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Behind the Numbers: LCD vs. CRT
OrenWolf writes "CNet has an article discussing the difference between CRT's and LCD's - where they've been, where they're going, and what to look for when buying one. They inclde information on how to judge the most important (and most overlooked) features in LCD's, the rise/fall of pixels, something that keeps most gamers away from them." Good
summary type piece, although nothing exceptional for the more hardcore techie.
Everytime I see an article about this sort of stuff I keep praying that OLED monitors will be out soon. Flat, less power required than in LCD, flatter than LCD, bright like CRT and once in full production likely up to 30% cheaper than LCD.
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
about $200.
Is this the new Katz manifesto? I thought I was blocking his articles...
The CRT - by about 0.8"
I think it was the purple one.
I recently had a new 18.1" LCD screen from NEC loaned to me for a trial period. Wow. I used it connected to my HP Omnibook and the larger screen was incredible. I forget the resolution I was running, but it was great for working on documents side-by-side. Going back to the 14" on my laptop was disappointing.
In a computer store, you'll often see monitors stacked on a rack and connected to a signal splitter that degrades image quality (with the cheapest monitors on top catching the most glare).
Kind of like the area that I share with my cube friends.. No splitters but monitors everywhere.
Far from the "ideal" conditions that I doubt anyone really has.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Will be an LCD. I'm planning on buying an Apple Cinema 23" to go with my Dual G4. Then I get to move my 19" Viewsonic CRT to the game box and finally get rid of that old, dim dingy Sony Trinitron. Unless of course someone knows how to make it brighter again. I want the Viewsonic on the game machine because I've yet to see an LCD that can keep up with a fast paced game. I do understand that the OLED's that might be coming out soon will be very close. Now if there was a way to hook up one of those 60" plasma screens (and afford one...).
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
I hope they are comparing the actual viewable screen size when they are compaing the prices of CRTs to LCD. Most people don't realize this, but a 15" LCD has the same viewable area of a 17" CRT, and a 17.4" LCD has the same viewable area of most 19" CRTs. You can't compare a 15" LCD to 15" CRT, since they really aren't the same size.
I bought a solarism 15 inch lcd a few weeks ago, it doesn't have DVI (Their new 17 inch does though) but i have had no problems w/ ghosting in dvds or games (quake3, medal of honor...) Toms hardware loved it, but no one else seems to be putting it in their LCD shootouts... ? I'm a gamer using an lcd...
Dimensions, Refresh rate, Colors, Response time, and Power consumption.
While I would agree these are all important, why are response time and refresh rate not linked together? I.E., a crappy refresh rate (50Hz) combined with a crappy response rate (60 ms) could possibly lead to trouble. Also missing are contrast and brightness, two more very important aspects.
As a mac fan I find CRT vs LCD comparisons very interesting since Apple now only ships LCD-equipped machines. Personally I think this is a bad idea, and my current Mac runs with the slick looking clear CRT apple made last. It will be used on my primary machine for the next 5 years at least. I'm planning on going dual head soon and have already begun looking for a good deal on another one.
However I still have to wonder if LCD really is the future. I'd love a new iMac at home but can't imagine I'd get very good FPS at 1024 x 768 with a Geforce 2MX. If the iMac still had a CRT then I could play the game at something more reasonable.
For now I have to trust that Mr. Jobs and Apple know what they are doing. They have enough past successes forcasting - Newton, NeXT, FireWire, etc - that despite my reservations I have to acknowledge that they might be right.
I dunno what the big deal is about lcd vs. crt. As far as power, the average desktop user(including me) doesn't care. The desk space, perhaps. But I've already adapted to my 21" monitor taking up most of the space, so what's the big change gonna be. I guess just a few more square inches for me to fill up with trash!
The punchline is, I do graphic/web design, where LCDs are traditionally pariahs. =)
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
This article over at Toms does an excellent job of describing the technical differences between CRT and LCD.
He also has a recent roundup of the current LCD players and what to look for.
C.
Anyone know anything about how long LCDs will last? CRTs have a tendency to become fuzzy with age. I assume CRTs won't do this, but do they have any long term issues?
I'll pay a little extra, but the price of a so-called '17 inch equivalent' 15in LCD (diagonally smaller by 1 inch) is now rising, just as it had gotten sensible. I say forget it -- my Sony CRT's are bigger, cheaper, and brighter, if not sexier.
than CRTs to throw off the tops of buildings.
note: use extreme caution and some common sense when throwing anything from a rooftop.
