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LCD Overtaking CRT
prostoalex writes "IDC has a new report out, claiming that revenues for LCDs by the end of this year will top the CRT revenues. The only market not susceptible to the shift will be gaming and graphics-intensive applications, where the refresh rates of LCDs are not satisfactory yet."
well, sure revenues are going to be more, they cost a helluva lot more
i sell illegal drugs
The price is still a bit overwhelming, so I don't think it's only the gaming community refraining.
I'd love to have one, but not for the price of a P4 3ghz.
Posting useless rant since 2003.
Despite this statistic, I think it'll be a long time before CRTs become an uncommon sight on a desktop machine.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Cheers,
-- RLJ
Just a note: revenues are different from unit sales. Since LCDs typically (always?) cost more than comparable CRTs, the revenue figures are likely inflated.
I'll be interested to see how long it takes for UNIT SALES of LCDs to surpass CRT monitors. My guess is that it will be within 2 or 3 years.
With these narrow angle displays being standard i can expect to surf porn at work and still get away with it
BAIN http://www.devslashzero.com
I'm on Windows 2000 right now so I get to use pretty much any hardware that has ever been made by anyone anywhere just by plugging it in and waiting a few seconds. I am interested in switching to Linux because I have a lot of free time on my hands and I was hoping to amuse myself by editing text files so my mouse scroll wheel would work.
Cunning linguists
Someone who will not pay $700 for a 17in monitor should try and remember 7 years ago when you could not get a good 17in CRT monitor for less tham $700. A 17in LCD was nearly $7,000.
If only Bill Gates had a penny for every time Windows crashed... oh wait.. he does!
In the graphics design realm it's rarely about refresh rates (unless you're working specifically with animation or motion media production). The color calibration just isn't there yet, the level threshold dropps off at the bottom (reducing the low luminosity contrast) and turns to glare far too low in the histogram (almost eliminating useful high-luminosity contrast).
They're also sensitive to heat, both from the operating environment and duration of use causing further shifts in appreciable color and (perceived) refresh.
OLED display's promise to eliminate the contrast and color calibration issues, but until those are more viable in cost and lifetime graphics design will still rely alost solely on CRT's.
Any spoon would be too big.
Higher revenue leads to companies thinking this is a viable (desktop) technology. That will stimulate more research, more development, and more production.
And that means that one day they'll be cheap enough for me to own; a simple pricewatch check shows that I could get a 17-inch LCD monitor for $333 OR spend $329 on a 21-inch CRT monitor. Which do you think (given only $350) I'd rather do?
Also, this article makes an interesting claim that LCDs haven't done as well as they might've because "the human eye needs to see 25 frames per second to be tricked into thinking that motion is continuous, and LCD monitors have often failed to meet this specification". Um, my laptop LCD has a fixed 60Hz refresh rate. If that's what Computerworld is talking about, they're full of it.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Am I misunderstanding something, or was the article author just intending a more generic meaning of refresh rates?
/syle
First, as previously mentioned, LCDs are more expensive per monitor than CRTs, so a smaller amount of total sales will still yield the same net revenue.
Second, the new wave in desktop computing appears to be smaller, thinner machines. Almost every computer advertisement these days sells LCD displays, because they look pretty and save space, so they make for good advertising -- and as a result they sell better.
Finally, of course, this is the year of the laptop. (Steve Jobs said so, it has to be true!) I'm afraid I can't provide any hard evidence, but I think the percentage of total computers sold that are laptops is increasing at a pretty fast clip, and that of course boosts LCD revenues.
All told, there are plenty of reasons LCDs have gained in popularity; this isn't that much of a shocker.
-- shayborg
Recently my 21 inch CRT failed and I had the need to get a new monitor. I checked out a lot of different options but as it turns out i ended up with a 19 inch lcd and i think its just wonderful. The ghosting in FPS games is small but noticable but its not so hard to adjust to and i dont see any ghosting in any other apps, including viewing divx movies and watching DVDs. before you pass judgement on LCDs you should check out this latest generation. With each new series the problems become smaller and less annoying. Also i no longer need a fan in my window to cool my office off, my old crt threw a lot of heat.
