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CRTs Still Beat Flat-Panel TVs
mr.henry writes "Consumers scrambling for sexy new flat-panel televisions may want to tune in to this less-publicized feature of the trendy boxes: They don't deliver pictures as clearly as traditional tube TVs do. Consumers think they're buying the best in technology (with flat-panel televisions), but it's more of an emotional purchase."
shell out $1700 for a 17" LCD tv and then hook it up to an antennae for 4 stations...
He also thinks "mid engine" on his Boxter means the engine is still in front of him, just not all the way up to the bumper. He justifies this by pointing out the washer fluid reserves and whatnot as being part of the engine.
You call it excessive, I call it ambitious.
I have been tempted many times by the sleak and sexy LCD's, but why would I want to spend $1500+ on two replacement monitors that have a limited viewing angle, limited resolutions selections, limited game performance?
I've yet to see, however, a LCD that makes me want to replace my beasts.
The other day I moved the DVD player from the bedroom TFT TV (Samsung) to the kitchen TV, and was very surprised at how good the old TV was. And for months I was thinking that DVDs were getting worse and worse in encoding quality.
The same with watching DVDs on the PC through a monitor -- you'd think that the quality would be best of all, but even from a distance you can see encoding and scaling problems.
I think tube TVs will be around for a long time for affictionados -- kinda like record players.
"This is totally insecure, but very convenient."
But then, for lowly consumers, when is it the technology that matters ?
:-) but both free up a huge area of floorspace and don't intrude. The LCD looks nicer when it's not on...
:-)
At the end of the day, you want something nice in your living room, and a flatscreen TV fits the bill. Personally I prefer a projector (nothing like an 8' image to give you a sense of cinema
I'm typing this on a 23" Apple Cinema Screen LCD display, which I bought because it was gorgeous. Simple as. The fact that for significantly less cash I could have had 2 CRT's and a slightly larger screen real-estate didn't matter (which is saying something for me - I like having lots of windows open at once...). Looks matter
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
There's no HDTV I can justify buying now. The only one worth buying is the $35,000 Mitsubishi one which is basically a 50" computer monitor.
Even the $15,000 plasmas you see on MTV cribs have motion artifacts.
I'm not saying they all suck, I'm just saying I can't justify any of them right now.
I work at a retailer that sells several different kinds of TVs and I've found that the average consumer that I'm dealing with is really in the dark about current TV technology and tends to follow the notion that more expensive = better.
I found myself having to really educate people who come in since they often have no idea that LCD is diffrent from flat CRTs, or plasmas, or HDTV. Most consumers really have very little to go on, and the battles between manufacturers on what will be the next standard really isn't helping.
These are breasts; this is source code.
Why do you have a problem with those two things belonging to one person?
they cost thousands of dollars right now, but the sunnybrook high dynamic range monitors seen at last year's SIGGRAPH were a showstopper... They currently have a model that offeres a dynamic range of 40,000:1x .html has a good visual on how effective the system is.
compared to the best of today's displays ~700:1, that's something to brag about. most are about 300:1!
I believe 40,000:1 reaches the limits of human vision.
They work by individually illuminating the pixels with LEDs, thus facilitating higher dynamic range and local control. Darks are darker lights are brighter.
http://www.sunnybrooktech.com/hdr/inde
Once the price drops to reasonable levels, I think that the act of purchasing a flatscreen will become something more than an "emmotional" venture.
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
I'll take a little picture degradation to be able to hang a 37" TV on the bedroom wall rather than having a 200-pound behemoth taking up 3/4 of my dresser. And you'd have a hard time telling the difference in picture quality from 15' away unless you saw them side by side.
That's why I got my LCD monitor (which also has a TV built in, btw): it just makes more room. My previous monitor (14 inches) was 16 inches deep. The new one (17" 16:9) is only about 4 inches deep, 9 for the very base. It made a HUGE difference on my cramped desk.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Consumers scrambling for sexy new flat-panel televisions may want to tune in to this less-publicized feature of the trendy boxes: They don't deliver pictures as clearly as traditional tube TVs do
I must disagree to some extent with this article and opinion. It really depends on what you call "clearly". For example, text and edges are MUCH clearer on any type of flat panel than a CRT.
