I plan to keep a CRT or two around, but I'm not actively using any these days except at work where they're too cheap to replace all of the expensive 1600x1200 CRTs with expensive 1920x1200 LCDs.

I love to occasionally connect my Roland SC-88 and MT-32 to a modern computer running DOSBox or ScummVM so that I can hear the music in old games the way the composers heard it. I need to buy a new USB-MIDI interface though because M-Audio isn't providing 64-bit Vista/Win7 drivers for the one I have now (because they later released a version that is plug-and-play under the same name and are pretending that noone is stuck with the original model).

It's also necessary to hook up an analog joystick in order to play games like X-Wing properly, but I don't do that too often these days.

In response to your comment on speakers: When I was a kid I used to enjoy hooking up computers and consoles to hi-fi's and other better-than-average speaker systems, and I found most "desktop" speakers to be woefully inadequate.

Great Hierophant wrote:

a CRT have two great advantages still. First, they have no single native resolution where things look good and the rest looks like crap (if not letterboxed).

What about Samsung 204B 20" 1600x1200. Every old game looks properly (actually even better than any CRT) with DOSBox configured to use openglnb.

Great Hierophant wrote:

Second, old games were meant to be played on these devices.

This is just sensless. It's as if you said that old games were meant to be played with rubber ball mice.

robertmo wrote:

What about Samsung 204B 20" 1600x1200. Every old game looks properly (actually even better than any CRT) with DOSBox configured […]
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Great Hierophant wrote:

a CRT have two great advantages still. First, they have no single native resolution where things look good and the rest looks like crap (if not letterboxed).

What about Samsung 204B 20" 1600x1200. Every old game looks properly (actually even better than any CRT) with DOSBox configured to use openglnb.

Great Hierophant wrote:

Second, old games were meant to be played on these devices.

This is just sensless. It's as if you said that old games were meant to be played with rubber ball mice.

A CRT handles lower resolutions like 320x200 in the way the players would have seen back in the day. Without the stretching capabilities provided by openglnb, the game would look very fuzzy.

Moreover, openglnb gives an 1 to 1, 2 to 2, etc. stretch the last time I checked. That means you should be getting an effective resolution of 1600x1000, letter boxed. The aspect ratio is incorrect, and "correcting" the ratio stretches the image so that the pixels are no longer perfectly equilavent. There direct3d output option can give you a 5 to 6 strtech, but even then the aspect ratio is not ideal. A CRT gives you the ideal ratio without any compromises.

I draw the line at ball mice, they don't really offer much.

In my country, there are still some CRTs listed for sale. One of them is the ViewSonic P76F+b. The ViewSonic maxed at 2048x1536@60Hz and can do 1600x1200@77Hz. That's about the best we can get today for new here. I think i should get them before they ran out of stock for good.

Do you face this same situation in where you live? Or do you have better options for CRT?

I kind of think that older aspect ratios should be preserved in every flat panel produced today. That is 4:3 and 5:4. Probably also a 16:10 'compressed' to 4:3 as well, like the old 320x200.

While we're on this stuff--for 'native resolution' displays, let's list some good matches for older resolutions (exact 1x, 2x or 4x multiplied)

1600x1200 native for that resolution and 800x600
1280x960 native for that resolution and 640x480
1280x800 native for 640x400 and 320x200 (but of course the image will still look 'stretched')
1024x768 native for that resolution and 512x384

But seriously, it's a mess to have all these in other than a single package, thus the analogue advantage... It's the most important "good old equipment" to me. I still have my old pair of Altec Lansing ACS-90 speakers, but i miss my old 19" Samsung more.

CRTs have always been a bit fuzzy around the pixel edges due to being analog devices. DOSBox's opengl renderer that does bilinear filtering of the stretched image looks the most like I remember. When I use the non-filtered stretching modes, the super-sharp pixels shown on my LCD look almost ridiculous for old games by comparison.

Also, side-letterboxing of a 4:3 image on a 16:10 monitor doesn't bother me because I think of it as being extra width that isn't being used, instead of height that is lost. It's just a matter of perspective.

Actually I play DOSBox in a window more often than not these days because it's fun to play DOS games in brief spurts while taking a break from doing other things.

HunterZ wrote:

CRTs have always been a bit fuzzy around the pixel edges due to being analog devices. DOSBox's opengl renderer that does bilinear filtering of the stretched image looks the most like I remember. When I use the non-filtered stretching modes, the super-sharp pixels shown on my LCD look almost ridiculous for old games by comparison.

CRTs don't really have square pixels like the ones you see gridded on our TFT LCD panels. CRT's dot pitches are more like... um how do you say it... maybe a picture is best to describe it.

• 
  (i think the real thing would be a bit fuzzier than pictured here)

HunterZ wrote:

Also, side-letterboxing of a 4:3 image on a 16:10 monitor doesn't bother me because I think of it as being extra width that isn't being used, instead of height that is lost. It's just a matter of perspective.

My bad, if you were referring to my previous post above. That's what i was trying to say. I should have said "I kind of think that older aspect ratios should be preserved in every widescreen flat panel produced today." And by preserved i mean native letterboxed modes, not relying on software. I said this because not every widescreen monitor has this feature.

HunterZ wrote:

Actually I play DOSBox in a window more often than not these days because it's fun to play DOS games in brief spurts while taking a break from doing other things.

Ditto here, for this very reason (casual gaming), i think DOSBox is the real future for old DOS games (eh, that sounds like a contradiction, 'future for old').

The softness of CRT "pixels" is actually a really great effect that reduces image aliasing. The super sharp square LCD pixels make aliasing worse.

One thing I've noticed too with LCD scaling is that the scaling algorithms vary in quality dramatically. I have a pair of Dell LCDs at home that scale as well as ATI and NV GPUs (I've tried GPU scaling). On some cheap LCDs, they stick with nasty pixel stretch scaling. It reminds me of old notebooks. You definitely don't want to have to use those with non-native resolutions.

Of course, no LCD comes close to a CRT with respect to resolution flexibility...