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Are CRTs History?
DreamWheezer asks: "I work on a medical imaging program that uses CrystalEyes for high resolution true color stereoscopy. This program requires high resolution high frequency true color CRTs. Very recently, a vendor trend has developed: almost all are dropping out of the CRT market in favor of LCDs. Unfortunately, LCDs cannot render high resolution page sequential stereoscopy. The vendors have said that autostereo LCDs are on the way in 12 to 18 months, but what can I do in the meantime? Furthermore, does this mean the end is near for CRTs?" While there does still seem to be a market for CRTs, it seems to be dwindling to a narrow niche. Are LCDs ready to take over as the primary computer display or is the retirement of CRTs, premature?
LCDs are certianly more popular these days but CRTs are hardly dead. NEC has a massive lineup of CRTs from low end consumer models to $1000+ professional models. Viewsonic likewise has a huge lineup, though theirs don't go to quite the same level as NEC. I personally just purchased a LaCie 22" CRT (NEC makes their monitors for them).
CRTs are certianly falling in popularity, but they are by no means dead. LCDs still have flaws that are not acceptable for some appilcations. I imagine there'll still be major production of CRTs for another 5 years at least, and you'll still be able to get pro models for years and years to come.
I play UT2K4 on a laptop LCD with a wireless mouse, and still manage to top 3 just about every round. What's this 'LCDs aren't for gaming' that I keep hearing?
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
I don't understand this article. Is it hard to buy a high-quality CRT these days? No. Just surf over to Viewsonic or NEC. Seems like many companies are still manufacturing CRTs right now, which means they will be available from the manufacturer for at least 4 years, and could still be purchased second-hand for (I'm guessing) another 15 years. If in 15 years LCDs still don't meet your needs, I imagine it won't matter, since your particular application will have long since been replaced with something different.
Sorry, but this seems like a non-issue to me.
It's not just that they have higher resolution...
-They don't have a FIXED and lower resolution (and anything running at not-native res looks FUGLY, even with like ClearType and what not)
-CRTs have a LOT more contrast
-CRTs don't have/get dead/stuck pixels
-CRTs have a good angle of view
-CRTs don't have slow response delays (and LCD manufacturers that claim super low delays are using tricks to be able to claim those numbers)
-CRTs aren't limited to 18 (eek) or 24bit color, tend to have better color accuracy, wider gamut...
-Good CRTs have a long lifespan, not sure about LCDs
Dtiching my perfectly find 21" CRTs for 21" LCDs would cost me an arm and a leg, would also require me to buy a newer and more expensive spectrometer too.
As far as I'm concerned, that's a lot of money wasted to get inferior technology.
Oh, and for those people that only talk about electricity savings, well, why not get rid of your SUV and buy a scooter instead? You'll save a LOT of gas and money (a lot more than swtiching monitors could ever make you save)! Oh, what's that you say? It's not quite the same? Exactly. LCD isn't nearly as good as CRT either.
Unless you think your (reclaimed) desk space is worth 1000$/sq ft, or that you think LCD is better in a interior-designer standpoint, in which case I'll grant you it's a better buy for you.
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Yes and no.
If you use a DVI connection and run at the native resolution a half-way decent LCD looks perfectly clear. Add to that antialiased fonts and you're in for a winner on the eyes.
However, at work we have analog connectors for our LCD monitors (actually, the monitors have DVI inputs but our desktops only have analog out). Even after "auto-calibrarting" the monitor like 20 times I get ghosting.
DVI on an LCD can make all the difference in the world. Most people at work don't notice the oddities experienced with teh analog connections, but some of us can. Fortunately my new work machine will have a DVI out on the video card
But if you run analog, or MOST IMPORTANTLY the non-native resolution it can look like utter garbage. DVI is pretty common on video cards now a days, and I believe it's getting more common on LCDs too.
Flat panel displays have a "sweet-spot" resulution. Anything outside that looks terrible.
It's not a "sweet spot," it's the dimensions of the physical pixels on the display, also known as a native resolution.
With that said, computer labs full of 1024x768 native res flat panel displays all set at 800x600 is one of the worst tech atrocities in the world.
I just replaced an aging but beautiful high-end CRT, and when I started looking, I found high-quality straight-digital (i.e. DVI) LCD screens, 1280x1024 at 19" in size, sporting pixel switch rates of 8ms... For about $350.
All of the reasons to avoid LCDs are evaporating: price, smearing/update speeds, resolution...
End-to-end digital video is startlingly noticeable if you are used to CRTs, even good ones.
Really excellent LCDs are now well within the price range of what I used to pay for premium CRTs.
I don't see myself buying another CRT, pretty much ever.
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Yes, when the refresh time on LCDs was 25ms or more the ghosting in games made them a less than desireable choice. Finding an LCD with a refresh time greater than 16ms these days is becoming increasingly rare, though.
