With the advances in screen tech, does the good 'o CRT still have any advantages?

rocman

Junior Member
Sep 1, 2009
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With all the awesome progress we've made in display technology, I was wondering if the good o' CRT possibly still has an edge in certain situations? I found my old 17" Sony FD Trinitron monitor from back in the olden days - went all the way up to 1600x1200 - and it got me thinking. The disadvantages are obvious - bulk, power, size limitations.

But what about say...viewing angle and response time?

Guess in a way, I am trying to decide if I should hold on to the trinitron or get rid of it lol
 
Aug 11, 2008
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With all the awesome progress we've made in display technology, I was wondering if the good o' CRT possibly still has an edge in certain situations? I found my old 17" Sony FD Trinitron monitor from back in the olden days - went all the way up to 1600x1200 - and it got me thinking. The disadvantages are obvious - bulk, power, size limitations.

But what about say...viewing angle and response time?

Guess in a way, I am trying to decide if I should hold on to the trinitron or get rid of it lol

The only good thing I can think of about CRTs is that you can run almost any resolution and it looks OK, while on an LCD non-native resolutions look like crap.
 

PliotronX

Diamond Member
Oct 17, 1999
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The only good thing I can think of about CRTs is that you can run almost any resolution and it looks OK, while on an LCD non-native resolutions look like crap.
Yup, they have made great improvements with interpolation lately but it still ends up being a blurfest. I still have a 19" DiamondTron for old school gaming on a Pentium 200MMX @250MHz.
 

mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
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I wouldn't even call viewing angles an advantage of a CRT. A good IPS screen will maintain good viewing angles up until geometry says that you can't see the screen anymore (i.e. edge on). As for response times, the best CRTs topped out at 85 Hz or so? Newer gaming LCDs can go up to 144Hz.

So yeah, resolution flexibility and nostalgia are about the only advantages that I can think up.
 

ElFenix

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Mar 20, 2000
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I wouldn't even call viewing angles an advantage of a CRT. A good IPS screen will maintain good viewing angles up until geometry says that you can't see the screen anymore (i.e. edge on). As for response times, the best CRTs topped out at 85 Hz or so? Newer gaming LCDs can go up to 144Hz.

So yeah, resolution flexibility and nostalgia are about the only advantages that I can think up.

that's just refresh rate. display lag is the real killer. on a CRT the display lag is basically 0 because the monitor has no way to store the signal. any lag is really only due to the speed of light, which we're all subject to anyway.
 
May 27, 2008
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I've heard that higher end CRTs have a greater color range. But that was a couple years ago, I'm not sure if that is true anymore.
 
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OBLAMA2009

Diamond Member
Apr 17, 2008
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With all the awesome progress we've made in display technology, I was wondering if the good o' CRT possibly still has an edge in certain situations? I found my old 17" Sony FD Trinitron monitor from back in the olden days - went all the way up to 1600x1200 - and it got me thinking. The disadvantages are obvious - bulk, power, size limitations.

But what about say...viewing angle and response time?

Guess in a way, I am trying to decide if I should hold on to the trinitron or get rid of it lol

uh, if youre trying to kill yourself from irradiation you can sleep in front of it?

about a year ago i threw away 7 brand new aperture grille monitors (nokia, sony). they had been nice when we bought them, but with the low resolutions, i couldnt come up with any reason to keep them
 
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NickelPlate

Senior member
Nov 9, 2006
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The only good thing I can think of about CRTs is that you can run almost any resolution and it looks OK, while on an LCD non-native resolutions look like crap.

Yeah that and no motion blur. But I guess that problem has been solved with the new 120hz panels. Oh and CRTs help keep your room warm in the winter time.
 

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
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I remember how I and my sister actually killed a couple CRTs from heat and heavy use. The nasty smelling smoke came out from the holes and then they died. Never bothered to check the insides, then again, I heard how dangerous meddling around with those monitors are and hence avoided taking that risk.
 

thecrecarc

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2004
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Mostly display lag, and display lag only really applies in very rare circumstances, or if the LCD has a ridiculous amount. Also, numerous LCDs have sub-1 frame lag at 60 fps, which is sufficient for nearly all purposes.
 

