People Who Hunt Down Old TVs

17 tmendez 5 9/12/2025, 10:51:19 PM bbc.com ↗

Comments (5)

EvanAnderson · 4h ago
I regret taking all my old tube monitors to Goodwill back in the mid-2000s. I saved a Commodore 1942, at least, but I sent all the rest away to die.

I appreciate the CRT modeling in emulators, but a hardware device that passes thru a display signal and provided sub-frame CRT artifacting and phosphor modeling (particularly if it supported 240P) would be bitchin'.

trenchpilgrim · 4h ago
Some images to demonstrate how retro games look on CRT vs unfiltered on a modern display:

https://x.com/ruuupu1

https://old.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/owdtpu/thats_why...

https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/anwgxf/here_is_an_e...

Modern emulators have post-processing filters to simulate the look, which is great. But it's not quite the same as the real thing.

dangson · 1h ago
This helps validate my memories of SNES and PS1 games looking so much better when I was a kid than on an emulator today.
nomel · 4h ago
> But it's not quite the same as the real thing.

To be fair, with modern "retina" HDR displays, it should be very very close.

mrob · 3h ago
The most important element of the CRT look is the fast phosphor decay. This is why CRTs have so little sample-and-hold blur. No other hardware can simulate it perfectly, but a 480Hz OLED display comes close:

https://blurbusters.com/crt-simulation-in-a-gpu-shader-looks...