Is CRT Extinct?
I’m still on the last gen of tv. The reason for it right now, to be sure, is I don’t have the luxury of spending money on everything that I want to while in my time of unemployment. But realistically, I’m a thrifty person that doesn’t like seeing things go to waste, so even if I were to happen across some moolah, my tv wouldn’t be the first thing to get upgraded.
As a student, I relied on roommates to supply the tv. At that point, I was still mostly using the tv for multiplayer sessions of Double Dragon II, Battletoads, Smash Bros, and Mario Kart, but eventually when I got into the professional workforce… we had our loans paid off, got married, and then splurged on getting a 42″ plasma tv. I quickly realized that the new technology is built to be incompatible with the old technology, and isn’t especially friendly with gaming either. Whether it be the pillar boxing, the distorted graphics, or the lag… I realized that old school games just were terrible on HDTV’s. This is something that’s pretty well explored and explained in the retro gaming community. In fact, lots of people work really hard to recapture that look on modern displays.
Anyways, I moved out of Toronto to Australia and we sold our plasma tv. It’s not a good thing to ship around the world. When there, we had to reacquire almost everything that you would typically fill an apartment with, and so resorted to a combination of Ikea and Gumtree. We left Australia, and moved back to North America. I managed to get a free tv from Craigslist. Pretty awesome to get in the occasional gaming session. Got rid of that one when I left Vancouver, and acquired yet another free one here in San Francisco.
See… I’m a little cheap. If I can get a free tv, I will. I like not spending money, but I also hate the idea of this stuff going to landfill when it’s still perfectly usable. The problem is, modern games really aren’t friendly toward old tvs. And at the same time, modern tv’s aren’t really friendly toward new games!!
I got burned recently when I tried to acquire Ni No Kuni. I love RPG’s, and I love Ghibli, and figured I couldn’t go wrong and downloaded it on the difficult to navigate PSN (due to legibility on an SDTV). I’ve played it for about 2 hours before I just had to give up:
Which is kind of disappointing, but with how few developers keep in mind that part of their audience is still using older displays, I must say that I’m actually satisfied that the PS4 and the XBone have both made the executive decision to just cease support of older tvs. On one hand, it’s a shame that we’re so eager to fill the landfill with technology that is still capable of bringing joy to people’s lives… but… well at least you’ll be able to fully enjoy the entertainment that you buy.
At the same time, it’s frustrating the type of reaction that one gets when they attempt to make sure that buying a game won’t be a waste of money. A new tv isn’t an option for everyone, and it isn’t the best option for everyone. While you’ll get more detail in an HDTV… generally the color is worse, the contrast is worse, the viewing angle is worse, the ghosting is worse, and when trying to play games that require precision… the response time is worse. Which is why there are places to go where you can actually check out the lag on HDTVs. Heck, there’s a whole domain specifically for testing latency in TV’s, that’s been created by a competitive gamer.
So… as far as the competitive or retro gaming communities are concerned… the nail isn’t in the coffin just yet for CRTV’s… but I’m sure the death knell is just around the corner. With any luck the new 4k tv’s and 3d tv’s being jammed down the throats of consumers means that I’ll be able to pick up an HDTV for free on craigslist in the near future.