I agree with this and have the luxury of space and connections to source excellent CRTs. I also have the good fortune of having had Ray Carlsen restore my C128's period correct gloriously boxy 1902A which can support both 40 and 80 columns. And another local friend who recapped my 1702 (just in the
nick of time) and original Macintosh monitor that is paired with my Quadra 700 last month. I have 2 1080s (one mint, boxed) and a 1084S. Also a dual-mode 1942 I use with a stock A3000. I really can use a CRT with pretty much every retro machine in my house except my Win98 IBM PC, which gets a late 19" 90s LCD.
And I feel so lucky and happy to be able to experience my machines this way.
My C64 hooked to the 1702 is a dreamy setup I hope to have with me the rest of my life, whatever it takes. I have hooked the 64 up to new LCDs and it can look very nice, but it's not what
my mind needs when I sit down to experience that glorious machine.
I will say this, though.
When my Macintosh CRT started to act up this year, in desperation I hooked up a new 4:3 LCD to the Quad so I could continue with my projects while the monitor was being recapped. I was absolutely
stunned at how clean, crisp and frankly better the Mac looked on the LCD display. It was as if it had been designed for it from the start. The CRT was "tired" and in some areas of the screen it had grown less than crisp. When I hooked up the LCD I was surprised and even a bit face-slapped at how miraculous the display was. I've since reminded myself that even my G3 Powerbook laptop - running 9.2 - was actually using an LCD, too, if a bit less contrasty and more faded feeling. And it had never bothered me over there. For text and design programs it was totally natural.
I don't fully understand the technology under the hood, but to my eyes the output looked as good (if not even a bit better overall) coming out of the Quadra's built-in video as my A3000 running a ZZ9000 over HDMI to the same new 4:3 monitor.
For some reason, while aesthetically it doesn't look nearly as good as a system on my table using a black-sheep LCD, the actual video output seemed as good or better on the LCD with my Macintosh.
Today my A3K with the ZZ sits on a shelf. It just doesn't do what I want my Amigas to actually
do.
Ironically, as my eyes age the lower resolutions of the Amigas/C64 on CRTs are so much easier for me to digest than trying to push them into jaggedy higher resolutions.
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As an aside, but related, when I sent my Mac's CRT off to be worked on I started to look into video cards for that machine.
If you get a machine or card that can match an LCD's native display, the results can be shocking. For example, my new 4:3 15" LCD I've been using with the A3K's HDMI port is natively 1024x768. On a 15" screen, that's about as hi-res I want to go. You can make the card do other resolutions, but if they aren't matching the LCD's native res you can get some blurring or slight ghosting. I also don't really want or need to get a giant display for the machine. The 15" is almost identical to the CRTs I normally use with my other Amigas (~1" bigger or so).
The Q can only push out 800x600 at the highest using the stock video. To keep the display crisp on the new LCD, that meant a large black border all the way around. Still looked great, but not ideal.
So I won a hard-fought auction based in Australia for a video card that will support 1024x768, which will fill the LCD's screen. This is a big deal, because I really grew to love that crispness when working on a ton of wacky Mac projects over the past two months. And since the CRT was recapped, it has shown new signs of age and potential failings in the near term. So while I start to look for a suitable CRT replacement, I'm glad I've got a fantastic backup to keep things chugging along.