Won't you be my my neighbor?
The performance and reliability of LCDs compared with CRTs is a big factor in bolstering revenue for the LCD market. Sure, LCD screens are more expensive - but the benefits of LCD screens over CRTs, in my opinion, are worth the additional money (savings in energy, ease of long-term viewing on the eyes, etc.)
d _pixels-01.html
Many manufacturers guarantee their LCDs from burned out pixels with a pixel defect policy. The policies will differ as to the amount of defect will warrant a free replacement, and you should check to see the duration of terms of the policy prior to making a decision.
In fact, Tom's Hardware Guide posted a recent article with regards to pixel displays. You can find the article here: http://www17.tomshardware.com/display/20030319/lc
Ayup
Check out tomshardware.com, they have an article on manufactures replacement policies for burned out pixels. Basically, the policies are all accross the board. Also, they make a distinction between an "unlit" pixel (black), and a "stuck" pixel (always on). Personally, I can put up with an unlit pixel at the edge of a screen, but I had a laptop once that had a couple of red pixels towards the middle, and it drove me bonkers.
One of the big questions is where are all these CRT's going to end up? I have no problem finding takers for old computers, but nobody wants to take 15in and soon 17in CRT monitors. Selling them on eBay doesn't work because usually the shipping is 3x more than the monitor itself. 21in CRT's that cost $1500 three years ago are going for under $100. I've seen quite a few companies with closets full of old CRT's.
Ha-ha, yes it was intended. Anyways.
> gaming and graphics-intensive applications, where
> the refresh rates of LCDs are not satisfactory yet
It's getting harder and harder these days to complain about refresh on an LCD. Granted it's not as good as a tried and true CRT, but the point is that LCD's running at native resolution are doing quite well. To the point that an average person won't notice any difference between a CRT and an LCD.
My better half owns a recent LCD. She plays plenty of games on it, from everquest to the latest sim city title to crappy web based flash games. I haven't yet taken the chance to "stress test" with a round of quake but for the most part I've been pleasantly surprised to how well the LCD responds to modern games. The images are bright, reasonably crisp, and it does all this over a crappy legacy analog vga port.
Maybe a "videophile" will find stuff to complain about, but I've found myself quite impressed by the performance an LCD can offer. These days I consider them equal to a CRT.
...with LCDs is that they're generally lower res at a given size than I'd run an equivilent-sized CRT at. In other words, I can crank a CRT to a higher display resolution than an LCD can.
To get the res I'm used to on a 21" CRT (1920x1440), I need some $3k 24" LCD display.
It's not refresh rates that are important, it's the contrast and color settings. LCD's are totally inadequate for graphics design. Shift your eyes a couple of degrees while looking at an LCD screen and, whoa! all the colors and contrasting changes magically right before your very eyes! CRT's are extremely accurate and reliable with color, LCD's aren't even a little bit.
No Comment.
"...where the refresh rates of LCDs are not satisfactory yet."
;)
I believe the poster is mistakenly trying to apply CRT terminology to LCDs. The refresh rate of a CRT, which is the number of times an image is painted on the screen per second, doesn't quite apply to LCDs. What does apply, however, is the response time. This is usually measured in ms and refers to the time period for a pixel to completely change its state. Response times are typically around 25 ms, but are often slower for black -> white transitions. Slow response gives the effect known as ghosting and makes these panels undesirable to gamers.
As for the graphics artists, it's kind of a mixed bag. They get perfect geometries as a trade off for true color. Most modern LCDs operate at only 24 bit color.
The office user/casual gamer makes up the vast majority of the population and won't notice any of these downfalls. Thus, despite the price, these things are selling like hotcakes due to the easiness on the eyes and uber-coolness. Besides, chicks dig em.
"Software is like sex. It's better when it's free." -Linus Torvalds
I just bought 2 of them with dvi inputs and a new video card with dual dvi out (was an Asus card, Geforce 4 mx440) and I couldn't be happier. Both of them are perfect, no dead or bad pixels. And to my surprise, there is almost no streaking when I play UT2k3 or UT.
I guess the manufacturing process has reached a point where they can get it perfect most of the time (my laptop has a bad pixel in the upper right corner but that doesn't bother me).
