Hi and thanks for the useful tips.

What specs should I look in a good crt monitor? From back in the day, I remember how good quality image Sony and Nokia ones seemed to have. I used to work with a couple of those, in 19" and 21" sizes. Not sure how good they are, though.
Can I tell what kind of tube a monitor has just by looking at the back sticker? Or is there any reference list around the web (brand & model)?

The specs you should look for depend on what you want to use it for.

I usually tend to look for flat screen trinitrons (sony) and diamontrons (mitsubishi, nec)...recently I just picked up a brand new in box 22" samsung CRT with a .24mm dot pitch and it does up to 2048x1536...It's not the best one out there, but it does produce a very high quality image....I think Samsung made their own tubes for the most part, but I'm not sure of this...can anyone confirm this?

I usually look for the smallest dot pitch (at least 0.25mm and lower) and large screen size (at least 19"-22") and capability of high resolution (up to 2048x1536). The reason for this is that I prefer to use my CRT as an all-in-one solution for all my retro computing from XT DOS all the way up to Core2Duo WinXP stuff. I do a lot of photo editing with my more modern Core2Duo system and don't miss 16:9 widescreen ratio at all for movies, etc....that's what my 40" SONY LCD TV is for (connected to the same system).

For strictly older DOS gaming (320x200 and 640x480) you don't necessarily need a large high res monitor, but I still use my 21" trinitrons for older gaming as well...like I said, it depends on your personal preference.

The only information I can provide you with regarding what tubes are found in some monitors is as follows:
- SONY Trinitron - Some Dell, IBM, and Sun Microsystem branded CRT's.
- Diamontron - NEC, Mitsubishi, and I'm sure there's more but I don't know

You can tell if a CRT is using a trinitron tube if there are two very faint and thin darker horizontal lines 1/3 the way up and down from the edge of the screen. When I first saw this, I thought my monitor was broken, but upon some research I found out that this is intentional...I think it has something to do with aligning the image due to having a perfectly flat screen over a curved one or something like that, I'm not sure (you can read about it more here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_grille), but if you notice these thin lines it means you have a trinitron (apeture grille) tube (this may have been discussed on Vogons a while ago).

Other specs to look for is refresh rate at certain resolutions...I for one am fine with 60Hz when I'm using 2048x1536 (some people think it's too low, but I like having the high resolution to have more "real estate" on my screen when I'm managing my photos, for example) but the higher the refresh rate, the better in most cases. 75Hz is a good refresh rate to look for when talking lower resolutions than 2048x1536 or 1600x1200.

Myself and others have posted pics of some CRT's in this topic:Post pics of your CRT monitors if you want to get an idea of what's out there.

zerodiagonal wrote:

What specs should I look in a good crt monitor?

Even the finest-quality CRT from back in the day can be completely ruined by burn-in if the previous owner spent years taking care of it badly – and usually you can't tell without plugging in the monitor first, unless things have gotten really bad. If you want a CRT, there is little point in holding out for something particularly good, especially as they are only going to get harder to find.

Jorpho wrote:

zerodiagonal wrote:

What specs should I look in a good crt monitor?

Even the finest-quality CRT from back in the day can be completely ruined by burn-in if the previous owner spent years taking care of it badly – and usually you can't tell without plugging in the monitor first, unless things have gotten really bad. If you want a CRT, there is little point in holding out for something particularly good, especially as they are only going to get harder to find.

I agree with Jorpho about burn-in and deterioration, this has been the case with about 30% of all the used CRT's I have purchased over the last 12 years. I had to recycle 4 different 22" trinitron CRT's because the colors were just not right and they were starting to 'bleed' and the text quality was getting "muddy". I expect the same to happen very soon with some of my CRT's I have now 😢

I do have to say though all my Commodore RGB monitors are still going strong with no noticeable deterioration. For the most part in my experience, suprisingly, some of the older stuff from the 80's seems to last a bit longer than stuff made in the 90's...maybe because the 80's stuff is getting less use? Not sure.

