I've wanted to bring back the console electronics. To that end I have built a few things along similar lines for myself.
A couple of thinner "speaker tables" with a small subwoofer + plate amplifier built in and a pair of full-range drivers. Not really a full console but does keep the wires to a minimum [1]. Just add an amp and sound source. (Sub is down-firing and underneath — so not visible.)
I built a taller version with storage for albums underneath (now we're getting closer to a console stereo [2]. (Sub is also down-firing.)
Additionally I built one for the TV that has a mid (full range) driver as well. With the integrated sub it's fully 3.1 with no external wires [3]. (Like previous, sub is also down-firing.)
FWIW, the "cavities" allowed for the drivers within the body of the furniture were designed to match the drivers in terms of volume (usually sized for a bass port as well). So there was a little more thought than to just slap speakers on a box.
Tried to find a build photo — this is the taller stereo version being built. Full-range drivers on each end, dual subs left-center, bass port in center, plate amplifier (for sub only) right-center: https://imgur.com/ZZtP2qp
That is excellent! I followed more of the 'just slap speakers in it' method - I have an old 50s record player that I got as a teenager (in the 90s) the bass on it was stunning, so I played it to death until the values blew.
I then emptied out the insides as with the lid it made a nice box to keep stuff in. A few years later I worked a 2.1 computer speaker amp and drivers in there (sadly I'd used the original speakers for a project), and added a Bluetooth receiver, an ipod touch and an additional aux cable - then mounted the whole thing on hair pin legs.
It is now a cute coffee table, chest and basic speaker system - but no where near as polished as yours!
I have the advantage of having iterated on these. All told I've made perhaps 7 or 8 of them in various configs. I also got very much into baltic birch (and other high-end multi-ply plywood) construction on earlier projects (MAME machines, furniture, etc.) so I already had down the joinery. (And built a number of "normal" speakers before as well.)
So I already some wood-working experience before starting these. Still though, not a thing anyone else couldn't learn to build.
Well wonderful work. It will go on my long list of projects to borrow from - I love multi functional furniture. I really wanted to find a way to hide our bedroom TV either in/behind a chest of drawers, or behind a 2 way mirror - but at the moment it just sits there taunting me.
The lower frequencies can, yeah. Some turntables are better than others though. It does make sense for turntables though to have a separate sub on the floor — the full-range drivers are not a problem for the turntable at least.
Mid 1980s, I worked at an record store that was also heavy into stereos and other audio / visual equipment. We were fortunate enough to have not only a huge 40" Sony set (which weighed about 300lbs) but also a 36" Fisher console set that I think weighed close to 400lbs. So, so much heavy glass.
There were lots of reasons why you wouldn't want to buy one of these behemoths at the time (cost, weight, heat) but maybe the most significant was how bad NTSC video looked when you spread it across a 40" screen. I recently pulled out an old laserdisc player and connected it to a 65" OLED set and it looks absolutely terrible.
When my dad's old Sony KV-25XBR bit the dust, he replaced it with a 32" Toshiba flat-screen CRT. That thing was a chunk indeed.
In my opinion, even though it was really quite a good set, you're absolutely right about NTSC looking horrible on big screens. From day one I noticed that the scan lines very much made it look like watching through very fine Venetian blinds.
Upscaling NTSC and putting it on a big flat panel isn't really so great either.
One does not do it like that. There needs to be a hardware video signal upscaler in between. Of which many different versions at different capability and price points exist.
My first job out of uni in the mid 2000s was working on line doubling and film mode detection for Imagination Technologies (makers of the graphics chip in the Dreamcast). Faroudja was our benchmark!
Felt like a real baller with a giant HDTV on my desk, but less fun was watching test scenes from Titanic at 1FPS over and over.
Wow :) I got a 18 inch office-display by Fujitsu-Siemens with S-PVA panel, long ago.
Broke down after a long time. Repaired it by resoldering some simple capacitors.
During the repair I had a look at the chips. One (or two?)had that Faroudja label on it.
At the time I didn't know about that, and just wondered WTF is that? Searched the net and "got it". They meanwhile got bought up by someone, Wiki as of now says STMicroelectronics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faroudja
That display is still working but mostly gathering dust, some 8800 km away from me, atop a 4x kvm, managing some old stuff, also gathering dust :)
Laserdisc will output 480i rather than 240p (it's just an encoding of the NTSC signal) and lag isn't really an issue, and the linked page doesn't really cover the other advantages. I can imagine that a TV's scaler isn't optimised for composite signals (or even ingesting and filtering the composite signals in the first place), but also laserdisc is just going to look kind of bad compared to modern formats even under the best of circumstances. Even back in the 90s, when encoders were at their worst, DVD was considered a meaningful step up from laserdisc.