What exactly is it about the color problems that LCDs have? I've heard people say that newer ones "fixed" this but all of the LCDs i've seen in stores ranged from plain washed out to the pseudo-kiddie effects i used to put on my video games by playing with the brit/con/hue controls on my TV...until they correct that issue i'll happily drag my heavy 17" (soon to be 19 i hope) to LAN parties and whatnot
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Tom's Hardware has an excellent comparison of 14 LCD monitors, in case you are thinking about getting one. The first part is also a really good guide to wheter you want an LCD or a CRT, plus a simple explanation of what to look for. Outstanding piece.
First part is here
The second part can be found here
A few years back, my CEO's wife said, "We should replace all our monitors with LCD flatscreens to make the whole company look high tech to investors" Eventually that kind of free spending drove the company into the ground.
LCD's are pretty to look at, that's about it. None of them can match the refresh rate of a CRT. (Yes I know LCD's don't really do vertical scan like CRT's do, but most LCD's sample the analog verticle refresh at 60hz then coverts it to digital unless it has a digital interface to begin with)
If you really want to reduce eye strain, or just simply get work done, a bigger monitor with a high refresh rate (120HZ+)
Size and refresh rate are the two most important things for me when I purchase a monitor. I don't care if I can hang it on a wall or off my ass. Unless you absolutely need it to be portable, you're better off using a CRT.
Apple Cinema Display is absolutely coveted by most of the graphics designers i've met in the last year or so.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
I've checked all the guru sites (Anandtech, Extremetech, Tom's HArdware, Cnet, etc) and they all seem so subjective. I can't justify spending $750+ CAD for a monitor for home use, but on the other hand if there is truly a worthwhile difference I might loosen the purse strings. Samsung 19" 955 or a Viewsonic PF90 are my current options...
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
I've just found the 18.1" NEC 1850x which supposedly has a refresh rate of 15ms from black to white and white to black, but am uncertain if this is "real" anyone seen any reviews? From what I've read this would make a good gaming LCD monitor. Though I must say the $1300 pricetag is a kick in the wallet.
Anyone found any new technology that will make us wish for something other then LCDs? I've seen all the articles about the different process technology for LCDs, but nothing exciting.
Anyone seen DLP flatscreen monitors? DLP seems to do everything you want, they make kick ass tvs.
This is a little OT, but can we get a poll to see what kind of monitors everyone is using and in what sizes? I'd love to know how many of us are using LCDs or dual-monitor setups, and what size screen most /.ers gaze upon daily.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
Mine.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
If you want a damn good techie white paper on the basic physics and engineering of LCD technology, I recommend the mildly dated but still highly informative SGI 1600SW white paper.
Their display used to have the unique advantage of a very low pixel response rate, great for avoiding ghosting in video, but I can't seem to confirm that in their specs nowdays.
--LP
An LCD was the best investment I've made recently. Screw gamers! Games are just like drugs for dorks!
1. JPEG compression is terribly magnified on an LCD. look at a typical Yahoo News press photo on an LCD and then on a CRT, especially close ups of people.
2. Contrast is variable from top to bottom while looking dead center: On my recent model VAIO laptop, when looking at the screen from dead center, the top is too dark, the bottom is too bright. (in terms of black level)
3. Colors shift depending on left to right viewing angle, and typically subtle hues of red and blues and purples will not appear as pleasing and natural as they do on a CRT.
4. Overall gamma is poor, with the falloff happening in all the wrong places, which wrecks havok on portraits and figure photography. (which means yes, pr0n!)
So it's interesting to note that on a recent visit to Vertis studios in San Francisco, the people who often do the Macy's catalogs, that each digital photography station consisted of a high end scanning back camera and a macintosh with a 22" LCD monitor! I mentioned this to one of the supervisors and he said "Yea...we're aware of the problems with LCD...we carefully calibrate them and make sure to stare at them dead center, or we get the color shift problem left to right." I figured that someone had sold them on those setups purely for the 'cool' value, and they fell for it hook line and sinker.
He then took me into the finishing room, where, to my pleasure, there were several workstations outfitted with high end CRT monitors with hoods around them. I knew there was no way they were doing catalog work without CRT's, given the pickiness of fashion retailers over the color accuracy in the catalogs.
