It would simply look... Awesome.

The only downside to a bigger than 19" display could be picture fidelity. I have a 22" Vision Master and a 19" one and, albeit they're not the same model, the latter's picture is really hard to beat... even better than the Samsung 951p's already great one.

Which monitor are you thinking of getting?

The only true overkill would be on a Sony (F)W900 24" 16:9 widescreen, but glorious overkill nonetheless 😉

I have a 19" CRT monitor as well and I'm just loving it.

Plus, a 21" CRT TV for my consoles. 😊

i was looking for a sony 20inch monitor

but i don´t know for me it is kind of too much. Maybe it looks better on a smaller size monitor for example a 17inch

what other brand and CRT model# have awesome picture quality?

I have 4 different CRT monitors in my collection:

1) Sony PVM-9L1 8" monitor for my Commodore 64 (might get a bigger PVM since 8" is too small)
2) IBM 2115-001 15" PC monitor (has the pink color issue)
3) Medion MD 1998 OF 19" PC monitor (German)
4) 15" CRT inside an iMac G3/600 (might go green and modify an LCD display inside the machine)

TV sets:
1) Some portable color TV from the 1980's
2) Toshiba TV/VCR Combo with a Roku Streaming Plus (composite and HDMI outputs)

Cga.8086 wrote:

i was looking for a sony 20inch monitor

but i don´t know for me it is kind of too much. Maybe it looks better on a smaller size monitor for example a 17inch

what other brand and CRT model# have awesome picture quality?

Lots. Best is to look at the underlying display tubes & electronics. Generally (Sony) Trinitron and (Mitsubishi) Diamondtron have a deserved good reputation. It's not impossible to have a good shadow mask screen, but usually that's the cheap & dirty option and it shows.

Personally I had a lot of Sun & SGI monitors, all using Sony tubes - as at the time I was into *BIG* CRTs I was also rather strapped for cash (student or later dropout with young child to support), just at the time everyone was ditching RISC UNIX systems and migrating to x86 and Windows or Linux (i.e. 2000-2005), and you could get the Sun & SGI models for a fraction of the price of the Sony equivalents.These days it's the other way around: few people are interested in CRTs of any description, but the Sun & SGI stuff is getting rare and the dinosaurs collecting that stuff drive monitor prices up too. Regular Sonys are now cheap to free.

I currently have a 17" Iiyama screen with Diamondtron tube, specifically chosen because it offered high refresh rates at high resolutions on a relatively small screen, as I don't want a giant filling half my room any more.

As a rule of thumb, watch the specs for horizontal scan rate. They determine what resolutions the screen can handle at a given vertical refresh rate, and even though it's not a 100% match, if the monitor supports (very) high refresh it's generally a high-end screen with good picture quality. IMHO, any horizontal scan rate over 96kHz is good, and the higher the better. You also want as low a dot pitch as possible. 0.25mm or lower is good. The epic Sony FW900 (the newer of their 24" widescreen CRTs) has a 121kHz scan rate and 0.23mm dot pitch. Look for similar specs and you'll be fine.

Man, I remember having a 20" Mitsubishi Diamond Scan 20H monitor that had the RGB BNC breakout to VGA D-Sub 15 cable. 1600x1200 wasn't working on that monitor. Gave it away back in 2011. Would be amazed to see that monitor again.

Waaaaaay back in the day we started out with a 14" CRT. That died and I got a 15" and then a 17".

Fast forward about 10 years and I found a 20" Apple CRT at a goodwill for $25. I used that for about 3 years before it finally died.

After that I went to LCDs only for years. There were and still are some 19" 4:3 that do a pretty great job of scaling for use with older systems.

Then, a while back , a friend gave me a few smaller CRTs and then I found a very sweet 19" CRT that somebody stuck out by the curb.

19-20" is the ideal size for a CRT IMO although I wouldn't turn down a larger one either.

Cga.8086 wrote:

So, playing DOS games on a 20inch CRT monitor is an overkill?

