In Search of Scanlines: The Best CRT Monitor for Retro Gaming

Your 1080p HDTV may be great for Blu-ray movies, but it sucks for SNES games. Adopting new television technology means saying goodbye to the advantages of older hardware. And yes, there are advantages. There's no such thing as a best TV for all eras of content. And for retro gaming, diehard gamers and collectors turn to old CRTs and specialty scaling hardware in search for that perfect picture.

[Soplox]

Hmmmm...nope

I prefer playing emulators with HD Textures and filters on a HDTV. Is a LOT better.

[MadLad]

Eyup.

[fsfsxii]

The title was mentioning CRT monitors not how you play your older games with HD textures

[sigfredod]

The article stated clearly that a crt is best when you use the actual snes or genesis, the actual vintage console not emulators

[PurpHerbison]

Although I liked playing emulators with HD textures, I really wish I still had a CRT so I could play all my old school stuff in 4:3. It's just not the same doing it on an HD screen.

[SkullBlade169]

My Super Famicom, MegaDrive and older consoles too look just fine on my HDTV 0_o

I guess input lag is an issue with a lot of HDTVs, but I don't have any complaints about mine.

It's just a random 42" Hitachi TV, it seems to work fine with retro consoles.

[deafdani]

Nope, trust me, your old games would look loads better on a CRT monitor. That is simply because your TV has a much higher pixel density than what these games were programmed for, and because of this, the pixels in your games won't look sharp, but diluted into many, many more smaller pixels.

For the majority of people this isn't much of an issue, if at all, but there are others that want the "pure" experience. Regardless, it's a fact that no HDTV set can reproduce the retro graphics faithfully, for that you need a CRT.

[SkullBlade169]

I'm not debating that they will look better on a good CRT, I actually only got rid of my CRT about 6 months ago, but retro consoles look good enough for me on my HDTV, I don't have any issues so I'm happy with it.

I do use RGB SCART on them all though at least, except for the consoles that don't support it like the N64 or NES obviously.

[Thehyph]

A good CRT also refreshes at 120Hz on lower resolutions.
120 fps > 60 fps.
Not that it matters in most retro games. Save maybe fighters.

[PurpHerbison]

Old games have much better clarity on a CRT.

[deafdani]

Thankfully I have a 32" Sony Trinitron where retro games look awesome. A whole library shelf with books and all fell over it during an earthquake, breaking the TV from behind, and IT STILL WORKS. Lol.

[josephayal]

this is the future