I picked up some old CRTs from an ewaste find and had real trouble getting them to work around 2022.
I found a guy in southern California that can fix them but he was 2+ hours away and the monitors weighted around 100 pounds.
Just a few weeks ago I finally made the drive and got the first one repaired. It needed a few small parts and a service, but had a new picture tube installed.
It was a Sony BVM-D24E1WU.
The other monitor takes about 10 minutes to warm up. Pat the repair guy told me it would only support sd resolutions (480i) I didn’t take it for repair since I didn’t know what I would hook up to a SD only monitor. That one was a Sony BVM-20F1U.
Doing some quick searches it seems I got super lucky in the model both displays they were, as well as finding someone who knows how to fix them.
It seems that I should do some retro gaming. My retro system is a PS3 . Is there anything that just wows on these displays?
Does anyone have an HDMI to sdi recommendation? How do I de-embed the audio?
Update:
I realized that my Taiko Drum Master machine is a PS2. I tried hooking it up the the 20" monitor and discovered the BVM does not have a composite input, component only. I’ll get a component cable since I can’t imagine I’d get an input card for less.
Is there anything to look out for in PS2/PS3 component cables? I had a Sony set I got by mistake and can’t seem to find them now that I need them.


And that’s not a coincidence. Not all, but the best pixel artists took the limitations and quirks of the tech from that era into account when designing. Not only the CRT technology with scanlines and other properties, also the cable connection you got plays a huge role. Not only on SNES, but also very apparent on the Mega Drive / Genesis. Nowadays I play old systems on emulators only and don’t want to miss a good Shader which simulates old CRT effects. They get pretty close to the original thing (depending on the shader and depending on to what monitor you compare).
Let’s not forget possibly the most iconic one, Dracula from Symphony of the Night
99% sure this one is fake, every time it gets posted its mentioned that his eyes are doctored
Hmm, never read that. I will test this myself with bunch of different Shaders, if any of them has a similar effect. It might be because there are many Shaders that simulate the CRT effects and can be customized.
I was about to comment with incredible surprise that a single red pixel for his eyes could blend across 6-7 pixels on a CRT.