You know, zero-latency is cool, but I gotta admit that I do not miss cathode ray tube TVs. They are really heavy, the picture was fuzzy, I never personally liked the scanlines, they're bulky, and I never liked that high pitch squeal that they make. I'll confess a little nostalgia for the CRTs sometimes, my first TV was a hand-me-down RCA from my parents and that served as my only TV until I was 20, but the second that 1080p (or better) LCD TVs got cheap, I never looked back.
Even in regards to the latency, I'm kind of convinced that those claims are a little overblown. LCDs do increase latency, but some of the more modern LCD TVs have a "low latency mode", that claims to get the latency to below 15 milliseconds; assuming most games are 60FPS, that's below a single frame, and I don't think that a vast majority of humans can even detect that. and for the few that can, OLEDs have you covered with latency on the order of like 2ms.
No, I don't think it is, a friend of mine got one recently and I could only just barely hear the squeal, and I suspect that in another year or two I won't hear it at all.
Still, I don't miss it, I never really liked it. People love to crap on LCD TVs, but honestly I'm an unapologetic fan of them. Even pretty cheap LCD TVs nowadays are really decent [1], and give a really sharp, nice picture with very few downsides. I have a MiSTer plugged into my $400 Vizio in my bedroom plugged in via HDMI, and SNES games just look so much better on it than they ever did on my CRT as a kid.
[1] Except for the speakers. Somehow built in speakers have gotten way worse than they were in the 90s, and TVs are borderline unusable without a soundbar or something.
Most people were playing SNES via composite video or RF out. MiSTER is going to be using RGB. RGB cables for SNES didn't really happen in the US (YPbPr component video seemed to come out with DVDs, and there weren't contemporaneous cables for that for SNES, although they exist now), but S-Video was available and is much better than composite.
On speakers, it's pretty simple. Physical depth is very useful for simple speaker designs, and today's screens are very thin and try not to have a bezel. It's pretty common for speakers to be downward or rear facing to make the front of the tv beautiful. This provides sound, but it's not very good. And you can't get much bass out of a small speaker anyway. A CRT tv was pretty big, adding a sizable speaker wasn't a big deal. Even early flat screens had room for an OK speaker, usually oval to use the width of the screen without adding much to the height.
Yeah, I'm not claiming that my HDMI setup for the MiSTer is the most accurate to the original experience, I'm claiming that I just like the raw HDMI output better than I liked the composite/S-Video signal. It's just a much clearer picture, I like the sharp, chunky pixels.
Yeah, I figured it had something to do with how thin they are.
Until you consider a CRT 1/4 the screen dimensions would have weighed the same and now you don't have to lug the equivalent of a large oven on to your desk :p.
I remember with my first multi-monitor setup the desk heavily bowed in the middle from all the weight. Now I have a 3x2 monitor setup, all larger than the largest of those, supported much more easily.
I couldn't find any generally-available 55" CRT that ever sold; the largest I could find was the 40" Sony KV-40XBR800, which some quick Googling seems to indicate weighed upwards of 300lbs.
So your 91 pound TV has a significantly larger screen, and still weighs less than a third. This still seems like a win to me.
I do. It's great, basically unlimited screen realestate on the same screen. No concerns about burn-in you would have on oled. I'm a huge fan of the 1000R curve as well. My biggest complaint is that my webcam is now at an odd angled compared to ontop of a normal monitor.
Edit: Monitor prices can vary significantly based on the time and the place you buy it from. I payed about $800 less than MSRP. It was still super expensive.
Just out of curiosity, how much better do you think this is than a decent 4K TV?
The reason I ask, my main "monitor" is a 55" Samsung UHD display. I could find the model number but it's not important because it's decidedly "not fancy", something that cost like $450 in 2020. I plug in my Macbook via HDMI with a 4k@60hz thunderbolt adapter, and I have a decent sound bar plugged into the TV and I listen to audio via HDMI ARC.
I really like it; 4k is enough pixels to be pretty sharp, even for high-contrast stuff like text, as well as enough room to able to cram a bunch of stuff on screen. Also, my brain is kind of bad and as a result I am able to comprehend what I'm reading if the text is huge. I have not measured the latency on this screen yet, but FWIW I was able to beat Donkey Kong Country 2 (a pretty challenging game) with the MiSTer plugged into it.
People have told me that dedicated monitors are better though, both in refresh rate and just in general for more desktopey stuff...do you think that's true? How much more worth it do you think that is? I've debated buying a dedicated monitor, but getting something of a comparable size and resolution is pretty pricey.
I justify expensive displays because I sit at my desk 12-16hours a day 6.5 days a week. I usually buy a top of the line display (or array of displays) every 3-5 years. The difference between a great flat panel and a good flat panel is huge on the picture it outputs. However, this translates to marginal productivity gains. The 1000R curve is much better ergonomically, it means a much smaller head/eye movement to focus on different parts of the display. The 120hz display, especially with moving text, reduces my eye strain. Display lag, image settings, color quality, and HDR are big for gaming. The KVM switch can be good productivity, depending on your situation.
Yeah, that's why I was asking; I work from home 3 days a week, and do other work at my desk the remaining days, so I could pretty easily justify something better. I would very much like a 120hz refresh rate, because that's really the only thing in fancier displays that I think I'd actually notice; I appear to not be nearly as sensitive to "darker blacks" and "brighter whites" as other people, at least in my limited friend group, but I definitely do see a difference in a higher refresh rate.
I think there's a human sense of global experience. I do miss some stuff that, by all measures, is bad. I still miss them, they make for a strange blend on noise, curves, sensations and limitations. It's another plane of judgement entirely, one that is a bit less reductionist.
Even in regards to the latency, I'm kind of convinced that those claims are a little overblown. LCDs do increase latency, but some of the more modern LCD TVs have a "low latency mode", that claims to get the latency to below 15 milliseconds; assuming most games are 60FPS, that's below a single frame, and I don't think that a vast majority of humans can even detect that. and for the few that can, OLEDs have you covered with latency on the order of like 2ms.