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Flat Screen Monitors Sales to Reign This Year
swimfastom writes "Yahoo! News reports that sales of flat-panel computer monitors will top sales of bulkier traditional models this year, signifying a long-expected turning point in the computer monitor market. Flat-panel screen sales are expected to grow at a 49-percent compounded annual growth rate from 2001 through 2006, giving them an 82-percent share of the desktop computer market."
Until 19" flatscreens are available for sane prices they will not sell as well as they predict. the 15" models are ok priced ($299.00 compared to $100.00 for a 15 inch monitor is a tough one) but anything larger is nuts and any model that is fast enough for gaming get's up in price really fast.
and then you have that nasty problem with not running at the native resolutions...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
flat panels, in general, cost a lot more than traditional CRTs, so "measuring by dollars" isn't necessarily the best way of calculating market share. it's like saying that more people saw "the waterboy" than "gone with the wind," just because it made more money in the theater.
I have two 21" Sony monitors on my desktop. My desk makes eerie straining noises whn I put my glass hands on the keyboard and a have a tan just on my face.
It's a worry.
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The rise of the flat panel is very good for colleges, not just in terms of power-saving costs but also in terms of space. The CRTs just take up a lot of space on the small college desks. My CRT/keyboard prevents me from even having room for a notebook and pen to do math problem sets on - I need to go to the library to do any non-computer work. Whenever I go support someone with an LCD I eye it with envy, and the day approaches when I will be forced to get one for myself :-)
I bet LCDs have a slighty higher percentage of the laptop market.
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For gamers, price isn't SUCH huge concern for the screens, but the ghosting itself. Sure, the ghosting for these guys are getting better, but still aren't nearly close to what a CRT can do. Also, refresh rates are very poor compared to CRTs, so playing a fast paced game with a high end video card doesn't look as good when the screen is tearing (most LCDs are at 60 or 75 hz, my monitor will do 120hz at those gaming resolutions). Sure, not everyone is a gamer, but gamers are finicky and won't convert unless the solution is perfect. Nothing worse than killing someone and listening to their complaints about their low FPS system lag.
That's a pretty optimistic prediction, because the current price ratio is about 5 CRT monitors for the cost of 1 flat-panel. Common sense tell us that the price of a flat-panel screen would have to drop by about 60%-70% before the majority of consumers would consider buying forking out the extra cash to save 1 or 2 cubic feet of desk space.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
I am the PC tech for a large BUSINESS, 17" is too small, we order on 19" or larger. For business the LCD's are nice and easy on your eyes, for gaming they just plain suck, slow blurry and running at low end resolutions. I'll stick with my 21" .23 monitor at 1200X1600.
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Most computer sales are to corporations. Home users only account for something like 20% of Dell or Gateway's sales. Corporations are interested in the presumably increased life of LCDs, their reduced power consumption, space savings, and the effects of CRTs on their employees' eyes (People sue for everything after all). I work for a medium-sized credit union (which, unlike banks, are non-profit) with ~250 seats and we are already to the point of being 30% flat panels. By next year we will be over 70%. I love not pulling a muscle every time I have to swap a display out.
There is an awful ambiguity here between flat screen displays such as LCD displays, and flat screen monitors, which are still big bulky CRT based monitors, but have a flat screen rather than the slightly curved screens on earlier CRT monitors. Many manufacturers, including mainstream names like NEC and Viewsonic market Flat Screen Monitors . If these are getting into the count of expected sales then of course they will top sales of bulkier traditional models this year, but it will not do much to make space available on your desk.
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Everyone should take not that this article probably refers to sales in "dollars" and not sales in actual "units." This is why we barely see or know anybody who has a flat panel display.
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Anybody got quality concerns? I have never seen an LCD screen which colors come and crisp display come close to my CRT. And what I hate the most about LCD, its that the colors change with the angle of viewing; a little slight tint change when you move your head. Its very anoying. Some people say that this only occur with passive LCD screens, but then stores only sell passive LCD screens because I never saw an LCD without this tint changing effect.
They better substantially increase the quality of the displays before I buy one, and I hope keeping my CRT at work until the quality improves.
But, I agree that business might buy them for saving power, space and avoid the "bad" radiations emitted by CRTs.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
It seems like compactness is the ultimate feature. But then why do so many people drive SUV's?
