RetroTINK recreates the beauty of CRT displays for serious and seriously deep-pocketed retrogamers

[PeterJ]

https://boingboing.net/2023/11/17/retro ... amers.html

[Ralf]

It's a weird thing with these CRT blurred displays.

We used it in the past because there was nothing better. When technology allowed clear LCD displays everybody
switched to it. Today, even on retroparties, most people use modern TVs or monitors.

In emulation, while many emulators allow blurred modes, most people including me use the clear display.

At Spectrum Computing we use clear screenshots, not blurred ones.

And yet some people are going to pay serious money for having it blurred

[AndyC]

A lot of older console graphics were designed such that they look better when blurred, because the artist was actually taking that effect into account. The waterfalls in Sonic are a great example - with sharp pixels the effect looks a bit crappy, but when the colours bleed into each other it gives a much more convincing transparency effect.

I don't know that it makes much of a difference on the Spectrum, to be honest, because you can't often get the necessary colour density to really take advantage of it. The best you'll get is a stippled pattern giving a slightly more convincing faked colour.

[PeteProdge]

ZX Spectrum and other 8-bit (and even 16-bit) output looks better on CRTs. Same goes for any video content produced for a standard definition era. I can see all the artifacts of VHS, DVDs and SD Freeview/satellite/cable channels on a modern flat screen, but on CRT TVs, it's right at home.

The pseudo-CRT filters you can put on in emulators on modern computers are just not cutting it and actually give you the worst of both worlds.

Of course, I don't rig up a CRT telly to my PC when I emulate the Speccy, I'll do with the sharp pixels and all that, but it's really nice when I've got my Sega Mega Drive (I don't own a working Speccy) connected to a portable telly and have friends playing it. I've also tried it with a Raspberry Pi emulator box, with a HDMI-to-SCART adapter plugged into the portable telly, that's really beautiful, feels very authentic.

[4thRock]

For CRT filters to work you need a 4K display. I tried it with MAME and it works perfectly.
Makes sense, because with 4K you have high enough pixel density to actually simulate the colour mask and scanlines of a CRT.

[clebin]

I can see the nostalgia for CRTs, but scanlines? I don't quite get it. You only had really noticeable scanlines on a dedicated computer monitor like a Commodore 1084 or a Phillips 8833. Those sharper displays were better suited to applications.

Scanlines weren't particularly noticeable on the kind of TV sets most of us used, and the games looked better for it (IMO) because of the way colours were allowed to glow and blend. So the whole scanline thing feels like a false idea of what it was like to play games in the 80s.

[PeteProdge]

...the whole scanline thing feels like a false idea of what it was like to play games in the 80s.

I did notice them a little bit in arcades, where it'd usually be NTSC-based (American) CRTs as part of the hardware.

(Also, when on holiday once in the USA in the pre-flat-screen era, didn't really notice much of the scanlines on the usual broadcast television output, albeit the slightly lower resolution of NTSC compared to PAL has always been apparent to me.)

[4thRock]

On a CRT TV scanlines were quite large, with a small gap between them, like this:

█████████████
█████████████
░░░░░░░░░░░░░
█████████████
█████████████
░░░░░░░░░░░░░
█████████████
█████████████

(In the case of interlace there would be some overlap between scanlines of each field, and the next field would be something like:
░░░░░░░░░░░░░
█████████████
█████████████
░░░░░░░░░░░░░
█████████████
█████████████
░░░░░░░░░░░░░
█████████████
█████████████



The problem with most emulator scanlines is that they simply implement a completely wrong on/off pattern:

█████████████
░░░░░░░░░░░░░
█████████████
░░░░░░░░░░░░░
█████████████

Of course, this looks horrible and much unlike a CRT ....

[p13z]

I still use CRTs for any retro computing / gaming. Nearly 50 years of using CRT and I've never noticed anything that looks quite like the "scanlines" options on emulators, beyond a couple of dedicated mid-eighties "hi res" monitors, and the occasional coin-op.
To actually emulate a low res CRT, you'd need 8k+ res to get anything close to realistic phosphor dots, and 100,000fps or so to get the immediacy and true effect of the scan. Alternatively, you could just use one of the millions of free CRT displays getting chucked away every year.

[Guesser]

To me "scanlines" is about as irritating as all those supposed VHS filters people slap on videos. You know the ones, where the picture's tearing side to side all the time and everything looks like an old 3D movie without the cardboard glasses.

[AndyC]

To me "scanlines" is about as irritating as all those supposed VHS filters people slap on videos. You know the ones, where the picture's tearing side to side all the time and everything looks like an old 3D movie without the cardboard glasses.

Totally agree, I don't ever remember seeing scanlines like that and the effect looks cheap and very fake to my eyes. A proper, more subtle, emulation of a CRT effect can be great though.

[Oloturia]

It's a weird thing with these CRT blurred displays.

We used it in the past because there was nothing better. When technology allowed clear LCD displays everybody
switched to it. Today, even on retroparties, most people use modern TVs or monitors.

In emulation, while many emulators allow blurred modes, most people including me use the clear display.

At Spectrum Computing we use clear screenshots, not blurred ones.

And yet some people are going to pay serious money for having it blurred

I agree. Moreover they should add some filter to add some television interference like when you didn't set the TV right. Like a lousy commercial about electric massagers.
I don't know why but my old TV tended to go adrift after some time. Maybe the potentiometers weren't top notch.

[Seven.FFF]

I would prefer to see all that tacky fake CRT stuff included in displays rather than devices that output video signals. It really has no place place in anything but a display, and even then, only for the people who actually want to see the fake stuff. It reminds me of rednecks and chavs that deliberately blow their car exhaust silencer because they think it sounds like a racing car

[Guesser]

Don't get me wrong, I think trying to emulate shadow masks and suchlike is a worthy endeavour so that people can see the software the way it was expected to look rather than painfully pure colours and infinite-bandwidth pixel edges. I just think great big scanlines look dumb

[Matt_B]

I also used to think CRT filters were awful but then I discovered the joys of CRT-Royale at 4K.

Here it is in action, tackling the infamous Sonic waterfalls.