do crt damage your eyesight or just cause eye strain (head hurts, eyes hurt)? I was going to get an lcd to help my eyes, and for that reason only. Though, is the $400 price tag worth it? I know one thing lcds have, anti-glare and no/little flickering. Most good crt that i'd get instead of an lcd would have anti-glare coating, plus being a flat screen CRT and good monitor positioning i dont have to worry about glare. Secondly, the no/little flickering, will it be a big difference from just setting your crt to 85mhz-100mhz? If instead of getting some cheap $300 lcd, i would rather get some sweet .20 19" high quality $200 flat screen crt if the difference in "Eye strain" isnt huge.
do crt damage your eyesight?
- Thread starter MadOni0n
- Start date
I'm no expert at this but IMO if you care for your eyes go for LCD.
That of course is an issue if you spend a lot of time in front of your screen.
After so many yrs in front of my CRTs I finally start to realize that my eyesight is not what it used to be. I've never had any headaches though even after hrs of gaming.That said I always try to use 100Hz and with a light on of course at nights.
But when I use a friend's LCD I can feel that my eyes are safe in front of such a screen.
That of course is an issue if you spend a lot of time in front of your screen.
After so many yrs in front of my CRTs I finally start to realize that my eyesight is not what it used to be. I've never had any headaches though even after hrs of gaming.That said I always try to use 100Hz and with a light on of course at nights.
But when I use a friend's LCD I can feel that my eyes are safe in front of such a screen.
Good CRTs can get you really high refresh rates even at higher resolutions which is much easier on the eyes. Either way you're still going to be forking over a good chunk of cash.
still, i can probably get a great crt much cheaper then the lcd, if the lcd won't be neccessary anymore.
Originally posted by: Bateluer
CRTs can damage your eyes. They are shooting electrons directly at them.
Part of the reason why I will never go back to using a CRT.
Links?
No, the electrons definately go towards you and not the side, but the screen absorbs closer to 100% of them, AFAIK. That's how CRT's work though - you have three electron guns encased in lead at the back of your monitor shooting electrons through a screen (Aperture Grille, Shadow Mask, etc.) and then projecting an image on the glass. The thick layer of glass is what keeps the electrons at bay, but it's a pretty unnerving process when you think about it.
LCD's on the other hand run a voltage through liquid crystals, which rotate depending on low (=no?) or high voltage.
It's all becoming hazy to me at this point; I covered this in electrical engineering two years ago! It should be something like how I explained, at any rate
.As for the eye strain - CRT's redraw themselves line by line X number of times per second, where X is the refresh rate in Hz (so a monitor at 75 Hz redraws the entire screen 75 times in a second). I'm 99% sure LCD's redraw the entire (or most) of the screen simultaneously, which is why refresh rates don't really matter on LCD's (or at least, at 60 Hz+, it's a nonissue).
There's is no way that electrons can get through the glass of a CRT. Electrons can't even travel in air, let alone burrow through glass! That's why the glass is evacuated, to allow the electrons to travel unhindered, otherwise air molecules would stop them.
getting a good video card and high end crt will be a better choice. Just get the resolution to your comfort and high refresh rate (>85 Hz) will help your problem. LCD is very bright and it will strain your eyes for extended viewing and you also have to consider about fixed resolution on majority LCDs.
VirtualLarry
No Lifer
- Aug 25, 2001
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Well, CRTs can easily cause eyestrain, and it is true, you have a particle-accelerator pointed right at your head. There are also (supposedly, although this was more true in the past, before TCO II and MPR specs), much stronger EM fields emitted around the CRT than an LCD. There's a reason why your parents told you to sit back a few feet from the television set when you were a kid. Unfortunately, most people's faces are just inches away from their PC's display screen; I know mine is. I personally find myself unable to concentrate heavily, when in front of a CRT. I can actually feel the field around one too with my hand, also my USB 802.11g adaptor. I have far less of a problem with most LCD screens and laptops, and none whatsoever with a pen and paper. Too bad I can't get a notebook (paper one, that is), with an internet connection.
Some LCDs can be overly-bright though, due to the backlight used and the contrast ratios that those can put out. Oftentimes the contrast/brightness can actually be higher than a CRTs, for some of the very newest LCDs on the market. I always turn my CRT's brightness and contrast down quite a bit. In fact, I've done some experiments, and when looking at the screen, I'm actually slightly more comfortable wearing sunglasses; unfortunately, that also has a lot of practical disadvantages, especially when working indoors. You aren't always looking at the screen.
Too bad I can't get a notebook (paper one, that is), with an internet connection.Some LCDs can be overly-bright though, due to the backlight used and the contrast ratios that those can put out. Oftentimes the contrast/brightness can actually be higher than a CRTs, for some of the very newest LCDs on the market. I always turn my CRT's brightness and contrast down quite a bit. In fact, I've done some experiments, and when looking at the screen, I'm actually slightly more comfortable wearing sunglasses; unfortunately, that also has a lot of practical disadvantages, especially when working indoors. You aren't always looking at the screen.
Set your CRT to 85Hz refresh rate and you should have no problems. I have none.
To test which is the best refresh rate for you, open up a blank document sheet to fill the screen and stick your face on the screen, with your eyes really close to the screen. If you can see flicker there, then you need to up the refresh rate. Mine is 85Hz.
To test which is the best refresh rate for you, open up a blank document sheet to fill the screen and stick your face on the screen, with your eyes really close to the screen. If you can see flicker there, then you need to up the refresh rate. Mine is 85Hz.