I have a Dell 2005FPW widescreen LCD. It has a native resolution of 1680x1050 and a refresh time of 12ms. There is absolutely no ghosting on it whatsoever. Doom3, FarCry, HL2, et al all look and play amazing on it. I've played most of those games on a high-quality (read "Dell", "Viewsonic" or "NEC") LCD with a 16ms refresh time and have not noticed any ghosting. The higher contrast ratio, more intense brightness levels, and digital signal and color of LCDs make games look better on them than on CRTs too.
I'm certain there are exceptions to every rule and some no-name Korean brand LCD you can get at Sam's Club for cheap will probably be less than optimal in games. But, by and large, LCDs are as good as, or better, than CRTs for gaming these days.
I always have to wonder, when someone uses the "LCDs suck for gaming" argument if they have even played a game on an LCD in the past 6-12 months. If they haven't, they shouldn't comment on it.
As my sibling stated, it's not the color, it's the ghosting. When you're playing a fast paced action game, and all you see is one long blur, it's pretty obvious that the LCDs aren't up to par (at least not the 21" LCDs, at least relatively cheaply). I have a Dell 1800FP at work that is relatively new. We play old games on that on occasion over lunch. Grand Theft Auto 1 starts streaking in no time. It's really noticeable when you're on a motorcycle and zooming straight ahead.
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There are LCDs for gaming that don't ghost, but they're EXTREMELY expensive if you want a lot of real estate + low response times. A 21" replacement LCD is already a lot more than a CRT, and when you factor in the lower response rates
(I should also say that the last I looked into this was at Christmas, so things may have changed in the last 6 months. If you find a 21" LCD for 450$ and 8-12ms response rate, let me know. Until then, CRTs are king.)
You stated:
5 0526/index.html
"With that said, however, I'd rather have to deal with a mountainous behemoth that looked good in games than one that was light and looked like shit."
This led me to believe you had a problem with the colors (which older LCDs definitely had a problem with). As for speed, check these out:
http://www7.graphics.tomshardware.com/display/200
They are suitable for gaming (even FPS type games). They can be had for under $450. You might say $450 is a lot for a monitor these days when you can pick up a 19" CRT for less that $200. However, the LCD will have better color reproduction than your pos CRT, MUCH longer life, the colors won't be mostly faded out 5 years after you buy it, you won't have to spend an hour trying to get the image shape correct, it won't be distorted around the edges, it won't use anywhere near as much electricity, it won't weigh a ton, and it will definitely be much sexier. To me, it's easily worth the extra cash. You do the math and see if you don't change your mind.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
is only 8 bits per color channel, or 256 shades.
Your eyes are capable of detecting thousands of shades of a single color.
24 bit color is not enough for serious graphics or photographic work, which is why many professionals work in 16 bit per channel. Most digital cameras today capture at 12 bit or higher.
Also that LCDs cannot display as many colors as CRT's is simply false. There are LCDs available today capable of displaying most of the Adobe RGB gamut, something which very few (and expensive) CRT's can do also.
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Here ya go/ lcddisplays/xseries/vx924/
http://www.viewsonic.com/products/desktopdisplays
4ms or (1 second) / (4 millisecond) = 250 htz.
250 htz is much more then your 60/72/75/80/100/120 htz your crt does.
Don't try to convert response time into refresh rate. The response time is how long it takes a pixel to change colors, and the refresh rate is how often the monitor gives instructions to a pixel. The two measurements are not related, and you cannot find one given the other.
Refresh rates in Hz are pretty meaningless for LCDs, actually. The measurements on monitors are response time and refresh rate, and they each have their place.
The response time on an LCD is the amount of time it takes a pixel to change color once it's been instructed to do so. This is a meaningless measurement for a CRT, because a CRT pixel is lit only when the electron beam is on it. For this reason, you never see a CRT advertised with a response time.
The refresh rate of a monitor is the number of times a pixel is redrawn per second. On an LCD, the refresh rate is almost always 60 Hz. That's high enough to present smooth visuals to the viewer. However, because the pixels in an LCD keep their color for several milliseconds after each refresh, they don't need to be refreshed any more often than that. On a CRT, on the other hand, the more often a pixel is refreshed, the smoother the image will appear. This is because the pixel only has color when it is being refreshed. If the refresh rate is too low, the pixel and therefore the whole image will appear to flicker.
LCDs are frequently set at a low refresh rate like 60 Hz, because that's all they need to present consistent visuals. For an LCD, a much more important number is the response time.
CRTs are often set to a much higher refresh rate, because that enables a more consistent image. The response time is irrelevant.
Computers need to explode more often.
I know a little something about displays ;)
-They don't have a FIXED and lower resolution (and anything running at not-native res looks FUGLY, even with like ClearType and what not)
LCDs with decent electronics dont have much of a problem with this. I suppose if you buy no-name brand, it might.
