any1th3r3

I don't anymore, but from memory the clamp force was quite a bit stronger with the first model than with this Pulse Elite one. I've kept it on for a 4hr gaming session the other day without any comfort issues whatsoever.

Disclaimer: I'm about as inexperienced as you are (and ended up giving up on CRTs for the time being, but mostly for lack of space tbh).

With that out of the way, my research from a couple years ago netted a couple of results, which might or might not be relevant to you (and I'm guessing you could have already found those), depending on where on the globe you are located.

• This person in the Bay Area, who also happens to manage the super useful CRT Database website.
• This person in the Lower Mainland.

If those two are not relevant to you, you might want to check your local CL / Kijiji / FB Marketplace / local equivalent(s) for potential listings.

Otherwise you could certainly YOLO it with the Trinitron since it's well documented, assuming you feel confident enough around high voltage and are equipped with the necessary tools to discharge the tube, etc. From what I've seen it's not as bad as it seems, as long as you you're careful and follow the right steps/tutorials.
Do you have any spare PCB / whatever lying around you could use to practice soldering with? Components on CRT PCBs are indeed not so small, so I don't know what sort of prior experience you have with soldering, but bigger components = easier to solder (as long as you use a bigger tip on your soldering iron, and feel free to use flux / add fresh solder).

Yep, it's the developer options to be specific and all available codecs would show up there.
Here's the main bluetooth settings page fwiw:

I completely forgot I bought those at launch as well, thank you for reminding me! I had the same exact issue happen to mine and I ended up reselling them for half-off iirc.
The glued-on design of the Elite earpads does not inspire confidence, even though the build quality is certainly a step-up from the Pulse 3D's.

It's much less "bass-y" by default compared to the XMs and you'd have trouble EQ-ing it to get some of that bass back (watch this video for more info), if that's something you're after. Comfort wise, the XM line is better, but the Elite is really much better than I thought it'd be.
I would say XMs are better for music listening overall, but the Elite is much better for gaming (and the mic is infinitely better tbh).
The Elite does not support LDAC unfortunately, per screenshot, only SBC or AAC.

• Wii, you'd be perfectly fine either way, you'll be able to get 480p 2x on the OSSC or 3x on the 5X.
• PS2, you'd really benefit from the 5X for a vast majority of games, which output 480i, as the deinterlacing on the 5X is much better than the OSSC, here's an example on GT4, and you'd again get 3x (1440p) vs 2x (960p) on the OSSC.
  You could try and force 480p via GSM otherwise, if your PS2 is nodded, but I've had pretty poor luck with that method so I wouldn't recommend it.
• PS1, that's debatable, for most games you'd be completely fine either way, but there's a fair number of them with res switching, which the 5X tends to handle better / without any delay vs the OSSC, so if that matters to you, that could be another pro for the 5X.

You're kinda in the perfect "target demographic" for the 5X with a PS2 in a way, but it's a matter of how much flickering bothers you or not, and whether or not the higher output res, more features, etc, is worth the price or not.
Again, both options are absolutely great and you wouldn't go wrong with either!

Are you using scanlines per chance? Because otherwise the amount of flickering produced via bob deinterlacing is extremely distracting tbh.

This will be dependent on a few things:

• What's your budget?
• What consoles are you looking to play?

I can personally vouch for the OSSC as a great entry point, however there's a caveat - if you'll be mostly playing PS2 / inputting interlaced content and you have the budget for it, you might want to consider the RetroTink 5X, as the OSSC's bob deinterlacing is not up to par IMO. The 5X is well worth it for that reason alone, otherwise they are both great options.

It used to be that the timer started as soon as you hit download, however they supposedly fixed it later on to only start whenever you booted up the game (and stop as soon as you fully quit it).
I guess there might be some bugs / potential rollback on that fix, but since it's never been officially communicated AFAIK...

FYI, nitter is no more, sadly.

I don't think other platform holders would follow suit, but I'm also of the mind that exclusivity is mostly a thing of the past (possibly because I've only "reentered" console gaming recently and I didnt really enjoy having to buy three different consoles to enjoy all the games I wanted to play, I might be of a different opinion otherwise?).
The more people get to play games, the better, even business-wise tbh.

I'm not sure I get your Steam Deck comparison?