What is the difference between an LCD and a conventional moniter?

[HereThereandEverywhere]

What is the difference between an LCD and a conventional moniter? I know what the literal difference is but im convincing someone to buy one and the first question he asked was " is is better for my eyes"...well....is it?

 

[fatbaby]

CRT= Cathode Ray Tube, LCD= Liquid Crystal DIsplay

 

[AluminumStudios]

They do have some fundamental characteristic differences:

CRT (traditional monitor) - better contrast, better motion (no ghosting), runs at multiple resolutions, better color graduation (more colors)

Flat panel - brighter (emits more light), often less contrast, fewer colors (sometimes you see banding across smooth gradients), slower motion response (you see ghosting during a lot of motion), looks GREAT at it's native resolution, but will look a little chunky at any resolution other than the one it is manufactured at. Flat panels also take less power and produce less heat. I seem to recal some tech site doing a test with an ammeter (amp meter?) and showing that a CRT was consuming 60 watts while a flat screen was consuming like 13 watts.

Basically I prefer CRT for graphic arts and motion video work, but I prefer flat panels when I'm at work looking at text, spreadsheets, graphs, etc. I find flat panels very easy on the eyes but they're not accurate enough in terms of color, contrast, and motion to keep me happy when image or video editing (hobbies of mine.) Really expensive ones are good for graphic arts though.

I think Tomshardware.com recently had a comparison of 13 flat panel displays, you might want to look for it, as I remember it talked about some of the good and bad things about the newer, less expensive ones.

 

[HouRman]

The difference I see is Price. It's 700 and up for a good 17 or 19" LCD, while it's $400 and up for a good 19" CRT. The CRTs usually are capable of higher resolutions and higher refresh rates. I've also noticed the dot pitch to be smaller for CRTs and the quality to be better.

I suppose there are some LCDs with great quality and use DVI connections but the costs are high.

Right now I think the 19" CRTs are a good buy because they are bigger than the norm (17") and arn't priced much higher. The aperture grille monitors tend to use up to 30% more electricty than shadow mask probably due to brighter colors. Typical watts for 19" crts range from 100-140 watts as stated by the manufacturer. LCDs are as low as 30 watts.

Since CRTs can have crisper images, and can use shadow mask to make text easy to read, I suppose CRTs would be better on the eyes. Drawbacks of a CRT are power consumption, weight and size compared to LCDs.

 

[Kerle]

Actually, due mostly to lower radiation emissions, LCDs are considered to be better for your eyes. And there's no NEED for LCDs to use masks, as the color of one pixel cannot spread into an adjoining one - it's just not applicable to the technology.

Depending on the quality of the masking and phosphors, a CRT can have ghosting, too. Most do, actually, to some degree or another, but LCDs are currently even worse.

If you're reading text or doing still 2D image editing, a strong case can be made for some of the newer LCDs being more suited to the task. The main problems that currently plague LCDs are response rates, brightness and color depth, and all of these have improved considerably in the last few months.

Microsofts support of sub-pixel font rendering in Windows XP (through Cleartype) is also a serious bonus for LCDs - it really can make a difference. I know; a fellow programmer and I were the first to do a Gameboy Advance demo that took advantage of sub-pixel rendering.

It's no longer really a CRT vs. LCD issue, but more of a monitor vs. monitor issue - I've seen quite a few LCDs that look better than the 19" CRT I'm typing this on, but I've seen quite a few that are obviously worse, too.