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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
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
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.
"...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
CRTs 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
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
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.
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"?
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.
I rarely move my monitor. Actually never.
If you like a high refresh rate then you will LOVE an LCD. As much as you don't want to hear it, and LCD is MUCH better on your eyes mainly because of the refresh rate. Because if a pixel doesn't change color, then the refresh rate is infinitely fast. That is why LCDs shouldbe set at a refresh rate of 60 Hz. No more headaches for you. EVER.
And I have yet to see any ghosting on my Dell FP2000 or my sgi 1600SW. Cheap LCDs may ghost though.
I'm sure brightness is the same or close to a CRT, but picture geometry can't come close. On my LCD every line is PERFECTLY straight. No CRT can claim that. And 2 years from now, every line will still be perfectly straight.
Other nice things include 4 inputs on my FP2000; DVI, analog, S-video, composite. And I can watch the S-video or composite signals for Picture in Picture inside the DVI or analog screen. Very nice.
About the only thing CRTs have over LCDs in color trueness. But LCDs are catching up fast and this really only applies to graphic designers who need to use perfectly color calibrated monitors.
Still kinda funny you said not to mention 'better eye sight' and 'I get a headache' in the same sentence.
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.