I was worried that I'd get one with some dead pixels and hafta go through the hassle of returning it, but then again, I heard that Dell has a pretty good return policy for that kind of thing.
So anyways, a month and $1000 later (they were 15" ones) and I am entirely satisfied with my 2 lcd monitors... I might even tell my parents to buy one for their computer... I say go for it!
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Pro's:
- Small form factor
- More power efficient
Cons:- poor color support
- poor resolution
- poor refresh rates
- easily damage
- blown pixels irreparable
- additive color model
- poor viewing angle
- expensive
so why should i want to buy one again, because it seems LCD hasnt got much going for it on the desktopCRTs take a large amount of real-estate when it comes to the desk in which an employee has to work. In the long term, a farm of CRT cubicals versus a farm of LCD cubicals will consume a much larger portion of energy costs (considered company overhead). Display costs alone are appropriated from a specific budget. However, rarely does a department ever worry about the higher cost of energy until the overhead budget continues to swell. This does indeed turn the heads of bean counters.
Cheap CRTs have the notoriety of having short "brightness" spans so much that a company would rather purchase a more expensive brand name just to ensure that the longevity of the display device will be sufficient.
The company I work for alone has begun the mass upgrade of computers throughout the building. So far, it's about a 8:2 ratio of LCDs to CRTs. Even so, the CRT purchases are for individuals who require 21" screens. The average LCD purchase is for a 17" screen.
The banks in the city I work in have begun adopting LCD screens over the small CRT monitors to reduce the amount of breaks necessary by tellers to relieve eye-stress, theoretically increasing productivity.
Hospitals (a big corporate customer base) have begun the mass adoption of LCD screens because they take much less space than their CRT counterparts and produce a much smaller amount of electrical interface when turned on or off.
These are just a few examples of how LCDs are more practical and efficient - spearheading the adoption of LCDs as the display of choice.
Ayup
That's just it! NO radiation! I don't know about you, but I'm working on a third arm here, and the LCD industry is trying to pull the rug right out from under my feet. What will an LCD monitor stream into my body all day and all night, effecting all manner of cool mutation? ZILCH! Feh... and you call yourself Atomic...
Dude, to me that high pitch is a sign of impending death. I've had 2 monitors die on me (CRT) and the sound was the thing I noticed both times. I won't place a bet on WHEN but I'd guess you have about 6 months after the point it gets REALLY annoying.
I love my LCD but reality is that ghosting (blurring of moving images) is very noticeable on LCDs. They are nowhere near CRTs for watching movies and such. However, for text work (99% of my time) I love it. The decision boils down to WHAT you do with your PC. If you game or do a lot of multimedia, it's not as good as a CRT. In my case, I couldn't go back to CRTs since I'd lose the "crispness" of text on an LCD.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
I have an 18" Hitachi CML181SXW and it's plenty good enough for all the games I play, including shooters like UT 2k3.
I don't know what people are talking about when they say that LCD's are not ready for games. I don't notice any ghosts or any other strange artifacts when I play games.
broke users who demand quality.
cheap LCD monitors look like my old laptop monitor. I didn't complain too much about the laptop because it was only a laptop. No way I'm paying twice as much for a monitor that doesn't work as well as my dinosaur of a CRT.
"no way I'm paying" means "I can not afford", in this case.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
While I agree with a the posts pointing out that LCDs are much more expensive than CRTs; however, this does state that LCDs are getting pretty decent market penetration.
The one main issue I currently see if LCDs, is that they are really good at a specific resolution/refresh rate and everything else either has borders or looks crappy. CRTs also have this limitation; however, looking at a CRT running too high for it's dotpitch looks alot better than a LCD doing the same.
Hopefully, we will begin to see the ability of the OS to run at a specified resolution, and then scale everything to a proporanite amount. I know work is being done on this, but the greater need for it can push development along.
For those of you who aren't sure what I'm taking about try this. Set your monitor to 800x600, then 1024x768, and so on going higher and higher. As you can see everything begins to shrink down in size the higher you go. With scaling it would work differently.
