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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."
The thing I like most about the new LCDs and Plasma screens is that it makes the CRTs less expensive...
I don't mind the bulkiness because I get bonuses: Cheaper price and (not just according to this article, but personal experience) a better picture...
but flat panels still look so cool...
Emotional purchases, indeed. "Yeah, but this one goes up to eleven!!"
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
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.
People (especially ladies) like the flat screens because of their super slim depth, massive picture size, and amazing light-weight.
Show me a 60" CRT -- and if you can even find one, find a rec-room it would fit in, and try and lift it!
Sam
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!
The issue isn't resolution or viewing angle.
There is an interesting set of articles over at Extremetech that compare CRT, LCD, Plasma and DLP display systems.
Your typical CRT TV may not be better, but a CRT HDTV will outperform a flat HDTV. And it'll be a hell of a lot cheaper too.
are you telling me that "Regular Ol' TVs" are better than flat HDTVs?
No, they are telling you that HDTV's made with CRT technology (The huge, heavy boxes) display a better picture than the thing plasma or LCD screens. The article is pointing out -- quite rightly -- that general consumers have associated "thin" with "high tech and good picture."
In fact, if you have the space, you can buy a sizable CRT HDTV for a relatively affordable price. Not cheap, but something an average consumer could afford if they were willing to sacrifice a bit.
On the other hand, I believe this trend has continued because people genuinely really do like the thin, lighter screens.
Like it or not a television is one of the most dominant objects in a many peoplees homes. They don't want it big, bulky and ugly.
One theory I read awhile back was that there has always been a significant number of wealthy men who wanted to go buy a big screen televeision, but were basically restrained by their wives who didn't want the huge ugly beheamouth in their living room. Sure, that flat screen costs twice as much, but now the wife says go for it because its not ugly.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Cnet has nice article on FED screens using carban nanotubes
I already get a warm fuzzy feeling from the static off my crt when I hug it and it's been running for a while.
Checking out my form of escapism.
As much as this can create some benefits for those of us who are poor (like dual g4's with 512mb ram on ebay for $400), they cause a lot of problems in the market in places where the goods are a little bit more necessary.
Take food, for instance. I would very much like to buy organically grown, chemical and gmo free vegetables (which my grandfather was able to buy when he was my age), but because those have become yuppie foods, they're priced out of my price range. There's no reason that veggie burgers should be more expensive than real burgers, where you have to raise a whole damn cow as opposed to growing some soybeans, but because they're trendy, people pay a lot of money for them.
The "stupid rich" create benefits for things like technology, because they offset R&D costs when the company overprices when it first comes to market. But for goods that I feel everybody deserves the highest quality, they really make life difficult.
Your CRT monitor according to some studies shows it can cause brain damage and short term memory problems due to the radiation.
This is just silly. Why, many of us here on Slashdot have been using them every day for years now... some for decades! And when you look at the fine group we have assembled here, I'm sure you won't find any evidence of brain damage or short-term... ah... wait a sec, now. What were we talking about again? No, of course I remember... heh. Just give me a few moments to review some polaroids and these notes that I've written on my skin, and I'll comment further.
I can tink of two reasons other than hype why flat-panel tvs are selling like hotcakes
1)they take up far less space, its a big deal believe it or not. Its why I got a flat panel for my computer and why many people buy flat-panel tvs. The less space a device takes up, the more space there is for other things and the less cramped the room looks. and speaking of looks....
2)They look damn sexy. Remember, these are living room pieces and you want them to look good. This isnt a piece of hardware you stuff under the desk, its displayed prominently in most peoples living rooms. In short its like furniture and people want it to look good.
3)The awe value, i.e. your friends walk in and go ohhhhh-ahhhhh.
make sense now?
--Anubis
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
They don't want it big, bulky and ugly.
Yeah, watching TV shouldn't remind them of their spouse!
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
In picture quality and price, the CRT wins hands down, but they only go up to about 36" in size. Any bigger and you'll be looking at a rear projection set which, sure enough, also uses CRTs, but the CRT's disadvantages of size, weight and power consumption are multiplied even more in a projection set. If you want a 40" big screen and don't want a huge projection set, $2000 for a plasma is pretty reasonable, but if you're a big time couch potato who'll leave it on a lot of hours, it'll fade noticably in a few years. $2000 for what's essentially a throwaway TV is a little steep for me, but hey, it's not my money. Also remember the plasma screens are power hogs just like CRTs. If I were buying now, I'd say the 32" HDTV CRTs are at the sweet spot in price, under $900. Or I'd get a 20" computer LCD and add a tuner box.
