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Monitor Basics - LCD vs. CRT
Herbal V wrote in with a little article discussing the differences between LCD and CRT. Briefly summarizes all the major issues (Price, Refresh Rate etc). More of a beginner level piece, but as LCD prices are dropping like rocks, it's good to be aware.
Thing even came with a wall mount, too bad I live in an apartment (though toothpaste does have its other uses...)
Size is great, too, because a 17" LCD is almost as big as a 19" CRT :-)
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Well, LCDs are clearly on the way out. I just hope all those CRTs will be recycled (including TVs) and not end up in our water supply etc. How do my fellow Slashdotters recycle their old CRTs?
Everyone has been talking about LCD price drops for the past 2 years but it just has not happened. I've been in the market to buy an LCD monitor for the past 2 years and I have not seen any significant drop.
With all the news of companies dropping plasma, more LCD plants being opened, production being increased, technology improving, why hasn't the price of LCD monitors been cut in half?
I think it's because it has the cool factor that lets the companies sell it at whatever price they want.
Look at the quality of LCDs in some laptop and how cheap they are. OFten times a comparable LCD for a Pc would be more expensive than he laptop WITH the lcd.
The article only briefly mentions response time -- doesn't explain it. Response time was the reason I returned the LCD I bought and went back to my CRT -- DVD playback was awful. I imagine there are people who don't notice it, just as there are people who are more sensitive to lower CRT refresh rates, but it was hellish for me.
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It's funny, the main reason why I dumped 3 of my 20" Sun monitors for an Apple Cinema Display was the health issues. Sure, we have herd all the stories about special cameras that can read the material on your CRT through walls (and the person sitting in front of it), but that didn't stop me. No, I went ahead and set myself up with enough radiation to cook lunch. 5 months later, I found myself having trouble shaking off common colds, and my appetite went down hill. People should be aware of the health issues, not just specs.
Kind of OT, but important - if you are running XP with an LCD screen, don't forget to turn on ClearType. ClearType dramatically improves the quality of text displayed on screen, to the point where my work laptop almost looks as good as my OS X box w/CRT at home.
ClearType takes advantage of the fact that LCDs make coloured pixels out of three adjacent sub-pixels (usually R-G-B), rather than a CRT which focuses all three of its guns on the same spot. By varying the intensity of the three colours in each pixel, ClearType effectively triples the horizontal resolution of type. The trade-off is some slight colour-banding in small fonts, but the payoff is a much more readable screen.
I stumbled across the settings by accident. With the increasing popularity of LCDs, I'm surprised that Microsoft doesn't promote it more.
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I love LCDs myself and have replaced all of my monitors with LCD displays, but even to me this 'comparison' reads more like a fanboy article than an objective comparison.
CRTs certainly win out when it comes to contrast, yet the article only begrudgingly says that CRTs "may still have the edge". "May"? They absolutely do rule for contrast. When the electron gun turns off on a CRT the screen is black. On an LCD it's dark gray.
I believe CRTs also win for refresh/framerate. The 'reviewer' relies on manufacturer specs to evaluate transition times. Are these the same manufacturers who used to tell us that their 15" monitors were 17"? Or the same ones who would use inappropriate contrast tests in order to claim huge ratios? It's true that LCDs don't flicker, but a fast refresh CRT doesn't flicker either and the CRT can switch images very quickly. The best LCDs that I've seen are still inferior in this regard. I'd prefer to see independent testing to validate these claims of 16ms switching times.
Again, I love my LCDs and wouldn't trade them even though Doom III does smear a bit when I pan around. I love the low power consumption and I love the ease on my eyes, but it still doesn't change the fact that this article is just some fanboy fluff piece.
1 A drop in LCD prices, and I mean significant (who wouldn't)
2 Quicker response times (for people who like to watch DVDs or play games)
3 A change in number 2 should NOT change number 1 exponentially
4 KISS method of engineering. Worry about the DISPLAY, not what kind of speakers you can slap in the case and how many USB ports you can mount on the thing.
5 Digital and Analogue ports on ALL LCDs. Let the buyer decide which one they would like to use.
The author is also a bit wrong in writing that the brighter the monitor, the better. Actually, some LCD monitors can be just too bright. You have to remember that LCD works by blocking light generated by lamps, so if the lamps are too bright, you won't block enough light to make black appear really black (it is especially visible in darkened room). Another caveat is that LCDs perform worse at representing a whole spectrum of colors (they're worse at representing warm colors). And that modern LCDs often do not show full 16.4 million RGB spectrum, only a subset of it and interpolate inbetween, which makes gradients worse.
Having said that, I wouldn't give back my 17" LCD for any CRT, my eyes are too precious for me.
I bought a model that was reviewed on newegg.com by umpteen people and many said they had no dead pixels.
I tend to ignore such reviews. First of all, I have no guarantee that shop owners do not edit/cut out bad reviews. Second, a sizeable chunk of the reviews is written like "Hey, I just bought it 4 hours ago and it looks GREAT!!!! No more headaches and the fonts look so sharp!! Whopeee!". Sorry, this is not my idea of a noteworthy review.
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