Thin CRTs to Challenge LCDs in 2005

bigtangringo writes "First Samsung and now LG.Phillips have worked out a way to create thin CRT displays. Thin CRTs offer the best of both worlds -- superior picture quality with a slim size. Thin CRTs are expected to be more expensive than current CRTs, however they are also expected to drop in price rapidly. Both companies plan on releasing Thin CRTs in late 2005."

Comments

Perfect Example.....

[hcob$]

Of why people like me (and most of slashdot) HATE to rush out and buy new equipment. I just spent a little over 400 on a 19" LCD Pannel, and DAMNIT they come out with this nifty little thingy(that's the technical term ya know).

At this rate of technological development, I'm just wondering when Moore's law will be replaced by Murphy's.

Re:Perfect Example.....

[FatAlb3rt]

you only spent $400 on a 19" LCD and that's rushing?! that's where 19" CRTs were a few years ago.

Eyes

[mfh]

I'm coding on my system all the time. Recently I was looking at getting a new system (for games and stuff), but I couldn't find any information on the effects of different monitors on my eyes. Does anyone know which type of monitor (LCD, CRT...etc) is safer for prolonged use? I'm talking about 18 hour days... thin or not, what are the effects on my inevitable glaucoma?

Re:Eyes

[eliza_effect]

I'm just gonna guess here and say that LCDs are "better" for your eyes, since a nice LCD will have very good contrast (to reduce eyestrain when trying to discern small details) and no "refresh rate" in the same sense that CRTs do (LCDs just refresh pixels that have changed, not the entire screen).

Re:Eyes

[Gonzotek]

18 hours is far too long to be staring at any one thing, regardless of the technology used. LCDs probably have lower glare than CRTs, overall, but that's not the only factor.
Here are some generalized tips for monitor placement, lighting, and eye health:
http://www.crazycolour.com/os/ergonomics_ 06.shtml

Re:Eyes

[Dan East]

This is somewhat anecdotal, but an optometrist told me that reflective and transflective screens are best for the eyes, because they reflect light instead of emit it, and reflected light is more 'natural'.

The only devices I know of with those types of displays are Pocket PCs.

I've always assumed that regular LCDs still were better than CRT because at least you don't have an electron gun deluging your face with radiation.

Dan East

Re:Eyes

[DigitumDei]

Just to add to this. While the parent is correct, that a LCD is usually going to be better on your eye's, a good quality crt will also allow just as many hours of use with no eye strain.

I find with a cheaper CRT I get headaches after a couple of hours of work. However I purchased an Iiyama visionmaster pro 455 and I can literally spend days working on it with no noticable eye strain. It is also brighter and clearer than pretty much any LCD I've seen. So in the end, if you pay a decent amount for a monitor it should be fine.

All the same, unless you plan on playing games on the machine, I'd suggest going for an LCD.

Re:Eyes

[JavaMoose]

Um, it's obvious that you aren't aware of HOW the different types of LCDs work.

Reflective LCD doesn't mean that it reflects everything around you, or that there is any glare, it just bounces ambiant light back through the panel to improve brightness. This also has the effect of making them good outdoors in sunlight.

Re:Eyes

[Max Romantschuk]

but if they reflect light, youre eyes have to work harder to decide what to pay attention to; the reflection or the stuff on the screen.

Um, a paper reflects light. Thats how you see it. So does mostly everything else in your surroundings, except for the minority of objects which emit light. Lamps and screens, mostly.

By your logic, a paper should be harder to read than a screen. Is it?

Re:Eyes

[Clueless Moron]

reflected light is more 'natural'.

Gosh. Do the photons come with little tags that say "organically grown"?

Re:Eyes

[untaken_name]

By your logic, a paper should be harder to read than a screen. Is it?

Depends. Is there any light source in the room? If not, then a screen will be easier to read. If the room is brightly lit, a paper should be easier to read. Of course, trying to decide whether a screen is better than paper is like trying to decide if technical whitepapers are better than novels. It totally depends on your environment, needs, and other variables. I don't think there's much point to the whole 'paper v. screens' debate.

Re:Eyes

[DigitumDei]

Can you remember what refresh rate these crt's ran at?

5 years ago 75 was considered the norm even with expencive crt's. I personally don't like to use a CRT unless its running at 100.

I'd assume the thin crt's have the same drawbacks as the old ones since they will still refresh in a similar way and thus have the flicker. Of course that is assuming the flicker is what causes the eye strain (AFAIK it is).

