to avoid this. Or have this weird NTSC refresh rate and some 60 Hz magnetic field nearby to slowly wobble the image over the screen.

[@gnarlin4964]

I wish some manufacturers would make new crt monitors.

[@crestofhonor2349]

Not enough of a market as well as the facilities that used to make them are shut down. Plus they’d be quite expensive to make as well as trying to decide which audience do you want to make them for. You can’t have super high line count monitors like PC CRTs otherwise they suffer. Plus they aren’t being made due ti them containing led in the glass to shield them, although this is just on the inside and isn’t dangerous

[@ThAlEdison]

As a kid I used to plug my NES and SNES into a Commodore 1702 monitor.

[@grimpaper]

Personally, I would really appreciate a video detailing how to get a good set of shaders running in retro arch. I haven't touched a CRT Since the age of 10, so I doubt that I could do it as much justice as you could.

[@filiepgeeraert8301]

The technical explanations are incorrect in many ways, like the interlaced part is completely missing in the explanation. CRT TV's will not refresh the whole screen 50 or 60 times per second, but only half of the image. For example, the S-Video explanation. Don't try to explain if you don't understand it yourself. That said, the main point that pictures are different on a CRT than on an LCD is correct.

[@scorpio6819]

Thanks so much for the video really informative 😀 Would be great if you could make a video about how to apply different shaders/filters thx 😊

[@BeautifulGazelle06]

I personally got into retro games after I got my older sibling's old GBA, and (a bit more recently) my aunt's OG Gameboy, I think because those both use LCD screens that make it easier to see the individual pixels my idea of older games has always been those little pixels. I definitely get why a lot of people prefer playing old games on CRT TVs or just with a CRT filter, but I personally like crisp pixels more because that's what I grew up with.

[@SorryImRelatable]

would absolutely love a vid on your CRT filter settings! I've plucked around with a bunch of the presets inside retroarch and also tried community options like crt-royale and sonkun's but can never get it quite to where I would like

[@JD-mz1rl]

5:57 this is a great illustration of the difference. Especially the bottom left, looks leagues better than the bottom right

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

No, the phosphors in a crt is NOT instant. It slowly fades after being struck by the electrons. Quite noticeable in a dark room and an image with sharp contrasting areas. Also, electrons don't travel at the speed of light on account of them not being photons...

[@teksyndicate]

response time for gray to gray should be near zero and better than any LCD... plus the black that is there in between illumination cycles helps our eyes see more movement... as for the speed of light. Yeah, you got me there. They do have mass.

[@Peremptor]

I remember always getting bothered how with monitor CRTs a lot of people use to leave them on 60hz and at that refresh rate to me the image didn't look stable in a desktop environment... once in a game though 60hz was fine... still I always was trying to raize the frequency to at least 85-100hz.

[@NorthWay_no]

You didn't touch in on non-15KHz CRTs (i.e. 31KHz+) - they seem to be missing something for me. Also, I would like to hear if there are some display technologies that are better for getting the filters right, like OLED?

[@wariodude128]

Noticed when you were playing Link to the Past on a CRT television Link had blonde hair. Which is fascinating considering now people refer to Link in the game as "Pink Hair Link" and wonder how that happened. Well, as you just proved, the game was made with CRT televisions in mind. It was only with LCD and non-CRT monitors Link with pink hair became a thing. Amazing.

[@kodilewis3849]

Dude, you described how a PLASMA television works... Tiny little individual PLASMA cells this ignite to create light. An LCD or LED tv work with an LCD panel on top of a few light diffusion panels and then a few LED light strips usually located down the sides of the panel or the top and bottom. There is NO tv for the consumer market that consists of thousands of LED lights to make up the screen.

[@musicman3569]

My favorite RetroArch Shader preset as of late for NES/SNES/Genesis/etc. is xsal/2xsal-level2-crt. It strikes a nice balance with a little bit of blurring, a little pixilation (so it doesn't look like a flash game), and a little bit of phosphors without going overboard. It feels like a CRT on a very high quality connection, and doesn't feel distracting to me. Of course that is just my own tastes, I feel some of the other filters are a bit too heavy-handed. Cheers!

[@itsdeonlol]

I wish they can bring back CRTs.