-CRTs have a LOT more contrast
Not really. The contrast ratios for good LCDs are beyond what anyone needs. Black is black, white is white.
-CRTs don't have/get dead/stuck pixels
Neither do most LCDs these days... even my laptop with its rather average display has no dead pixels. This has stopped being an issue.
-CRTs have a good angle of view
As do most decent LCDs. Lower priced CRT's still have a slight edge in this regard vs. comparable lcd classes.
-CRTs don't have slow response delays (and LCD manufacturers that claim super low delays are using tricks to be able to claim those numbers)
I've been using LCDs for the better part of 8 years now and have *never* seen this.
-CRTs aren't limited to 18 (eek) or 24bit color, tend to have better color accuracy, wider gamut...
18 bit? What LCD doesnt display 24 bit? Further, there are LCD displays that can display the Adobe RGB gamut (Eizo makes a model of it now, more are to follow). Adobe RGB CRT's are very rare and expensive. CRT phosphors age and shift color frequently enough that you need to recalibrate every week or so. LCDs don't shift as much as the only thing they have that ages is a fairly stable backlight (I recalibrate monthly)
-Good CRTs have a long lifespan, not sure about LCDs
The backlight on an LCD is typically rated in the several 10s of thousands of hours. And while CRT's slowly degrade by flickering and blurring, LCDs do not.
I switched to LCDs several years ago. The color performance is more stable and images are much sharper.
The complaints I read about LCDs on here might've been valid 8-10 years ago. Today they are not.
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I have a Panasonic DVD player almost a decade old now, it was one of the first to have 10 bit DACs. and yes, the picture quality IS noticeable better than most, this is only part of the reason it was (at the time) nearly $1000 DVD player.
Many graphics cards now have ten bit D/A convertors. With the proper driver this means 30 bits of color resolution and yes, it does make a difference.
You know... there's a reason it looks fine at 800x600 and 1600x1200.
It's called integer ratios.
Try it at 1280x960, see how good it looks then.
(Also, your LCD's color purity sucks compared to a good CRT. Sorry. It does. Anyone who works color-calibrated will tell you this.)
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
I bought a Dell 2005FPW (20.1" wide screen, 1680x1050 resolution, 12ms response rate). I paid $407.85 for the monitor and a 5-pack of CD-RW discs (The discs brought the total over a minimum for an extra discount.
Watch http://www.dealmein.net/ every day for a month or so, and you'll find a similar deal.
I like mine... I noticed ghosting problems when I ran those LCD tests that are designed to show such problems, but don't usually notice a problem when actually gaming...
Even worse, the response time is the best-case for the smallest transition for the fastest subpixel element. The actual response time varies for the red, green and blue subpixels. It also varies depending on whether the subpixel starts completely off or completely on. It also takes longer to transition from fully off to fully on than it would from fully off to slightly on.
The response time should be given as a range. Instead they give you the best response and people falsely extrapolate refresh times, as the GP did.
Actually 32bit color is still really only 24bit color. The fourth byte is alpha.
And 16 bit coloris only 65536 colors if the format is 5 bits for red, 6 for green, and 5 for blue. If it is 555 format then you only get 32K colors.
There is no such thing at 6 bit color.
8 bit color is not stored the same as 16 bit or 24 bit color. In 16 bit color mode, each color has either 32 different shades, except in 565 mode where green has 64 different shades. In 24 bit color mode, each color has 8 bits, so each color has 256 different shades.
But 8 bit color mode would only be enough for 4 shades for red and blue, and 16 for green, or 8 for red, 8 for gree, and 4 for blue. That's not nearly enough shades for smooth color.
So, 8 bit color mode uses a palette. Each of the 256 colors is an index into a list of 256 colors in 24 bit color format. This allows you to have smooth transitions, at the expense of the number of diffrent hues can have onscreen at once.
6 bit color on an LCD means that when you display a 24 bit color image on it, some of the colors which should be different will end up being the same. Each color (red, green, and blue) that makes up the pixel can only have 64 different shades, whereas 24 bit color has 256 different shades for each component. That means that color transitions are 4x less smooth on an LCD panel than they are on a CRT which can display the full range of colors. It also means that you ARE in fact wasting those 24bit color displays, because the resulting image will be only marginally better than a 16 bit color image.
Of course that doesn't mean you should run your 3D games in 16 bit color mode, because blending colors is more accurate when you have more precision.
Also, who knows if those 64 shades are spread out evenly over the spectrum. It might be that the colors near the middle of the shading spectrum get more attention than the colors which are near white or black, which would reduce the problem somewhat unless you are looking art very dark scenes, which happens to be exactly what you would be looking at in many games, so yeah, LCD sucks for games, and LCD sucks in general.
I am using a CRT right now, and I will be sticking with a CRT until carbon nanotube displays become common because those will actually look like a CRT image and not dim and blurry, and with dark edges and ridged lines across the screen.