End of the arcade CRT monitor

[RCM]

I got the following release the other day and thought you arcade guys would be interested.

"It's the last call for a piece of history at Dream Arcades: The oldest arcade technology, the CRT monitor, is almost out of stock -- and gone forever!

"We have only about thirty Vision 29 arcades, which come with the CRT monitor, in stock. After that, there will be no more big-screen CRT
arcades," says, Michael Ware, Founder & "Head Geek" of Dream Arcades. "By the end of the year, we'll be forced to discontinue using CRT
monitors all together, even in our smaller cocktail systems."

This is due to the fact that in recent years nearly every major CRT manufacturer has gone out of business or moved to newer technologies,
meaning the days of CRT monitor are numbered.

Besides the old-school feel, there are other benefits of CRT technology over the newer monitors. "For retro gaming the advantages
of CRT over LCD are numerous," Ware says. "Refresh rate, supported resolutions, and pixel blur are just the big ones. LCD monitors just
weren't made for retro gaming."

To own a piece of history, get your Dream Arcade Vision 29 before they're sold out -- forever."

[jb143]

The thing is though, people that aren't already used to the games on a CRT probably won't even know what they're missing. I mentioned to someone once that I was putting a CRT in a MAME cabinet and they acted like I was crazy for not using LCD. But if I wanted to stare at little square pixels I'd just play on my PC.

[Esquire Fox]

Luckily, arcade chassis are still plentiful and certain CRT television tubes can be used in arcade cabinets if you know what you are doing.
Inevitably, the remaining CRT televisions will start to die out though as the tubes develop problems such as burn in, cathode poisoning, and weak color guns.
The best we can do is to take care of our old displays so that we can extend their life as much as possible.

[kedawa]

It's just a shame that large CRT computer monitors are so scarce these days.
They make great screens for any arcade game that supports VGA,

[ACiD]

It is sad indeed, CRT is the cherry of an experience kids today will simply not know. Once I get a job I may try and find a decent sized CRT Computer Monitor for my fix.

Edit: Wanted to add that it could be possible a Manufacturer may come along to support the niche market.

[kedawa]

Sadder still is that most gamers have never even seen a vector monitor.

[Leo_A]

Wanted to add that it could be possible a Manufacturer may come along to support the niche market.

If there was money to be made, companies that were supporting the already "niche" arcade marketplace wouldn't of shut down their existing production lines to start with

Arcade CRT monitors once the last one leaves the manufacturing floor (if it hasn't already) aren't ever going to come back. Manufacturing them is far out of reach for hobbyiest, designing and arranging the manufacturing of them is expensive, etc.

What we have is all we'll have.

[MasterFygar]

I'll be honest, I prefer most 90s titles (all non-Virtua-series 3D games and shmups at least) on an LCD as it gives a clearer, more "high tech" picture. But yeah, for classics CRT is a must-have. They specifically designed most of the sprites to look good on a CRT monitor (so the jaggedies appear like curves and whatnot) so it seems weird playing them on LCDs. It's a shame CRTs are getting harder to find though, I don't know what I'll do if one of my classics' monitors dies in a few years :(

[jammajup]

On a similar note the demise of the crt will effect arcade game collectors and enthusiasts of the light gun games as the older classic titles do not work with lcd monitors,this will effect only a small amount of people but is something to bear in mind.

[drunkninja]

Yep, when I was putting together a MAME cabinet a few years back, I managed to snag one of the last 19" CRT monitors that Wells-Gardner had in stock. Only a few months later, they had switched entirely to LCD.

Sad days indeed. Perhaps I should just stock up on spare CRTs to store and drag them out over the years as they die lol.

[BlastProcessing402]

That sucks. The only problem with CRTs is size and weight. In every other way they're better than an LCD of similar specs. Another loss of quality to convenience.

[Jorpho]

The only problem with CRTs is size and weight. In every other way they're better than an LCD of similar specs. Another loss of quality to convenience.Really now, there's a multitude of arcade CRTs out there with severe, irredeemable burn-in. This is fundamentally flawed technology.

[RP2A03]

Really now, there's a multitude of arcade CRTs out there with severe, irredeemable burn-in. This is fundamentally flawed technology.

Except that burn-in is avoidable whereas blur on a sample-and-hold display is not.

[Jorpho]

Except that burn-in is avoidableIs it? I don't really see how, unless you run some kind of custom software or if you're willing to constantly turn the machine off (and lose your high scores) when it is not in use.

[sheath]

This makes me want to try to fix my generic Shinobi monitor while I can still find new monitors. I still don't have the time or money to dump into a real Arcade monitor right now though.

[kedawa]

Is it? I don't really see how, unless you run some kind of custom software or if you're willing to constantly turn the machine off (and lose your high scores) when it is not in use.

Burn-in isn't a problem for CRTs made in the last twenty years or so.

[Jorpho]

Some of the worst burn-in I've seen lately was a House of the Dead III machine.

[jb143]

Yeah, modern CRT's have burn in protection but they're not completely insusceptible...just much less likely than older ones.

[kedawa]

I've had PC monitors that were used to display the same inventory screen for over a decade. No burn-in.
Same for the RGB monitors from the airport that showed arrival/departure info 24/7 for several years.
Maybe refresh rate has something to do with it?

At any rate, there are still plenty of 19-22" computer CRTs kicking around for MAME cabs, at least.

[Jorpho]

Well, you really wouldn't notice the burn-in until you tried to use it for something different.

[RP2A03]

It is actually possible for the crystals in an LCD to get stuck in a twisted state resulting in what is essentially burn-in.

[Ed Oscuro]

They specifically designed most of the sprites to look good on a CRT monitor
Man, I remember back when I used to believe this. Those were the days.

Then I found MAME's Pixel Aspect setting, and fat Simon from Dracula on X68000, and nothing was the same. Actually having a discussion about that right now.

A good example - reportedly you get 1-to-1 horizontal and vertical movement in Thunder Dragon 2 if you go to square pixels. Sure, why not? The problem is that the game plays, obviously, in 3:4 aspect, and in this case it looks wrong if you go to 1x1 square pixels from "pixel aspect" mode. But it's not always the case that graphics were designed that way.

There are some occasional odd effects that are CRT-based - I recall reading about a change to MAME's Three Wonders so that a screen would appear blue instead of black as in MAME. That was the result of a rather obscure quality of CRT monitors.

But for most purposes, and especially for classic NES console games and the like, they were plotting those graphics on 1x1 paper grids or maybe composing them in 1x1 on a computer monitor grid, and maybe peeking at the game later running on a television if they had time, maybe changing something if it looked really hideous.

[Jack_Burton_BYOAC]

How do we know those grids weren't composed of rectangles to compensate for the aspect ratio differences?

[Ed Oscuro]

How do we know those grids weren't composed of rectangles to compensate for the aspect ratio differences?
There definitely are some questions to be answered here. Thunder Dragon 2, when viewed in pixel aspect mode (or just when taking an unstretched screenshot) is a good example in that it gets very widely stretched out. If anything is going to show evidence of distortion, it'd be something with a reference outside the game, like a simple grid, logo, or a digitized photograph you could access after (not arcade, but try Joker's body at the end of Batman on Genesis; for arcade, Aliens has a lot of promising sources, although the 9:7 pixel aspect mode comes out reasonably close to 4:3 display). I won't generalize and say none were tweaked with a perspective-corrected grid, but there's photographic and other proof that some weren't, at least on consoles (I need to look at this again, though): Pictures of graphics being composed on some computer monitors, where the grids obviously have a 1:1 ratio, and some graph paper plots of other game graphics, I think. (I should ask around to see who has pictures of those...bet you Dion Dakis has a bunch! ;) ) In some early cases (NES would be an example) I think it's most likely that if something was tweaked it was done only by eye, which is more than good enough in many cases.

Having the planning grid use square pixels still doesn't prove the games weren't tweaked for non-square pixels in the output resolution, but in some cases you can see things look better as 1:1 pixels than in the final resolution's aspect ratio.

I don't mean to say that people are wrong for having a preference on this, either, although this is usually said with respect to output formats, not in attempts to change the actual aspect ratio of the pixels, which is impossible for output to any classic 4:3 style CRT and only really possible for most people when emulating. The more typical case of "is this how the designers intended?" is when talking about NES output (http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=43526), since that system's default hardwares output composite and the RGB generating chip variants seem to have some errors in design.