In what years did consumer CRT quality begin to decline?

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elfoam
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Re: In what years did consumer CRT quality begin to decline?

Post by elfoam »

Yeah in my experience the Chinese sets made in 2006 on, last of the last are usually better than anything made by anyone in the 90s and earlier. At least as far as picture quality goes.
Brad251
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Re: In what years did consumer CRT quality begin to decline?

Post by Brad251 »

elfoam wrote:Yeah in my experience the Chinese sets made in 2006 on, last of the last are usually better than anything made by anyone in the 90s and earlier. At least as far as picture quality goes.
What would be some brands and models of these particular sets?
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buttersoft
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Re: In what years did consumer CRT quality begin to decline?

Post by buttersoft »

Brad251 wrote:What makes the cheaper Samsung TVs from 2004 and up good?
Well, being newer they're often not as heavily used. might just be that, but i went through about a dozen tubes of all brands before settling on the best few. Not the hugest sample size, i'll admit. The newer Samsungs i found were nice and bright and clear with good focus, very black blacks. Convergence seems to be an interesting game once you recline them, however.
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segasonicfan
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Re: In what years did consumer CRT quality begin to decline?

Post by segasonicfan »

Personally, I think the 1990s was the sweet spot. I used to work in arcades, and I can tell you that the later wells-gardner CRTs simply don't hold a candle to the mid-90s ones. Same goes for ones on the consumer market. It's partly personal taste though, cuz I like the curved ones. They generally had better geometry, especially in the corners. And for some reason they seem to match Retro Gaming better for me.

Trinitrons have always been overrated Imo. I have one from 2000 and the geometry is just ass. Surprisingly, the best CRT I've ever owned is a JVC from 1994. RGB modded it in 2005 and it's still going strong. I play that thing all the time.
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FinalBaton
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Re: In what years did consumer CRT quality begin to decline?

Post by FinalBaton »

segasonicfan wrote:Personally, I think the 1990s was the sweet spot. I used to work in arcades, and I can tell you that the later wells-gardner CRTs simply don't hold a candle to the mid-90s ones. Same goes for ones on the consumer market. It's partly personal taste though, cuz I like the curved ones. They generally had better geometry, especially in the corners. And for some reason they seem to match Retro Gaming better for me.

Trinitrons have always been overrated Imo. I have one from 2000 and the geometry is just ass. Surprisingly, the best CRT I've ever owned is a JVC from 1994. RGB modded it in 2005 and it's still going strong. I play that thing all the time.
JVC made killer sets, no doubt
-FM Synth & Black Metal-
Taiyaki
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Re: In what years did consumer CRT quality begin to decline?

Post by Taiyaki »

Flat Trinitron tubes are notorious for their poor corner geometry out of the box (and convergence I would add). I can confirm this is true as I've had several out of box that had the same corner issues as used sets. They require internal adjustments to get near perfect but it's absolutely possible to achieve (just more work than a curved tube). middle area of the image will likely not be 100% perfect but it never is on any crt anyway (some geometrical distortions on scrolling images is normal).

I think a lot of people will favor what ever they remember from their childhood/adulthood most. In my family we upgraded to flat tv's on most of our sets in the early 2000's, we had both 90's Trinitrons and shadow mask tubes before that. So I had a lot of time with horizontally curved and flat trinitron's as well as Shadow Masks. My preference definitely goes to flat, and I felt that way back then too (looks better, better brightness, sharpness, colors, contrast). however I understand the love for shadow masks or even horizontally curved trinitrons as well. There's no wrong answer when it comes to these things. It's in big part nostalgia anyway, most people would think we're nuts going back to crt's in the age of 4K lol.
fernan1234
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Re: In what years did consumer CRT quality begin to decline?

Post by fernan1234 »

Taiyaki wrote:There's no wrong answer when it comes to these things. It's in big part nostalgia anyway, most people would think we're nuts going back to crt's in the age of 4K lol.
But then what about the pleasure of having a very strong opinion about something? :lol:

I'm just going to throw out there that the best professional CRTs ever made were both flat and aperture grill 8)
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