Cathode Ray Tubes

[Mylo]

Does anyone here use cathode ray tube monitors or televisions?

[Luku]

Uh, yeah! Can't beat old reliable CRT. Retro games (or as we call them in our house, "games") just don't look right on modern TVs.

I had a monitor that enjoyed daily use from 1999 to 2012, which certainly ain't bad.

[Jackie]

We have the monitor from an old IBM in my grandfather's room, it glows ever so slightly in the dark ^-^

Currently I have a rear projection screen television, but I do like CRT's ^^

[Jacoby Quinn]

eeeyup, people will give them away free on occasion, why wouldn't I?

[Foxpup]

eeeyup, people will give them away free on occasion, why wouldn't I?

Because CRTs are particularly vulnerable to van Eck phreaking, making them totally unsuitable for high security applications (but unusually suitable for pirate radio broadcasting).

[Jacoby Quinn]

eeeyup, people will give them away free on occasion, why wouldn't I?

Because CRTs are particularly vulnerable to van Eck phreaking, making them totally unsuitable for high security applications (but unusually suitable for pirate radio broadcasting).

I have 8 in my closet that I got free and what is "van Eck phreaking"?

[Foxpup]

I have 8 in my closet that I got free and what is "van Eck phreaking"?

A form of eavesdropping named after the Dutch researcher Wim van Eck, the first person after the NSA to invent it. Since the electron guns in a CRT operate at high voltage and high frequency, they emit an intense electromagnetic field, which can be picked up by an AM receiver tuned to pixel frequency (25-100MHz depending on your resolution and refresh rate). Add synchronisation pulses and the result (a live TV broadcast of what's displayed on your monitor) can be displayed by an ordinary analogue TV set. Range can be up to several hundred metres with a good antennae.

You can also have some fun with this. The FCC may not approve, but by displaying the right images on your monitor, you can transmit an audio broadcast that can be picked up by an ordinary AM radio on the frequency of your choosing. Don't try this at home.

[Jacoby Quinn]

sounds like fun

[HazardJackal]

Yep, the laptop i'm using has one! 

Nah, but i do use one on a regular basis as the main TV, pretty big too.  Recently it's had some weird flickering issues, but it hasn't been a real problem yet.

[Foxpup]

Yep, the laptop i'm using has one! 

Amber or green?

[HazardJackal]

Yep, the laptop i'm using has one! 

Amber or green?

I had no idea...

[Old Rabbit]

I have 3 crt monitors, and 2 crt television sets. I still use
one 19" crt flat screen monitor. Yes it's flat with glass thats
at least 1/2 " thick. Everything else is regular flat screens.
Monitor or Tv.  I need to get rid of some of them. 

[Yip]

Retro games (or as we call them in our house, "games") just don't look right on modern TVs.

Atari 2600 on an old black and white TV that was going out so the image was vertically squished slightly, and then over time squished more and more until the image was little more than a line across the screen.  "The good old days". 

[Old Rabbit]

When I was a kid our TV had all vacuum tubes, no transisitors. So usually a new
plug in tube would fix the horizontal or virtical.

Could say that was the good ole days too. But one could meet their end if they got into
the 20k volt supply. On wonders if such a device would even be allowed these days.

[Foxpup]

Could say that was the good ole days too. But one could meet their end if they got into
the 20k volt supply.

One still can. They're not called electron guns because they shoot harmless pixie dust, after all.

Beware the lightning that lurketh in the undischarged capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most untechnician-like manner.

[Old Rabbit]

Beware the lightning that lurketh in the undischarged capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most untechnician-like manner.

The capacitor built into the cathode ray tube has probably caused
more injury or death to an amateur/hobby tech than any other
capacitor in a device for home use. It's good they are going away.

One of my first shocks came from a capacitor. My dad was into
Amateur Radio, and liked to build the equipment he used. He had
me hold some solder to a terminal, and zap    I got bit. I don't
think he did it on purpose, but it sure got my attention.  

[weese]

I still have a CRT TV in my living room. Granted it is a wide screen HD one (720p it claims) made by Samsung. It has an ok picture. The bottom 1/8th of the screen is showing only black, though. :c

[Aloneness]

I like not having my eyes melted out of my head by the 65MHz-72MHz refresh rate on most monitors CRT monitors, the TV's are okay because they generally have a much higher refresh rate. We have a CRT TV that's pretty good and we got it for free so I'm not gonna complain. Though I use LED monitors, and it works just fine for what I need.

[CodeSquirrel]

65MHz-72MHz refresh rate

I believe you mean 60-75 Hz, but I get what you mean…I don't like it when CRTs are set to a low refresh rate, either.

TV's are okay because they generally have a much higher refresh rate.

Actually, the main reason CRT television sets are less flickery than CRT computer monitors is because they use an interlaced scanning mode, which means they scan every other line on each scan cycle, alternating "fields" with each vertical refresh (i.e. lines 1, 3, 5, etc. are scanned in on one refresh, and lines 2, 4, 6, etc. on the next).  Human persistence of vision makes it so that this alternating pattern of interleaving lines appears as a solid, consistent picture. :3

Computer monitors (both CRTs and LCDs) are "progressive-scan" devices, meaning they scan one line at a time, thus making for a more flickery display in the case of the CRT.  LCDs, on the other hand, don't suffer from this problem because each line refresh is merely changing the state of each pixel, rather than lighting it (since the light is provided from a backlight, and the LCD panel itself is simply blocking/polarizing it to produce the colors you see).

One interesting artifact you might notice, if you look carefully enough, is that on an LCD monitor, if there's smooth motion, and you track it with your eyes, you may see a bit of squishing and/or shearing, with the "trailing" edge of the animated object/scene being on the side of the display where the raster scan ends.  This is again due to persistence of vision; we see parts of new animation frames being scanned out to the display, but not for long enough to really distinguish them as whole images, so they get mixed with parts of the previous frame, etc., etc., to create a blended image that's "shearing" or being "squished/stretched"…I hope that made some kind of sense. xP

As for my 2¢ on the topic at hand…I actually don't have a CRT myself, but I would kill for one if it had support for a decent refresh rate (at least 70 Hz), and were widescreen (I don't care what you say about vertical display area…I've grown used to the 16:9/10 format, and it feels weird going back to a "standard" 4:3 aspect ratio )…yes, widescreen CRTs like that do exist, but they're insanely expensive, AFAIK…mainly geared for professional use in graphic design and such, due to the wider color gamut CRTs can also provide.