When I was working at Digital Domain in Hollywood, as well as every other VFX company I've ever worked for, there was nigh an LCD in sight, because you can't do critical adjustment on an LCD.
Despite all this doom and gloom, it IS getting better all the time, and eventually, unless it's replaced by DLP or other "every pixel is a tube" flatscreen technology, then I'll be calibrating my photographs for viewing on LCD, because that's what everyone will have. Until then, I prefer my high end Sony FD trinitron above all else.
--Mike
Not to mention the huge amount of heat CRTs put out! In my old apartment, my gas went out (ok, I didn't pay the bill :P), but my computer room was always toasty warm with 3 CRTs going. You haven't lived, till you've used a Mac SE for a foot-warming ottoman!
The article mentioned that graphic art types prefer CRTs because of a more true color depth? This being the result of the electron gun having better intensity control than LCD. (Article's point, not mine) I'd like to know why SGI makes such awesome flat panels? When I worked with a wide-screen flat panel SGI monitor, I was so taken back by how sharp the image was and how easy it is to read a wide monitor, I never wanted to go back.
But wouldn't SGI reject the LCD monitors due to color quality? What's the story there? Are the SGI monitors better than PC flat panels?
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
LCDs have held a lot of promise, and I have been told that the Apple Cinema display was the culmination of what LCD brings, and I got a chance to use one and was extremely disappointed.
Truly, I didn't see any hint of ghosting effect, and the absence of refresh is nice to know, but has no visual impact. The idea that the signal is kept digital logner doesn't make a damn bit of difference to me, but the more precise usage of the visible screen does.
However, the thing still looked bad in terms of color and brightness. On smaller LCDs the field of vision is pretty good, but when you have something the size of a Cinema display, looking at any particular part of the screen makes the portions away from focus really dark. While LCD tech has drastically improved, it doesn't seem to scale well at close distances (my subjective experience). I have never seen an LCD with an adequate viewable angle. Now OLEDs may become what LCD should have been. LCDs are certainly not worth the extra cash, but an OLED display might be more tempting, all the pluses of LCD with none of the disadvantages...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
My main monitor is a 17" HP F70 LCD; it is sharp, brilliant, fast, and clear at 1280x1024. I play StartFleet Command, Wizardry 8, Heroes of Might & Magic IV, Destroyer Command, and Combat Flight Simulator with no problems at all.
Of course, I could have bought three nice 19" CRTs for the same price, but the CRTs would have continued to give me a headache, I suspect. My eyes don't twitch after 12 hours of coding on the LCD... and that's worth something.
My advice -- stay away from cheap LCDs and the bargain 15-inchers. You get what you pay for...
All about me
I hadn't heard about this before. Seems like another strike against LCDs for games because most gamers nowadays run their games with 32-bit color.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Now this makes me wonder, I thought most graphic designers used Mac, but Apple only supplies these with LCD's these days.. Has anybody told Apple that this probably isn't a good idea?
--
\ Christian A Strømmen
Are you sure that Einstein said the Black Holes divided by zero quote? I have most often heard it attributed to Steven Wright.
From the article (2nd page): "To vary the transmission of light through color filters, LCDs use magnetic fields to twist particles floating in a liquid--an inherently less precise process."
No, LCD's use electric fields. CRT's use magnetic fields to focus and scan the beams. Why do tech-oriented mags hire technical idiots?
I recommend the samsung great picture quality.
LCDS
Pros:
weight
Cons:
Pixel Burnouts
Ghosting
Price
Viewable Angles
Native resolutions
Monitors
Pros:
Cost
Picture Quality is Better
DVD & Movie playback (No ghosting)
Ajustable Refresh (its not a con, when its selectable!)
Ajustable resolutions
Cons:
Size
Humm, Ill stick with my 22 inch flat screen monitor which is perfect. Ill use a LCD for when space is tight, thats it.
Here is an article entitled "LCD Panels and Customer Expectations". It talks about "stuck pixels" among other things.
Refresh rate is incredibly important for taking care of your eyes. It's too bad sysadmins and managers rarely understand the benefit of superior (or even mediocre) video cards for programmers.
Is it a 23" Apple Cinema Display?
No? then go for a CRT!
mmm...Apple 23" Cinema Display...*drool*
My laptops have LCD displays. My IPAQ IA-1 has an LCD display. And we have an LCD display on the console switch for the servers, because, when the power is out, I want 24W on the UPS, not 240W.