Also, I've been sitting in front of CRT monitors for far to many hours a day for the last 14 years and I still have 20/20 vision. At work I moved over to LCD last year, though I have noticed no difference in how my eyes feel at the end of the day, so its really only desk space that I gain.

I guess its one of those things that varies a lot from person to person.

Re:Eyes

[ricotest]

Exactly. I've had an astigmatism in my eyes since I was very young, but an 85 Hz 19" CRT is fine for me. I've used it very regularly for 3 years or so without ill effects. On the other hand, for a small portion of that time the monitor reset to 60 Hz and I didn't realise. I began getting very severe headaches. Eventually I discovered it and changed it back, and my eyes became fine again.

Some people like yourself prefer 100+, some are fine with 60 Hz. It varies completely.

On the other hand, my new 17" TFT runs at 60 Hz and hasn't caused any problems because they don't flicker. I suggest them for games too, since the newer ones have very good response times and no visible ghosting (although, again, it depends who you are as some people notice it more than others). My only advice: don't dual screen a CRT and a TFT with different refresh rates, it seems to mess your eyes up if you focus on both :/

Re:Eyes

[danila]

I've always assumed that regular LCDs still were better than CRT because at least you don't have an electron gun deluging your face with radiation.

1) Modern CRT monitors produce a negligible amount of radiation.
2) Almost all of that radiation actually goes away from the back of the monitor in the opposite direction to you.
3) All displays emit a form of electro-magnetic radiation called "light". That's how you see objects on the screen.

Answering mfh's question, it's best to use an expensive LCD display. Test it before, a lot depends on the way your personal eyes work - different people would prefer different monitors. And make 5-minute breaks every hour. You can use these breaks to visit a toilet, eat a serving of fresh fruits or drink a glass of water. All these things (if done regularly) do wonders to your health. And don't forget about carpal tunnel syndrome and haemorrhoids. :)

Re:Eyes

[pz]

IAAVN (I am a Visual Neuroscientist). In our lab we have looked at the effects of CRT versus LCD displays on what's known as the early part of the visual system (retina, LGN, primary visual cortex).

If you accurately measure the luminance from one spot on a CRT screen at sufficiently high time resolution, it looks like a regular series of big spikes followed by exponential decay as the electron beam passes by during each vertical sweep. If the beam passes by sufficiently frequently, our visual system temporally smooths this uneven luminance into what we percieve as a solid image through an effect that's called flicker fusion. Most humans have a flicker fusion rate at about 30 Hz, but there's a broad distribution from individual to individual, and the transition between seeing something that flashes and something that's solid isn't abrupt (further, it depends on contrast ratio, which part of the retina, and a host of other things). But, this is why, in general, CRTs tend to appear to flicker when the refresh rate is at 60 Hz, but not so at 85 Hz or above.

When we record the response of individual neurons in the early visual system, the entrainment of activity to the vertical refresh is striking, and has been found even in higher order visual areas (well beyond the primary visual cortex) at refresh rates as high as 135 Hz with CRTs. In my work, I routinely see responses to 90 Hz flicker in the visual thalamus.

If you examine the luminance from an LCD in the same way, instead of big spikes followed by exponential decay, you see staircases as pixels changes from one luminance to the next through the presentation of whatever is on the display. Recording from early visual neurons in the same circumstances shows a vastly different response characteristic than for the same visual presentation made via CRT (as accurately as we can match it).

This physiological result jibes well with my personal experience that a 60 Hz refresh rate on a CRT is just this side of torture, and while 85 Hz appears solid, 100 Hz has a subtle *more* solid and more pleasant aspect to it. And, further, that any current LCD blows away even an ultra-fast CRT (we use 180 Hz at the upper end) in terms of image stability.

Bottom line: the scientific evidence suggests that unless you want your visual system to be pulsing at CRT refresh rates, get an LCD display.

Re:Eyes

[pz]

While there isn't any evidence I'm aware of that pulsing is bad in the visual system (the classical notion that epilepsy is uncontrolled synchronous firing has been brought into question of late), and one of the prevaling theories is that synchroized activity is used to bind object characteristics (eg, color, position, orientation, identification), we do have substantial evidence that the visual system has been very highly tuned for the real world -- that is, with illumination which does not flicker.

Personally, I find that my eyes spend more time trying to microaccommodate (focus) on CRT screens than on LCDs.