My link has a link to 240p, which also goes into 480i.
That aside, all that stuff was made for CRT technology, with dot/slit masks, and phospors with varying intensity of afterglow. Bigger computer CRT screens worked similar in principle, just not interlaced(mostly), and higher resolutions.
What they both have in common is resolution independency within their technical limits.
Flat displays of today don't have that, no matter which panel technology they are based on.
Their internal upscalers may compensate for the resolution, but not for the effects of phosphor, and it's afterglow, after the beam raced over them, until its hitting them again, through the mask.
There is a reason that hardware stuff exists, more so than much so called 'audiophile' stuff, though it's still 'niche'. Once you have seen it in direct comparison, with, or without, you'll know.
Or you've been lucky, and have a really good screen.
Or bad eyesight/perception, not noticing the difference.
^^^^ Not meant to be condescending, but I've seen that IRL.
> The Bang & Olufsen deserves a mention all of it's own. This was a luxury set that retailed at £1200 in the early to mid-90s... it can be nabbed for £10-£40 on eBay
They're going on the 'bay now for $1200. Time is a flat circle, etc. etc.
My dad was a big fan of Trinitrons. Both our first TV bought in the mid '80s, and the second one bought in the early 2000s after the first one died, were Trinitrons, as was our 17” PC monitor.
Last year I got bitten by the retrogaming bug and ended up getting now one, but two 17” Trinitrons, one for a MAME machine in our office's cantine, and one for my retro PC. Even after 25 years those beasts look gorgeous, old games really look great on them.
As a kid, I had a Sony 20" Trintron KV-20EXR20 with the weird PiP feature. That was right about the era of the change from OTA NTSC to cable TV.
On the PC side, I had a Sony CPD-1304 Trinitron monitor, and later an Iiyama Vision Master Pro 17 (with a Mitsubishi Diamondtron tube) which was possibly the finest CRT monitor ever made.
I will always remember when my Dad bought a vertically flat, 27in Trinitron back around 1998. I miss those buttery-smooth pans. Probably my biggest gripe with any modern television is how awful panning or tracking shots look. Similarly, I enjoyed this quest to obtain a (the?) 43in Trinitron: https://youtu.be/JfZxOuc9Qwk?si=9XcP5-4lwzrvpvpF
Modern displays are better at this than those CRTs, you're playing back the wrong thing the wrong way. i.e. framerate conversion, badly streamed video or it's trying to sync to an external clock like your audio output.
I happen to have a 36 inch Trinitron in my garage. It stays there because moving it is impossible.
Yes, the cylindrically-curved screen is distinctively Trinitron. It’s easy to spot one at-a-glance, whereas the later fully-flat models look much more like those from other brands.
> I miss those buttery-smooth pans
This motion clarity is a big reason why CRTs are still the best way to play retro side-scrolling games.
CRTs are literally particle accelerators smashing electrons into phosphors with high enough accuracy to make human recognizable images. And this was not just at some university science lab. We mass produced this crazy shit and put it in most homes on planet earth as new campfire our families would gather around, replacing primitive transistor radios.
And now people just leave these displays of humanities wildest engineering capabilities... on the side of the road. There is not a factory left on the planet with the experience or equipment to make them anymore, and these tubes have a limited lifespan.
I recently setup 30+ game consoles in my garage, along with a modular a/v synth and switchboard equipment and 30+ CRT TVs of every size ever mass produced in a big amorphous blob floor to ceiling. No one else wants these beautiful things? MORE FOR ME :D
It is glorious, and as a security engineer it is how I detox and remember that I actually do enjoy playing with technology when it does not require user tracking or the internet to function.
Do you wish CRT manufacturing would start again? Let's suppose there is enough market demand for that. What advantages could they bring back that we have since lost?
I don't, but I feel like GP was just expressing respect for the aesthetics of the engineering accomplishment, orthogonal to whether it was obsolete or not.
Something akin to how one might feel looking at the design of a clipper ship.
CRT advantages over modern displays:
- Blackest blacks. Deep detail in dark scenes.
- Lower latency.
- scanlines make everything look cooler. Especially pixel art.
