all these things tend to do is get casual players playing the game system... and that's great. this is not for actual classic console players. If you want it to look and act like you are playing SNES on a CRT...actually DO it. Buy a console and a CRT and play it as it's intended. No amount of farting around is going to make 90's technology and tricks used to make it look good...look okay on a modern display.
If only life were so black and white.
I myself had to ditch my larger CRT when I moved to a smaller apartment, kept my smaller 14" one but I only use it for PCB testing and most of the time it sits in a closet.
For people who live in Texas or Pennsylvania or whatever inland area, keeping a CRT is easy. You all got tons of space, and on the cheap! I hate seeing those house hunter shows my wife watches when the couple looking for a home are in places like Texas and they're scoffing at a $300,000 large house being too expensive, I'm like f**k right the hell off. Try paying $800,000+ on a small bungalow home on the west coast.
Playing on original consoles with a good (not cheap ebay chinese ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---) upscaler, and a high response gaming monitor is totally acceptable for those actual classic gamers you speak of. I'm running my original consoles through an OSSC, connected to a Benq Zowie which is the monitor used at most fighting game tournaments now. It feels good and responsive and only takes a small footprint of space on my 4' wide desk.
Another problem these days with CRT's is that all the hipsters are buying them up, trying to chase that real classic gamer lifestyle they see being so cool. At least the good CRT's. Or if you're in a dense urban location, I've heard people complain that finding CRT's now are getting more difficult.
so tell me again why we are swapping out one set of problems which aren't really a problem for people who care, for another set that ARE a problem.... to cater to people who don't REALLY give a crap about authenticity anyways? people who care about how their game plays and how it looks already have their solution.
You lost me on the first sentence.
But I want to ask what you think authenticity is? In North America we think authentic is hooking our old consoles to a CRT through either RF or Composite Video, with all the grain and A/V noise and we call it the truest. But think about people in Europe that grew up with the same old consoles, they were connecting their gear to CRT's that accepted clean RGB. So for them, the ugly noise and grain that we deemed the true experience is wrong. It's all relative, man.
Point being, we can sit here and judge people on buying one thing or another, but in the end...who cares? It's not my money. I'm not going to buy it, so what does it really matter. We can sit all high and mighty being keyboard warriors and casting judgements down on the plebeians, but at the end of the day we're all just looking to play games on our own terms.
Buy what you dig, dig what you buy.