Item — HN Reader

> faux CRTs sitting atop the non-Amigas. ... in the end, they decided to use a standard LCD behind a milled acrylic lens

Hmm, I'd never considered that. I keep seeing people talking about buying really expensive 90s Sony TVs for retro gaming or resorting to iffy display filters in their emulator, but a clip-on lens could be nice. And frankly, I'm not sure my desk or tables would support one of those 90s monsters anyway.

I'm imagining one of those odd "anti-radiation filters" that were all the rage in the CRT days. Have to remember to check back in a few days to see if any commenters there have posted a workable home solution.

3 comments

I still use CRT... or rather, used. My CRT died too weeks ago and now I am using an LCD screen... I am missing my CRT :(

The quality of the LCD is super poor, and it causes more eyestrain than the CRT "radiation" ever did, often I am squinting, or shifting on my chair, to see if the LCD colour shift will make seeing stuff easier.

I did feel your pain when my last CRT died 5 years ago, but I got myself a good enough LG LCD[0] and am quite happy with it. I can't notice any motion blur, which is what always drove me mad while using lesser LCDs and no need to move my head to see the actual correct color.

[0] https://www.lg.com/br/monitores/lg-M2380AF-monitores-led not sure the equivalent model in english-speaking countries though

I am going to face such a project myself. I got a Minitel terminal (lovely, with a qwerty keyboard!) but if got badly smashed in transport and the CRT seal broke.

I'm not aware of any way to recreate the vacuum in the CRT (is there one?), so my option will probably be to get a 9" LCD and make a resin lens with a negative of the CRT's face (or detach and fill the implosion mask). To that I'll need to add a controller that can take the TTL RGB signals from the board and remove all the high voltage stuff before I fry myself.

A Trinitron replacement should be a bit easier to fake with a flexible (and large enough - that's the problem) OLED display.

Would a color LCD survive being bent in an oven?

My assumption on bending is no, but I'm assuming that only because I'm sure we would have seen tonnes of stories posted about doing just that if it worked. The retro gamers love curved old screens and love posting weekend makes, so that seems like a valid assumption to me.

I'll also add a reminder to check back here in a few days to see how you've fared :)

It'll be a while before I can dedicate the time for that.

Day job and family take time away from the silliest endeavors.

The lens is OK, but it won't solve the issue where the pixels appear as pixels on an LCD screen.

So you probably still want a filter.

Still, this is nice + probably better than using a shader for the distortion.