Stupid false nostalgia, just like the old c10 pickup trucks. They are rare now because they are SHIT and nearly all of them were scrapped like they deserve.

What was wrong with them? They served their purpose just fine for many years

Moving those CRTs from one place to another is arduous.

The fear of having to walk under a mounted crt every time I went in and out of my room was real… 😂

Mine exploded.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing.

Do I think crt’s are better? No. Do I miss them? Yes.

Yup. A lot of survivor bias going on with the remaining crop of CRTs out there. Granted, there were probably a lot of perfectly good tubes that got thrown out back in the 2000’s. But the ones we have left still need repair now and then.

I am still rocking my old Apple color monitor and it has never needed a repair. It does need a slap on the top to get the picture right from time to time though.

That thing was my primary tv from the time I was 10 until I bought an hdtv in 2008 (so 13 years), and it was a monitor in a school for an Apple IIe before that. I had two badass old pc speakers I hooked into my ps2 for dvds and gaming back in the day. Now I have my classic consoles plugged into it. It hasn’t seen much use in the last 3 years, but it was constantly being used before that.

I know we threw some out from time to time when I was a kid, but we also had some in the family that lasted forever. We had this really pretty black and white floor model from the early 60s that we finally threw out in the early 2000s, but it worked just fine. No one wanted it any more I guess. I still have dreams about that tv for some reason.

I had a monster sized CRT that would creak due to thermal expansion and would buzz when in use

I agree, but the ones with the degauss button were fun.

CRTs are great for retro gaming because they made low resolutions looking better than any other tech can (by low resolutions i mean 240-360p)

One of the problems is survivorship bias.

The CRT’s that survive today are mostly the cream of the crop. Professional monitors that were used for decades at local TV studios. HD CRT’s from the 2000’s that were some of the last ones made, were prohibitively expensive at the time, and have been lovingly cared for by enthusiasts.

I think a lot of retro gaming enthusiasts who are in to CRT’s today are either too young to actually remember what the average CRT was like or are old enough that they were enthusiasts back even in the 90’s, only buying the absolute best of the best.

I would literally take my phone over the console TV I grew up with in my parent’s living room. I remember setting stuff down on it (it was pretty much a table), like an empty can, and the picture would go crazy. I think part of why we got rid of it was because my mom got new, wireless handsets for the landline phone that caused interference (and it was also around the time new technologies we’re replacing CRT’s).

At one point as a kid i got a 19" Zenith CRT in my bedroom. That thing was absolute garbage. Colors all over the place, the image noisy and warped. It was loud, deeper than it was wide or tall, and weighed probably 40lbs. The only two inputs were RF and RCA, but only mono because it only had one speaker.

I think most of the retro gaming community has just forgotten how bad the average CRT was.

However, I also wonder if this demand for CRT’s and that premium gaming experience is going to impact the market. Will there ever be enough demand for a Kickstarter to manufacture a few thousand high-end CRT’s? Probably not. Could there be new features or new technologies invented to try to sate this demand? Maybe. Projector glasses, retro gaming handhelds, TV’s and monitors with higher refresh rates, “gaming modes”. I wonder if some other new tech is going to come along to try to capture the benefits of good CRT’s in a modern package.

Yeah they were all those things but they also made your hand tingly when you ran it over the screen and it smelled like a Tesla coil

I gave up for a dumb TV, I just don’t hook mine up to the Internet.

Short of undoing decades of neoliberal globalism and free trade agreements that destroyed a litany of domestic industries by sending them offshore, and as a result, collapsing an economy of ‘repair, don’t replace’, we’ll never ever see the days of buying anything for life again.

Welcome to the future. It sucks.

Large Format Displays like those made by NEC are my secret tip, they usually don’t have any “smart” garbage, they’re great for wall-mounting and you can even get them with an anti-reflective coating

Sceptre still makes dumb TVs.

Buy whatever TV and don’t plug it to the internet?

Have you tried turning it off and on?

A friend of mine had an expensive LED TV set get bad RAM about 10 years ago after a firmware fix. You could watch TV for about 2 hours before it went blank. Only official fix via the manufacturer was to disconnect it from power, wait until the rechargeable battery went down, then it was fine again for another 2 hours. It seems like it’s overheating, but it’s not. Something to do with a memory leak and video buffering. It was a known issue among tech enthusiasts, there was a homemade wiki on how to replace the shitty low end RAM with a $30 stick of laptop DIMM and it worked! He still has it, I think.

Update thru USB?

That’s nothing. Look into how vacuum tubes work to achieve logic gates, rectify AC-to-DC, and more. Compared to solid-state electronics, the fundamentals aren’t even the same sport, let alone the same game. People really were living in a different world 80 years ago.

I find this about a lot of old tech. Like precisely etching a piece of vinyl in such a way that it vibrates just right to get the music you want vs bouncing a laser off a reflective disc to read a bunch of 0s and 1s.

First of all, LEDs are bloody insane in how they work. And last, but not least, LCD panels bend THEMSELVES!

My 34" Trinitron weights literally 200 pounds.

While that very much sucks, CRT was a very mature technology that provided excellent products for what was needed at the time. It’s still unmatched when it comes to motion in my book (some may disagree because of phosphor trails).

The fact that my new fancy TV has to make the screen dark and flickery (and possibly add a little SOE) to look almost as clear as that clunker is pretty impressive.

You clearly have never had a good CRT. It will cost you but its great for watching old movies and shows

Better yet, go to your local indie used game store and buy used movies.

Eh, I have been running a pi-hole on my network for many years now. When I did it was purely because I find ads annoying, these days I’d consider it a basic necessity.

also, I have a hard time complaining about privacy and recommending anything google, especially at the price point they sell Chromecast’s for. If you’re buying a consumer set top box, Apple TV is basically the only one that’s anywhere near privacy conscious. Kodi box or self-built PC though if you really care, and even then I’d still want a pi-hole or similar even if you run it on Linux instead of Windows because the services themselves are doing all kinds of shady shit.

It pings an update server

A few times a day it rolls 3 dice (that’s the rattling sound you hear) and if they all come up six an update is needed.

I’m just imagining that juice maker, that just smashed to plates together to pour juice from a bag. And it took forever to actually pour. There was absolutely no reason for it to be smart. Except so that it could make sure you knky bought juice from them.

Video about it from critikal/penguinz0/Charlie.

I’ll have you know that if you uninstall updates from the launcher, I think, and something else, then turn off auto updates. You can get rid of the ads.