Excellent question on fluorescent lighting. It turns out that fluorescent lighting isn't nearly as aggressive as CRT illumination in terms of being pulsed. There are three reasons for this, first fluorescent bulbs -- and we're talking about the classic long tubes, not the newer compact fluorescents which are completely different -- are driven by a sinusoidal current rather than an impulse like the CRT electron beam, so that the pulsation is of lower magnitude. Second, the phosphor on fluorescent bulbs is much slower than that used for CRTs, to help filter out even more of the pulsation. Third, fluorescent bulbs have an effective refresh rate of 120 Hz (both half cycles of the 60 Hz sinusoid activate the phosphor). However, not all fluorescent phosphors are made equal, and in countries where AC power is 50 Hz, you can often see the flicker.

So, to return to the question at hand, will using an LCD monitor make a difference given that you have fluorescent lighting in your environment? Yes, but not as much as if the lighting were incandescent. Is it still worth doing? I'd say so.

What do I personally do? (Does the dentist actually chew Trident?) I use 5 screens total in my professional and personal life, three are LCDs, and two are CRTs running at 85 Hz (this is discounting the screens used for experimentation). The illumination at work is stock institutional fluorescent bulbs which would be full-spectrum if the physical plant staff didn't automatically change them every N months, and at home there's a mix of full-spectrum compact fluorescent (which don't pulse at anything close to a perceptually relevant frequency) and incandescent. I much prefer the LCDs to the CRTs.

Well

[instanto]

The best of both worlds, but also the worst of the CRT World.

E.g Refresh Rate issues, Pollution, Power Usage.

Still.. a smaller 24" widescreen would be nice, since this Compaq weights around 44 pounds.

Not exactly flat

[MrPrefect]

says they are around 16 inches for the LG and 20 or so for the samsung, not excatly the same, but still might be worth it if they are a bit cheaper then the LCD's

Still pretty heavy

[jmcharry]

44kg is still quite heavy. I guess that will be one of the tradeoffs.

"Super-Slim"

[felonius maximus]

whereas the ultra-slim CRT developed by Samsung SDI has a depth of 417mm and weighs 44kg

Bugger me with a fish fork! That weighs as much as I do!

How does this work?

[LiSrt]

I assume it just means the electron beams are deflected at a greater angle and you have to be a bit more careful aligning the grille. Is that essentially it?

thin?

[rdc_uk]

I don't know about you lot, but to me, while its less-huge than current CRTs, 16-inches is not "thin".

YMMV, obviously.

(from TFA: "A 30-inch-tube television from Samsung Electronics will be about 16 inches thick, deeper than a flat panel set but about the same size as the typical stand on a flat-panel television, a Samsung executive said.")

Clive Sinclair did it first

[Anonymous Coward]

Britain's Clive Sinclair made a TV with a flat CRT back in the early 1980s. Here is a picture: http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/images/tv80.jpg

"20% reduction" in power consumption = not bad.

[mopslik]

Thin CRTs offer the best of both worlds -- superior picture quality with a slim size.

Of course, one of the other bonuses of LCD screens is their low power consumption. Good for the electricity bill, and for Mother Nature.

At a 20% reduction, that comes out to between 80-90W, compared to 30-40W for LCDs.

Re:"20% reduction" in power consumption = not bad.

[Lumpy]

what kind of LCD's are you using???

I just looked at the back of the DELL 19" LCD sitting at the reception desk and it uses 22.8Watts

any LCD that uses 30-40 watts is horribly inefficient.

How's about a little thinking..

[Ancient_Hacker]

" Thin CRTs offer the best of both worlds -- superior picture quality with a slim size. " I wouldnt call a 20% reduction, from 51 to 41cm deep , a "slim" CRT, nor worthy of Slashdot coverage. And they're probably compromising on something-- I'd guess they're going to lose a bit of convergence near the edges.

I want one!

[mrjb]

Now I can have a flat screen, and still keep my radiation tan!

Viva la Valve, Long libe the Vacuum Tube!

[Sai Babu]

"CRTs are not going away anytime soon," said Riddhi Patel, an analyst with researcher iSuppli. "They will account for 70 percent of the market in 2008."

I wonder if these employ thermionic emmission, electrons hopping off sharp points, or ???

Any /.ers in the know? There was no tech info on at either referenced site.

I am curious because there may be life left in the CRT rebuilding industry.

I worked in CRT rebuilding plant one winter while in High School. Excepting myself, a high school friend, and an old half blind splotchy looking guy (he ran the hydroflouric acid etching machine) we were the only people who didn't run for the warehouse and hide in boxes whenever the INS appeared.

Dangerous work. Closest I've ever come to immolation. Thank you to whoever invented the dry chemical fire extinguisher!

