CRT SCR$ Project - The Book Edition and a new collection update

[arkive]

CRT SCR$ Project, hosted at archive.org, is a preservation drive aiming to build a collection of high-resolution (and hopefully quality) photographs showcasing software from the standard-definition (SD) era displayed on CRT TVs and monitors. It's something I've been working on for years, and I have just released a major update (v0.3) featuring tons of new material.

CRT SCR$ Project - The Book Edition is a newly released digital photo book based on this collection. The content on archive.org is and always will be free, but it also takes a lot of funds and time to develop. So, instead of starting a Patreon or something similar, I thought it'd be nice to have a tangible reward for those who'd like to support this project. The book costs 10 USD (~9 EUR) and is available for purchase at www.crtartbooks.com

The book also serves as an easily accessible general overview of the CRT era, showcasing photos of live CRT displays connected to original computers and consoles. It includes:

-more than 460 pages featuring hundreds of high-resolution photos of live CRT screens (with or without TV bezels, close-ups, darkroom shots, and miscellaneous photos)
-10 CRT TVs and monitors
-over 25 consoles and microcomputers
-hundreds of games ranging from well known hits to obscure underdogs
-comparison sections showcasing differences between different inputs and CRT tech (e.g. RF vs composite vs S-Video vs RGB, or slot mask vs aperture grille)
-PDF bookmarks for every page
-tags for easy searching

The images have been slightly more compressed than the original JPEGs in the collection, but most are still highly zoomable, with many allowing zooming to the phosphor level.

Here are some example page spreads from the book (you can see some other ones on the shop page).









The CRT SCR$ Project is a work in progress, and will be updated in the near future. All the future editions of the book will be available for free to those who purchased it previously (you will receive an automatic notice about new downloads).

I'm always on the lookout for photo contributors. Due to my limited hardware resources and budget, I managed to cover only some of the most popular retro hardware so far (the current platform/CRT list is available on the archive.org page). So, if you have a CRT TV or monitor connected to an original console or microcomputer and are willing to take some photos, please get in touch!

This appeal is especially valid for other Amstrad stuff. I have included only CPC 6128 with CTM 664 monitor (and other non-Amstrad CRTs), which is what I own myself, but there are many more configs I'd like to see featured, especially other Amstrad monitors.

I'd also hugely appreciate any feedback on the book and the collection. I'm just an amateur photographer, and this is my first foray into desktop publishing as well, so any comments and suggestions on how to improve things would be greatly welcomed.

[Gryzor]

This sounds awesome. Any chance there'll be a physical edition at some point?

[arkive]

This sounds awesome. Any chance there'll be a physical edition at some point?

Thank you. I'd love to have a physical edition too, of course, but it requires a substantial investment, meaning Kickstarter or some such. And I have zero social media clout, so that could be tricky to pull off

Also, an important thing about photos in this book is that most of them allow for big zooms, showing shadowmasks, phosphors and general detail (dust on my CRTs too). This ability would obviously be gone in the physical book, so that's a good reason to grab the PDF (or just download the collection).

[retro space]

Cool! A bit similar to what I'm doing with VFD games.
Do you also record video's? I think good video captures are also very nice to archive.
What this also shows is that PVM's are actually kind of weird. On normal TV's you don't see scanlines, as the horizontal pixel pitch is roughly the same as the scan line spacing, but a PVM gives a weird horizontal character to the games totally different from what we saw at home.

[Gryzor]

This sounds awesome. Any chance there'll be a physical edition at some point?

Thank you. I'd love to have a physical edition too, of course, but it requires a substantial investment, meaning Kickstarter or some such. And I have zero social media clout, so that could be tricky to pull off

Also, an important thing about photos in this book is that most of them allow for big zooms, showing shadowmasks, phosphors and general detail (dust on my CRTs too). This ability would obviously be gone in the physical book, so that's a good reason to grab the PDF (or just download the collection).

Yeah, the financial aspect is an issue indeed. For the second point, it can be done by including zoomed-in images of points of particular interest, but it would mean actually redoing the thing with a print edition in mind...

[arkive]

Cool! A bit similar to what I'm doing with VFD games.
Do you also record video's? I think good video captures are also very nice to archive.
What this also shows is that PVM's are actually kind of weird. On normal TV's you don't see scanlines, as the horizontal pixel pitch is roughly the same as the scan line spacing, but a PVM gives a weird horizontal character to the games totally different from what we saw at home.

Thank you. I'd like to record a few videos at some point too, because some things can't really be shown in the photos (like dot crawl). But that's another technical obstacle - not sure my current cameras could handle CRTs well - and I'm quite busy with building the collection and book editing as it is. But, it's an idea...

You're also right about scanlines - it's just one of these things (like PVM worship haha) that has been completely blown out of proportion in modern times, like many things on the Internet. Nobody had 600+ TVL studio monitors at home back then - not even many devs themselves - and the slot mask equipped sets (most popular) didn't have so pronounced scanlines and the image was maybe less sharp but more uniform.

I like both styles, in a fashion, but I think the displays with really fat scanlines (>800 TVL BVMs and the like) look a bit silly. After all, who'd want big black gaps in your image? Back then, people would look at you funny if you advocated that, these days it's a religion

This sounds awesome. Any chance there'll be a physical edition at some point?

Thank you. I'd love to have a physical edition too, of course, but it requires a substantial investment, meaning Kickstarter or some such. And I have zero social media clout, so that could be tricky to pull off

Also, an important thing about photos in this book is that most of them allow for big zooms, showing shadowmasks, phosphors and general detail (dust on my CRTs too). This ability would obviously be gone in the physical book, so that's a good reason to grab the PDF (or just download the collection).

Yeah, the financial aspect is an issue indeed. For the second point, it can be done by including zoomed-in images of points of particular interest, but it would mean actually redoing the thing with a print edition in mind...

Yes, I already included some zoomed in images too, and it'd be possible to extend this for print edition without that much work actually. So, maybe one day...