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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.
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.
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.
than CRTs to throw off the tops of buildings.
note: use extreme caution and some common sense when throwing anything from a rooftop.
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.
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
but a 15" LCD has the same viewable area of a 17" CRT
Maybe they have the same viewable area, but most of the times not the maximum resolution. Typically, you can get 1280x1024 in a 17" CRT, but not more than 1024x768 on a 15" LCD (on a laptop, for instance, the monitor must be SVGA+ our USVGA to achieve more than 1024x768).
Not only are the Apple Cinema (and Studio) LCD displays coveted by graphic designers and other professionals who do color work, you can actually use external color calibration equipment with them just as is done with CRTs and get reliable results for production printing. This article's information, while accurate for run-of-the-mill LCDs, perpetuates a lot of "old news" about LCD tech that is soon to go by the wayside.
BTW, the stated viewing angle on these is 170 deg, and they darn well mean it. Comparing (e.g.) a laptop LCD to these is wholly inaccurate -- not all LCD panels are created equal these days.
Anyone know of other displays that have managed to ship with panels of this quality?
The reason graphic artists (like myself) avoid LCD monitors is because of the lack of consistency of luminance across the entire screen. The same color can look completely different because its brightness value doesn;t look the same even though, according to the software, it is. If you are working on any work which requires color accuracy, this will not do. Hopefully the OLEP screens will eliminate this luminosity problem and larger screens will be available at a much more affordable price.
The pixels themselves last a really really long time. Much longer than the display technology will probably be useful. The backlights need to be replaced after a few years of use. An old backlight will either fail altogether or just turn purple. Luckily the backlights are inexpensive and easy to replace.
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.
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.
:)
Nope, games (and your windows probably) run at 24-bit colour, 32 bits per pixel, and they simply waste one byte per pixel because it's much faster to access the pixels when aligned on a 4 byte boundary. It's simply a speed thing. Not only this, but from a reflective surface (paper) you can distinguish about 50 million colours (except some women who are reverse colour-blind in having 4 whatsijigs in their eyes instead of 3). On an emittive source (crt,tv, backlit lcd monitor) you can only see about 14 million colours. Note this doesn't apply to reflective lcd monitors such as the game boy colour, but that only does a few thousand colours in the graphics chip anyway
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
More LCD Pros:
Power consumption
Digital interface
Sub-pixel text rendering
More CRT cons:
Power consumption
Power supply & amp failure
Analog interface
Focus
Convergence
Radiation
Seriously, I have sitting right here on the desk with me the Sony GDM-F500R, still the best monitor Sony makes, and a Samsung SyncMaster 210T, both running at 1600x1200. There is no contest. I can stare at source code continuously with the Samsung (thanks to the sub-pixel rendered text, the horizontal resolution is 300dpi), but with the Sony I need to take breaks. Focus and convergence on the Sony are worse in proportion to the distance from the center of the screen. The Sony needs to go to Irvine, CA (100lbs shipping cost) for professional adjustment and maintenance every two years or so.
Sure, the CRT has terrific color and response, but that isn't enough to overcome its annoying electro-optical problems.