That's it. For everything else, for now, CRT's are superior. The 19" monitor I'm working on right now displays 1600x1200 crisply, can go higher if I really want to, and yet, can produce 800x600 without artifacting.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Less eyestrain. Consider yourself lucky if you don't have eyestrain after extended periods in front of the computer.
One of the "questions and answers" claims that
when purchasing a tube-type (CRT) monitor, "any CRT will do".
I won't bother being graceful here. That's a bunch of crap.
Cheap monitors are junk. The CRT is the major difference between cheap and good-quality monitors. I am typing this on an NEC MultiSync FE950+ which is a beaufiful flat-face CRT monitor. It costs a lot more, but it is worth it. The other two monitors on my desk (a Sun/Sony 20E20 and a Misubishi DiamondTron) are of similar quality. They will last me through several computers...in fact, the Mitsubishi already has.
Refresh rate matters for CRTs because low refresh gives you "flicker". Refresh is irrelevant with LCDs because there is no "flicker" because there is no electron gun lighting one pixel at a time.
I've long had problems with monitor flicker, even 85 Hz refresh. (I like having both high refresh and high resolution so I never really did the 120Hz thing...) I haven't had any problems with refresh since getting a LCD.
Your point about larger screen size reducing eyestrain remains relevant with LCDs however.
--LP
My advice would be to go to the store, get some black text on a white screen, and stare at it until you go blind. Whichever monitor takes the longest wins. ;)
"Time is an abstract concept devised by carbon-based lifeforms to monitor their ongoing decay." - Thundercleese
I have a Sony CPD-400G 19" trinitron... very nice, and only about $500 (also has dual inputs)
Under no circumstances should you mail-order one of these. The packing is so bad, that subjecting it to UPS or FedEx will destroy it. =(
My old 17" Komodo monitor died last fall, and I got a Radius LCD monitor.
What a difference!
No more headaches, no more blurry vision, I can read road signs now.
Yeah, it wouldn't be great for certain types of games, but for my purposes, it saved me the cost of a new pair of contacts, at the least.
Why are square pixels bad? What's better - _round_?! Or would you prefer some wierd rectangular pixel? Seems to me the most pixel per space would be square or rectangular. The nice digital cameras (high-end ones) have square pixels in them, so the original picture is being taken with square pixels in the originals now. I'd rather have square pixels.
Today, the technology has improved, and prices for small, 15-inch displays have dipped to about $300. That low price point makes sleek flat-panels a viable alternative to standard CRT monitors, whose technology has undergone few fundamental changes since Philo Farnsworth patented television in 1930.
Well, only color, digital, non-interlaced, VGA, Trinitron, on-screen controls, power savings, almost-perfect flatness... This nineteen-incher doesn't bear much in common with the bulbous b&w RCA Dad picked up from Woolworth's on the way back from the war.
I mean, whatever. It's just, you gotta love the offhanded style of these semi-conscious mass-market tech reviewers.
However, you won't go wrong with the Viewsonic either. If the Viewsonic is cheaper by a good margin (check for rebates, I got $70 back on mine), it's probably worth saving the money and getting the Viewsonic.
-J
...Especially if you also have to air condition the space. A 50 watt difference is closer to a 200 watt difference if you're paying for air conditioning.
You didn't really state specifically your price range (though I could infer one from your "option"), but if $400 is doable, I would suggest you buy a ViewSonic P95f from http://www.newegg.com
It has excellent brightness, excellent color, and mine has virtually no visual anamolies when looking at testing software.
For a little more you could also consider one of the M2 Iiyama monitors, like the Vision Master Pro 454.
I was in Taiwan in December and found that LCDs are ubiquitous there. Furthermore, a decent 15" to 17" LCD costs about 250 to 300 dollars in Taiwan. I hardly saw any CRTs there, as only the old, junky computers still used CRTs. I only wish I had 200 dollars extra with me to spend on a LCD instead of having to shell out 400 or so here in the U.S. for the same thing.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
Here I go.
/. if they're not going to post them?
<bitch>
I submitted this story 3 days ago (on a slow day) and the editors thought it wasn't good enough. So what? Articles have to be "properly aged" before they get posted now?
This has happened to me way too much on here. Seriously though, what's the point of us surfing through the net to submit stories to
</bitch>
you can mod me down all you want, but we both know it's the truth.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I just bought a new notebook, a Dell Inspiron 8200, but I'm still waiting for it to arrive (still a month away).