[@benjaminyoung9694]

It can happen if the demand is there. But there is a lot of pushback from the tv companies themselves to discredit crts

[@1ButtonDash]

I will forever love pixel art. MAybe it's cuz I grew up with sega genesis and snes but I will never stop loving that art style and love how devs keep using it to this day

[@lanpartylandlord6123]

id love to see you do a video on finding CRT deals or how you acquired yours. i used to have two CRT’s melee on, but sadly i sold both. right now, id like to buy a crt monitor for my pc, but am having trouble deciding the best way to go about it.

[@bjorkobubba6778]

Some things that helped me out when I was looking for PC crts was checking out old electronics recyclers, going to college campuses to see if they were getting rid of old computers, and especially office spaces that haven't gotten around to getting rid of stuff.

[@crestofhonor2349]

For a PC make sure to get a VGA CRT as those are best for PC usage. Plus they look amazing at 480p and above as well as being sharp enough for proper PC usage. Some great ones came from Apple(although they can be a bit odd), Sony, Dell, Mitsubishi, and some diamondtrons. Horizontal refresh rate is super important as well as dot pitch

[@lanpartylandlord6123]

@@crestofhonor2349 do you have any specific recommendations?

[@crestofhonor2349]

@@lanpartylandlord6123 You'll have to see what's around you. I highly advise against any shipping and reccomend picking up locally in order to avoid anything breaking when being transported. Some of the companies I listed earlier make great VGA CRTs. My reccomendation is to stick to late 90s and early 2000s sets for the really high resolution tubes.

[@lanpartylandlord6123]

@@crestofhonor2349 thank you! glad i didnt buy a trinitron on ebay and pay the hundreds of dollars in shipping ;) hahaha

[@MaxiZamac]

Retro gaming, loved that era. Atari 2600, C64 and then PC with all those wonderful MS-DOS games. So much fun!

[@De5ertFi5h]

Your description of how LCDs work is very wrong. If you're going to explain something, at least take a minute or two to get a basic understanding yourself.

[@LaurenceReeves]

He isn’t really that far off though.. you’ve called him out but not then given the correct explanation.

[@razorbackroar]

@@LaurenceReeves agreed dude gonna call out out old boy but to ignorant to explain what exactly it is that he is off about. Everyone loses

[@mana_beast_beats1114]

It doesn't matter much. RetroArch has ~pleeeenty~ of Shaders that can replicate CRT style.....

[@calinguga]

led and oled screens work with micro leds, lcd screens have an array of colored cells with liquid crystal technology, controlled electronically, that block or let through a large white backlight. he shouldn't have called them leds, but the "small light bulbs" analogy was perfectly fine.

[@benh715]

No need to be so rude.

[@panchoki1d]

I believe LCSs raster across the screen like CRTs and don't "all turn on and off at the same time" as you mentioned about 4:45 into the video.

[@crestofhonor2349]

They do. OLED’s do the same thing as well

[@judgewest2000]

In the UK we had scart that handled RGB pretty well from memory, but not everything supported it. I had an Amiga as my last main machine before jumping to the PC and ran scart the entire time - it was pretty lush. Previous machines mainly ran on RF which was about as bad as it gets.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

UK had zx spectrum with digital RGB to a CRT?

[@judgewest2000]

​@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt That's a good question. I don't recall if the ZX had RGB out without some physical mod, I'd guess it probably didn't and would only support RF. TV's in the UK didn't have anything other than RF support I would say from the very late 80's but became incredibly common in the early 90's with the advent of other tech like Sky TV, decent VHS and later on DVD players.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@judgewest2000 I confused this. BBC micro and Amstrad CPC had RGB output. I still think that I have seen computers which got power from the flyback in the monitor. Like a Mac, but with a cable. Arcade were RGB.

[@PhoenixBird9000]

Excellent video. I took a VERY long time to go from a CRT to any kind of flat screen because of motion sensitivity. I eventually had to go to an LCD monitor because of compatibility reasons, but this was after monitors capable of black frame insertion and over 120Hz refresh were possible. I've always noticed the visual differences though, especially on emulators. Later PC games haven't been as much as an issue owing to the larger color palettes. Thank you for taking the time to revisit this tech in such detail.

