The CRT Terminator Is a VGA Card Add-On That Supplies Native Digital Video

In retro gaming and retro computing circles, CRT (cathode-ray tube) monitors and TVs are generally considered to be superior to their LCD and OLED counterparts. That's because most vintage consoles and computers output analog video signals that look better on those screens — especially because developers of the era created their graphics with that in mind. But CRTs are becoming difficult to find and many people would prefer to use the LCDs they already own. Computers "speak" digital anyway, so the Oulainen Multimedia Group designed the CRT Terminator that outputs clean, digital video through HDMI or DVI.

Computers don't understand analog. To "hear" an analog signal, they need an additional component called an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) that translates that signal into a series of digital values. With enough values, the computer can understand the analog signal with enough granularity to satisfy the application. The opposite is also true; a computer needs a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) to "speak" an analog signal. When it comes to video signals, the computer has to convert its native digital to an analog approximation to produce something like VGA or composite video that a CRT monitor can accept.

Some modern TVs will accept that input, then convert it back to digital to display. VGA-to-HDMI converters do the same thing. But that means you've taken something digital, converted it to analog, then converted it back to digital. You lose something in that process and the CRT Terminator sidesteps that issue. It taps into the digital video signal generated by the graphics card before the conversion to analog. That signal is still perfect and allows for output of a clean DVI-D 24-bit RGB video signal that you can use directly or with an HDMI adapter. With such anadapter, you're still going from digital to digital and there isn't any loss. In both cases, you get a pixel-perfect video signal for your modern LCD or OLED screen.

This works with any 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit ISA VLB VGA adapter that includes a Feature Connector interface. The CRT Terminator is its own card that sits next to the graphics card and connects to it through a ribbon cable (either to the edge connector or pin header). It outputs at a maximum resolution of 1600×1200 and can perform direct upscaling of the input video — which, again, does not lower the video quality. It can even output VGA and DVI-D at the same time and that is perfect for game streamers.

CRT Terminator isn't quite ready for the market yet, but it should go on sale sometime this year at a price of around €200 ($220 USD). Sign up on the website for updates if you want to know when it becomes available.