I went for one of the new UltraSharp (aka Enhanced UXGA) LCD.
Has anyone seen one of these LCDs, or have any comments on their performance?
I'd love an OLED display like everybody else, but until they can come up with a blue OLED that can survive more than a couple of hundred hours, you ain't gonna be able to buy one.......
:)
Unless you feel like replacing your screen on a monthly basis
Id never buy a LCD screen with stuck pixels, that they try to force them on you after the sale just shows that for mainstream prices (where they cant guarantuee 0 stuck pixels) these things just arent viable yet.
Personally Id just make use of my customer rights and return them for a full refund (dunno about the states, but we have that right here within 2 weeks) till I got a good one, if I couldnt find a store which I could bully into selling me one guarantueed without stuck pixels.
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I have an LCD display on my laptop and it is quite nice (1600x1200 native resolution). I use the laptop to read long articles because I find that the LCD is easier on the eyes for reading text. I have a few problems with the LCD however.
1. Ghosting [in games this can be annoying, the
screen I have has slight ghosting]
2. Color [doesn't beat my 2 19" trinitron
monitors, nor my 21" Trinitron]
3. PRICE!!
I run each of my 19" monitors at 1280x1024 at 95 hz, and my 21" monitor at 1600x1200 at 95hz, they are wonderfully flicker free and the colors are great. How much would it cost me to replace all of that desktop space with LCD monitors? An assload.
Personally I will stick to CRTs for my day to day use.
No red amplitude for porn skin tones on flat screens-INTERPLOLATED from 5 bit amplitude!
Yup.. all FFT (what people erroneously call LCDs) have limitation of using multiple refreshes to simulate more than 32 levels of red (or any color).
They have only 5 bits of red amplitude for motion data.
No one likes to check the facts.
To get 8 bits its simulated and averaged even on Apples 2002 screens for its wierd iMac.
A color tube has had only 8 bits of red even since Apples Mac II shipped in May 1987 supporting 6 simultaneous tubes on six cards.
today in 2002, still only 8 levels of red on tubes.... over 15 years later.
There is a greyscale monitor hack by a college researcher that uses the green and red wires tied together against a ground to drive a greyscale tube at 9 bits, but its only monochromatic solution. He called it "Video Toolkit"? I think (source for Mac only).
But 8 bits is the norm for most of the world on tubes.
This limits my porn watching but not too badly.
Skin tones are mostly messed up on Flat Screens.
All the best porn is on tubes.
I have nothing against flat screens for portables (I own a 1440 pixel wide portable computer), but they suck for flsh tone and always will for a while.
avoid flat screens for animation, and avoid them for photo work,
How good is it for watching DVDs or editing video?
hehe...i wonder how you would have felt with an 18" CRT. LCD is very crisp and doesnt ur eyes as much, but for things like photos and games, u want smooth more than u want crisp (hence antialiasing)
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
No it doesn't, why does everyone say it sucks?
I ordered an 8200 as well, but didn't get the Enhanced version of the display. This discussion is making me think I should call them up and dump the extra $100. The contrast ratio increase is quite significant.
I wish I could get it with LOWER resolution though. I'm afraid that 1600x1200 on a 15" monitor is going to kill my eyes. I think this stuff is just designed for Windows, where you are expected to bump the font size up. Oh well, I guess I can start 16 terminal sessions at once.
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This is a shameless plug. But it has a good drool factor so it shouldn't be shunned too bad.
/.
I work for a company, Rainbow Displays, that is making a 37.5" tiled LCD. This was previously covered here on
The display resolution is 852x480. This is actually a tiled 3x1 display. Don't expect it in stores soon since we are just starting to get a pilot line (400/month) going.
The pictures of the display on the web site suck. one could say that they are fake and the product is vaporware. Far from it though. While there is still a lot of work to be done, the displays work and are gorgeous to look at.
BTW, a lot of plasma displays I have seen have VGA and DVI inputs.
Older generations had the problems you describe, but the current new generation of LCD's are great, having alleviated the ghosting and other issues. I have a NEC 1550V and it has none of the problems you describe, its great for games and dvd/movies/editing. Furthermore on an LCD you CAN adjust the refresh, but you don't need to since they are set to run at one refresh, the reason being they have no flicker. Regarding resolutions, mine is a 15" set at 1024x768, yes the quality is less at 800x600 or 640x480 but modern graphics cards can run all my games at 1024x768, so whats the problem?
