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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."
Always good to shoot for good Ausio/Video Equipment like speakers and monitors, since they last longer than PC internals and they aren't pushed into obsolecence as quickly. I'll keep using my 17" CRT monitor untill it dies. Then I'll look at a 21" perhaps...
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Plasma sucks!
After paying an arm and a leg for a Plasma screen, I can honestly say that it sucks... worst dollar to value ratio ever. The resolution is okay (I'm not talking about the gateway/circuit city peice of shit that has EDTV resolution)... the picture isn't anywhere near as good as you can get with LCD or DLP... I really don't understand why Plasma still exists!
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
I not before heard of these CRTs you speak of. Sounds like its time to upgrade the old audio cone.
Wake me up when the industry figures this out. Now _that_ will blow everything out of the water.
My favorite display format technology has always been paper.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
Flat CRT's are damned nice if you have room and are cheaper than a comparable LCD, My girlfriend got one of the newer eMachines packages with the 17" CRT and if I had the room in my dorm i would have gone for one of those displays
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
You must have had some pretty lame CRTs in the past then. I'm reading this on a crisp 21" CRT at 1600x1200x85. Using a CRT I can use a high resolution for my desktop and still have access to lower resolutions 1280x1024x100 to use with video games. I can have my cake and eat it too.
Of course the monitor weighs 60 pounds, but my computer don't do a whole lot of moving.
They forget to mention projectors, you get a bigger image cheaper than plasma
Great! However it will still show crap on whatever screen it's made of.
While an LCD monitor has much to recommend it on the grounds of space saving and visual clarity, I find one arena where it is left in the dust by a CRT: game playing. When rushing around in a FPS, the picture on an LCD monitor turns into a blurry, muddy mess; on a CRT, by contrast, it remains crisp.
In an unrelated but related point (think "tea and no tea"), I find that optical mice are great for day-to-day work, but fall down during FPS play: when you figure that someone is filling your back with lead, and you need to do an instant 180 degree turn, an optical mouse simply can't handle the rate of movement. A traditional ball mouse is the only choice; however, you have to make sure its clean so that the ball doesn't jam when being rolled at high speed. A good tip to keeping your balls clean is to rest your beer on a different table to your keyboard/mouse.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
I won't buy CRT rear projection or plasma because of the burn in problem. Why is noone looking to fix this major problem with these types of TVs, that prevent much normal use? For now, I'm sticking with a 36-inch Toshiba picture tube set. (which Consumer Reports rated a 'best buy' in traditional CRT televisions) LCDs are AFAIK the only 'new' technology immune from burn-in. (traditional TVs aren't completely immune from this problem, but it is unlikely to happen with normal use) Also, plasmas degrade over time, and in 10 years are completely dim to the point of being unwatchable. So, devide your price of the plasma ($3000) by ten to get a price of $300/year for your plasma TV. With LCD projection, there is the extreme high cost of bulbs. Why should a bulb cost so much anyway?? The hourly rate of an LCD projector can be in upwards of 30 cents. Is there a way to win?
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.
I am typing this from a 19" CRT screen that costs just #150 for a 1600x1200 desktop. A LCD of that size and resoloution are over #1000! I dont need the space savings, Desks are cheap, LCDs are not!
The article is an excellent beginner's guide to display technology formats, however, they make that oft-repeated forcast that soon LCDs will be cheap. We've been hearing that for years. Active-Matrix displays have been in use in Notebooks for 10 years and still they are the most expensive part of the notebook. They've certainly come down in price, but I wonder why so many people latch onto this belief that soon they will be so cheap they'll replace everything. Every couple years we hear about a world-wide "supply shortage" which jacks the price of LCDs up about 20%, there are inherent limitations in the design process which require an entirely separate production line to produce a 15" display, a 19", etc... What about Hot-Pixels? How happy would you be to spend $10k on an LCD display that has hotpixels?
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
If Kodak is in charge then it is doomed. They are the modern day xerox when it comes to marketing what they make. Hell, they had to move production of film off shore because they could no compete with Fuji Film because Kodak said it is too expensive to make film in the USA. Fuji Film is made in America.
I still can't figure out why the gamma on the PC and the Mac are so far apart. Hell, the gamma on a windows system is much lower than a Mac and even darker than a CRT TV!!!
Why is this? And why is there not a universal standard by which a display is to be callibrated. Sure, you could argue that there is already 3 standards, but my question is why not just one standard?
As a visual artist I find it irritating to have my imagery appear darker on a PC and when I play a DVD, I notice that the display on my Mac is much brighter than my TV.
I'm sure movie producers and directors get annoyed by this as well.
By setting an international gamma/color calibration standard, all visual media would benefit not only because of consistant display but lowered production costs as well.
Gee, with all of these new, flat monitors and TVs, my cat loses out on the most comfy, warm place in the house.
Even hard core gaming sites like Sharky Extreme are now recommending optical mice exclusively in all their hardware guides.
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.
I'm so sick of people trying the predict the end of the CRT, and how digital displays will take over. ...) that can rival a CRT when it comes to what matters most: quality.
I have not seen ONE digital display (whether it be LCD, Plasma
CRT screens just look better. The colours are always alive, blacks are black (not grey), and white are white.
Every plasma screen I have seen, sharp though the image may be, is horribly grainy when it comes to colour. It's just like watching something in 16 bit colour.
The CRT has been around for almost a century (I might be wrong), and you know why? Because it works. It doesn't need to be replaced, so please stop trying to bring forth its demise.
I fear that one day, there'll be a generation out there who will never have known the quality of a nice CRT, the beauty of film, and the smooth sound of a nice vinyl record.