[@cult_of_odin]

I had a high dollar CRT into the PS3 era. I got one of the new Sony Bravia LEDs just because of Oblivion. Still have the CRT in storage. Pull it out occasionally so my kids can play 8 and 16 bit games.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

There is a web page named after a back illumination where white LEDS only lighten up one horizontal stripe. Even they said that it makes no sense anymore. But they are into modern 3d games .. so . Anywhere were you can buy this illumination for LCD? I would even accept a thick case and don't care for native resolution of the LCD itself. When you turn up brightness, this stripe has to get bigger. But when you play at a dark winter evening, the ambient detector narrows the stripe to almost CRT experience. Just, there is still some scanline lag for the molecules to physically rotate. I guess, Laser scanners win. Sadly, nobody could explain to me, why rotating scanners always look scratched, and how something can even rotate fast enough? Okay, I guess, 16 kHz is possible. But why even produce scanners for 720p ??

[@mattx5499]

Agree that CRT was a big part of game graphics back then. CRT masked low resolution and made dithering effect look like there were more colors and smooth transitions between them. Modern displays with it's perfect picture made it all fall apart. Another thing is the size of the screen. Back then most people had 14" to like 21" monitors and TVs. Now people want to play retro games on displays bigger than 30" stretching the low resolution into absurd sizes. I don't say you have to use shaders to simulate CRT picture, but at least don't stretch the picture into a freaking size of a billboard and make your retro gaming set-up to use proper aspect ratio. When I see 4:3 picture stretched horizontaly to fit the 16:9 screen I want to scream. ;D

[@kaylee42900]

It's crazy how CRTs could be used by artists to provide things like: 1) Anti aliasing 2) extra texturing - really evident in pre-rendered backgrounds where it makes them look more 3d. 3) What looks to me like an AO like effect. Even in games that lacked shadows and whatnot things would still appear grounded whereas lcds need AO to make not make objects look like they're "floating" on the terrain.

[@charliecharliewhiskey9403]

14:35 dumb question but isn't NTSC Colour at 29.97 FPS? Wouldn't a CRT playing "at 30FPS" really be displaying an NTSC signal for the TV to recognise, seeings as games were just giving the same signal formats as television broadcast? If your modern camera is recording *actual* 30 FPS then it's always going to be slightly out compared to an old CRT, right?

[@Oocca_Truth]

14:41 the reason for this is because the camera's shutter speed/framerate is not synced with the refresh rate of the CRT. The moving "band" you see is the electron gun scanning across the display. For instance, even if the game is playing at 30 FPS internally, if the signal is 240p you can automatically assume it's 60 Hz, and therefore the camera framerate should be set to 60 FPS, or for still images, the shutter speed should be 1/60. Modern cameras handle this weirdly (especially cellphone cameras) and you may find that adjusting the exposure actually changes the shutter speed/framerate. tl;dr: to get good images/videos of CRTs, you want the framerate/shutter speed to be in sync with the refresh rate of the CRT, not the framerate of the content you're viewing on the display

[@MrCashoos]

For choosing what input signal to use on retro games I have some guidance (this is entirely personal): Is it 2D and is a console from the 16bit era or before? I choose composite always because as you mentioned you will lose some or all effects that the artist and engineers intended when designing pixel art for consumer CRTs. A great example of this is transparencies: SNES was capable of rendering real transparencies but not all games used them in order to save for performance. Now the Sega Genesis and the TurboGrafx 16 weren't capable of that so they used dithering instead in all cases, those dithering effects that stimulated transparency and more color depth when displayed on a CRT with RF or composite will be lost when using component or even S-Video, let alone RGB. For early 3D game consoles I think composite is still ok in most cases, specially on a PS1 since the dithering present in that console rendering is wild high and covers the entire screen. This was a hardware build-in feature on the PS1 renderig pipeline to reduce color banding which was quite noticeable but again, the dithering wouldn't be noticeable on a CRT using composite input as it blends with the other colors giving the illusion of more color depth. Modern PS1 emulators like DuckStation have a option to eliminate the dithering but without the horrible color banding effect. Now for 6th gen 3D consoles is where I prefer S-Video or better yet Component. Is in this era that most developers weren't trying to create new effects, simulate higher color depth or hide rendering limitations on the level that they did on early 3D consoles. I still think using composite is acceptable with this consoles, specifically if you have a decent modern set and AV cables in good condition but better color separation via component cables improves picture clarity and in many cases gameplay as well thanks to that new level of improved image clarity

[@LumbyMcGumby]

3:57 what game is that incredible artwork

[@pianoatthirty]

This is so funny. Its like how audio engineers after decades of lamenting over their noisy tape machines/analogue hardware, finally get what they always wanted (pristine audio with a low noise floor, aka digital) and end up finding it completely insipid. The older gear was, even with its limitations, "better". You're totally right this stuff looks better on a CRT, I just think it's funny how the human mind works. Wanting, wanting, wanting, getting what it wants (more resolution!) then suddenly realizing, "Wait.... less was actually more. Perfection is boring. Let's bring back the imperfections, the artifacts."

