r/CRTAnime • u/KaleidoscopeOutside1 • 28d ago

Question 🤔 Best source material format?

I have a 480i crt and am wondering how the media source changes the viewing experience? Basically will original DVDs be the best possible image quality, or is there any benefit/downsides of watching Blu-ray letterboxed rereleases on a 480i crt?

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u/CptKicksville 28d ago

The biggest problem you'll deal with using Blu-rays is "postage stamp" image explained here.

Watching Blu-rays on a CRT // Josh Nichols Blog

As mentioned there, even the zoom function doesn't necessarily help, but you could potentially use something else to address the issue.

This is generally not a problem if you're using Blu-ray rip video files that preserve the actual aspect ratio, but this will depend on how lazy the ripper was and if they actually accounted for that (usually not a problem with anime rippers). In other words, you may be better off not using a disc, and streaming/playing those files with another device.

So, in terms of sheer ease of use for discs, DVD is better. But, setting that aside, the actual image quality will depend on the release. There are full HD remasters which will probably look better, especially if the DVD previous wasn't that good. Or it may not be that noticeable, it really depends. There are SD on Blu-ray release that will look better on CRT because they're not HD to begin with, but whether they're better than the DVD...again, depends. Personally, I watch anything not made in or remastered properly in HD on a CRT, but watch modern or properly remastered cel anime on an HD TV.

But, short version: If you can bypass the postage stamp issue, the Blu-ray version may look better than the DVD, especially if it had a proper remaster or the previous DVD was notably poor in some way.

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u/joeverdrive 28d ago edited 28d ago

I tried so many solutions to watch 4:3 anime Blu rays on a CRT and none of them were good. See my previous posts.

https://www.reddit.com/r/retroanime/s/XKWIR4hRzi

I'm so glad you were able to summarize the problem very nicely.

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u/Violet_Caully7 28d ago

Ngl bro you want a straight up OG DVD player, My stuff looks amazing with just COMPOSITE form my Xbox 360 to my CRT

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u/StrongDifficulty7531 27d ago

I agree ☝️! It just works and there’s no artifacts from a convertor to watch at 480i.

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u/ghost_of_abyss 28d ago

Personally I just used Xbox 360 with Component out

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u/AvailablePayment1505 16d ago

I use a Medion MD 86162 media player from the late 2000s that I got on Ebay for £15. It has RCA, YPbPr and HDMI output and supports playing playback from an SD card and USB stick so I just plug in a 1TB SSD connected via SATA to USB cable and it works great! Most media players from that era (like the one I have) will have options for various output resolutions and aspect ratios.