True stackup:
LCD Pros:
size/weight
no eyestrain or flicker
no radiation
perfect geometry
perfectly flat with no black lines on side of screen
Cons:
supposedly has worse contrast/gamma (though I noticed an improvement from my old 17" princeton CRT)
Monitors
Pros:
better contrast/gamma?
and cheaper for the size of screen
Cons:
Size
Learn to know, the dark side of the force, and you will achieve a power greater than any Jedi...the power to save your w
What I wish someone would make is a kit consisting of everything except display module, which one could buy directly from IBM. That is: a plastic housing for the display, a power supply and a video card. The video card needs to be driven by 4 24-bit LVDS transmitter chips, which were $8 each when I looked in it--I think the chip may have beeen the National Semiconductor DS90CF581. 4 x $8 = $32 chip cost x 5X markup for retail = $160 additional cost of video card plus cost of two LVDS connectors (using the hokey rule of thumb that I've heard that total electronic component costs are typically 20% of the suggested retail prices of the resulting product).
Without the need to stock the display component, there would not have to have such a big mark up to cover storage, damage, etc. I think the kit without the display could easily cost under $1k.
The video card would be the significant engineering task. The two LVDS streams have to be kept in sync, so you cannot just use two of the LVDS cards that can drive an SGI-1600SW display. It looks like you really do have a make a new video card. The big question that I had not gotten around to researching was whether were was a VGA chip or chip set that could deliver the digital output for two screens without convering the signal to analog,that is deliver two 24-bit parallel streams (the display interface is basically that of two 1024x1536 LVDS flat panels, side by side). There are a number of dual head VGA cards. I just never got around to looking into whether it was possible to get digital output from their chips.
I think that if a kit like this were available, some computer retailers would assemble it and the panels to offer the finished product, and that would reach untapped section of the flat panel market that I think there should be significant deamnd for (a $3k 20.8" TFT for CAD, engineeringing, graphic art, etc.).
One minor drawback that might slightly impede the popularity of this display as it gets closer to the consumer range is that the housing for it is currently not very thin. The housing is about four inches thick, making it a bit less sexy looking from the side than most other flat panels.
I bought a KDS 19" flatscreen Trinitron monitor for around $500 and have been more than satisfied with it. I don't recall the model, but it's probably been superceded by something newer anyway. I would definitely buy one of those again, if I were inclined to buy a CRT (which I probably am not). I'd also give serious consideration to the Sony and Mitsubishi.
:-)
In case you hadn't noticed, yes, I am a Trinitron snob. I won't buy a shadow mask monitor.
Oops. I meant to links to existing products based on IBM's 20.8" 2048x1536 ITQX20 module. Here they are.
Raintree Systems IN 2080-50 and National Display's Nova have the standard IBM dual LVDS digital inputs. I think there was an outfit in the UK called "Gemini Electonics" that was going to produce a similar device, but I could not find a link to them right now. RealVision has a dual LVDS video card for driving these monitors, although they promote it more for the electrically identical 6144x1536 grey scale version of the ITQX20. Finally, IBM's T-210 apparently uses the ITQX20 module, but only allows analog input, and only at something like 30Hz if you want to full resolution.
I have no financial relationship to any of these vendors.
955DF is nice, but do _not_ use Windex to clean the screen. ...don't ask...
... But the contrast and saturation are nice. Dont hold your breath.
KDS' Radius 15" LCD is TASTY. It's also light...I'd say no more than 10 pounds. I have nothing but positive things to say about KDS in general...they have a 3 year replacement warranty...they will send you the replacement immediately after they know yours is on the way.
I have a KDS 17" CRT monitor that is one of the finest I have ever used. And it cost me a pittance...a sub-$200 17" bought 2 years ago when that price meant you were getting a piece of crap no-name Chinese monitor.
As soon as my finances improve I'm definitely grabbing one of those KDS Radius monitors. I need something I can haul to a LUG meeting. I also need something that can give me 1024 x 768 and not take up half a desk. Sadly, that's the story with my 17". No short-neck there. It needs every millimeter of desk space it can get.
BTW I can't stand Trinitrons. They make my eyes hurt. I don't know why, but they do. I have an old Apple 12" monitor that's an exception to the rule, but it only works on older Macs. Oh well.
Ms. Geek, not logged in because she's on someone else's computer.