[@sergeykish]

Would modern game look better on CRT? Content requires hardware it was made for.

[@Alex.mueller.781]

I always use CRT Filters on Retroarch because of the natural look. Of course with curved shaders. But 3D Systems like PSX and N64 i love to use upscale with AA Options, if it´s possible without frame drops. BTW: Super Video. I always thought scanlines are that black lines. Nice to know that Scan Lines are the pixel itself.

[@georgef551]

The reason you get weird lines/bars moving down the screen when recording a CRT is that the NTSC framerate is slightly different than the camera. The camera may be doing 60fps (or maybe processed down to 30, or actually set to 30), but the NTSC drawing rate is actually 59.94fps at 242p (it's not 240p, that's why you have those extra 2 lines of background at the bottom of an NES display), or 29.97 at 525i. This small difference is what the camera is picking up. I believe the NES (maybe SNES) actually refreshes at 60.1fps (242p). It's enough again for the lines to appear (opposite traveling direction), but close enough to 59.94 the vertical hold still locks on without adjustment. The reason for the odd framerate was to accommodate color in the old black and white NTSC signals. There wasn't enough bandwidth to process color properly on the 30/60fps original framerate, but slowing it down very slightly came close enough to eliminate most of the interference. The auditory buzz, and dot crawl are some artifacts from not getting it exactly right, but came the closest without having an unstable mess (wouldn't fit in the 525i space).

[@Lippeth]

I found a cool retro tech warehouse in my area and settled on a smaller 13" tv because it was the only one with composite inputs, but after testing the coax with a vcr that works like an rf modulator, I went back to get a 20" that was rf only. I use a splitter box and rca to quarter inch cables to hook up the audio to my computer's audio interface which outputs to my Wharfedale studio reference monitors, and though my room now looks like a plate of spaghetti stuck out of time, I'm having a lot of fun!

[@abowers]

I remembered growing up with a Magnavox set that was silver in color for the shell of the CRT and than we had a bigger (can't remember the size) but a Sony CRT for the living room. Playing PS1 and PS2 when I was younger on those TV's has brought back so many fun memories just playing on a CRT. Someday I want to get a CRT monitor to play retro on to re-live this nostalgia.

[@everx7]

I have a 19" CRT monitor, should i play it or try to play it that, i dont know if its worth it. Kinda want it to do, but then again im lazy to go and get it. I dont know. PS2 games i did only play on LCD so far and a big plasma tv, but that was bad, didnt like it. Probably will try it, this video just keep me thinking.

[@todesziege]

@@everx7 For older PC games, a CRT monitor makes a huge difference. Not _as_ huge as with console games, but they still look very noticeably 'smoother'.

[@everx7]

@@todesziege trust me i know, again im just lazy, the 19" monitor is huge :) and heavy maybe half my life i played on CRT, mostly exactly that, PC games, so i know how good even great they looked and smooth etc. Still my CRT is pretty heavy and really takes up a lot of space, probably if i had like a 17" or 15" maybe it wouldnt be that of a burden i guess. Just so u understand im 43, so i had my fair share of games the likes of Diablo when it was brand new, first time playing back in 1996 a game like that let me tell u thats like seeing the pyramids :). It was that different from what ive played before. Later i did bought my first PC, cause yeah i attended school ithink high or something like that, so not much time for gaming so of course parents didnt bother to buy me one. ANd back then we didnt use so much PCs in school maybe except IT classes, anyway. There was a like internet cafe or soemthing u nknow for gaming :) i dont know what they are called but nonetheless we paid we played and had fun. First like one or two hours at most, but one time we just decided to take a break from school and went for an 8hr session :) of Diablo goodness. On a CRT, i think those were 17", maybe just 15" still good memories. First time beating Diablo was in that establishment :). Anywho, i knew then i need myself a PC at home, so when i did finish my studies and no more school, i did get my first PC and it was beautiful. Weak even for that era, but games like NFS 4 or Fallout 2 ran like a dream and later Thief. Beautiful times :). and everything on CRT. Monitors, so no TV, but still all the better i guess. So now u know even though u never asked :).

[@feasttree]

Recently picked up an anbernic rg35xx and realized how important that scan filter is. Luckily it's built into most cores.