There is also the issue of calibration. A CRT gradually comes out of adjustment, requiring a skilled technician to correct. In order to keep your CRT as clear as, say, a DLP, you would have to get your CRT's imaged calibrated every 6 mos to a year, the DLP will never need a "maintenance" adjustment after the first calibration. This goes for any of the digital sets.
Also, what is one to do if they require an image of 40" or greater? I have looked at the XBR 40" Sony, and anyone who would argue its image is "clearer" than any native 720p set is smoking crack. The CRT image, while sitting 4' from the set, has vertical lines and you can't focus clearly on edge text. The 50" DLP I went with has no pixel separation and the edges are much clearer.
I see the article would only address specifically plasma shortcomings and a small blurb about refresh rates. Why leave out DLP? It has the highest refresh of anything. Oh yes, because it doesn't fit with the BS the story wants to feed you.
Remember kids, this is ZDNet India..
I bought a Sharp Aquos LCD television last year. It's only a 20" model, not a giant one, and it's only normal TV, not HDTV.
It's way better than the CRT it replaced.
There are no issues with ghosting; it clearly refreshes fast enough for TV, DVDs, or console video gaming.
I am looking forward to the day when I get a much bigger one (the 37" and 42" both look nice). When I get the bigger one, it will be a model with a DVI input, and I'll hook up a computer to that. I want to play first-person games on a giant screen with my living room's surround sound all around me.
steveha
P.S. I figure LCD is pretty much a stable technology at this point. It's basically a large laptop screen, and those have been around for years. Plasma has burnin issues, and OLED may simply fade with time. I look forward to SED displays... but LCD is here now and getting more affordable every year.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Don't get all excited - when you are in my tax bracket, my first thought, was "great, I just won the right to buy a $4499 TV for half price (after taxes)"; And I wasn't in the market for a $2250 TV!
After a prudent amount of skepticism [checking out the company that the fullfilment guy said he was from, etc] before turning over "1099" information, it seemed like the real deal. We really had won something. I inquired whether or not we could take cash in lieu of the TV. Having had first-hand experience with plasma burn-in (on the same set we had won, for a work project), I knew I didn't really want one.
The bottom line: "no cash", however, since the actual prize delivery was via our friends at Best Buy, I was able to finagle a deal with the local manager to do a one-time, use-it-or-lose-it buying spree for the value (which turned out to be "street" not "MSRP"). They just processed the TV as an in-store, no-receipt credit.
This turned out to be a much better deal than taking a TV. My daughter got a nice stereo, my younger son got lots of video games. The big ticket items were a DV camcorder and a Toshiba laptop. Toss in some nice Boston Acoustic clock-radios that I otherwise wouldn't have purchased at $150 each, and some blank DVD media and the family was much better off than taking one expensive, short-lived Plasma TV.
I mean, how much better could Sponge Bob look on a big screen? I'll stick to my Costco (Toshiba) 32" CRT for now (landfills be damned, someday).
Now, I only hope that 1099 says "only" $3699+sales tax. I feel much better paying taxes equivalent to a bunch of useful "half-price" stuff than I ever would have paying close to $2000 for one TV with 80 channels of crap on the cable.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I think it flows back to the basic mindset of a geek, we're generally exceedingly utilitarian. For proof go look at the old polls about CPU speed, and compare to the dates (most of us were running systems that were 3-5 years old, but in the comments would mention how the specific chip architecture, orverclocking, or other components (SCSI, cutting edge ATA technologies, video cards) more than offset the aging processors. Design that does not improve use in some way is wasted effort. Generally rationals are happy to pay up for quality (which probably means longer life or fewer hassles in operation), but don't care to pay for status or image.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Coz' it makes me kew!
Seriously, CRT is definitely a better picture and tt was definitely an emotional purchase except for one overriding factor.
I didn't want to lug up a 300 lb 50" TV screen up stairs to my apartment.
