CRT vs. LCD

[fell8]

The whole LCD vs CRT debate is a little silly, it's something of an apples/oranges situation. CRT holds the price & image quality titles and will continue to do so for at least a few more years. Why? Well, there's a few reasons.

1) Practical LCD technology is maybe 30-40 years old, whereas CRT tech is more like 80 years old. CRT has had a much longer time for refinement and innovation.

2) Currently there are 2 or 3 (maybe more) competing LCD technologies, which can be a good thing in that competition breeds innovation. However, it also means that development resources are being spread across more fronts, reinventing the wheel several times, if you will. CRT tech was more or less nailed down from the start, leaving development resources free to build on existing improvement.

3) CRTs are analog, making them able to produce a virtually infinite number of colors. LCDs, being digital, are limited by their 6 or 8 bit technologies. Currently this is not an issue, but as we all know, GPU technology is constantly improving, which means 40 bit, 48 bit, etc. color depths are not far down the road. 8 bit LCD tech has no headroom for this, which means to take advantage of such increased color depths, 10 bit, 12bit, etc. LCD techs will need to be developed. This will likely mean slower response times and brings us back to point #2.

Don't get me wrong, I like LCDs. They are the future. Look how far they've come in such a short period of time, and this is just the begining. There's still a ton of room for improvement. I have no doubt that in 10-15 years LCDs will not only trounce CRTs in image quality, but will also be far cheaper to produce, leaving CRTs obsolete and probably completely unavailable as anything other than specialty items.

I look forward to that day.

 

[Insane3D]

Originally posted by: fell8
The whole LCD vs CRT debate is a little silly, it's something of an apples/oranges situation. CRT holds the price image quality titles and will continue to do so for at least a few more years. Why? Well, there's a few reasons.

1) Practical LCD technology is maybe 30-40 years old, whereas CRT tech is more like 80 years old. CRT has had a much longer time for refinement and innovation.

2) Currently there are 2 or 3 (maybe more) competing LCD technologies, which can be a good thing in that competition breeds innovation. However, it also means that development resources are being spread across more fronts, reinventing the wheel several times, if you will. CRT tech was more or less nailed down from the start, leaving development resources free to build on existing improvement.

3) CRTs are analog, making them able to produce a virtually infinite number of colors. LCDs, being digital, are limited by their 6 or 8 bit technologies. Currently this is not an issue, but as we all know, GPU technology is constantly improving, which means 40 bit, 48 bit, etc. color depths are not far down the road. 8 bit LCD tech has no headroom for this, which means to take advantage of such increased color depths, 10 bit, 12bit, etc. LCD techs will need to be developed. This will likely mean slower response times and brings us back to point #2.

Don't get me wrong, I like LCDs. They are the future. Look how far they've come in such a short period of time, and this is just the begining. There's still a ton of room for improvement. I have no doubt that in 10-15 years LCDs will not only trounce CRTs in image quality, but will also be far cheaper to produce, leaving CRTs obsolete and probably completely unavailable as anything other than specialty items.

I look forward to that day.

Well said. I have no doubt that in the future, LCD's will reach the level of high end CRT's, and likely surpass them. Also, people do different things with their systems. If I was looking at text for hours on end, and rarely watching a DVD or gaming, or working with photos, I would probably have an LCD for that system...

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: Insane3D

Originally posted by: Zebo
They don't make any CRT's that can hang with LCD's. Get an LCD.

The cheap CRTs suck ass and thats all they make anymore.

crt is dead.

yup

FD Trinitrons died two years ago. U-NX Diamondtrons died over 4 months ago.

:roll:

Are you serious? I'd glady match my 22" NEC/Mitsu against any LCD out there.

2048 x 1536 @ 85hz anyone?

LCD's are generally better than low end CRT's at most things, but when you compare them to a high end CRT, they are still lacking...plain and simple.

 

[wchou]

The problems with CRT is that it is a projection much like big screen TV
You must look directly into it at 0 degree angle to see it vividly if you just look at it from 30' to 180' angle, it looks like crap and you can barely see anything.
Now this is what I called limited technology, much like those solar powered calculator
They may have sharper images but they will not replace crt completely, crt will always be cheaper and affordable to those less fortunate then the one with money to burn.

