Project CRT (aka The CRT Project)

[SilverWook]

Would it be possible to see some pics of these analog CRT beasts?

[PDB]

@Tomarrow

Yeah, you are talking about Calman and Spyder I think. I played with one of those years ago.

I agree in a perfect world I would want to calibrate a CRT to modern standards so I can watch modern BDs and HD correctly on it. But in this particular case I don't want to do that. I want the CRT to display as calibrated by Sony (taking into account phosphor age). There are settings to change the RGB mix in both the bias and gain but once you set this CRT into calibrated D65 mode it overrides these settings. That D65 mode is what I'm hoping is the key.

Let me show an example. Here is me watching Die Hard 3 running on my laptop (bottom, right) and the CRT (top, left) simultaneously. DH3 is notorious for having a terrible magenta/red look on BD. Its one of the reasons I did a 35mm project using Beber's in-theater pics.



(It is pushed because of the camera but you get the point. Like Doc said, I didn't have time to build it to scale.)

So color corrected on a CRT, DH3 has a very pleasing film like look, IMO. In fact, very similar to how my 35mm project and Beber's pics look. On a modern calibrated display with modern standards it looks blistering red. The difference is because a change of standards and technology that occurred after many of these HD masters were made. The CRT monitors at that times exist slightly before digital standard of BT/REC709 was made a standard setting. The next gen Sony color grading panels from the mid 2000s, which were LCD, specifically had a 709 mode. If I were to calibrate the CRT to the modern standards it would have the same red look of the laptop.

So the goal is to take that difference and to get these masters to look like they did on a CRT, only now on a modern display. I get there are a LOT of assumptions in that statement and I only have the one CRT to test with but so far I think there is something going on. At bare minimum they will have less of that ugly red.

@spoRv

The goal is to have a LUT where you can just apply it and it should correct the old master to how it should of looked on a CRT. Well this CRT specifically.

In fact, I have two test LUTs already. The first "pure" CRT LUT which still needs a tiny bit of adjustment in the red shadows. The second one has a little less yellow in the highs to look more pleasing but slightly less accurate to what I see on the CRT. I already started plugging the LUTs into a bunch of HD masters to see what you get.

@captainsolo

I'd love to learn more about that mode. This is the first I've heard about it and it sounds pretty cool

[deleted user]

@PDB

Oh yeah pardon, maybe there was a misunderstanding. I understood your intent, but I mixed up two separate topics. The first topic was that I think you could calibrate a CRT to look right by "modern" standards so to speak, that's what would involve Calman etc.

The second topic (the whole thing with the color chart) was about exactly what you want to do - take the native look of the CRT and replicate it using basically a LUT so you can apply it to a BD or DVD to have the correct colors. Basically it would be like a reverse calibration of the display, if that makes sense, but it wouldn't be applied to the display, but to the Blu Ray so it would look on an LCD as if it was played on the "uncalibrated" CRT.

[PDB]

No worries Tom I probably wasn't that clear on a bunch of things

Anyway, I wanted to test a whole movie to see how it would come out. I picked Tremors since I have the BDs and it was streaming on Netflix, so I could compare all of them. That might of been a bad choice given how terrible the Tremors HD master is.

BD/BD Regraded to CRT


One thing to notice is the white credits fade in purple then white. On the regrade it is all white. I'm going to spin this off into a separate project.

[captainsolo]

Menu screen and TV settings menu showing the monitor option. I always leave it on monitor as it provides the most accurate picture.


Paused with monitor mode on as usual. BD frame ignore phone camera artifacts.

Color mode switched to regular:

[dwalkerdon]

the 4K Remastered 1080p rip of DHWAV that i got off Crackle last year has really good colors. I wonder how the remaster would look on a CRT.        

[dwalkerdon]

Menu screen and TV settings menu showing the monitor option. I always leave it on monitor as it provides the most accurate picture.


Paused with monitor mode on as usual. BD frame ignore phone camera artifacts.

Color mode switched to regular:

is that an XBR960?

[captainsolo]

Yep she's my pride and joy.

[deleted user]

This reminds me that I used to own a Plasma TV that had a "Cinema" option or something similar. It was meant to create an image "as the filmmaker intended". It never made sense to me, because it simply made the image darker and greener. Now I'm starting to wonder if the purpose of that was exactly this.

[SilverWook]

Beautiful Sony you have there, captainsolo.