alt Hacker News> there’s some sort of physical element that would be hard to replicate
For a truly authentic CRT experience you need a faint smell of ozone, the crackle of a static charge on the screen and a high-pitched screaming/whining noise right on the edge of perception.
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Spot on. Reading that sentence I can almost feel that static on my skin from when very young me would curiously get way too close to the TV for reasons I no longer remember.
The thunk of turning off my CRT+VHS combo after a late night watching reruns as a tween. Nostalgia is hell of a drug.
When I was a kid, my CRT sometimes switched to a wrong resolution (it got narrower, so squares became slightly rectangular, for example). I say "my CRT", because that was a hardware, not software issue. I know, because kid-me solution was to smash the (hard, brick) wall with that CRT. And it worked. I still don't know why, I was too young to investigate - and hey it worked so why bother.
My parents were less impressed, when after a few years the screen was moved and the wall was scratched everywhere.
And the very physical experience of carrying it around.
Don’t forget the degauss button. TWANG