- nes and arcade light guns! Making this kind of experience work on modern lcds means entirely different much more expensive tech.
Was working a Samsung exhibit where they were showing off their latest TV, some quarter million dollar beast. Part of the price tag was delivery and installation, as there was just no way a mere mortal could install this.
The problem wasn't that it was heavy -- it wasn't. Just fragile. The TV was made up of an array of much smaller borderless panels.
Think they sold a few to a coupla professional football players.
Samsung microLED required professional installation until a year or two ago. It’s essentially a mini-JumboTron made of individual panels. They’ve managed to reduce down to four panels on brackets.
I bought a Trinitron tv a little later. It was an amazing display, and the weird thing was that I bought it (at a good discount) from the UK firm "Boots the Chemist" which used to sell all sorts of hardware. Alas, it has gone through a few owners since, and now only sells perfumes and drugs.
true story, I got my start programming by typing in two-line BASIC programs on the C64 display models in a Boots in South London. My family couldn't afford a computer at home.
Boots also used to sell home computers and games on cassette. Around 1983 it was an actual place to hang out to see the latest developments in home computing, and buy some toothpaste.
I never had a trinitron TV, but I had a trinitron monitor in the late 90s. What a beast that was. Think it was like an 18 or 19” with a max res of something kinda weird like 1280x960 or something like that. If my probably faulty memory is accurate, the sweet spot was to run it at 1024x768 because that was that was the highest res it could do at >60hz, which made the crt AC flicker much less annoying.
The monitor shelf on that computer table had about a 2” sag in it after years. Think that think weighed about 80lbs.
A late 90s Trinitron would have been 4:3, so 1280x1024. I found it more important to run a trinitron at the native resolution for the shadow mask. Otherwise things got blurry and gross. A bit like using an LCD at its non-native resolution where things get unevenly stretched and squished.
I seem to remember my Sony G220 had a native resolution of 1024x768 and I could run it up around 100Hz. I think the max was 1600x1200@60Hz.
Often my maximum refresh rate was limited by my graphics card's dot clock rather than the CRT specs.
There isn't one. Running a non 4:3 CRT mode simply resulted in a change in aspect ratio. However, by adjusting the geometry in the settings menu get to something closer to the aspect ratio by using the marginal areas of the tube. Pincushion will be a bit worse, but who cares,
I had a Sony CPD-G400. I almost broke my back carrying it home from the store in the box.
That thing would do 1600x1200 at about 85Hz if I remember correctly.
A couple of years ago I got my hands on a Lacie Electron 22 Blue IV. I have to say as good as my Sony was I think the Lacie crushed it. I guess that would be expected since the Lacie was made for graphic designers.
I think the thing people don't appreciate is how good different resolutions looked. Every res was "native". None of that crazy non-integer scaling you get with fixed pixel displays like lcds.
The older Sun monitors were fixed frequency (not multisync like a typical PC CRT monitor), so you only got one resolution, it couldn't sync to anything else :)
To drive home how luxurious this was, 1981 was the start of a recession that lead to 10% unemployment, the highest since the end of World War II, and here are people buying a TV that would be $35,000 in today's money.
Stunning machine - was shocked that in 1980 30 inches was the largest CRT - but that makes sense I suppose - we really are spoilt with screen sizes (and costs) now.
The sweet spot for CRTs was 27" - any larger, and one person could no longer lift it without risking injury; any smaller, and you'd feel like you're missing out.
A 27" TV weighed just under 100 pounds (45kg) if I remember correctly.
The largest ever Trinitron CRT was the 45 inch (!!) KX-45ED1. Here's a fascinating account of an enthusiast uncovering (and recovering) one of these behemoths in Japan:
Similar, but no. Our display used parallel wires that spanned the width of the display as cathodes. In front of that were positively charged "gating wires" that also spanned the width of the display. Then on glass, a laser etched conductive film made vertical strips which the phosphor was deposited making RGB anodes. Turn on the right cathode, gating wires, and RGB anodes to light a line of pixels.
Candescent? A friend of mine worked there. The technology looked amazing. I wonder what modern laptops would look like if they had made it to mass production.
LCDs were a thing (tho they were not great back then) and Plasma was the new hotness ( literally, they required external cooling units). The market for a thin, flat "CRT" like display was in extreme hot or cold environments, aviation, marine, stuff like that.
I heard they actually built one, but I never saw it. I was gone as soon as my paycheck bounced. This place was actual crazy. All sorts of bizarre shenanigans.
look at that "remote commander" at around 6min45, beautiful!