Ganja

[felonius maximus]

Smoke more weed, I've heard from reputable scienticians that it's good against Glaucoma.

Priceless

[Schwing84]

Money saved on reduced cost CRT's $20. Money spent on replacing eyes from radiation...priceless

/. is Missing the Point

[JavaMoose]

You are all missing the point! These are going to have excellent uses in the LIVING ROOM. The Samsung-SDI model is 32in, and they have a 42in and 50in on the way.

The 32in is estimated to be $1000 retail and is ACTUALLY 1080i, not like the 'take 1080 and make 720" game that Plasma monitors play.

Sure, as COMPUTER monitors it ain't all that great, but these have signifigant advantges over Plasma and LCD in the living room.

Weighed in the Balance...

[Headw1nd]

This still doesn't beat what, in my opinion, is one of the greatest advantages of other flat displays, weight. I like the concept of a display I can tote myself without fear of a hernia, or more likely, dropping the damn thing. The CRTs mentioned still weigh in at 49 and 44 kg. A slightly larger (37 in) plasma display would weigh in at around 25 kg, and a LCD at less than 20.

Going hand in hand with this, I really like the concept of wall mounting, something even these "thin" CRTs wouldn't be capable of.

Super-slim compared to Michael Moore. :-D

[TheConfusedOne]

It's marketing speak. 417 mm = 16.4 in

So it's "super-slim" compared to a current huge, "fat" CRT but is a real porker compared to an LCD or Plasma screen.

Re:LOL, depends what you mean by thin...

[GodsMadClown]

They are targeting LCD TVs. Samsung evaluated the physical needs of the market, and decided that 30 CM deep was what was needed to fit the average space. Plasma and LCD have much different characteristics than a direct-view CRT set:

Price. Try to find a decent looking (720p or 1080i) plasma for less than $2000. Samsung is targeting a ~$1k pricepoint on these new thin(er) CRT sets. LCD Tvs of comparaple size are even pricier.

Lifespan. If I'm going to drop $1-2K on a TV, I want the damn thing to last 10 years. CRTs have proven lifespans measured in the decades. Plasma screens tend to go tits-up all too frequently at the 3-5 year mark. LCD screens (being solid state) should have fine lifespan. Unless the backlight has problems.

Image quality. Plasma screens are very much on par with the image quality of CRTs. Blacks are black and they are very viewable at many angles. LCDs have problems with portraying a truely convincing black, and the viewing angle can be a problem. Direct-view CRTs have the disadvantage of being an analog technology, depending on a decent DAC implementation for digital inputs. However, they give great brightness and viewing angle, with deep blacks. They do need to be calibrated correctly, so the cost of a technician might be factored in. At the very least, a $30 calibration DVD is in order.

It's all about choices folks. I, for one, am looking forward to the pricing pressure this new CRT tech will exert on the market. I still have a SDTV. I'd love to get a decent HD set.

Re:picture quality

[rdc_uk]

Refresh rate.
Colour reproduction.
Viewable angle.
Brightness
Contrast
Difficulty to knock over :)

SED - the new 'killer app' in TV and monitors?

[bullet_tooth]

SED (Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display) panels. These are a new flat panel developed by Toshiba and Canon which are as thin as a plasma/LCD but allegedly produce picture quality on par with a CRT. read here:- http://www.physorg.com/news1295.html and http://www.engadget.com/entry/5732841184005838/ (picture and article illustrate that these TVs are already in production). I believe these are slated for a release in 2H 2005.

Re:SED - the new 'killer app' in TV and monitors?

[Thagg]

I've been following the SED technology for quite some time. It seems to be finally moving from the labs into production. In this article, Toshiba and Canon announce the creation of a company to begin producing the displays, with limited production in 2005, ramping up after that.

SED displays are CRTs, after a fashion. They have electron guns that fire modulated electron beams through a vacuum at phosphor screens. As such, they have the brightness, color purity, and response rate of regular CRTs. What is different is that there is an electron gun for every pixel, instead of just one that is scanned across the screen. This allows the screen to be flat and shallow, and gives the geometric flatness and sharpness usually associated with LCDs.

This was attempted before with a slightly different technology, and went by the acronym/buzzword FED, for Field Effect Display. As this article points out, there was tremendous anticipation of this technology quite some time ago, they were planning to go into production in 1996. FED's had an array of tiny, very sharp needles behind the phosphor screen. Unfortunately, the production and maintenance of this array of needles proved to be next to impossible.