The picture had looked fantastic at the store, but when I got it home into a lower light setting, ooh boy... My plasma magnified every mpeg artifact in the DirectTV compression. Color banding was everywhere. Watching Band of Brothers episode 4 (I believe) resulted in a great primal scream from me. (It's the episode where they sneak up to the German camp on a foggy night with a full moon in the background. All I could see was 64 shades of gray coming off the moon in circular bands. Jeep headlights in that same episode exhibited the same problem).
However, with the proper calibrations (using a dvd like video essentials) you can get a decent picture. You can get an even better picture with DVD material using an upconverting DVD player with DCDI (especially if your Plasma/LCD TV doesn't have good picture correction to begin with.)
But take away the geeky sexiness of it, if they had a lighter wide screen CRT, I'd probably be looking at that.
I have an LCD panel driven via DVI and find the display to be crisper than the CRT I had before.
Is the perceved superiority of CRTs (as mentioned in the article) because most people just plug LCD screens into the old analog output from their video card?
... or am I just imagining things?
Actually, I'm not too sure they are talking about HDTV CRTs. The "traditional tube TVs" (their words) they are talking about might be analog NTSC/PAL CRTs. The article doesn't make this clear. Note that "they" are from India, which seems to have very little HDTV content available. The article goes on to say:
An article from the Hindustan Times ("HDTV: Bigger, better but at a price") says that HDTV "could touch the lives of high-end consumers in India by 2007."
Buyers of HDTVs in India might be seeing the enhanced artifacts of 720x480 video that are less visible on a non-HDTV CRT. I wish the freakin' article had more details.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
I was indecisive for a few months on getting a new TV. We're at the start of a transition. The 36" & 40" CRTs are probably the best pictures I've seen..but they are massive, and 4:3.
If you watch lots of TV on lots of different channels (most will be in 4:3), then get one of those, or even just buy a $200 27" CRT. cos in a few years HDTV will be phased in.
If you watch mostly network TV, or the other HDTV channels (ESPN, Discovery, HBO & movie channels, we only get about 15 here now out of a few hundred regular ones) or mostly movies, then get a HDTV now! The sports stuff (mainly football) looks completely amazing. & newer movies (unfortunately only big studio ones) will blow you away. Sopranos in HD will definitely have people flocking to your house too.
Most of the cable channels are NOT HD/16:9 (at least here): Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, CNN, IFC, Sundance, all other HBOs except for main one, History. This leads to a stretched picture, or bars on the side to keep it 4:3. this is the suck part I mentioned earlier.
With Netflix tho, I watch a movie a night & you gotta have widescreen, unfortunately the largest 16:9 CRT TV I've seen was 30-33", which might be ok for a small bedroom but its really super tiny screen.
I personally like the LCD projection ones, 42", 50", 60"..less than half the price of HDTV plasma (EDTV plasma is lower resolution), not as thin but lots thinner than other projections of the same size...so not cheap, but affordable for home theater types.
So use a projection system. Then, when you sit up, you can rotate the picture onto the wall.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Someone gave me an old Tosh laptop, it was DOA, but with a 15" LCD, so I brought it back from the dead, and now I use it all the time because I noticed that I don't get any eye strain at all from viewing it after long periods of time.
I can't say that about any CRT I've ever used.
Works for me, but I'm not a gamer either.
apple only sells "hip" products. they try to distance themselves from the IBM workhorse image (notice the iMac monitor integration.. clever way to make a big CRT "hip"). the CRT just isn't hip, which is why they only do the LCD thing now.
"hip" matters because apple is in the business of selling an image to the "creative elite." basically this means they sell to latte-sipping superficial people who really do not care about getting from point A to point B, so long as it's done in style.
of course, certain things apple makes are better.. but the majority aren't.
How much real estate is your TV using? If your house is small (and expensive like in most metropolis down town areas), you value the real estate your TV takes up higher than picture quality or the extra price of a flat TV.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Also, CRTs give a better image for only certain measures of 'better'.
I'll completely agree with both article and many posters that the small LCD screens are a waste of money for most people. They look crap compared to a CRT of equivalent size.
That said, we aren't usually talking about those. Anything much over 28" in a direct-view CRT usually suffers from noticeable geometry issues - even the £2000 ($4000) fancypants 36" 16x9 Loewe sets I've looked at. Geometry problems obviously aren't even possible on a Plasma or LCD, because the pixels are physically stuck in place.
