Meet the experts who bring your old CRT TVs back to Life | Tech Reddy

If you’re a gamer of a certain age, you may have fond memories of playing your favorite retro console in front of a boxy TV. However, while many gamers keep their old devices — or buy them after garage sales and eBay auctions — CRT (cathode ray tube) TVs are largely abandoned antiques. You can find many examples gathering dust in your local store, the landfill, or maybe even your grandmother’s house. But are they worse than your cheap LED replacement, or do they deserve a second chance at life? According to enthusiasts working tirelessly to fix them, they’re not just leftovers—they’re the best way to play decades of classic games.

When CRT enthusiast Steve Nutter plugged in his old consoles to show his young son the games he grew up on, he was pleasantly surprised by the results. His favorite N64 games looked terrible on his LCD TV, with washed-out colors, flickering images, and a large amount of lag. He turned to the internet for advice, where he discovered one of the best-kept secrets of retro gaming – that an old TV is a must for any first console.

Fortunately, Nutter had an old Toshiba lying around, which he was able to wake up for his own foolish purposes. As an engineer by training, he found himself compelled by the complex machinery of these shows. He would watch YouTube videos made by hackers and phone “phreakers” who enjoyed playing around with machines, slowly gathering his knowledge base. Over time, Nutter’s interest in CRTs grew so much that he began scanning Craigslist and bidding on eBay auctions, looking for truly desirable CRT displays like the Sony PVM and BVM. And one day, his luck changed: the top PVM was sold at a reasonable price only a short walk away. What he found changed his life almost instantly.

“I found a local dealer who was a CRT remodeler,” Nutter explained. “When I went to pick it up, I saw that they had 25 PVMs just sitting in the warehouse. This was in 2015, back when they were being refurbished in hospitals and medical clinics. The owner explained to me that they had issues with getting enough. When I told him that I wanted to buy them all, in his opinion, I was doing him a favor .

When Nutter brought several boxes into his garage, he quickly realized that many of them had important issues. Some didn’t even want to open it. It was then that he decided to learn how to repair himself as best he could, if only to recoup his immediate investment.

“When I first started, I was sitting in a room surrounded by PVMs, and I thought, ‘Who’s going to want to buy all these?’ I thought I had made a big mistake. But when I started to fix them, suddenly everyone wanted them.

What makes a high-end CRT like a PVM or Trinitron better than your childhood Zenith? As Nutter puts it, it’s all about the use case. PVMs and BVMs are professional quality monitors designed for broadcast use in the workplace, such as a hospital or television studio. These boxes are designed to do things that consumer televisions can’t do, especially in terms of color adjustment and scan customization. Over the years, knowledgeable sources like Digital Foundry have shown that high-end CRTs are amazing for today’s gaming, despite some shortcomings. However, Nutter admits that some PVM vendors may take advantage of less informed customers by charging inflated prices for worn-out sets.

“There’s definitely something interesting about it,” Nutter said. “But a properly repaired PVM is the summation of 100 years of analog video technology working together. The sharper it is, the better it looks. The problem is that most PVMs are not in the best condition, which means they’re not worth the money people are paying for them… People come to me with broken PVMs that have cost them hundreds dollars for nationwide shipping.

Today, Nutter is a full-time CRT repairer focused on high-end or unusual boxes, from PVMs to forgotten models from Asia. However, he also spends time chatting with models for regular customers, often just for fun. His customers mail, drive, and hand-deliver their CRTs to his garage in Virginia, where he repairs an average of one TV a week. (His current backlog extends to 2023.)

He documents the repair process with photos, so the client knows exactly what he has done. Nutter explains that he’s worked on so many expensive CRT sets that show unclear or incomplete functionality over the years that he doesn’t write down everything he does, and why he does exactly that. Of course, he posts documentation from his Patreon, where he hopes his subscribers can learn from his mistakes—perhaps enough to fix their CRTs without his help.

Nutter is not the only CRT expert trying to help others learn the dark art of tube repair. Andy King is the owner of the CRT Database, a free web resource dedicated to collecting as much information about these boxes as possible. The site has how-to guides for most of the most popular CRT brands out there, from Sanyo to Toshiba. It also has a guide for adjusting any of the CRT’s color settings, which is useful for any retro player. King compares the experience of buying a PVM to getting the keys to the Ferrari you dreamed of driving as a child.

“None of us used broadcast monitors to play our games when we were kids,” King said. “We were using bedroom TVs… If you want the exact 1:1 entertainment of your childhood, PVM is not a worthwhile investment. However, some of us are looking to build on that unpleasant experience. by getting the best technology that has been able to play those games. “

Both Nutter and King describe themselves as entirely self-taught; after all, no course can teach you how to completely repair these old machines. Nutter says he started his journey with a scanned copy of an old PVM manual, which has several pages of troubleshooting tips. From there, he was able to learn the basics of CRT repair from old books and old web pages. Nutter explains that most of his work boils down to fully assembling each box, removing all the circuit boards, and replacing burnt capacitors on each board.

“A typical CRT that I bring to someone needs a few capacitors, and maybe a good cleaning,” explains Nutter. “There is also all the adjustment-side, where I measure the colors and deviations, the way the geometry looks on the screen. The normal work is working on all those steps and photographing the results. That’s it.”

King explains that CRTs that refuse to turn on are often very difficult to repair. While it can sometimes be fixed in an hour or less, a more serious issue can take months to resolve, especially if there isn’t much in the way of documentation.

Although Nutter’s main focus is on retro gaming, the use of his skills extends beyond this area. For example, there are many videos of video art installations from the 20th century designed to be displayed on CRTs – sometimes an entire wall of boxy TVs, as in the works of Nam June Paik. This means that museums must hire curators like Nutter and King to preserve their exhibits for years to come. Nutter even gave a seminar on the topic at the Houston Museum of Fine Art. He also has customers who provide CRTs as part of the design of period dramas, such as oddities, or music videos.

Nutter says there are several curators who specialize in curating these art exhibits, but most of them are retired. However, that doesn’t stop Nutter from calling one of them, a former Sony tech in his 1990s, for help with difficult problems. “I can sit there and try to figure out the problem all week, or I can call him, and he’ll tell me what to do in ten minutes,” Nutter said, laughing. “They didn’t share this information with the top machines and anyone else. It’s amazing what he knows.”

Overall, while Nutter and King acknowledge the hype and FOMO surrounding high-end CRTs like PVM and BVM, they both agree on one thing: If you want to play retro games, you don’t need to splurge on a fancy model — at least not right away.

“You can get the best CRT features in a set you find on the side of the road,” Nutter said. “With the right console and the right cables, it can look really good. Zero latency, brilliant picture, playing games on the hardware it’s designed for. That’s all that should matter. If you want a PVM, it’s a good one. Just. you know what I’m talking about for what.”