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Display Format Technologies Comparison
An anonymous reader writes "The differences between LCD, Plasma, DLP, LCOS, D-ILA, and CRT are revealed, as well as their associated advantages and disadvantages, as Audioholics post a new version of their Display Technologies Guide With advances companies like Intel (LCOS) and Texas Instruments (HD2+) are making in chip technologies and cost reductions, one wonders just how soon CRT based TVs will become an antiquity we discuss with our grandchildren as they install their new high resolution, lightweight, affordable displays on their walls."
Why? Because LCD displays suffer from "motion flicker". Black letters on a white background appear to have "double thickness" while you're scrolling or dragging a window around on the screen, rapidly switching between double thickness and single thickness. I have a dual-screen setup with my laptop, using my laptop's LCD screen and an external CRT simultaneously, and I can say for sure that this doesn't happen with my CRT. I don't use this for gaming, so I don't know if the gamers out there call the effect something else, but that's what it looks like to me.
Plasma still exists because it has one advantage over LCD/DLP in the price/performance war: Bigger direct-view screens that can be easily mounted on a wall. Rear-projection LCD/DLP units give better value in terms of screen area but they take up more space. In other words, it's a style-over-substance issue.
Even hard core gaming sites like Sharky Extreme are now recommending optical mice exclusively in all their hardware guides.
Your eyes eventually learn to compensate for the ghosting, while annoying at first. As for optical mice, they've come a long away since the first iterations.
I hate to admit actually paying for a Microsoft product, but I've replaced the mouse on every machine I own/use with an Intellimouse Optical.
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This is so not true. More like "your plasma sucks". DLP and Rear Projection LCD is great in everway except one. They don't look nearly as good as plasma's. Both DLP and RPLCD suffer from terrible black levels and much worse picture quality than any higher level plasma. I have seen numerous DLP sets and they have all suffered from a very high amount of dithering and pixilization that are completely absent on plasma's. And resolution? The 50" plasma displays now pretty much all have the same, or better resolution than the DLP sets (1366x768).
The only advantage DLP and RPLCD have is their price.
I would stick with a CRT, purely because you get more bang-per-buck (how many of us can afford a 21" LCD?). However, there is one important caveat: if you want a good picture, you must get a Trinitron CRT, rather than the normal shadow-mask tube (see here for a good overview of Trinitrons). I recently had to toss my beloved 6-year old Iiyama Trinitron, which always gave an incredibly crisp picture. The replacement, a Samsung 19" shadow-mask CRT, is rather a let down, with fuzzy fonts of the sort you describe. I'm now regretting the fact that I didn't shell out the extra $$ and get a Trinitron again.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
You obviously haven't use the newer ones then. Im using the newer Logitech Mx 300 and NEVER had had the movement skip a beat. Hell, even at the desktop, I can't make the cursor skip either no matter how quickly I twitch my wrist!!
Life is not for the lazy.
CRT's only burn in if improperly calibrated/used. Don't show a static image on your screen for hours on end and don't turn max out your contrast and brightness settings and you've got nothing to worry about.
Regarding technologies, LCD is certainly not the only technology that doesn't have burn-in issues. LCOS and DLP are also immune. You'd know that if you RTFA.
The newer technologies are nice in that they are thin and all, which is especially good for monitors. But, they do still have their drawbacks. LCDs don't display black as well as a CRT, making watching movies with dimly lit scenes annoying. LCDs have a very clear picture, but lose some of that sharpness if not run at native resolution or another that divides evenly into it (interpolating from one resoution to another causes slight bluriness or jaggedness of the pixels). Also, I have doubts as to whether the time between failures on LCD backlights is as good as CRT picture tubes.
Plasma is kinda neat, but has a reputation for burn-in and slowly losing brightness over time. If I was to buy a multi-thousand dollar TV, I'd want it to work for 8-10 years until the next big thing comes along.
For now, I'm still a CRT user. 35" Sony Trinitron for TV watching, 21" ViewSonic professional series for the PC. Keeping an eye on the new technologies but they're not quite "there" yet as far as I'm concerned.
I beg to differ. Most videophiles will tell you that CRT front-projectors are still the way to go. You can't beat a 9" CRT tube for most applications - with DLP you can have rainbow effects, and LCDs by their nature always have grids. For pure video, CRT is the way to go for the time being.