CGA and EGA monitors are rare and expensive already, so are Atari and Commodore ones for the ST and Amiga. I have a few decent 17" CRT monitors and a couple smaller ones I got for free. You don't really need a high end 21" monitor if you are just going to play VGA games, just one with decent digital controls and good color. Unless you have burn in the screens really don't go bad, its just the electronics that drive them might need repairs down the road. The problem with the very high end monitors is that you need special factory software and cables to calibrate them correctly once they do need repairs, the lower end ones don't.

Unknown_K wrote:

CGA and EGA monitors are rare and expensive already, so are Atari and Commodore ones for the ST and Amiga. I have a few decent 17" CRT monitors and a couple smaller ones I got for free. You don't really need a high end 21" monitor if you are just going to play VGA games, just one with decent digital controls and good color. Unless you have burn in the screens really don't go bad, its just the electronics that drive them might need repairs down the road. The problem with the very high end monitors is that you need special factory software and cables to calibrate them correctly once they do need repairs, the lower end ones don't.

Very good point about the calibration...I wonder if that's all a lot of the larger CRT's I gave up needed...maybe they weren't totally damaged...who knows.

I do like the larger 22" CRT's though just because of how amazing it is to play old games on such a big monitor...it's just something that was unheard of back in my youth to be able to play games on anything larger than a 17" (or later even a 19")...Even 19" monitors in my time were a little rare just because of the cost...myself and friends of mine always opted for the smaller CRT's because it was almost as much to buy a 19" CRT as the computer itself.

retrofanatic wrote:

I do have to say though all my Commodore RGB monitors are still going strong with no noticeable deterioration. For the most part in my experience, suprisingly, some of the older stuff from the 80's seems to last a bit longer than stuff made in the 90's...maybe because the 80's stuff is getting less use? Not sure.

Older picture tubes had thicker cannons and bigger electron guns, therefore larger cathodes with more emissive material. In my experience they do last longer than thinner tubes from the 90s, and also they probably weren't driven as hard as with automatic white balance circuitry and the like. 90's Sony Trinitron TVs are particularly bad, finding one today without a knackered tube is a very rare occurrence.

Unknown_K wrote:

Unless you have burn in the screens really don't go bad, its just the electronics that drive them might need repairs down the road.

While it's true that the electronics are much more failure prone than the picture tubes, they do go bad not just from burn-in. Cathode material depletes with use, giving off less and less electrons which leads to bad focus, muddy contrast, bleeding highlights, insufficient brightness and so on. There's a type of cathode wear in which the gamma curve falls, blacks and whites are nice so it looks healthy from a brightness/contrast perspective but the intermediate tones start to get lost, to the untrained eye this is not very noticeable until it becomes severe and the picture takes a 'metallic' appearance. Also PC monitor tubes wear out in a different way than TV tubes, due to their differing brightness characteristics and the kind of video material they display. GUI computing is usually full of bright white screens which result in hard, even cathode wear, while moving TV material doesn't drive them as hard but can result in uneven wear. Good thing about TV tubes is that even down to 50% of their original emission they can still produce a really acceptable picture, which means that a good, well cared tube can easily last several decades.

Commodore monitors are usually a good bet. Even if they're faulty, they're electronically quite simple and easy to fix.

I have always been very fond of Eizo (Rolls Royce of monitors through today) and Philips CRTs. I have a 19" Philips CRT now: no Eizo. 😀 At one point I had a Iiyama 17" CRT growing up. Those were very popular in NL at the time.

133MHz wrote:

Good thing about TV tubes is that even down to 50% of their original emission they can still produce a really acceptable picture, which means that a good, well cared tube can easily last several decades.

Unless of course you're particularly drawn to dark games. It was trying to play the underwater sections of FF7PC on an old CRT that really showed me the magnitude of the problem.

If I had a warehouse or huge house at my disposal I wouldn't get rid of any electronics. What's storage worth to you? I have to get rid of things time to time...