Ah, grasshopper, you come so close to the truth, yet so far away. It is not compactness that is the ultimate feature, it is price. He who has the most expensive toys becomes the envy of his friends, thus enhancing his self-esteem. Cell phones, laptops, and SUVs are status symbols - every American wants them because the sages of Madison Avenue tell them that these objects will bring happiness.
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Actually they're usually more like 60hz, which is more than sufficient. LCDs don't work the same way as CRTs; they don't fade between scans, so you don't get flicker.
The 60hz number on an LCD is confusing, try thinking about it like 60FPS. 60FPS high enough that most people see smooth movement anyhow, so it's quite sufficient.
I've not seen a flat panel that can pass the toddler test:
1) Find a 2 year old.
2) Give them a random hard, pointy object such as a ball-point pen. (This step is optional, toddlers can create such objects out of thin air. You just have more control this way.)
3) Put said toddler within 6 feet of flat panel monitor with a pretty screen saver being displayed.
The problem with an LCD is that you don't hear the "ting ting ting" warning bell that a CRT gives you when a toddler is too close.
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I, too, used to think flat-panel LCD monitors were useless in the home desktop mixed-application (office apps, coding, gaming, etc.). I do a lot of outside contracting so my home computer occasionally doubles as an after-hours workstation. I long ago discovered the joys of multiple monitor programming and so for several years had two 19" Sony Trinitron-tube monitors running - it still allowed for high-color gaming and I was able to split my code windows up over the two displays (it is nice to have code on one screen and the output and references on the other).
:) In short, you won't notice lack of clarity due to resolution size difference.
:)
:)
As luck would have it, I also own a wonderful Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop with the 15" 1600x1200 display. For the longest time I was running Windows 2000 on it, but when I heard about ClearType (sub-pixel font rendering) on Steve Gibson's site (GRC.com) I thought I'd give it a try. I was pretty impressed and decided to try the full-blown item with Windows XP Professional a try.
It was, in a word, mind-blowing!
Never before had text looked so sharp and clear - and after using it for several multi-hour coding sessions (aside from only the single display) it didn't give me headaches like my two CRTs did (even though I'd tried virtually every refresh rate setting from 60 to 120Hz).
That made the difference for me, so I slowly replaced my two 19" CRTs with two 17" Iiyama black LCDs (retail around $640 US for the digital versions, $610 for analog). Remember that CRTs cheat and don't really measure the actual diagonal, so that the 19" CRT is much more like 17.something (mine were 17.8"), whereas the LCDs are ACTUAL diagonal. So those who are saying, "Not until they have affordable 19" displays!" are missing the boat - for all intents and purposes a 17" LCD *is* equal to a 19" CRT in terms of usable display size. The LCD goes from bezel edge to bezel edge with ZERO loss in quality in the corners, something my CRTs could not claim. So in practice, I would guestimate the actual screen real estate are about equal.
As I didn't have the cash right away to drop on two, I ran for quite a while on one LCD (digital through my GeForce4 Ti4400) and one CRT. The differences were astounding - the CRT was noticeably not as bright as the LCD, and text was HORRIBLE to read. It was like trying to focus on a blurry photograph - your eyes keep trying to find the right focus and could never really adjust. It game me a TERRIBLE headache after only a few minutes, so I sold the CRT and waited for my next paycheck and got the second one. While both displays are digital (along with secondary analog inputs) my Ti4400 only has a single DVI output, so my secondary monitor is in *analog* mode until I can fix that (maybe a PCI card with digital?). I won't lie and say they look identical, but it is not nearly as dramatic as the CRT comparison.
Resolution-wise 1280x1024 is not a big deal to me. I enjoy my laptop's 1600x1200 and would hope we start seeing 17" affordable desktop LCDs in that range soon, but it isn't killing me. XP's ClearType provides for amazingly sharp text as it is, so the slightly larger fonts look pretty anyway.
