Pulled my old CRT monitor out of the basement after 8 years, and the colors are actually better now

I grabbed my Dell P991 from 2003 to hook up a retro PC and the blacks look way deeper than I remembered. I think the capacitor drift over time actually settled the picture somehow. Has anyone else noticed old CRTs aging in a good way like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

jake_hall8818d ago

Kinda wild how @patriciamoore mentioned the Trinitron settling in, but one thing that gets overlooked is how the yoke rings loosen over time and can shift slightly when gravity pulls on them. I swear my 991's geometry got straighter after sitting for a decade.

patriciamoore18d ago

The flyback transformer settling in is something people overlook. My old Sony Trinitron from 2002 had that green tint for years, then one day I noticed the reds had this warmth to them (like a vintage film look) that I never got out of it before. Capacitors do change value over time, and sometimes that drift actually aligns the color guns better than factory calibration ever did. Degaussing cycles might also play into it, especially after a monitor sits unpowered for years and the magnetic fields around it shift. Your P991 was built like a tank too, so its original tolerances were probably tighter than most.