CRTs were used for decades, then discarded almost overnight. That should bother more people than it does.
For a huge part of modern visual history, CRTs were the display. They were how people watched TV, played games, used computers, saw broadcast video, and experienced analog media in general. This was not some tiny niche. This was the standard for decades. Then flat panels took over, and a lot of people acted like nothing important was lost.
I do not agree with that.
My CRT Archive exists to document CRT displays and related analog video gear through actual ownership, actual use, real photos, and honest opinion. If something is on this site, it is because I owned it, handled it, tested it, repaired it, lived with it, or otherwise had it physically in front of me. This is not filler content and it is not nostalgia bait. It is a record.
The point is to preserve what these things really were before all of that turns into vague memory and secondhand internet sludge. That means documenting the good and the bad. Some CRTs are incredible. Some are mediocre. Some are overhyped. Some are cheap junk with one weird quality that makes them worth caring about anyway. Some have great tubes and awful controls. Some are beautiful. Some are beat to hell. Some deserve saving. Some….. honestly do not. I want all of that here.
This site covers consumer CRT TVs, pro monitors, VGA displays, and the gear around them too: scalers, converters, VCRs, switchers, adapters, repair notes, pickup stories, and comparison posts. Because the hardware around the display is part of the story too.
More than anything, I want this archive to capture something spec sheets cannot: what these displays actually feel like to use. The image. The glow. The motion. The quirks. The signal chain. The flaws. The stuff that gets lost when people reduce old hardware to model numbers and internet hype. That is the goal. To document what these things were, what they still are, and why some of them mattered enough to be worth dragging home, testing, photographing, and writing down before they vanish for good.
Used for decades. Discarded overnight. Maybe they mattered.
THIS SITE IS CURRENTLY BEING DEVELOPED, PLEASE…STANDBY