It's your vote! Newer flat screen HD sets or older crt sets.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by andy

I'm in the process of setting up my own in home cable system so I can supply all the vintage TVs with channels 2-13 from various sources. My plan is to have the 4 major networks, 3 Tivos, a Blu-Ray player, Roku, PC, and a color bar generator available on every analog TV in the house. I'm using a set of B-T MCIM-S modulators at the head end.

Sounds a lot like what I want to do, mainly so I can use my remote sets as they were meant to be used.

[Chip Chester]

The resolution loss is more than a "pinch". Ever notice how much better old edited-on-film TV shows look when they're remastered? No dirt and scratches from the neg, pin-registered transfers for no "swim", etc.? They go back and transfer it on a wet-gate HD film-to-tape transfer device with decent color grading and NR algorithms. They also skip the pan-and-scan, and come back with a product that looks quite good at HD resolutions. When 8k or better resolution comes around, (which will be accompanied by significant improvements in color palate, too) the quality improvement will be such that it will be worth re-transferring from original film again -- to extract all that is in the film. While the NTSC downconverted product will also look nice, it will leave lots of improvement on the cutting room floor, as it were.

Doesn't mean NTSC is bad, etc. It's just that "it is what it is".

The biggest hits to digital quality are poor compression (caused by not spending time to optimize settings) and artificial bandwidth restriction (scrunching sat and cable channel bandwidth to allow more shopping channels and PPV offerings of the same movie playing every five minutes). Analog usually wins on lack of banding artifacts because of 8 or 10 bit digital choices. That will likely change, too. (It's what bugs me the most about digital.)

I had the occasion to see all-analog HD (Sony) at an NAB convention many years ago. Really nice looking stuff -- best of both worlds -- but you could only get about 20 minutes on a 14" reel of 1-inch tape.

Chip

[user181]

My vote is yes to both -- the main TV is a Sony 1080i CRT.

[ChrisW6ATV]

I am glad to see some people in this discussion who do prefer modern high-definition displays for their regular viewing. My regular viewing is on a 46-inch LCD set, and movies/football are on a 92-inch screen fed by an Epson 1080P projector.

Originally Posted by Chip Chester

re: Coogar's comment about widescreen... On the films, they were framed up and shot wide-screen originally -- at least for the past 40-50 years or so. Things were cropped or "pan 'n scanned" on film-to-tape transfer. Now HD will allow display in a way that is closer to original screen layout.

Chip

Very good points. People may not think about or be aware of the major differences between movies (made for large, wide screens, especially after 1953) and TV programming (made for small screens that were all 4:3-ratio until a few years ago). If you look carefully at TV shows from the late 1950s or early 1960s, you will probably find that they were even formatted not just for 4:3 screens, but actually for the "roundie" color CRTs. Look at the credits, for example, and see if there is any text at all anywhere near the corners of the picture in shows of that era, even black-and-white shows.

Content created for TV broadcasts also always had to be careful of things like fine-striped suits causing "moire" or other patterns on the screen, certain color combinations being blurrier than others, and so on.

Now that I am getting more of my early TV sets restored to good, reliable performance, I plan to enjoy actually using them to watch older shows more, just for fun.

[Eric H]

I prefer a modern 1080 Plasma set for daily watching, however I'm still hanging on to a 25" Sony PVM for those time when a color CRT monitor is needed, testing VCR's or Laserdiscs for instance.

[Jon A.]

I'm satisfied simply feeding DVD-quality video to CRT sets. I like to set up rooms to be period-correct for the most part, so huge flat screens just don't cut it for me. Also, old CRT sets have quality and style flat screens will never have.

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

I'm still all CRT with the newest in the main cluster being a 1971.

Good for you!!!

CRTs are the best,always have been!!

[jmetal88]

I like them both for different reasons. Flat panel TVs have a sharper image and no geometric distortion. For watching modern HD channels and Blu-Rays, I immensely prefer a flat panel. However, I've found CRTs have better black levels and more vivid colors, so if I'm watching a low-def source (like a VCR or Laserdisc) I'll generally prefer a CRT (preferably late model standard definition set with S-Video and Component inputs, which is why I keep a Toshiba 32A33 in the spare bedroom -- also prefer it for my game consoles).

[Beachboy]

Living room TV is a Toshiba 24" CRT set. Works great, and it's displaying a 480i picture via the digital cable box, but since everything is letterboxed these days, I got tired of a postage stamp sized picture, so this week I bought a 48" Sony LED HD set. Expecting it to arrive next week.

Family room/home theater set is a 27" Toshiba CRT set, hooked to 5.1 surround. Very low hours set, but I imagine the big screen bug will bite me again. Probably go to 55" LED/UHD on this one.

Down side to upgrading from CRT to LED/HD is replacing the home entertainment centers that housed these sets. A nice furniture-quality stand for the new HD set cost me as much as the TV itself.

[Damnation]

Originally Posted by jmetal88

I like them both for different reasons. Flat panel TVs have a sharper image and no geometric distortion. For watching modern HD channels and Blu-Rays, I immensely prefer a flat panel. However, I've found CRTs have better black levels and more vivid colors, so if I'm watching a low-def source (like a VCR or Laserdisc) I'll generally prefer a CRT (preferably late model standard definition set with S-Video and Component inputs, which is why I keep a Toshiba 32A33 in the spare bedroom -- also prefer it for my game consoles).

Black level is really what still attracts me about CRT, that substantially helps with perceived image quality despite their smaller screen size. Panels have advantages, and with OLED they'll finally have comparable blacks, but I find it tough to watch older or subpar panels since the blacks are forever a light grey. Makes the image have no depth and be overall dull as dishwater.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Some LCD TV sets, such as my five-year-old Samsung, can do totally "cut-off" blacks, but only when viewed near straight-on. Viewed at higher angles, the black areas do become dark gray.

[TUD1]

My daily drivers are a 1979 Quasar and a 1985 RCA CTC-117. I love them both. So much better than flat screen.