Let's say your monitor's native resolution is 1280x960. You will always run at this resolution; however, the everything is scaled. If you have it scaled to 640x480, everything would be 2x the size it would normally be. Sure having 1/2, and 1/3 of sizes and make things look odd, but it's better than what we currently have.
As for games using this technology. You could have a 3d game. It's running in 1280x960, everything is the same size as at 640x480; however, everything can be alot sharper looking. Some games currently do this, but most still have there HUDs shrink the higher you go. With this 2d objects can also be scaled easily. Also it won't be the responibilty of the game to do this, the OS and display drivers will handle it.
Finally by having the display drivers doing the calculations for scaling, other effects can be added. If anyone has tried any emulators such as the SNES ones, you will see that there are a variety of rendering options. You can select how images are stretched/scaled or more advanced things like Super Eagle that antialias 2D and give it a unique look. Since the display driver is doing the rendering of the scaling, these other effects could be added. Most likely they could even be done in hardware on your graphics card.
With all that said will I be buying a LCD display soon? Nope, I'll wait until they can do 1600x1200/85Hz. I need my games to run smooth. :)
The new 16ms response time LCDs are great for gaming. I bought the new NEC LCD1760NX-BK (black) LCD monitor last month.
The monitor's 16ms response time is good for gaming and much better than the 17" Dell 1702FP (40ms) which I had returned.
There is also much less color banding with the NEC compared to the Dell; however, some color banding is still visible, most notably with my digital photgraphs. Additionally, the colors seem to be off slightly, with colors veering towards blue.
I do not consider the color-issues major as it is only a slight problem and I am not a graphic artist for which it would be a MAJOR problem. I would not buy this monitor if colors were terribly important.
The biggest complaint I have is that there appears to be a small vertical spacing between pixels. This results in a very faint, but disturbing, 'striped' effect. I find it highly distrubing in applications and especially while viewing photographs. I do manage to forget about it occasionally. I never notice it during games.
The NEC is a great monitor for gaming, but nothing else.
Despite this statistic, I think it'll be a long time before CRTs become an uncommon sight on a desktop machine.
... that "less than 5% market share" must be wrong too.
;)
You must be wrong.
When I watch TV shows, almost every computer has an LCD display.
Come to think of it, there's an awful lot of Apples too
TV wouldn't lie, would it.
Losing a pixel on a CRT is bad too. No, it doesn't happen as often, but I am typing this on a machine that uses a Philips CRT (model 107s 17 inch). The first unit I got had a missing pixel. I took it back to CompUSA and they replaced it. The next unit I got mysteriously went black after a month. Fortunately, I kept my old 15 inch as a backup, and the RMA process went very smoothly. Interesting to note is that the monitor I got via RMA was made in USA. You never see that in the store... so I guess if you have to sit through RMA, they make sure you get the best quality. I was able to put up with this, BTW, because at the time 17 inch CRTs were expensive and this one was a bargain. My Philips has now provided me with 5 years of uninterupted service under conditions including no A/C and daily power cycling (sometimes twice a day).
The point? Both technologies have their problems. What matters is the support. A good manufacturer won't leave you "stuck with an annoying glitch".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
LCDs don't last very long, comparatively speaking: backlights fade at an alarming rate (noticable within 18 months to 2-3 years, depending on the screen), and the colors can fade. A CRT of comparable price will easily outlive an LCD by 2-3 times -- a good CRT will last 10 years without reduction in quality, minimum.
:)
So not only are they not as bright, not as contrasty, and not color-accurate, with limited viewing angles and severely constricted color gamut, they wear out quickly and cost much more!
The Age of LCDs is not here yet. But let's hope that misguided reports like this spur more development of better, competing technologies
---- My Design, Code, Ruby on Rails blog: http://www.slash7.com/
They're pretty amazing (the bigger ones at least). I've used Trinitrons for years (and have a 17" FD at home) and the new Apple displays blow all of 'em out of the water.
/drool
I've got a digital 17" Studio Display on my desk at work. It's incredible: very bright colors, no flicker, wide viewing angle, zero distortion, one-cable connect (for video, power and USB) and 1280x1024 resolution.
At my other job we have a digital Dell Ultrasharp, and while still better than most CRT's, it isn't nearly as nice as the Apple display.