The big problem with LCD's is that they're optimized for one resolution, which is not a great idea IMHO. At least the newest LCD's don't have the motion blurring problem that made LCD's very unpleasant to use on multimedia applications.
This is the nice thing about CRT's--they look good over a wide range of resolutions. On my MAG DX1795 monitor at home, I run 1024x768 @ 75 Hz, though I can in a pinch run 1152x864 @ 70 Hz if I need to see larger images.
Today's really good 19" monitors from Sony, NEC, Idek Iilyama and Viewsonic can display all the way up to 1600x1200 @ 85 Hz very cleanly, though at 1600x1200 resolution objects on screen are displayed a bit too small for my taste.
When using stereoscopy with shutterglassess like the Eye3D and the like, the ghosting LCD screens make is unacceptable, and a CRT is the only possibility.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I recently got an 8100 with he UXGA display, and I had all of your fears, and they've all since been eliminated. It's flat out the best display I've ever used. Text is small, but it's so sharp that it's very easy to read. People who look at it are amazed. And I can't find a single dead pixel on the thing.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
One nice thing about being an Apple customer is that they don't make any crap stuff, so I don't have to read articles that tell me how to avoid crap stuff. I know how to avoid it ... I buy Apple products.
Their LCD displays have been all-digital for years, so you don't have ghosting and such. We play Quake on our flat panels, watch DVD's on them full-screen. Looks gorgeous. Also, color calibration is a feature of the Mac from top to bottom. Viewing angles are also the best in the business.
My favorite viewing angle story is that when CNet reviewed the Cinema Display, they complained that the viewing angle was "only" 160 degrees. Think about it for a second. I guess they wanted to sit perpendicular to the sides of the display, or sit behind the display, and still see the picture. Or else the product is so good that they were just looking for something to pick on so their review seemed balanced.
during the last 25 years of working with computer and video screens:
1. Uncalibrated monitors are worthless except for texual information. Might as well be black and white. Hardware calibrated is best. Calibrated by eye with test patterns is better than nothing.
2.) Ambient light is key. Correct light is a source behind the monitor (no other sources) that is roughly (no more than) 20% as bright as the light from the monitor, and has the same color temperature. Refresh is key. Incandescent is best, or match the refresh of flourescent to monitor refresh. One of the best ways to get a headache is standard office setup: overhead flourescents oscillating at a different, subliminally perceived, refresh than the monitor's subliminally perceived refresh. And at a different color temperature. At first, you don't notice, but your brain is going "WTF!?! Are you TRYING to hurt me?!?!"
3.) Trinitrons suck. All inline tubes suck. Triads of dots, not stripes, are best for displaying anything not rectilinear and vertical. Trini's are nice and sharp when looking at office buildings; look at curves (or rotate the office building 14.3 degrees) and your res has just dropped through the floor due to aliasing) As Joe Kane (Google it) said, "When I look at a Trinitron, all I see is stripes".
There's LOTS more. but I'm too drunk and tired. But I've calibrated my TV's since 1990 and my monitors since the first 24 bit display hit the market, and my point is, hardware is the least of it. The least. Anyone who knows what they're doing can make a POS display look better than a zillion dollar unobtainium, proof of concept flim-flam, and with a little homework, you can too. The work's all been done for you (and me, I didn't make this shit up, I learned it). Go find it and use it.
There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line. -- Oscar Levant
(* Personally Id just make use of my customer rights and return them for a full refund (dunno about the states, but we have that right here within 2 weeks) till I got a good one, if I couldnt find a store which I could bully into selling me one guarantueed without stuck pixels.*)
2-weeks may not be nearly long enuf. LCD monitors are known to have an annoying rate of spot-by-spot pixel death (or stuck-ness). Also, the overall picture degrades over time, such as loss of brightness,
Does anybody have any comparison studies on degredation over time between CRT's and LCD's? One problem with such a study is that LCD technology is still changing. Thus, 4-year-old LCD's may not be a sufficient representative of today's.
Also, I wonder if one can get bargains on stuck/bad pixel LCD monitors? I might live with a few spots to save some bucks. However, it might mess up programming in that a period looks like a colon or something. This site will just have to change it's name to "Slash Colon". Deal?
Table-ized A.I.
Your post brings up a question that I've yet to find and an answer for. Many 20-inch LCD monitors (like this Dell monitor) have a native resolution of 1600x1200. Are any there graphics cards out yet that can output DVI at that rate?