SED's use a much more producable and durable semiconductor array of electron guns. The technology of creating large, dense arrays of semiconductors on substrates has been developed and perfected by the LCD process, so I feel that there is hope this time around that the machines will actually be mass-produced on the aggressive schedule that Canon and Toshiba have laid out.

The first generation of SED's, it is claimed, will unfortunately not have the resolution that would make them good for computer displays or home TV's, as the spacing of the pixels will be somewhat large. They'll be used for business displays of various kinds. But, in the not-too-distant future (three-to-five years) Canon and Toshiba predict that SED's will come to dominate TV and monitor production.

We'll see.

Thad Beier

Best of both worlds?

[oneiros27]

Did anyone look at the stats on the Samsung site before claiming this?

a roughly 20% reduction in depth, and a 10% reduction in weight. (mass, weight, whatever, I didn't do so well in Physics).

100mm is less than 4 inches. It's still 417mm deep -- that's over 16 inches... and 44kg? That's almost 100lbs.

So, the great break through is that you won't have to punch out the back of whatever cabinet you're trying to put the TV into. You'll still need help moving it so you don't throw your back out, and still need some sort of cabinet to put it in, as it's not light enough to be directly wall mounted without some reinforcing first.

I'm not saying this isn't a improvement, but it's not any real breakthrough -- things have been getting smaller for years. They'll continue to get smaller.

Yes- I do know

[purduephotog]

The best system for eyestrain is one that incorporates the entire room lighting environment. You don't say how long you want to code, but looking at high contrast imagery requires subdued background lighting that matches your monitor.

CRTs generally deliver the Lmin (lowest brightness level) and an almost good enough Lmax (Colour CRTs don't hit the high range, unfortunately).

Basically no numbers because I'm not sure what's proprietary, but I'd tell you to choose CRTs hands down.

The LCD model that pretyt much every cheap LCD follows is innapropriate for large hours in front of the screen. The impulse that describes how the light appears to your eyes isn't the way your brain is designed to view things- the image doesn't 'decay'.

So if you light the wall behind your computer evenly with about, say, 2x15 watt bulbs from about 10 feet off, that should be sufficient illumination (note the rest of the room is dark) to keep your eyes in a 'relaxed' state. Your monitor should be out of cutoff (deep blacks) so that your eyes stay adjusted to the whole range. The bezel itself could be painted grey, but that isn't critical.

Help any?

1080i != 540p

[iceperson]

There are still more lines of resolution using 1080i than 720p. Fact: you can not get as clear an image on a 720p set as you can on a 1080i set. If you want to argue that programming with lots of fast motion looks better on a 720p set then that's up for debate, but stating 1080i is equivalent to 540p is just wrong.

Don't feel bad

[Hoi Polloi]

According to Samsung's press release they give an example of a 32 inch screen. The numbers they give show only a 10% reduction in weight and a 20% reduction in depth, not bad but not enough to justify dumping your current CRT if it is running well.

Candescent

[Skjellifetti]

A company named Candescent Technologies tried this a few years ago. They had backing from HP and Sony IIRC. I saw one of their demo screens. The color saturation was fantastic, there was no fading as you moved off to the side, and there were none of the ghost artifacts you get from LCDs when stuff on the screen is moving rapidly. Unfortunately, Candescent was poorly managed and is now in Chapter 11.

This seems to be Candescent Technologies flatCRT

[gwizah]

It appears that Candescent Technologies ThinCRT technology is behind this. They filed for bankruptcy earlier this year and sold all their IP to Canon. If you read this article You'll notice that the first name that comes up is Canon. Canon is using the acquisition to get into the display market from the looks of things. I had been wondering what had happened to ThinCRT since reading about it here on Slashdot.

Thank Fuck

[tarsi210]

The phrase "everyone likes sex" can be reinterpreted to the workplace in a similar form, "everyone likes desk space". When you have lots, it's great. When you don't have lots, it's still better than nothing.

But while that's the case, having desk space isn't nearly as valuable to me as not having my eyes flayed by an LCD scratching them for 9 hours a day, thus, I stick with CRTs. I value my space -- but not that much. I value my eyes more.

I was hoping that the industry wouldn't give up on the tube and figure out a way to get the best of both worlds, and hopefully this is it. I assume we're not losing other things, such as dot pitch and refresh rate, with this invention, so it should be a win-win situation.

I dunno. I assume there are people out there using an LCD panel for long hours of staring and don't feel the same effects. That being said, I know people who don't think monitors running at 60Hz flicker (esp. when coupled with floro lights). I suppose it's all in the eye of the beholder (yuk,yuk).