No, not all. I did this way back in the early to mid 90s when we had a 386DX40.
My own monitor was a 14" screen from IBM, though.

Edit: Here's my current 19" monitor in action: https://youtu.be/lt0ZQWmddZg

For DOS only I'd go for 15 or max 17". For Windows 9X era for 17 or 19". XP era 19"+. But in the end it's the space problem. Most of us don't have the space to afford playing with different machines and monitors. So 17" or 19" would be a good compromise.

I still remember going from VGA only, size around 13" to 15" almost flat screen. It was awesome, it was huge 😁 Later going to 17" didn't make such an impression. Even going to 19" in 1998 wasn't that impressive.

The last _wow_ was a few months ago when I put LCDTV LG 42" FullHD on my desk and played Test Drive Unlimited for a few hours. That's the way a car sim should be played 🤣

Playing on a 1600x1200 20" CRT i don't think it would be overkill, it would be a dream.
But for DOS idk, personally i wouldn't mind, but some people could find it period incorrect.

LCD monitors are period incorrect for DOS gaming (pixels vs blocks and scan lines). CRT monitors, regardless of their size, is period correct, depending upon how long ago those monitors were made.

I second that- Besides, there was an 199x magazine for the Atari ST that described an add-on graphics card and a 20" monitor.
I can't remember whether or not it supported colour, but the article explained that all GEM compliant applications should run fine.

bjwil1991 wrote:

LCD monitors are period incorrect for DOS gaming (pixels vs blocks and scan lines). CRT monitors, regardless of their size, is period correct, depending upon how long ago those monitors were made.

Not so sure about the latter.

As well as various TFTs for daily use (my main home work system has a Dell 23" 2560x1440 QHD screen, at work we use the identical exterior but with only a 1920x1080 panel in it), I have a 17" Iiyama flatscreen Diamondtron from 2001 or 2002 (i.e. very late) and a 14" Tatung from the mid 1990s.

The Iiyama is big, heavy and noisy (excessively so IMHO) compared to a TFT, but in the end, the experience looking at it is pretty similar to looking at a 15" TFT with a very good (VA) panel. After a decade of only having TFTs and some time before that with a mix of TFTs and flatscreen CRTs, the shock of looking at the Tatung was huge - that thing looks like an aquarium. Of course, all monitors used to look like that, but after being spoiled for so long it's one hell of a transition. So I'd say the difference between flat panel (regardless of CRT or TFT) is much bigger than between flat CRT and TFT.

I use a 17" flat CRT for my DOS gaming, and there are times I wish I could shrink it down to 14" to reduce the effect of the jaggies. My memory of DOS gaming on a 14" monitor back in the day is that it didn't look nearly as blocky and jaggy as it does on my current CRT.

clueless1 wrote:

My memory of DOS gaming on a 14" monitor back in the day is that it didn't look nearly as blocky and jaggy as it does on my current CRT.

My memory is the same. Though less because of the screen size, but rather the blurry screen.
I had one of these IBM PS/2 monitors with the red switch. Horribly for working. But nice for low-res games in 320x200. 😁

Edit: Here's a picture of that little beast..

Ooh nostalgia - had one of those too 1987-1995. Tiny 12" but decent quality.

I use a 29'' arcade monitor mounted in a hand-made wood box. Naturally it's max res is only 480p, but it looks fantastic. Even more "modern" systems like Dreamcast, PS2, Wii, and X360 look fantastic on it. Plus with CRTs we can use light-guns and 3D shutter glasses. LCDs have gotten much better, but for retro, nothing will beat a high-quality CRT.

The issue is that the pixels don't have the correct shape with the late 17"+ monitors, Trinitron and such. A flat, fine dot pitch CRT (which is all I have, too) might as well be a modern fast-refresh LCD, IMO.

(There's a cool Reddit post demonstrating a 0.39mm dot pitch 14": https://www.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/4 … vs_shadow_mask/)