My two cents worth... I do not think they are worth saving. Displays are one place where newer is better. Out out curiosity I did a search on Ebay - you have good trinitron monitors going for $40-$50. I am getting ready to trash an old 17 inch viewsonic. It's a boat anchor, one of the pins has broken off, and it's just not worth trying to fix it.

ncmark wrote:

My two cents worth... I do not think they are worth saving. Displays are one place where newer is better. Out out curiosity I did a search on Ebay - you have good trinitron monitors going for $40-$50. I am getting ready to trash an old 17 inch viewsonic. It's a boat anchor, one of the pins has broken off, and it's just not worth trying to fix it.

In general I'd agree with you - while CRTs as a "genre" have a near mythical status as "perfect displays" the truth is that average or below-average examples of CRTs weren't fantastic when they were brand new, and have not improved with age, whereas even bargain basement LCDs usually put up a decent picture.

Having said that, if you have fully working CRTs I don't see any reason to dump them out (your situation with a damaged monitor looks like a good time to look for a replacement), and if you have some of the higher-spec/exotic models like Trinitron those can produce a very good picture, and imho are worth holding onto if they're still in working order and you have the physical space. As far as going out to specifically track down such a display - that's a more personal decision imho: are you okay dealing with the bulk, power draw, heat generation, etc of a large CRT for whatever benefits (perceived or actual) that it offers.

obobskivich wrote:

ncmark wrote:

My two cents worth... I do not think they are worth saving. Displays are one place where newer is better. Out out curiosity I did a search on Ebay - you have good trinitron monitors going for $40-$50. I am getting ready to trash an old 17 inch viewsonic. It's a boat anchor, one of the pins has broken off, and it's just not worth trying to fix it.

In general I'd agree with you - while CRTs as a "genre" have a near mythical status as "perfect displays" the truth is that average or below-average examples of CRTs weren't fantastic when they were brand new, and have not improved with age, whereas even bargain basement LCDs usually put up a decent picture.

Having said that, if you have fully working CRTs I don't see any reason to dump them out (your situation with a damaged monitor looks like a good time to look for a replacement), and if you have some of the higher-spec/exotic models like Trinitron those can produce a very good picture, and imho are worth holding onto if they're still in working order and you have the physical space. As far as going out to specifically track down such a display - that's a more personal decision imho: are you okay dealing with the bulk, power draw, heat generation, etc of a large CRT for whatever benefits (perceived or actual) that it offers.

This. CRTs aren't full of some voodoo magic that inherently makes them better than LCDs, and in most cases a cheap LCD will actually have a better picture than a cheap CRT. That said, an expensive/higher-quality CRT can put out a pretty nice picture, though I don't have any CRTs like this aside from a couple of smallish Dell-branded ones.

The difference between CRTs and LCDs is really more obvious in terms of console gaming, as many older consoles will look like crap on an LCD, at least in my opinion.

No you shouldn't. There won't be any left for me to use.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

The difference between CRTs and LCDs is really more obvious in terms of console gaming, as many older consoles will look like crap on an LCD, at least in my opinion.

I've seen some "old-ish" consoles (like PlayStation 1) on very expensive LCDs with dedicated scaling hardware and the end result is not that bad, but the price isn't worth it imho - just go grab an old CRT from a garage sale or something and you can usually get the same quality experience. 😀 More generic LCDs (especially those sold as PC monitors) will usually do a not-so-great job with old consoles though - I agree entirely on that (and in a lot of cases they require some sort of converter to get CVBS into VGA, which usually degrades quality even further).

I'll only accept playstation on LCD through excessive amounts of filtering.

At least in some parts of Europe, many current LED or Plasma TVs still come with RGB scart 😀

At least on a Panasonic plasma such a setup gives you a very nice image, though you won't get scanlines.

leileilol wrote:

I'll only accept playstation on LCD through excessive amounts of filtering.

Do I even want to ask? 🤣

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

The difference between CRTs and LCDs is really more obvious in terms of console gaming, as many older consoles will look like crap on an LCD, at least in my opinion.

That's because without a hardware upscaler or scan doubler, most LCDs try to display 240p as 480i, so anything moving horizontally gets all torn and scrambled-looking.