Simply put, running a CRT at a low refresh rate, or a LCD at a high brightness, is likely to be unpleasant fairly soon. In daylight, I run my Samsung 191T LCD at ~25% brightness, color-matched for accuracy, and find it quite pleasent. My old Viewsonic PS790 CRT (run at 85hz) was a great monitor in its day, but it started to loose its color vibrancy and sharpness as it aged (as all CRTs do). Can't say I notice much of an "eyestrain" difference between these two higher-end monitors - whatever you use, just make sure you adjust it for comfort (and that includes relative height, so as to avoid neckstrain). I've seen a lot of threads go by on this topic, and all I've seen is lots of opinions, but no evidence.
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
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I believe that's static electricity, not magnetism that you feel.
As has been said a few times here, get a good monitor that supports high refresh rates. My screen here is a Nokia 445Pro, and it does 120Hz at 1024x768. No eyestrain here at all.
We do have lightning though, so electrons are capable of travelling through air. Beta radiation is comprised of high energy electrons. According to this, "The electron gun inside a television tube could also be considered a source of beta radiation, which is absorbed by the phosphor coating inside the tube to create light."
And, beta radiation can travel a few meters through air.
There's also the possibility of X-Ray emission if the lead coating is damaged.
But really, if these various kinds of radiation did leak out of monitors regularly, you'd likely have people dying all over the place from radiation poisoning or serious cancers. That's of course not the case - monitors really don't seem to put out much of any damaging radiation. Sunlight is more hazardous to your health - its radiation has been proven to cause skin burns and cancer.
well thanks for all the great technical info, but i'm still not sure if everyone is saying to get the CRT instead of the LCD?
The electrons are primarily absorbed by the phosphors in the display (which reradiate the energy as visible light), not the glass (although that does probably absorb any stray electrons that get through). Newer CRTs give off relatively little EMF (and practically zero 'hard' radiation). That said, spending a lot of time starting at any sort of artifical display will give you eyestrain, and may impact your vision over time. I'm not sure if any sort of research has proven that LCD displays are less harmful in this regard than CRTs.
Also, your eye strain might be the dryness in your eyes (red eye effect). Some people forget to blink (well, you don't actually remember to blink, but you are more focus when viewing/staring @ monitor) as often then before. And your eyes will be dryer than usual (especially if you wear contact lens) and that will cause eye strain as well. So, if that's the case, just buy a bottle of eye tear from Save-on and use it when you have eye strain. Oh, and remember change to higher refresh rate on your crt display.
BTW, I don't like to turn down the brightness on my laptop lcd too much. Everything looks grey and dark. I know, that's the cause of turning down the lcd brightness, but I can't bare the ultra brightness of my Dell lcd for extended viewing time. And turning it down makes everything look dull and dark. But for my CRT, I have find the good middle ground between the settings.
BTW, I don't like to turn down the brightness on my laptop lcd too much. Everything looks grey and dark. I know, that's the cause of turning down the lcd brightness, but I can't bare the ultra brightness of my Dell lcd for extended viewing time. And turning it down makes everything look dull and dark. But for my CRT, I have find the good middle ground between the settings.
Those are photons.
Electrons rarely travel through the air unless it's to get to a positive ion.
And 99.9% of the radiation that it does put out comes out the back.
But there is no hiding the fact that CRTs have better response time and much better color reproduction and better contrast than LCDs. The only real plus to LCDs are that they use less space and that they use less power and the picture can be crisper, depending if you're willing to dish out the bucks for digital. Other than that, there is no reason to buy one.
Oh yeah, they also look sexier because of because of their elegance, but want the sky in my game to be gray, not green because of bad color reproduction.
VirtualLarry
No Lifer
- Aug 25, 2001
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Originally posted by: Jeff7
I believe that's static electricity, not magnetism that you feel.
Er, no. I know what static fields/charges feel like. I also know what EM fields "feel" like. The human skin is quite capable of sensing EM fields. Perhaps not as good as a shark's skin, but that doesn't mean that we don't have that capability. Also, my WiFi adaptor does not generate any sort of significant static field around it, while it does generate a far more significant EM field, and you actually can sense it, relative to the orientation of the antenna. It's quite interesting, really.
At 120Hz, I would hope not. Even at 75Hz refresh, I think that's becoming marginal for me in terms of peripheral-vision flicker. I can still see it slightly, on light-colored backgrounds like the white on web pages. Very nice monitor, btw.
Somewhere, I had some articles from an old "Amatuer Scientist" magazine, about converting an old B&W television into a home-made X-ray machine. (No joke!) Also, when you buy a television, the seller is supposed to file something with the gov't, regarding the device with respect to X-ray radiation generation or something. (I'm a little fuzzy on this point, but I won an NEC television in the early 90s due to a contest, and there were three 'tags' adhered to the box from the mfg, and they claimed that one or two of them had to be sent to "register" the x-ray generating device with the gov't or something. I'm curious if this requirement is still in force or not. I do know that most older televisions do have a radiation warning somewhere on the back of them.)
Then again, most modern computer CRTs are much more heavily-shielded and better-designed in terms of radiation emissions than televisions of yesteryear, especially if they are designed to be sold/marketed in certain european, japanese, and scandanavian countries.
You are confusing the effects of EM radiation with nuclear radiation. There are different types, with different effects. I find that EM fields tend to affect my concentration, while I don't really think that they may be strong enough in those cases to cause my body to get cancer, for example. People often tend to forget that the body and brain are made up of a very complex, and very sensitive EM system. I think that's another danger that many people don't realize - placing metal into the body (or having it leached into the brain due to heavy-metal poisoning), can cause much worse (more concentrated) EM-field effects, in very close proximity to sensitive tissues, like the brain. I'm still a bit uncertain if WiFi (microwave freqs) are at all dangerous, long-term, to the body or not.
That's UV radiation - of which there is negligible emission from CRTs, AFAIK.
This is news to me. Which LCDs have you used and have this problem? My LCD monitor has better color reproduction than most CRTs I've seen.
Zephyr
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