Are CRTs dead?

Hardware and technical stuff
#1

Poking around Newegg and reading reviews, it looks like there aren’t really any good CRT monitors any more. Which is a shame, because I’m not impressed with LCDs at this point, especially not for the price.

Have things just moved around? Mostly what I was reading were Viewsonic reviews, explaining “This is a great monitor for this price, but it’s not as good as Viewsonics used to be,” specifically mentioning the lack of the apeture grill screens in today’s lineup (which is what I have and love). Do I need to go somewhere other than Viewsonic for an awesome CRT these days, or have they taken a back seat to LCDs everywhere, and I’ll just have to settle?

#2

Yes, the consumers have spoken. CRTs are on their way out.

Why are you trying to convince yourself that you need a CRT?

#3

LCDs do not impress him, at the price.

#4

You just can’t find a decent Victrola anymore, either.

Can’t get a decent CRT monitor, can’t send telegrams anymore… WTF is the world coming to?

#5

What about those one monitors.

Ill Llamas I think they were called.

#6

I still don’t use LCDs. They’re biggest advantage is their smaller size - which is great at the office. At home, a CRT still does me fine.

#7

They’re biggest advantage is their smaller size

You really haven’t used one have you? The difference between staring at an LCD vs a CRT is huge. I could care less about physical size. Once you make the switch you will be mad at yourself for having waited so long.

Chet

#8

Crap, I can’t even find a cable to connect my Babbage’s Difference Engine* to my Apple Imagewriter II.

*I do use an LCD monitor with it, though.

#9

I looked at LCDs just this weekend - a whole swag of them. They all still suffer from the same problem: they look fantastic at native resolution, they still look like shit at non-native resolution (unless it’s a direct .5 ratio of the native resolution).

#10

Plus the contrast, color and response rate still bother me in my new(ish) LCD monitor. Absolutely superb for text, but I prefer my CRT for gaming.

#11

Both my bride and I are still on Viewsonic CRTs, and apart from the footprint size, we can see no reason to switch just yet.

#12

Yeah, I took the same approach. I stuck with my CRT till it started dying on me and then got a nice LCD. I don’t notice much difference in image quality in the LCD vs CRT, but the LCD does have some wow factor because of the size, the widescreen format, and the picture in picture feature. I never thought I’d see a computer monitor with PiP but it’s kinda neat and I didn’t have to pay extra for it.

#13

After getting used to my LCD monitor, using a CRT makes my head instantly hurt. The difference in readability and eye comfort is humongous.

#14

They may be out of style for the the average consumer, but CRTs are still the best option for many applications. LCDs provide considerably less color depth and fidelity for doing artwork on a computer, which is why I still use a CRT. Resolution limitations are also a factor, both for artists and gamers. Even the high-end LCDs can’t match the resolution of a low-end CRT, and the high end ones totally blow them away. I’ve recently been playing Empire at War at 2048 x 1536. It looks awesome, and makes antialiasing completely unnecessary.

I have a 22" Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2070, which is still the best display I have ever used. And for the money ($700) still provides way more bang for the buck than you can get out of an LCD. I can see why many people would prefer an LCD, but I don’t. At least, not yet. There is no doubt in my mind that flat panels will eventually make CRTs obsolete, but we aren’t there yet.

You just aren’t looking at the right CRTs. If you get a CRT that is bright and supports high refresh rates, I doubt you’d notice the difference. They cost more, naturally, but so do LCDs.

#15

So at that resolution, the ‘jaggies’ aren’t going to be noticeable. But aren’t you still going to see aliasing artifacts, basically any time there’s structure at a frequency greater than your sampling rate? Or do modern engines remove that possibility, by properly scaling everything down (including geometry) to below the pixel spacing before rendering?

Even at 1280x1024, the jaggies don’t really bother me. But the occasional Moire pattern or other aliasing artifact is just brutal.

#16

My favorite thing about LCD’s is the way you can make cool screen art by pressing your finger against the monitor.

#17

You can do the same thing using a magnet on a CRT.

#18

So yeah, as everyone’s pointed out, there’s the native resolution issue, contrast, etc.

I’ll admit I probably haven’t used a top of the line LCD, so I haven’t made a personal side-by-side comparison. At work, we have the 17" Apple flat panels, which are nicely designed but don’t cut it graphically (odd choice for a printing company, where you’d think we’d care about that sort of thing).

But even if an LCD looked as great as my Viewsonic CRT (which from what I’ve heard, it won’t), I just don’t need an LCD. Desk space isn’t an issue, and I’m not moving it around that much, so I would gladly take the bulkiness of a CRT over the price of an LCD.

So back to my original question: Are there good CRTs left? I was looking for a 19" ideally, though my current one is a 17" so I could live with that too.

#19

Is a $1500 trinitron monitor at 100hz not good enough?

Anyway, regardless of the case, you are completely off your rocker if you think an equal price CRT comes anywhere close to the visual quality of an LCD.

#20

Show me an LCD that I can buy for $700 that will equal the image quality my current monitor. (Hint: you can’t, because it doesn’t exist). CRTs are also superior for soft-proofing, because an LCD screen’s colors tends to shift slightly based on even small changes in viewing angle.