I'm as excited as the next ./er about new display technology.
However, having just gotten RGB-AA text with Linux/Mozilla working on my laptop, I'd be reluctant to move to any technology with lower resolution. Since my 1024x768 display is now effectively 3072x768 for text aliasing, I'll either stick with LCD or wait until other technologies reach a high native resolution.
Current CRT screens do not have individually addressed (digital) pixels and OLED displays are slated to have full color pixels, something which has it's own distinct advantages (no more moire or other artifacts). A 200+ dpi OLED or thin CRT would be fantastic!
Yes, I've seen several of these UXGA LCDs. They are incredible! Keep in mind that you can always run in 800x600 without aliasing. You made the right choice, especially if you play 3D games.
"Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists."
Two words: Hitachi VX900. Mine came gateway branded, very crisp, and has stayed bright and clear for the 4 year's i've owned it. More than I can say for my 21" sony at work!
Everyone over 35 says it sucks 'cause they remember things like characters who seemed different from each other. But then, they also remember people who seemed different from each other.
There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line. -- Oscar Levant
Saying LCDs are bad because you can see JPEG compression artifacts is like saying microscopes are bad because you can see germs in them.
... indeed, the DivX v. DVD comparison starts to make DivX look pretty good.
.... it is very nice (although interestingly the DVDs have many more atifacts than either the raw ieee1394 or MJPEG video does, on both the CRT and LCD ... go figure).
Absolutely. I watch my old DivX encoded B5 episodes on an LCD, as well as my current crop of Enterprise MPEG4 encoded episodes, and on the 18.1" LCD you do see the artifacts (though it is quite watchable from typical TV viewing distance).
Watch the same videos on a CRT and most of the artifacts go away
Do the same thing with MJPEG or raw ieee1394 on the other hand, and the LCD, sans the glare of the CRT, looks much better. No flicker, no glare, just crisp, clear, beautiful video. And for viewing DVDs
And on my 4x3 18.1" ViewSonic I've not been able to create scaling or motion artifacts (though on a colleagues 16:10 SGI Flatpanel they are regrettebly there, in the form of ugly horizontal lines about 1/4 inch long, that go away if a max screened xine is moved one or two pixels to the right. Most odd.)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
No this didn't actually happen to me. Crumbz, why did you bother to share at all? Why is your comment modded up?
Every 17" I've seen displays about 16", and if yours displays 15", then that is not the norm.
16 is greater than 15.
Up to about 21" crt, you seem to lose about an inch, except some dells that you loose 2 inches.
Not to mention the resolution issues between crts and lcds.
The diagram accompanying a discussion of horizontal scanning rate was pitifully misleading. The beams in a CRT never go from right to left to create a scan line, not even in countries where the text goes right to left. :) The beams also never jump downward at the end of a scan line. (Have doubts? Study TV vertical deflection circuits. Monitors are basically the same, but work over a wide frequency range.) It would take extra circuitry to make them do that, and nothing would be gained. The truth is that the beams go ever so slightly "downhill" as they go from left to right. The tiny tilt is utterly masked by other minor geometry errors.
My little contribution to Linux was to correct that misconception in the text dealing with modelines in a How-To. ESR, the author, was very much the gentleman when I enlightened him.
I sent Eric Knorr (the author of the displays article) a message, most of my text between <flame> and </flame> pseudo-tags. The guy does know how to use English, though! No misspellings or other mis-usages, fairly sure. "Reads" very smoothly and easily.
Enby in Waltham
You say, "much easier to carry to a LAN party then my 19" monitor." First, you carry your LCD monitor, and then, afterwards, your 19-incher?
Doesn't make sense.
Displaying step wedges, I have to crank up both contrast and brightness all the way for proper rendering, but that might be intentional. A white background for dark text is just too bright that way, though.
On the whole, I'm quite happy with it. Sometimes I use it for continuous-tone images; does fine. Home use...
I have it because it became avail. at a good price; was planning on a good ViewSonic, Sony, Diamondtron, or the good Samsung (iirc).
Enby in Waltham
The author got it very wrong on two counts: magnetic fields (wrong; electrostatic fields; also, there are no particles in the conventional sense. A molecule is not a particle in any ordinary sense!) Particle in a liquid? Shucks, the liquid is a liquid crystal; it is the light valve, when combined with the polarizers.
The author goofed on several other points, too.