Now the 50x (2-4lbs vs 100-200lbs) weight factor certainly means that CRTs are less mobile than their newer digital counterparts, but be aware that there is a definite quality tradeoff.
Myself, I'm installing a CRT projector in my living room. I'll take superb picture quality (and GREAT price) over portability any day.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s= &threadid=361807&highlight=DLP
As LCD monitors get bigger, the viewing angle problem gets more severe. I just got a ViewSonic 19" LCD with supposedly good "viewing angle" specs. The problem is that you normally sit within 2 feet of your monitor. At this distance, your eyes view the top of the screen at a very different angle than the bottom of the screen. With a large LCD like this, there is absolutely no way to view the screen without severe differences in color... the monitor is just too big and you are sitting too close to it. I find myself constantly adjusting the monitor, or raising and lowering my head to try and read things.
This is a problem I never noticed on my smaller (laptop) LCDs, simply because the monitor is much smaller.
Obviously this wouldn't be a problem for an LCD in your living room, where you view it from quite a distance. But large LCD monitors are a problem. (At least mine is!)
There are standards.
One problem is that CRTs lose brightness as they age. Eventually you squeeze the dynamic range when you compensate by turning the brightness knob up.
A good place to look at some code for this is cpercep.c in the gimp source code. I'm not sure if the gimp even uses this code (yet), but it's got a lot of the functions and algorithms to do perceptual colorspace transformations taking into account gamma and color temperature of the display device.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Umm, a 19" LCD is equivalent to a 20-21" CRT. Remember, CRTs are measured by the total size of the monitor case, while LCDs are measured by their actual screen size. I prefer the crispness of LCDs, and you mention having more desktop space with CRT. I have more physical desktop space, and with a 15ms response time, my LCD is more than adequate for my gaming needs. $250 for a 15" LCD is more than worth it to me (I got it almost a year ago). Now when I use a CRT, I notice the horrible flicker from the monitor refreshing. Even at 75hz, it still makes my eyes hurt. To make a CRT usable for long periods of time, I need to throw the refresh rate up to 85-100hz, and it still doesn't have the crisp image I enjoy. CRTs may be cheaper, but they consume much more power. I bet a 15" LCD and a 17" CRT (remember these both have about the same actual screen size) cost the same if you include the cost of power over the lifetime of the display device. My LCD eats up 30 watts of power, max. Most 17" CRTs pull around 100-200 watts.
I'm amazed how many geeks spend tons of time on their computer cases, tweaking everything and making a great gaming system, and then they hook it up to a crappy 17" CRT and some cheap stereo speakers. Displays and speakers usually break before they become obsolete, computers don't.
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
I've been developing on LCDs for years now. When you adjust the resolution, set the monitor to just center it rather than trying to scale to fill the screen. That way, your 1600x1200 monitor just has a large black area surrounding the 640x480 test screen. Way simple.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
What ever happened to OLED screens. They werre supposed to be the next big thing as far as display technology goes.
http://www.wave-report.com/tutorials/oled.htm
Get a normal 32" CRT TV for daylight viewing and you get the best of both worlds - bring your screen in front of the CRT TV and you're back in cinema mode!
That was classic intercourse!
The combined frame buffer and display gamma is targeted to be 1.8 on Macs. This is done primarily through careful measurement and generation of calibration profiles for various displays.
The LCD panels have a non-gamma transfer function that's roughly linear (gamma 1.0). The actual transfer curve is S-shaped, something like a lazy integral symbol. Calibration for LCD panels is done through a compensating table lookup, rather than through a simple gamma equation.
The Mac OS X System Preferences Displays panel includes a Color tab, which in turn offers a Calibrate... option. Try running through the Calibrate sequence in your video viewing environment.
To obtain the best results for video viewing, which is often done under different environmental conditions than interactive computer use, use this Calibrate option in conjunction with a good video standards DVD in the desired viewing environment.
Even the THX Video Adjustment offered on 'THX Certified' DVDs is sufficient, when used with ColorSync Calibration, to produce reasonable results on Apple Macintosh displays.
The parent is correct, large LCDs are being seen now because of the change in Fab processes. It is going to change again real quick. The generation 6 and 7 plants are now being built in Taiwan, with an expectation of opening by fall '04, winter '05.