I would love to have such a console instead of the current remote control sticks we have with modern tv's. maybe could be a nice project do build...
We now have 240Hz OLED panels; has anyone tried emulating a CRT on them by drawing 1/4 of a field per frame, leaving the rest of it black? If you could do this with less than 4ms of latency, NES light-gun games might even work on such a thing.
Remember when products came with service manuals and schematics? I miss those times. Today you're just supposed to throw your electronics into the ocean instead of replacing its battery. In some important ways, environmentalism has regressed. But apple.com/environment has pictures of lush forests and windmills so I guess we're fine.
Edit: I'm picking on Apple because they're so sanctimonious about it, but of course it's not an issue unique to them.
A couple of thinner "speaker tables" with a small subwoofer + plate amplifier built in and a pair of full-range drivers. Not really a full console but does keep the wires to a minimum [1]. Just add an amp and sound source. (Sub is down-firing and underneath — so not visible.)
I built a taller version with storage for albums underneath (now we're getting closer to a console stereo [2]. (Sub is also down-firing.)
Additionally I built one for the TV that has a mid (full range) driver as well. With the integrated sub it's fully 3.1 with no external wires [3]. (Like previous, sub is also down-firing.)
FWIW, the "cavities" allowed for the drivers within the body of the furniture were designed to match the drivers in terms of volume (usually sized for a bass port as well). So there was a little more thought than to just slap speakers on a box.
[1] https://imgur.com/nqTy6Bi
[2] https://imgur.com/RIVRfea
[3] https://imgur.com/a1tbhB1
Tried to find a build photo — this is the taller stereo version being built. Full-range drivers on each end, dual subs left-center, bass port in center, plate amplifier (for sub only) right-center: https://imgur.com/ZZtP2qp
I then emptied out the insides as with the lid it made a nice box to keep stuff in. A few years later I worked a 2.1 computer speaker amp and drivers in there (sadly I'd used the original speakers for a project), and added a Bluetooth receiver, an ipod touch and an additional aux cable - then mounted the whole thing on hair pin legs.
It is now a cute coffee table, chest and basic speaker system - but no where near as polished as yours!
So I already some wood-working experience before starting these. Still though, not a thing anyone else couldn't learn to build.
There were lots of reasons why you wouldn't want to buy one of these behemoths at the time (cost, weight, heat) but maybe the most significant was how bad NTSC video looked when you spread it across a 40" screen. I recently pulled out an old laserdisc player and connected it to a 65" OLED set and it looks absolutely terrible.
In my opinion, even though it was really quite a good set, you're absolutely right about NTSC looking horrible on big screens. From day one I noticed that the scan lines very much made it look like watching through very fine Venetian blinds.
Upscaling NTSC and putting it on a big flat panel isn't really so great either.
Short intro here https://www.retrorgb.com/upscalers.html , be prepared for endless ramblings of what is best why for what in countless other places.
Looks like this https://www.ukaudiomart.com/details/649142996-faroudja-vp250...
Felt like a real baller with a giant HDTV on my desk, but less fun was watching test scenes from Titanic at 1FPS over and over.
Broke down after a long time. Repaired it by resoldering some simple capacitors.
During the repair I had a look at the chips. One (or two?)had that Faroudja label on it.
At the time I didn't know about that, and just wondered WTF is that? Searched the net and "got it". They meanwhile got bought up by someone, Wiki as of now says STMicroelectronics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faroudja
That display is still working but mostly gathering dust, some 8800 km away from me, atop a 4x kvm, managing some old stuff, also gathering dust :)
That aside, all that stuff was made for CRT technology, with dot/slit masks, and phospors with varying intensity of afterglow. Bigger computer CRT screens worked similar in principle, just not interlaced(mostly), and higher resolutions.
What they both have in common is resolution independency within their technical limits.
Flat displays of today don't have that, no matter which panel technology they are based on.
Their internal upscalers may compensate for the resolution, but not for the effects of phosphor, and it's afterglow, after the beam raced over them, until its hitting them again, through the mask.
There is a reason that hardware stuff exists, more so than much so called 'audiophile' stuff, though it's still 'niche'. Once you have seen it in direct comparison, with, or without, you'll know.
Or you've been lucky, and have a really good screen.
Or bad eyesight/perception, not noticing the difference. ^^^^ Not meant to be condescending, but I've seen that IRL.