Gaming, or LCD's *supposed* Achilles' heel. I play a couple games - Half-Life Counter-Strike, UT, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Stronghold Crusader - and have noticed ZERO blurring problems. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Get it? It's a NON-ISSUE. Perhaps my system (Athlon 1.333Ghz, 512MB PC2100, ATA100 HDD, 128MB GeForce4 Ti4400, etc.) is not fast enough to get the frame rate above the pixel response rate, but it is not a problem with my Iiyama digital LCD displays. Certainly it can be an issue with older or slower displays, but anything in the sub 30ms rate should be fine. The calculation (from Tom's Hardware) to turn response into FPS is: 1 / (rate * 0.001). So 30 ms = 1 / 0.030 = 33.3 images displayed on the screen per second. 25ms = 40fps. Your eye notices things at 25fps or higher to be continuous 'full-motion' and at 30 it seems to be the 'magic number'. Remember to read the fine print on each monitor since some companies will list 'average' display rate or some other random numbers. Find the worst-case percentage and see if you can live with it. The only problem I've noticed is that when the games exit and the video mode switches the LCD panel never 'wakes up'. I am sure everyone knows what I am talking about - the screen flickers, the green indicator turns amber for a while, and then it dumps you back to your desktop. Well, the LCD (or my Beta 4 Detonator drivers) must give up early on the video card and goes to a 'You have nothing hooked up' screen. I have to turn it on and off to re-cycle the display.
I have noticed that certain extremely light web-page backgrounds (the old background pattern on http://www.angsttechnology.com for example) the colors appear to be washed out (you could only see a little bit of the pattern) but it is generally not an issue for anything you are *actively* looking at (games, photos, etc.). Contrast seems to be better than my CRT as well, and the images appear to be more saturated on the LCD, somewhat startlingly so. When playing something like Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 (or any other real-time strategy game) the colors are MANY TIMES more vivid - it is hard to explain but a really cool feeling the first time you fire up a game. First-person shooters look different as well; generally I have to turn the gamma up a notch or two since they all appear BLACK in the dark areas. I am not sure if that is how it *should* be and my CRT was inadequate or it is an LCD artifact, but I generally noticed LCD improvement over the CRT images.
I also notice that certain images online are not as smooth looking on the LCD. Again on InkTank (http://www.angsttechnology.com/AT/index.cfm, a really good geeky comic; if you have time check out the archives!) you can see 'jaggies' or anti-aliasing artifacts far more clearly on the LCD. It appears to happen on thin black antialiased lines more than any other. The black outline on PennyArcade looks (I think) how it should be, but the lines on Ink Tank were the #1 first thing I noticed after I got the displays. Now, of course, my eyes have gotten adjusted and so I no longer see them any more.
Anyways, to make an entirely too long post short, I have no misgivings about the LCD purchase. You often get what you pay for, and a cheap panel will probably yield a poor display picture. Mine is pretty much perfect. Give it a try, you might like it!
www.LCD.com/switch
Thanks,
--
Matt
I just bought a Samsung 172T (read an early glowing review). It's the first LCD screen I've owned, although I've used plenty before; I have a laptop for work.
Just like plenty of comments from this thread from yesterday, plenty of non-LCD-owning people here seem to have a strong opinion on the matter :)
I couldn't be happier with my new screen. At the stated response rate of 25ms, I have an effective screen refresh rate of 40 updates a second, ie. faster than my eye can detect. The monitor can handle being fed 72Hz at 1280x1024 (native res), which is better than my old Acer 77c 17" could manage. I've always played games with v-sync switched on to prevent tearing in the past (for the uninitiated, v-sync means the card sends the same number of frames per second as the screen refresh rate, so that monitor doesn't try to display parts of two frames at once and cause visible tearing). The long and the short of all this is that the screen is happily updating as fast as my eyes and brain need it to. As a bonus:
- I have a "true" 17" viewable monitor (equiv. to a 19" CRT)
- a screen that doesn't hurt to look at for day-long gaming sessions
- I can lift it with two fingers! ie it's portable for LANs
- It chews far less power than a CRT
- it gives off far less HEAT than a CRT - a cool room makes for a cooler PC
- it looks way cooler than any CRT on the planet
- I can use a smaller desk, or fit more on my existing desk
- My girlfriend thinks I'm cooler for owning it
:)
Yes it cost more. But doesn't almost everything worthwhile cost more?Sure - many gamers won't get an LCD because on paper they doesn't match current CRT capabilities. But good ones come close enough.
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