The parent had one mistake in the story, the fabs are not one meter, but now with G7 plants will be 5-6 meters on a side, with a thickness of a few millimeters. The entire process is done without the use of human hands, the glass is too thin for a human to move without breaking. The wafer process is extremely cheap en mass, letting the price of LCD's slip down. The 40 inch LCD displays are now about ten grand, because they use most of a wafer, the G7 will allow 90+ inch lcds, and will have them be even cheaper than the current 40 inch ones. The industry hope the price decrease will allow for quality to go up, ad the human element is minimized in fab, and the large wafers will decrease the cost to replace flawed models. There may be a few new flaws of course, sagging glass is now a problem with that big a display.
I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
Plasma still exists because it has one advantage over LCD/DLP in the price/performance war: Bigger direct-view screens that can be easily mounted on a wall.
This isn't a big advantage anymore. Sharp and a few other manufacturers have 30+" and 40+" direct-view widescreen LCD displays now. One new 45" Sharp display, subject of a recent announcement at CES, is a 1080p display! Units in the 32+" range I saw this weekend were priced in the ~$3300 USD range.
I think you've just articulated the problem with a majority of the "But the LCD is easier on the eyes!" type of comments -- lame CRTs.
A few comments above someone remarked on having to push the resolution on their monitor up to 75Hz! Like, duh! Selecting a monitor setting so that it performs a few percentage points above a flickering fluorescent light is a basis for comparison?
No doubt there are a lot of crappy CRTs on the market, but I'd venture to say that even the better ones are running at some nutty "factory default" of 60Hz/256-colours.
Mind you, I do lust after the kewl factor (and the desktop space), but I'll wait a few years before I consider an LCD.
DigiUpdate has a guide to high definition displays, which focuses on commercially available technologies.
I originally was all psyched over LCOS. But with the problems they've had with it and the price I'm now looking toward buying a DLP based tv later this year. Toshiba is dropping its LCOS line (has discontinued it already) and will be releasing a ton of DLP based models in a few months. Initially with the 6 panel color wheel, but then the 7 panel one.
I would never get an LCD tv. The black level is trash.
If you've got the space stick with CRT, but if you want something skinnier go with DLP. Should be interesting to see what Intel does later this year with LCOS but I wouldn't touch it just yet.
I've been looking around at various monitors (RP, flat panel, FP, and conventional) and have to say based on what's currently around I'm going to go with DLPRP, at least for home theatre applications.
Plasmas are too expensive, don't seem to have many shades of colors (everything seems too bright, and doesn't have the subtle variations of other monitors) and significantly burn out over their life time (the colors go very very dull until everything looks grey).
LCD is my choice for computers, mainly because they have been best optimized for them in terms of resolution and response. However for home theatre purposes they can seem a little flicker, their colors seem more dull than some of the other options (like 6 segment color wheel DLP) and are less bright. LCDRP/FP also normally have a significant screen door affect which makes images seem to pixilated. LCD's are also said to burn out over long periods of time, although to a lesser extent than Plasmas. LCD flat panel's also come in too smaller sizes.
CRT's have dull colors, they like plasmas burn out over time; they have flicker images, and are harder to focus on for long periods of time. They are also restricted in screen size.
DLP's are currently a great way to go, the newer machines have spectacular resolution, color, a clear crisp image. The 6 segment 5X boxes have no visible (at least to humans) rainbow affect, and some companies are starting to release 6X units which will have the best refresh rates on the market as well. They will never burn out as well, in that every time you replace the lamp and clean the color wheel, it will be returned to its original specs. DLP's also have a much less noticeable screen door affect than LCD. DLP's resolution with the next generaton chips will be better than anything we currently use. Contrast ratio and Brightness is right up there with the best as well.
DLPRP seem the best of the bunch because they have a much thinner box than other RP's or CRT's. They can be viewed in all lighting levels. RP's also allowed much bigger images than flat panels, or at least have the potential to. They don't burn out, and most people doing random viewing tests say they have the 'most pleasant' picture.
I haven't tested the LCOS methods, so can't really talk about them, also note my assessments have been based on HDTV standards and the Blue laser DVD standards that will come in the future.
The best of the DLP's that I have been able to look at are made by sim2.
VENI, VIDI, VICI, DIXI
You're going to be Rip van Winkle, since Kodak killed the GEMS project. (A pity too. Friends were working on it and it was pretty nice.)
ShoutingMan.com