Photos of it plus Trinitrons in my CRT buying guide: https://opticalgarbage.com/wiki/index.php/Gaming/CRTBuyingGu...
They're going on the 'bay now for $1200. Time is a flat circle, etc. etc.
Last year I got bitten by the retrogaming bug and ended up getting now one, but two 17” Trinitrons, one for a MAME machine in our office's cantine, and one for my retro PC. Even after 25 years those beasts look gorgeous, old games really look great on them.
I really wish I had the space for another CRT. One day I hope to have a second for two player time crisis.
On the PC side, I had a Sony CPD-1304 Trinitron monitor, and later an Iiyama Vision Master Pro 17 (with a Mitsubishi Diamondtron tube) which was possibly the finest CRT monitor ever made.
Modern displays are better at this than those CRTs, you're playing back the wrong thing the wrong way. i.e. framerate conversion, badly streamed video or it's trying to sync to an external clock like your audio output.
I happen to have a 36 inch Trinitron in my garage. It stays there because moving it is impossible.
Yes, the cylindrically-curved screen is distinctively Trinitron. It’s easy to spot one at-a-glance, whereas the later fully-flat models look much more like those from other brands.
> I miss those buttery-smooth pans
This motion clarity is a big reason why CRTs are still the best way to play retro side-scrolling games.
And now people just leave these displays of humanities wildest engineering capabilities... on the side of the road. There is not a factory left on the planet with the experience or equipment to make them anymore, and these tubes have a limited lifespan.
I recently setup 30+ game consoles in my garage, along with a modular a/v synth and switchboard equipment and 30+ CRT TVs of every size ever mass produced in a big amorphous blob floor to ceiling. No one else wants these beautiful things? MORE FOR ME :D
It is glorious, and as a security engineer it is how I detox and remember that I actually do enjoy playing with technology when it does not require user tracking or the internet to function.
IIRC CRTs are still being manufactured in small quantities for military and aviation equipment.
Something akin to how one might feel looking at the design of a clipper ship.
Was working a Samsung exhibit where they were showing off their latest TV, some quarter million dollar beast. Part of the price tag was delivery and installation, as there was just no way a mere mortal could install this.
The problem wasn't that it was heavy -- it wasn't. Just fragile. The TV was made up of an array of much smaller borderless panels.
Think they sold a few to a coupla professional football players.
If you want to install your $200,000 143” TV yourself here’s a video: https://youtu.be/oSpX2aZDPng
10 PRINT "FART!"
20 GOTO 10
Not my finest code, I'll admit.
That was 40 years and a continent away.
Although I would suggest adding a space after the exclamation point and a semi colon after the end of the string for a better screen filling UX.
The monitor shelf on that computer table had about a 2” sag in it after years. Think that think weighed about 80lbs.
I seem to remember my Sony G220 had a native resolution of 1024x768 and I could run it up around 100Hz. I think the max was 1600x1200@60Hz.
Often my maximum refresh rate was limited by my graphics card's dot clock rather than the CRT specs.
That’s 5:4. The correct 4:3 resolution is indeed 1280x960.
Maybe there was a popular professional monitor at some point that was 5:4 and had this resolution?
What was the original 5:4 CRT that gave us this resolution?
That thing would do 1600x1200 at about 85Hz if I remember correctly.
A couple of years ago I got my hands on a Lacie Electron 22 Blue IV. I have to say as good as my Sony was I think the Lacie crushed it. I guess that would be expected since the Lacie was made for graphic designers.
There was a Sun on the desk over with lots of SCSI stuff in a nice cabinet.
They weighed a ton, were painful to move and basically consumed the entirety of any desk they were set on.
A 27" TV weighed just under 100 pounds (45kg) if I remember correctly.
Yes, a little short of 100lbs. The heaviest part of the set is the CRT, but more precisely, the front of the tube. It's very thick glass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZxOuc9Qwk
Also travel. Travel got even cheaper.
Lodging and home ownership on the other hand...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_electron-em...
LCDs were a thing (tho they were not great back then) and Plasma was the new hotness ( literally, they required external cooling units). The market for a thin, flat "CRT" like display was in extreme hot or cold environments, aviation, marine, stuff like that.
I heard they actually built one, but I never saw it. I was gone as soon as my paycheck bounced. This place was actual crazy. All sorts of bizarre shenanigans.
Edit: I'm picking on Apple because they're so sanctimonious about it, but of course it's not an issue unique to them.