Doomer

Diamond Member
Dec 5, 1999
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If the power cord is hard wired into the monitor it would make a good boat anchor.
 

homebrew2ny

Senior member
Jan 3, 2013
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You can make a pretty neat custom fish tank out of a CRT.

However you may be able to make a cool ant farm with a LCD so perhaps that's a wash...
 

mfenn

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Jan 17, 2010
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that's just refresh rate. display lag is the real killer. on a CRT the display lag is basically 0 because the monitor has no way to store the signal. any lag is really only due to the speed of light, which we're all subject to anyway.

Right, but a 144Hz screen can actually change the pixels at pretty close to that rate, so the pixel response time is similar to a CRT. You could put latency down as a CRT advantage though.
 

glugglug

Diamond Member
Jun 9, 2002
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The advantages are getting slimmer, but yes, a CRT still has advantages.

My 17" LG StudioWorks 78i that I got in 1995 or 96 for $250 easily did 1920x1200 @67Hz. If I lowered it to an annoyingly flickery 56Hz I could get it to do the 2560x1600 used by today's 30" monitors. And while the crispness was totally lost at that resolution, you could change a single pixel and see it. If you lowered it to 800x600 to find a font with the minimum number of pixels to be legible at any size, then started cranking it up, you could see that the absolute minimum sized fonts were legible up to 1920x1200. The "powerstrip" utility was awesome for creating/tuning custom video modes.

As a second monitor with that I eventually got a 19" with good specs (don't remember the model name) for an unbelievable $160 at J&R. With dual inputs and a built in USB hub in 2004. That 19" did 1920x1440 @74Hz, or 2560x1600 @65Hz. 100% legible even with fonts only having the absolute minimum number of pixels to make out the chars (usually about 6 point, depending what font we're talking about).

And yes, this is with analog input signals -- good old VGA actually has more bandwidth than DVI, although I would say it is beat by dual-link DVI, let alone newer standards like HDMI1.4, & Displayport. Any signal reflection in the VGA cable or timing difference between the 3 color pins becomes very noticeable at 2560x1600. Typical A/B switches add enough signal reflection to lower it to about the same bandwidth as single link DVI or worse.

I eventually replaced both of those monitors with 24" LCDs to reclaim some desk space. Or so I thought.... I'm not surprised to see a 24" LCD take as much space as a 17" CRT (even taking into account depth). But the stupid stand that came with the Dell 2408WFP makes it take more than the 19" CRT did, which was quite deep. At least my Samsung LCD doesn't have this deficiency, so it takes about the same space the rather compact (for a CRT) 17" did.

I also expected the switch to LCDs to result in lower power bills, and was sorely disappointed. The LCD power usage seems nearly independent of what is displayed on the screen, and mainly depends on how bright you set the backlight. For the CRTs, power usage increased depending on how bright the current picture is, (I mean white pixels, not just the setting) and also increased appreciably proportional to the horizontal refresh. (Roughly horizontal refresh = vertical resolution * vertical refresh + about 20% margin for vertical blanking interval). Given similar brightness the 24" 1920x1200 LCDs use about the same power as the 19" CRT when displaying a medium brightness image (like say XP default desktop) at 1920x1440 @74Hz. If the CRT is lowered to the 1920x1200@60Hz the LCDs are doing, it takes a mostly white screen (like a maximized word document) to use the same power, as measured by my UPS. So really, I am not seeing the power efficiency gains.

The real advantages of the LCD I'd say are:
  • Weight (my desk actually warped from years of having 2 CRTs on it)
  • Completely flat screen
  • Real rotation support. I rotated CRTs for awhile for code editing before LCDs were around. They tend to last less than 2 years in that orientation.
  • Ultimately, passive 3D, but not many options for that yet
  • digital input support (HDCP)
  • Potentially less space depending on the model
  • You can't hear the horizontal scan when blind people switch to a low resolution & refresh.
 
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