 

[mordantmonkey]

lets not forget dead or stuck pixels. some people say you don't notice them after a while. bullshet.
i guess i have better than normal eye sight, because i can see each pixel on an lcd without straining and a birght white or magenta or green pixel on an LCD annoys the holy hell out of me. maybe the mfg process will get better or my eye sight will get crappier.
until then I'll stick with my CRT .

 

[ExpertNovice]

Originally posted by: wchou
The problems with CRT is that it is a projection much like big screen TV
You must look directly into it at 0 degree angle to see it vividly if you just look at it from 30' to 180' angle, it looks like crap and you can barely see anything.
Now this is what I called limited technology, much like those solar powered calculator
They may have sharper images but they will not replace crt completely, crt will always be cheaper and affordable to those less fortunate then the one with money to burn.

I believe you meant TFT LCD instead of CRT!

Among the many other problems LCDs have that doubtfully can ever be corrected is "native resolution." A CRT can be changed from 640x to 2048+x and look good. An LCD can also be changed and looks good as long as you always choose it's native resolution. If you actually have need for only one resolution then there is no problem!

Still, we are being forced to use LCD's and that is not necessarily bad. Like SSN reform (if you live in the U.S.) the transition is painful but the future will be better having done so. (PS. People of my age will be hurt the most due to the proposed SSN reform.)

Now, where is that LCD Jukebox that will change monitors for me when a different resolution is needed... or perhaps 2, 3, or 4 LCD's should be attached to each computer.

 

[Oyeve]

I use a Dell LCD 1905FP and a Sony 20" Trinitron CRT. The Sony blows away the LCD in EVERYTHING but size and power consumption. I have been using my Sony for a few years and it is on several hours a day and has not "dimmed" at all. I run games at their highest res and they look great (except of course games my vid card chokes on in super high resolutions) My refresh on the Sony is at 100hz and far surpasses HD TV resolution. While I love my Dell 1905FP it in NO WAY can match the quality of my CRT. I use the 1905fp for console gaming as I have all my console games at my PC workstation and can either play them on my Sony or LCD. I was going to replace the trinitron with the LCD but dont think the quality is good enough on the LCD to justify replacing my crt. Movies look like crap on the LCD and superior on the CRT. I know the 1905fp is known for crappy movie playback but even at work where we have mac cinema lcds my CRT still plays movies better than those multi thousand dollar LCDs.

 

[ExpertNovice]

Oyeve,

I agree. By multi thousand dollar LCDs, I assume you have actually tested the IBM T221 or it's bigger brother? I'm surprised considering how impressive the numbers, including the $7,500+ price tag, are.

================================
Final update on the adventure of moving to LCDs....

To make my Dell 2005FPW useable I purchased Spyder2 and calibrated the monitor. Still too bright.

I then purchased LaCie Blue Eye 2 and recalibrated it to a Gamma of 2.4, color temp 6295K. This was done with the starting brightness at 100.

Testing the monitor by placing the "device" (that is what LaCie calls it) in the center of the monitor the report is fairly consistent. Place the device in a corner and it shows that the monitor is not very stable. However, I am unable to detect any changes so it is fine by me.

The point is that by raising the gamma and calibrating I still get a beautiful monitor. Then, when using Excel, Access, Word (default white backgrounds) I can turn the brightness down to 0 and the system is now useable.

Of course for video editing the gamma goes back to 2.2. This is easily done using the nVidia Desktop Manager profiles.

All in all the software/hardware to calibrate the monitor cost me more than the monitor! However, not knowing anything about gamma and color temperature made manually calibrating the monitor impossible. Of course, the documentation on calibrating monitors talks about how VERY hard it is to manually calibrating an LCD monitor.

Final thought. It would have been very hard to use the LaCie calibration system had I not used the Spyder2 system first. The documentation was MUCH better and the sytem much cheaper. Unfortunately Spyder2 could only calibrate to 1.8 or 2.2 and either 5000K or 6500K. Ultimately I needed a gamma of 2.4.

Good luck.

PS. I should mention that a new video card was required but that was much cheaper than the calibration software. ~$100 vs the $550 for the two calibrating packages.