It might not feel like it, but CRT TVs haven’t been popular for decades at this point. I know, I know, we’re all getting old. The good news is that if you still have a working one lying around, it’s still worth using. I have several CRTs lying around my house, and I keep one of them plugged in all the time. No, it’s not my main TV, and it’s never going to be. However, there are still quite a few ways I get use out of it, and I still manage to use it at least a few times a month.

Most people probably won’t get a lot of mileage out of a CRT today, and that makes sense. These TVs are very bulky, so you need a lot of extra space to justify setting one up. Thankfully, I have a spare bedroom and a wide open basement just begging me to put a bunch of extra junk in. I won’t say a CRT TV is junk today, but I have found a couple of them on the side of the road waiting for the garbage.

They are perfect for older consoles

It’s what they were made for

Far and away, the most use I get from my CRT is running older consoles. When I say older consoles, I mean anything before the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation, as these consoles were designed with CRTs in mind. The 360 and PS3 work on a CRT, but I find that most of the library looks better on an HDTV, and my 360 even looks good on a 4K TV.

Things like my Nintendo 64 and PS2, however, look right at home on a CRT. I don’t even have a nice CRT TV by any means. I only have composite ports, so you could make the case that I’m getting the worst experience that I can, but I don’t even mind. I’m getting to play both games I played growing up and ones I’ve never played before, on a TV they were designed for. It’s been a fun experience, and it’s really one of the main reasons I have my CRT TV still plugged in.

Still a good choice for DVD and VHS

Depends on what you can put up with

If you’re like me, you or somebody you know has a collection of old VHS tapes and even DVDs. It feels like something happened with the change to Blu-ray because I’m the only person I know with a collection of those, but that’s a conversation for another day. In the case of VHS and DVD, many of these feel right at home due to the fullscreen format. A lot of my old tapes fill up the whole screen, and while widescreen was an option, a lot of people opted for the fullscreen release just so it filled up the screen, despite not being the intended way to watch.

I tried to get into VHS tapes in 2025, but I just couldn’t do it. I’m sure there are people out there who like them for nostalgic purposes, but I just couldn’t do it. The grainy and low-quality video was too much for me to handle. DVDs, on the other hand, were a lot easier to stomach on my CRT. I’d still take a 4K Blu-ray and even a regular Blu-ray disc over either of them any day, but you go ahead and enjoy what you want. I grew up with VHS tapes, and I feel like I’ve had my fill. It’s cool to see younger people getting into the hobby because I know thrift stores are dying to unload their vast quantities of VHS tapes that just sit on the shelves. I’m sure there are even movies trapped on VHS that aren’t available anywhere else, so it can be fun for collectors to track those down.

A Raspberry Pi doesn’t look bad

As long as you get one that works with a CRT

When I first got my hands on a CRT, I looked up a bunch of ways I could make use of one outside of plugging in old devices. Eventually, I settled on a Raspberry Pi, a new device that I installed RetroPie on so it could emulate old devices. Makes sense, right? Not every Raspberry Pi works natively with a CRT. You have to look for one with the right port, and that’s why I settled on a Raspberry Pi 3A+. I didn’t have to buy any HDMI to composite adapter, and everything just works natively.

Installing RetroPie was a little time-consuming considering that I had never worked with a Pi before, but it was a fun project to tackle. This won’t run modern games by any means, but if you’re sticking to CRT-era consoles, you’re in a good spot. Any SNES games I fired up ran perfectly, but I’m not sure if I’d push much further than that. With some tinkering, you might be able to get some more games running, but I’m fine with the 16-bit era on this device.

Making a retro aesthetic

Sometimes you just need a vibe

Even if you don’t use the CRT TV often, there’s still something magical about having one in your room. Although these things are very bulky, they make for excellent conversation starters. I don’t think I’ve ever had somebody look at mine without saying something about it. You don’t have to use these things as your main TV, and I feel like just having one around is good enough. Perhaps it’s the YouTube algorithm taking hold of me, but I’ve seen a lot of retro room designs recently, and many of them have a CRT TV in there. I think they are perfect for spare bedrooms and watching things that were made with a 4:3 aspect ratio in mind. For example, many old anime shows look great in the format.

If you’re able to create an old-school feel with the rest of room — old consoles, a colorful rugs, etc. — then I don’t see any reason you can’t rock a CRT TV. I bought some old wrestling VHS tapes to throw on my TV, which felt a lot better to watch than actual movies. You’ll find that it’s very easy to get back into the feel of the ’90s, and with thrifting as big as it is today, you can do it without breaking the bank. I’d say the hardest thing to do now is actually finding the TV, as many people want to sell you them instead of treating them like things to get rid of. Things have certainly changed quite a bit in the last decade or so, so I’m glad I have my TV and don’t have to worry about hunting one down.