CRT vs LCD vs OLED: Old Trash or Gaming Treasure?

Your gaming monitor is TRASH! This, actual trash, monitor out-performs it by exponential amounts… so why did we regress to LCD panels for so long? Here it is: The verdict. CRTs vs LCD and OLED displays for gaming and media consumption. After YEARS of hyping them up in videos, it’s time to put some hard numbers to it.

Thanks to our special guests:

Video footage courtesy of Getty Images.

TIMECODES:
00:00 CRT explained
02:10 What you don't remember
03:27 Clarity & Sharpness
14:46 Motion clarity
15:10 Black Frame Insertion vs CRT
21:17 Input lag & LDAT measurements
27:22 Usability
28:50 Getting the most out of your CRT
31:55 Linus' take: FW900 vs Modern Gaming Displays
34:30 Power Consumption & Heat output
35:43 How to get into the hobby
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[webinatic]

I miss my plasma tv. I was so sad when it started to fail on me. The movies looked like I was in a movie theatre. Regular DVD and TV looked good too.

[TheBardOfTheRedHand]

Very excited for the extended cut. I watched the original several times.

[hmgn]

I'm playing Warhammer 40k on my 21 inch CRT today

[TheSergeyJW]

I finally got myself a PC CRT monitor last month. It's nothing crazy, just a 17" LG F700p. But I got lucky and actually found it as new old stock, legit factory sealed. So it looks just perfect! You are one of the reasons I got interested in this topic so a huge THANK YOU! Now playing older games feel just right. Exactly like it felt when I was a kid.

And it's great as a second monitor for productivity too, btw.

[panikk]

i'm watching this in 480i on an arcade monitor i just recapped today :)

[KillahMate]

An incredible documentary, as thorough as one could hope about not just the technical details but the intangibles of this hobby. Well done.

[Wobble]

I've been sampling the latest OLED monitors, and they are getting interesting, I like the new 27 inch 1440p 480Hz OLED with ELMB, the trouble is, most games I play are 60Hz, so those are not much use to me, and even when you do get the full 480FPS, they still are a long way from the perfect 1:1 motion resolution CRTs have at 60Hz and over, there is also the fact they are only available in a console and film/video aspect ratio (16:9), which is a huge downgrade over 4:3 (nearly 50% less vertical resolution and real-estate), another dealbreaker, is the horrible non RGB subpixel layout they have, I like to sit close up, and I can so easily see the poor DP these modern OLEDs have, they are just not the same as RGB-OLED, they also have really poor greyscale and shadow resolution, though the new iPad Pro's Tandem-OLED goes some way to fixing that problem, so I guess that is what I shall wait for, a pure RGB-Stripe, Tandem-OLED with a nice full-fat 16:10 aspect ratio, at least 500 PPI @ 27 inches, 600Hz refresh rate with HDR rolling-scan and a proper FPGA integer scaler built in for handling multi-resolutions properly (another huge downgrade fixed pixel displays have), if only Sony would make a proper gaming Tandem-OLED monitor using their brilliant proprietary rolling-scan modulation tech used in their OLED BVM sets, those have very respectable motion-resolution @ 60Hz, and if it was available at higher refresh rates, it would be even better.

I'm in no rush though, I just got an HD Fury 4, which has incredible image quality for CRTs, it even allows colour depth upscaling for VGA and component, 36-Bit RGB 4:4:4, HDR tone mapping emulation, and 1920x1440p72Hz thanks to the triple 11-Bit 225Mhz pixel clock, it looks just incredible on my LaCie Blue IV 22, I can run the Switch, MiSTer, PS4, Steam Deck, gaming rig and so on through it with zero latency, it also has perfect gamma, shadow resolution, so I'm more than content for the next few years, I might look out for a cheap 25 inch Sony BVM-OLED though, that I can use with a GBS-C scaler, might be nice to have for some 16:9 60Hz only games, I already have a 17 inch BVM-OLED, which has that beautiful 60Hz rolling-scan, not to bad for some content, I do find it mind-boggling how far we still are from coming full circle and at least catching back up to the last gen CRT monitors, even when we see hints of something that might get us there, it either never comes out or gets killed of as it starts to take off, like SED/FED tech, Focus-Field-Drive Plasma, Mitsubishi LaserVue, Panasonic MegaCon, so we already have the technology available to completely smash past CRT tech, it's just profits are what drives the industry, more than ever in fact, gone are the days when Sony & Panasonic were constantly one-upping each other and producing real quality displays, thankfully OLED became cheap enough to satisfy the greedy execs at the top, so we at least have something that relative to LCD is serviceable as a modern display tech, all be-it a much more cut-down version of OLED that only uses one single OLED emitter (WOLED & QD-OLED), rather than the original triple RGB emitter JOLED technology that was originally introduced by Sony & Panasonic in 2012, JOLED was also originally supposed to use rolling-scan modulation, not sample & hold, but again in the name of profits, WOLED with sample & hold is what we ended up getting instead, and later QD-OLED, a slightly improved version of WOLED that uses conversion rather than a filter, still single OLED emitter though, meaning only 1 3rd of the subpixel resolution that RGB-OLED has.

