Darth Lars
Master Member
They have three black dials, so they would be IBM 5153 CGA monitors, which had come onto the market in 1983. I was wrong about one thing however: CGA uses digital RGBI signals with a hard maximum of 16 colours, so while it would be possible to make a television receiver for the 5153 the colours would be posterised to the 16 CGA colours.Those monitors at point were amber or green. At best EGA, not even VGA. When VGA monitors showed up they were 256 colors max. Monitors couldn't handle full on video until into the 90's.
Streaming digital video on computers did not become mainstream until the mid '90s, no, but that was a limitation of the computers, not the monitor. Most colour computer monitors have taken analogue input up until flatscreens in the '00s.