People have taken it way past the point of sanity now, but they are better for game consoles from PS1 era and below. Especially for 2D games, as the pixel art was often designed around the square aspect ratio, and the tendency of CRTs to soften images and blur minor details.
It's how the waterfalls in Sonic appeared transparent. Every line alternated between waterfall and background, so when the TV blurred it slightly it looked transparent instead of alternating lines. You'll also often see it in old games with dithering, using a checkerboard pattern of two colors to approximate a third color in between the two when "smoothed" together.
Like I said though, people take it way too far. Most people don't need a reference quality Sony Trinitron monitor meant for professional video editing studios with less than 500 hours of time powered on so it's still in perfect shape. You do you, but there's some real elitist shit I've seen, and some audiophile level "$600 cable for digital signal" delusion going around.
As long as you aren't streching a "square" image to a widescreen one, it's really up to preference on the blur/softening side. And even the streching is just the one point I'm personally elitist about.
As moderm screen resolutions get better, we get better and better approximations of CRT screen effects through using graphical shaders. There's some mad genius shit out there that does things like simulating how the electron beam scans across the CRT vacuum tube.
I used to have a 27" set. Probably weighed about 150 lbs. It had bowed the platform on the entertainment center. I wish I hadn't got rid of it. Those things fetch a pretty penny these days. Old games just look fantastic on a CRT.
Do they really? (are worth something, I mean) I still have one upstairs in my house. I don't use it at all, I've just been using it to hold the house down in case of windy weather.
(actually I'm just too lazy to try and haul it out of the house and toss it.)
I helped my buddy move his new Trinitron HD (in 1999 or 2000) up 2 flights of stairs.
Our hands were practically bleeding and thighs were bruised from stopping repeatedly to adjust our grips.
There was one point where why weren’t sure we were gonna make it and would need to go rent a dolly to finish it. Which would have meant me sitting with the TV blocking the stairs for Horner long that would take.
Especially with the flat-screened Trinitron CRTs, the screen face itself was by far the heaviest part due to all the reinforcing glass. They were ridiculously heavy and front-heavy.
So you had the TV face you, and you bellied up to the screen. Then you put your arms over the top and down each side. The trick was to get the top corners poking out from under your armpits so the TV couldn’t turtle over backwards. Then you grabbed the bottom on either end - towards the rear, but not along the rear - and lifted. Rocking the TV side to side was likely needed to get your fingers under it. What also helped is if the TV was up on something and could be leaned towards you.
Provided your arms were long enough - and I am only 189cm tall, with normally-proportioned arms - this was doable clear up to a 34″ Trinitron. The only models I couldn’t do this on were the 36″ one and that strange 16:9 aspect ratio one that was released especially for viewing widescreen movies.
I had one until about 10 years ago. I was moving and planning to take it with me, but I dropped it on the way to the truck. So it went in the dumpster.
yeah, after helping the 3rd guy with moving his gaming rig (those big towers were not lightweight too, some of them were heavy like they were made of lead) to the LAN i normally tapped out and let the others cover the rest.
When I was poorer I bought a TV like this, a CRT, from a charity shop in town and carried it home over a mile then up to the tenth floor of my block of flats. Thankfully the lift was working.
I'll allow it when it's warranted. this one just reeks of haste and overall reduces the quality of the impact. I felt like I was tripping on roots trying to read it.
This reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld where they get a guy they know a massive TV as an engagement present but he breaks up before they get to see it in action
Back in the days of my apprenticeship (Ausbildung) the company still had this whole storage of old CRT TVs. At some point the other apprentice and me had to get rid of all of them.
This meant each of us grabbing one, carry it down 3 floors, load them onto the company's VW T bus and unload at the recycling center.
No fun, one was so big and heavy I tripped and couldn't get it off my myself. In hindsight I dont't think this was within safety regulations, haha.
I have an uncle who had one of those massive, old CRT tvs. Easily weighed several hundred pounds. The tv was free to anyone who would carry it out of the basement and out of house. Took four people to move that tv out.
there's still two left over in our household. while one is really heavy but manageable, the other one hasn't been moved in years. probably for the best.
It's made by hand one by one, something like the Ferrari of TV/multimedia systems if you have >$25.000 to buy an TV. The advantage all products are modular and can be updated for life to the last tecnologies.