Sorry for the long post, I love talking about this stuff. Only thing in tech that still keeps me interested personally.

[Auroclock]

About to watch but just wanted to say I had so much fun playing F-Zero GX on my Viewsonic 17" CRT last night. Its 1280x 1024 so it does 2x in dolphin really well, but it is contrasty to a point of defect. Luckily I like that and in F-Zero's dark scenes with the bright lights it looks so cool

[KingKrouch]

For some reason, both AMD and NVIDIA's modern GPU drivers are weird with low screen resolutions, and you have to use Linux to force CRT monitors to run at certain resolutions and refresh rates (For example, 240p). Wayland needs an easy way of adding custom resolutions and refresh rates, but using the Steam Deck's desktop mode and some scripts makes it so I can have really nice looking scanlines in RetroArch. Might be a thing worth investigating.

If one can get custom resolutions working in the Steam Deck's Game Mode, that basically opens the door to retro gaming without needing old GPUs or outdated drivers.

[complete-mayhem-x]

I have a really old flat screen CRT tv that I keep for playing my retro games on. It's always my go to and was nearly a requirement when I was heavy into speed running Super Metroid

Also Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 1 and 2 are fire. I keep my ps2 copies close!

[blendernoob]

I own a Sun GDM 5410 and it is the best display I own. I love my CRT so much

[Wierie_]

i don't watch tv but i do have a crt tv in the livingroom with an old modded original xbox under it for decoration lol

[crestofhonor]

Been watching this as well on my VGA CRT. I love CRT shaders even on VGA CRTs

[ReclaimerTyphoon]

I main a CRT on my gaming rig, and it's amazing. I also plug my PS5 into it, and 60FPS games are BUTTER.

I'm looking forward playing some Astro Bot on this thing. Ghost of Tsushima is going to be incredible, too. It's going to be so good.

[pedrogriyo]

I like this channel more and more. The passion for giving the best video quality is evident from the first second. I can only congratulate you for such a spectacular job and I will always look forward to new content.

[ivosimac]

I have a CRT TV stored away and every time I think about using it I remember about all of its downsides and I give up on that idea. This has happened more than a couple of times already 😅.

[phil_matic]

As someone who has experimented with CRT PC gaming for about a year, using some known high end monitors (P991, G220fb, 2070SB) in the community, I must say that CRT monitors aren't the be all, end all solution that many people claim. Now that's not to say that they are overrated, they definitely are great, but it depends on what you're trying to get. Without a doubt, CRT monitors can not be beaten when it comes to input lag, and motion clarity. They can be pretty sharp, but in my experience the image is just a tad soft compared to a modern display. You can use the UFOTest to see how clear the motion is at a lower hz compared to modern display.

Of course, there's also the thing to consider the size of the display. CRTs use a lot of real estate on your desk, and if you don't have a desk with a lot of depth, you might not enjoy using a CRT as much.

LCD is nothing really to compare to CRT, but if you're interested in a CRT monitor compared to a modern display, I'd say just compare it to a OLED monitor which is pretty comparable in motion clarity

[superior]

I'd like to see comparisons with the new 480hz OLED monitors.

[SDMasterYoda]

9:40 Why did you have the TV in the power saving picture mode? That's the worst possible option.

[A-BYTE]

I miss my Sun Microsystems CRT which was huge and had 1440x1080 resolution, but it died