Death of the CRT display technology

[Executioner]

http://venturebeat.com/2017/03/03/what- ... -machines/

When the last major manufacturer stopped making CRTs, they sold the manufacturing equipment to a Chinese company that couldn’t properly reproduce the winding procedure. “Turns out that’s a semi-manual process,” says Ware. “You have to wind the CRT bulbs by hand, so they stopped making them. I have an engineer on staff that couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. It’s almost an art form.” Winding together a CRT tube with its electron gun (the two major components in a CRT) requires a delicate touch. It’s a two-part, by-hand procedure that begins with the laborer painting the inside of the tube as it spins on a centrifuge.

[Losbot]

Wow.

[Pugsley]

I didn't open the link but thought the only thing this will suck for is arcade cabinets and that's what the article was about. You can put LCD's in place of the CRT but it just doesn't have the same look. Me personally I don't care and would prefer a LCD for power consumption and heat output but I have pinball machines and bowlers. I have been thinking of getting a 60 in 1 just to mix things up.

[FlyingPenguin]

It's actually worse than just not having the same look. A lot of the early games used tricks that specifically relied on the vertical blanking of a CRT monitor. A lot of the games would redraw the screen during the blanking period, or if it was a vector game it would return the vector to the start point for the next frame during the blanking period. Sometimes they used the vertical blanking to achieve an effect that wasn't otherwise possible with the limited hardware of the time. Or they would use closely spaced lines to simulate a spectrum of colors when the hardware had a limited color palette (the moire effect - which was noticeable on broadcast TV when someone wore a striped tie). If you connect an LCD to some of this old hardware, it just looks like garbage.

Sure, you could create some custom electronics to simulate this, or just replace the old boards with a computer that emulates the game, but now you no longer have an authentic cabinet. It's like building a new 1936 Chevy from modern components and modern alloys. Sure it LOOKS like a '36 chevy, but it's just a recreation not the real thing. That matters to some people.

[Pugsley]

Yeah I understand all that and know there is a difference. I know there were 2 big ones. Wells Gardner and I don't remember the other. I agree that nothing looks better then original, but at some point its going to get too expensive to keep them going. Hell even the rom chips are getting hard to find. Now you see companies selling modern surface mount parts on adapter boards that are old IC style sockets.