We've got a coupla 15" iMacs and 15" studio displays as well, though, and the picture isn't nearly as nice on those.
Oh, and there are rumors of Apple introducing a 30" model with the next revision of their displays.
1. I don't like the ghosting because I game (FPS mostly) and watch videos a lot.
2. I change to various resolutions. I noticed stretching is ugly and black borders are annoying (no stretch).
3. Price especially for the bigger LCDs.
For now, I will just wait until LCDs are cheaper and improved.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
You can get a 17" LCD from Hitachi with a 12ms refresh rate. At 60fps, 1 frame is 16.67ms, so this is good enough.
Performance and reliability are generally features for the technically minded.
The main advantage I see is the compact footprint of such units combined with low weight.
Any new innovation results in a price premium, DDR RAM was expensive not long ago. Only recently is it becoming as cheap as SDRAM.
My monitor at work hasn't moved in 2 years. If I spent 750$ for a display that was only 20" and had a resolution of 1600x1200 I would go insane. Plus I am one of those people who likes his refresh rate set up to 85hz otherwise I get a headache. So why should I shell out the money for the LCD what are the real advantages? I actually want an answer here, don't just say, better eye sight blah blah blah. Show me a sight that is run by a company that knows optometry and have them tell me that it's better on my eyes. A good flat screen trinitron CRT is just as bright as a LCD.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Not terribly difficult,
If something (a speck of dust perhaps) was blocking the aperature grille, the electron beam would never reach the Phosphor to illuminate it. Dirty manufacturing facilities could be to blame. You don't see this often because manufacturers check for this sort of thing, and don't generally let defective CRT's leave the factory.
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
But from using, I can guess why. With CRT, there is no harm in allowing both high and low resolutions, the lower resolutions are not impacted quality wise just because the monitor can go really high. With LCD displays, it is a much different story, anything smaller than the LCD native resolution will be scaled by the monitor (or shrunk to a smaller area) by some digital scaling technique. While you can have some pretty effective techniques with digital scaling, anything with detail (i.e. text) is a bit distorted and strange looking no matter the technique used. Thus, there is a greater emphasis on having a resolution that would look the best to the most amount of people. Add to this that dead pixels become much more of a problem as the resolution increases (probability increases, and even at 1920x1440 a dead pixel is noticeable), not to mention cost is more directly impacted by the pixel count.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Technically, LCD displays don't have a refresh rate, but they do have a maximum change rate which is effectively the same thing in this case.
On an LCD:
1 / (response time) = maximum frame rate
Whereas on a CRT:
refresh rate = maximum frame rate
So you can loosely compare refresh rate to the inverse of the response time.
Most modern LCDs operate at only 24 bit color.
How many video cards can put out more than 8 bits per primary? Only really high-end graphics people are going to care about that anyway, the gamut is probably much more important.
LCD's are nice but I hate that they have to stick to some native resolution. I'm sure 1024x768 is good right now, but what'll happen when a newer os will require 1600x1200 just to look decent. Bigger LCD's with huge resolutions are great, but using Windows at that res is just unbearable. What's up with everyone having +5 mods?
.smell my feet.
So how can something be 60 cycles a second and infinite cycles a second at the same time?
LCDs have no scanning beam. If you were hyperfast, you would notice that the pixels on your monitor get very bright as the cathode ray hits them, then fade away over time. This is why you can see flicker at low refresh rates. But like watching a movie, you don't see the refreshes, you see a moving image.
With an LCD, the backlight is constantly on. LCD pixels don't have the surge in brightness, they stay a uniform color. When the signal says change color, it transitions to the new color. The time it takes to change can be significant, thus limiting the "refresh" rate of the LCD -- really, the maximum change rate -- and causing ghosting, as pixels retain some of their old color longer than they should.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Uh, no, just that LCDs are a completely different tech from CRTs. Every pixel has a transistor driving it, and if that transistor dies, or stays on, you have a dead pixel. This contrasts with CRTs, which have an electron gun that scans the monitor. Some monitors have a grill that said beam passes through, thus if a hole in the grill gets clogged that pixel is dead.