People Who Hunt Down Old TVs

15 tmendez 4 9/12/2025, 10:51:19 PM bbc.com ↗

Comments (4)

EvanAnderson · 1h 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 · 2h 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.

nomel · 1h 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 · 31m 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...