The article was slashdotted, heres my personal guide:
CRT - Still probably capable of the best picture for now (especially at the high end, think G90). Requires much more maintenance than digital technlogies (convergence, etc.). Essentially infinite on/off contrast, not quite as good ANSI contrast. No screendoor. High end guns capable of fully resolving 1080p.
DLP - Best contrast numbers of the digital technologies. Consumer units limited to 720p for now. Screendoor is pretty limited. Some people may see rainbows on one chip devices due to color wheel (pretty limited on new HD2+ machines). Most machines not terribly bright when compared to LCD. Limited to projection devices.
LCD - Poor contrast, very hight black level. Most screendoor of the digitals. Can be in projection or panel configurations. Considerably less expensive than other digital techs. Scales to higher resolutions than DLP for now.
LCOS - Least screendoor of digital technologies. Often appears "smoothest" or most like a CRT to people. Contrast numbers not up to DLP's standards. Not a large number of LCOS unites on the market for now, but looks like more will be coming soon. Many see it as the ultimate sucessor to CRT rear-projection.
Plasma - Least bang for the buck of the digitals. Only a flat-panel technology, no projection. Reletively poor contrast numbers.
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.
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.
When I bought my last system, I could have bought two decient 17" CRT'S for the cost of 1 19" LCD display. So I am now sitting in front of two 17" CRT's and I have twice as much desktop space.
Oh happy me!
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s= &threadid=361807&highlight=DLP
17"? I think, my chum, if you don't have room for a 17" monitor, then you are in completely the wrong market for the techonlogies being spoken of here. We are talking home theater technologies, not desktop. We're talking HDTVs in the 40"-70" range.
For the home theater, CRT is dying. It's power hungry, it's space hungry, and it's heavy. There are only two things that CRT technology has going for it over all other HDTV technologies: (1) price and (2) the ability to easily change resolutions. Only the first of those two matter outside of the PC monitor world.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You buy a CRT and you get BETTER performance for about 1/3rd the cost -
Assuming you live in your mother's basement, and don't pay for electricity.
A CRT is on the "be sure to turn it off when you leave" list as far as power consumption goes.
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!)
The organic-based displays come out. Flexible, brighter than LCD, superior to plasma (no burn-in).
OK, OK, I'll wait until the organic displays are around for a while and their price reaches non-astronomical levels. That should be in about 7-8+ years from now assuming a soonish release.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
"Flat" simply describes a surface which is not curved. LCD screens are all flat; it's their nature. As such, it's sufficient to identify a screen as an "LCD", and not necessary to also point out that it's flat. However, it is most definitely a flat screen.
CRTs, on the other hand, are by nature curved, so (relative) flatness is a feature worth pointing out. But in fact, even so-called "flat" CRTs only approximate the condition, AFAIK.
LCDs are a better fit for most people's conception of "flat", because not only are their screens uncurved, but they're very shallow front-to-back. You could put one "flat against the wall" or "flat on the floor"; you couldn't really do that with a cube-shaped CRT, no matter how uncurved its screen.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
In the final table, the author chose not to highlight the winning cells if they happened to be for CRT solutions. CRT is a winner in 5 of the 12 catagories: Contrast Ratio, Brightness, Longevity, Burn-In, and Viewing Angle. More than any other solution.
I know that Direct View (and Rear Projection) CRT's days are numbered, but as of today, no other solution provides the same picture quality, at any cost. It will be at least 3 more years before videophiles start making the switch to something better. I'm guessing the winners will be DLP and Carbon Nanotube Field Emission Displays.
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
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.
After Viewing All other technologies (at the time), I purchased two televisions - One A CRT Projection Sony (HDTV) 46" and a Panasonic Plasma (EDTV) 42" (both highly recommended on almost every method of research I performed). Hands down, the Panasonic kicks the Sony's ass, I have NEVER seen a better picture (I've only been to best buy, circuit city and The Big Screen Store, and there ilk). The real word black level performance (eye candy view) is just as good. Matter of fact, I bought the plasma just because the room that it's in was so small. I planned on using the Sony most of the time, especially for movies. The plasma is so much better, the CRT justs sits there most of the time.
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
1. The units are still very expensive
2. You have to factor in the components required to get sound into the equation
I looked at projectors, RPTVs, LCDs and DLPs late last year. After careful examination of the costs, picture quality (personal view), flexibility (number/type of inputs), portability and size, I ended up with a DLP. (HLN617W from Samsung). I think the rainbow effect is mostly FUD. Yes, some people see them, but not as many as the reporting would seem. No-one I have shown the unit to has seen them.
Quicky eval summary:
CRT RPTV - heavy, expensive tube replacement, bad side angle viewing, lowest price
Projector - relatively expensive, required separate sound gear, generally requires more distance than I have (about 12 feet), some units are noisy (fans), some units have short bulb lives (p.s. I really wanted a projector - I'm a movie buff)
LCD - I can see the screen door effect up to around 8 feet from the screen, some reported burn in issues due to high temp from lamp and gels in the LCD, price was comparable to DLP, good weight and depth.
DLP - weight and depth is good for a unit of this size, brighter than LCD (my perception), no chance of burn in, reasonable lamp life (3000 hours - user replaceable), some issues with internal reflections
Pet peeve: Why do none of the remotes have back-lit panels? If you are watching the TV, aren't you typically in a darkened environment? Why are we expected to turn on a light to read the remote buttons? It's nuts!
My simple suggestion: Make one button on the remote a glow-in-the-dark button which (ta-da) turns the back light on for the other buttons.