32" Direct-view CRTs weigh an absolute tonne (well, 50+kg, anyway) - we nearly did ourselves an injury carrying mine upstairs with two people. So I dread to think how we'd lift a 36" up to the living room, even if there wasn't the issue of how difficult it was to squeeze my 32" TV round the corner on the stairs. A 37" flat-panel would, however, be easy to move.
Finally, from a normal viewing distance, I can't even see the difference between SD and HD resolution on anything smaller than a 37". So when talking about how much better HD looks, I can't really see the point in even discussing CRTs.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I work in an IT store and stare at new CRT and LCD screens most of the day, without a shadow of a doubt the CRT has a far clearer and crisper image. (to my eyes anyway) I agree most people just get LCD because they think it is the latest technology so it must be the best. If someone comes in wanting to do serious graphic work I alway direct them to the top end CRT screens.
Besides, that adds up to 40fps, which exceeds TV's ~30fps.
TVs are interlaced and actually refresh 60-half pictures a second.
LCDs boasting 12ms refresh lie, because they use two refreshes to reach the pixels intended color.
A witty
Buy a digital projector (and possibly a screen). The picture quality is fantastic on the recent models I've had experience of, and with the right kind of screen and room lighting, you can even be finicky about brightness/contrast and still be happy.
Besides, it just has that "home cinema" feel.
If you work for really nice people, they might let you bring one home from work! More fool them (and you if you can't afford to replace it). But if you trust yourself, it's a cheap way to have a home cinema (and you can just use a wall rather than screen!)
I can testify that it's the only way to play games console car racing games . Or watch LOTR.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
Viewing angle??????
...unless you think opposite and consider it an advantage that nobody looking at your screen from a side would see a thing.
That word was unknown before the LCD era. It's a strictly LCD-related problem and still serious though great advances have been made...
CRT has full 180 degrees viewing angle. So does Plasma. LCDs are the ones with problems in this area.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
I know a fair amount about sound reinforcement - if you're getting lag it is almost certainly the result of a speaker being far away from a listener, and not the length of cable (unless you are running your cable across several states).
Unless you're in some kind of theater-sized room, however, the delay really won't be noticable. In a big living room I doubt it takes sound more than 1 ms to travel across the room. In really big rooms with multiple speakers you usually use digital delay generators - not to avoid a perceptible lag, but to avoid phase problems (you can't hear a 20ms delay, but you can hear what happens when you mix a sound coming from a speaker directly overhead with a sound travelling halfway across a big room if the speaker overhead isn't delayed to make both sounds arrive at the same time).
If you're getting lag it might be due to some crazy setting on your receiver (if it has a delay feature), a bad DVD player (more likely), or if it only happens on one DVD it is just a bad hollywood post-production job (most likely).
I don't doubt that your father's setup has issues, but the lag is certainly not the result of cable length - signals travel at nearly the speed of light in cable, and you probably need miles of length to even start to make the delay measurable by any but the most advanced equipment. (Assuming, of course, that the signal wasn't completely attenuated into non-existance by such a cable run.)
Something missing altogether from the article is any mention of power consumption. A typical CRT monitor burns 120 watts while an LCD can work with 30 watts. Depending on your electrical rates, this can translate into hundreds of dollars a year. It also lowers the load on your UPS during a brownout, which means it's more likely your complete system will be able to stay up for extended periods of time.
While a CRT can offer superior contrast ratios, a quality LCD can provide 500:1 or better (CRT's are generally 1000:1). The advent of OLED will help LCD's advance in this area, and quite likely surpass CRT's in the very near future.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
FWIW, we've had three WEGA's, and they have all needed major repairs within 3 years.
Great picture quality, no doubt, but these aren't your father's 1970 Zenith which is probably still going strong.
One power source (intermittent shutting off), and two blown picture tubes in three years kind of turned us off to that series of TV ... although it may be chalked up to unique experience.
This is probably the only product that I would recommend one of those Homer Simpon "extended warranty, how can I lose?" purchases on.