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.
They're getting better and cheaper all the time. Over Christmas, two members of my immediate family bought themselves projectors instead of a new TV. One was looking at spending $3000 on a 62" rear projection TV, but instead picked up one of those BenQ SVGA projectors for under $1000 CDN. The screen is easily twice the size, and they're just blown away by the clarity and how their Xbox looks on it with component cables.
Of course this solution doesn't fit all comers, as you have to put the projector somewhere that doesn't always see direct sunlight, and you need something to provide the signal (cable box, DVD player, game system, VCR with tuner, etc) and the audio (most use a stereo or 5.1 home theatre system), but in the end a lot of people I know who have gone the projector route are far happier with it than if they just got the TV. And in the majority of cases it's cheaper too. Even factoring in replacement bulbs. As my brother-in-law summed it up: "After everything is said and done, this is costing me $0.15 an hour to have a movie theater experience in my TV room!"
#Turning Economics Lecture Mode ON#
The reason veggie burgers are more expensive is not too much demand from those yuppies, but just not enough supply from producers. There isn't a big supply because there isn't a big demand at any price. Most people prefer real meat.
To get the economies of scale needed to provide cheap veggie burgers, a lot more people would need to want to eat veggie burgers.
As to your Grandpa getting cheap "organic" food, my guess is that relative to his income, his "organic" food was more expensive than your organic food is relative to your income. Food prices have declined sharply over the last century.
evanchik.net
Practically nothing is being done at 48-bit. Never really was. Thirty-six bit was common for a while (what people in the biz call "12-bit integer"), but it's basically gone the way of the dodo now.
Virtually all film and d-cinema work is being done in OpenEXR format now, which uses 32-bit floating-point pixels. Video work, of course, is all done in 10-bit integer. Well, not all. A surprising amount of it is still being done in 8-bit integer. But the pro stuff is practically all 10-bit.
While it's true that neither CRT nor LCD monitors can handle the complete dynamic range of 32-bit floating-point, LCD is quite a bit closer. DLP comes closest, of course, which is why it's being used in new movie theaters.
Interestingly, OpenEXR support is native in Mac OS X Tiger. That's the power of the BSD license, right there.
To read about the sort of things that are important to getting a good quality picture out of HDTV, I would recommend picking up any random issue of Widescreen Review magazine that features some CRT TV reviews to see what parameters they test on. The main thing that cheap sets (and any Plasma unit for that matter) really screw up are color linearity/accuracy and black level.
I'm going to address CRTs as far as good brands go, because if you're not getting a CRT you're prioritizing something other than image quality under normal viewing conditions. As such the non-CRT recommendation process becomes very specific to your priorities and it's hard to give a good answer. I'm not trying to be snotty here, because I certainly understand that it's often the case that display quality is not even close to the main decision parameter. For example, the last TV box I bought was a small projector, which I knew perfectly well wasn't as good as a CRT. But I was living on a 5th floor walk-up apartment and not about to haul a good TV up there when I had a short-term lease.
Anyway, Mitsubishi's high-end Diamond CRTs have the best factory calibration regime I'm aware of to make sure they are faithfully displaying their inputs, and their less expensive models are invariably at the top of the accuracy (and build quality) heap as well. Usually on the expensive side in get what you pay for fashion. At lower price ranges, Toshiba CRT sets usually give the best accuracy relative to their price. Some of the Sony sets look very good, but talk to any statistically significant number of people who have dealth with Sony repair centers and you'll never consider one of their products again.
As always with TVs, displays in showrooms are totally bogus unless you are verifying color temperature and brightness/contrast/sharpness yourself across sets. Most showrooms sets are too bright and too blue, because those are the characteristics that make people prefer a TV at first glance in the same way that louder stereo equipment always seems better at first.
60 fields a second for interlaced display. So while it's not 60 full frames, it is refreshing 60 times per second. Besides, an HDTV CRT would be displaying in 480p, which is 60 full frames/second.
Now how can a CRT have better picture quality than plasma, but plasma have a better resolution making it better for HDTV?When did resolution come to equal picture quality? What about color accuracy for example? Besides, by definition, the set has to display both 720p and 1080i to be an HDTV (or hd ready). HD CRTs do. Have you ever seen an HD broadcast on an HD Tube?
The fact is that this article is all hype.No, they make a fair assertion. The last half of the article is crap, but CRT still offers better quality than Plasma or LCD.