Author Topic: How a color picture tube (CRT) is manufactured.  (Read 4122 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline MikeK

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1316
  • Country: us
Re: How a color picture tube (CRT) is manufactured.
« Reply #25 on: November 09, 2022, 11:31:14 pm »
SONY TRINITRON Television: HOW IT WAS MADE



I'm not sure why they credited Pittsburgh.  The Sony plant was actually one county over in Westmoreland Co.  I think that's Mt. Pleasant.  But Pittsburgh is the nearest big city.  It was previously the VW plant...making many VW Rabbits and even my [dearly departed] 1986 GTI.
 

Offline tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 13157
  • Country: ch
Re: How a color picture tube (CRT) is manufactured.
« Reply #26 on: November 10, 2022, 12:17:27 am »
I wonder how the flat screen CRT business really worked out? It seems they took years to perfect, so presumably a lot of investment went into them. They never really took over the market, so the volumes were limited compared to the preceding tubes. Then their market window started to close quite quickly, as other screen technologies took over.
Honestly, I wouldn’t say that they managed to perfect them. The corner sharpness of them, even with fancy dynamic focus, simply isn’t as good as curvier CRTs. Any deviation from a spherical surface leads to dot distortion, since the beam isn’t hitting perfectly perpendicularly. This distortion was exacerbated by the simultaneous push towards shorter tubes. If the tube could be 2 meters long, then it’d probably appear razor sharp, but with the short-neck tubes, it meant significant distortion of the dot in the corners. I believe they even used astigmatic beam lenses to try and compensate for this, but it couldn’t do it perfectly.

As much as I admire the CRT, and enjoyed using them, I don’t think I’d want to go back, even if space and weight weren’t an issue.
 
The following users thanked this post: tom66

Offline james_s

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 21611
  • Country: us
Re: How a color picture tube (CRT) is manufactured.
« Reply #27 on: November 10, 2022, 12:22:06 am »
I still think a good CRT looks great. I have a 27" Sony Trinitron XBR in my rec room, mostly it's used for vintage console games but I do use it for watching content sometimes and despite being 480i the picture is fantastic. It's *far* better than the specs would imply.

I'm also a big fan of vector arcade games and for those there is no substitute for a CRT. Nothing can touch the dynamic range of the monochrome vector monitor used in Asteroids. A person that has only played that on an emulator has never really played it.
 
The following users thanked this post: MK14

Offline IDEngineer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1950
  • Country: us
Re: How a color picture tube (CRT) is manufactured.
« Reply #28 on: November 12, 2022, 04:37:51 pm »
+1 for CRT vector displays. Nothing rastered nor masked can match their appearance.

Did you ever play Gravitar? Vector perfection. I'd love to own one, but must be satisfied with my original Joust machine (which now needs debugging, sadly).
 

Online coppice

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 10034
  • Country: gb
Re: How a color picture tube (CRT) is manufactured.
« Reply #29 on: November 12, 2022, 04:40:23 pm »
+1 for CRT vector displays. Nothing rastered nor masked can match their appearance.

Did you ever play Gravitar? Vector perfection. I'd love to own one, but must be satisfied with my original Joust machine (which now needs debugging, sadly).
Penetron and Tektronix style storage screens could be really excellent. Other types of vector displays were not so great. Just trying to move the beam around fast enough to display anything complex could be a real problem.
 

Offline james_s

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 21611
  • Country: us
Re: How a color picture tube (CRT) is manufactured.
« Reply #30 on: November 12, 2022, 06:17:07 pm »
+1 for CRT vector displays. Nothing rastered nor masked can match their appearance.

Did you ever play Gravitar? Vector perfection. I'd love to own one, but must be satisfied with my original Joust machine (which now needs debugging, sadly).

I have a Black Widow that had been converted to Gravitar when I got it but I converted it back. I tried to like it but I just don't, I think Black Widow is a lot more fun. My favorite vector games in my collection are Tempest and Asteroids.
 

Offline IDEngineer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1950
  • Country: us
Re: How a color picture tube (CRT) is manufactured.
« Reply #31 on: November 12, 2022, 07:58:01 pm »
Funny story there... I could never get the "hang" of Tempest. But my wife was amazing at it.

I really like Gravitar. Like Joust, it has an element of gravity and the additional realism that continuous thrust (engine in Gravitar, flapping wings in Joust) is required to offset that gravity. It felt more real to me in the way you had to control the ship. A lot of games (and TV shows, and Hollywood movies, and...) take shortcuts so I appreciate more true-to-life representations. Of course that kicks up the difficulty and I didn't have access to Gravitar long enough to get very good at it, which may be why I look back favorably - it's an itch that never got completely scratched!
 

Offline james_s

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 21611
  • Country: us
Re: How a color picture tube (CRT) is manufactured.
« Reply #32 on: November 13, 2022, 01:47:47 am »
Joust is ok, I don't own one though. Gravitar is just too hard, I never could get anywhere with it. Tempest is probably my favorite game of all time, my high score of 374k that I set around 20 years ago is still on mine. It's one of those games where you get "in the zone" and the world around you just fades away. Another of my favorites in my collection is Quantum, it was not popular at all when it came out and is quite rare because of that, it's a really unique game though and with a Motorola 68000 CPU it is quite powerful compared to the 8 bit CPUs used in most games of the era, it is the only vector game capable of drawing solid objects.

Asteroids is easily the finest example of fully utilizing the capabilities of a monochrome vector monitor, the dynamic range is incredible and the gameplay is quite good too, the physics is absolutely top notch, it just feels good to play.
 

Online BrianHGTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8275
  • Country: ca
    • LinkedIn
Re: How a color picture tube (CRT) is manufactured.
« Reply #33 on: November 13, 2022, 02:18:31 am »
Asteroids is easily the finest example of fully utilizing the capabilities of a monochrome vector monitor, the dynamic range is incredible and the gameplay is quite good too, the physics is absolutely top notch, it just feels good to play.
Yes, especially if you happen to have a perfectly focused and strong CRT, nothing could compete with the simplistic monochrome vector display of the original Asteroids.

Though, I believe Joust was bitmap, not vector.

Tempest's color vector display was also impressive to see.
 
The following users thanked this post: eti

Offline james_s

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 21611
  • Country: us
Re: How a color picture tube (CRT) is manufactured.
« Reply #34 on: November 13, 2022, 04:04:22 am »
Yes, Joust is definitely a raster game. It shares almost identical hardware with Defender, Stargate, Robotron, Sinistar and Bubbles. Of those, Robotron is the only one I have.
 

Offline IDEngineer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1950
  • Country: us
Re: How a color picture tube (CRT) is manufactured.
« Reply #35 on: November 13, 2022, 04:10:21 am »
Yes, Joust is raster. I brought it up because of how it uses gravity similar to Gravitar.
 

Offline IDEngineer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1950
  • Country: us
Re: How a color picture tube (CRT) is manufactured.
« Reply #36 on: November 13, 2022, 05:15:27 am »
I just looked up a video of Quantum, having never seen nor heard of it. Cool concept! The trackball would make it very interesting. I liked how they used a trackball in Marble Madness on the Amiga and would love trying it on Quantum.

Might be interesting to duplicate Quantum as a touchscreen game on a phone or pad. I wrote a game for the iPhone years ago, a fun experience.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf