I’m really glad to find that there’s a decent sized community for this special interest group on the Fediverse! Bravo, glad to be here and counted among these numbers.
When I finish later this summer, I’ll link up some pics (maybe on PixelFed!) but for now, I’m excitedly waiting for some new hardware. Having run a MiSTer for over a year now, it didn’t get much use due to being poorly placed in my house and not getting enough attention. This summer, I’ve made it a priority project and now my kids are enjoying retro Kirby games just as much as the new ones!
Eagerly awaiting (shipment and) delivery of Ironclad+ round seven with accessories, and a wagonload of OEM controllers to use on SNAC. I feel then that my quest to squash lag will be more or less complete from an acquisition standpoint. But the fuller journey is never “over.”
Long term, I either need to hire someone to adjust the yoke on my RGB modded 36" Trinitron or (better) teach me to do it safely. Alternatively I need to find another large set that I can mod and which doesn’t have convergence issues. And eventually, I’m sure FPGA programmers will migrate to a new platform that will need to be explored. :)
Honestly with how cheap it often can be to get your hands on a medium to large CRT, I wouldn’t be too scared of the long term maintenance. Bare minimum, you spend $20-$50 to get a really cool way to play your retro stuff for a few years. If it ends up degrading to the point where the imperfections don’t improve the experience, you then have to pick between:
A: get a new CRT
B: Fix your current CRT (most problems can be fixed in a service menu but there are things that need physical work)
C: Pay someone to fix your current CRT for you
D: Re-assess the currently available display and scaler technology (I believe that someone said that a 55" 8K OLED TV @ 120Hz will have small enough pixels that a filter can literally draw an aperture grille and simulate the color bleed to nearly indistinguishable levels from a 33" CRT), and see if a CRT is still the best way to play retro games. If the display tech is such that a fancy modern TV would be able to handle your fancy modern PS7 / Xbox Series XXX / Nintendo Switch and your SNES/MISTER/emulator machine, that’s the endgame.
The main thing is that all of those situations are “later problems” and buying a big ol’ chonky boi off Facebook Marketplace or adopting one off the side of a street will get you a ton of fun with your retro stuff right now.
It’s worth it to play retro games on a CRT even if you’re doing it through composite on a big consumer set with kinda wonky geometry. IMO I’d rather embrace the imperfections of an analog system and display than try to do the studio-perfect PVM thing.
I’m with you on embracing the visual imperfections. There’s one thing a modern unit simply can’t do, and not only that but we seem to be in a race further away from ever seeing it again - which is lag-free display suitable to twitch gaming.
Even disabling all video processing possible still results in 1-3ms lag in the best sets, which matters when possibly missing a frame matters. Setting aside competitive play (which I don’t do), it’s immersion and soul crushing to miss jumps you would have made if your display didn’t handicap you.
Even the worst CRT won’t process you into losing frames, so I don’t care much about any visual flaws so long as the picture is roughly average or better.
That said, in my area, people don’t give away or sell cheap CRTs anymore. They got wise and immediately greedy, you don’t often see a working one listed for less that $300 within half an hour of my house, which is nearly PVM territory.