Basic CRT or half decent LCD?
 

Hi,

I'm considering swapping my 19" Dell M993s CRT monitor for a flat panel LCD display. If you do the research, the general opinion seems to be that for colour fidelity, CRT is still better than LCD - in most areas. As one of the monitor's main uses will be photo editing, colour accuracy is important.

The question is, is a fairly cheap and cheerful CRT, such as the one I have, any better than an entry level desk top publishing LCD? It would appear from reading around that most desk top publishing CRTs could reproduce about 85% of the AdobeRGB colour space and, unless you are prepared to pay somewhere in the region of £4K, an LCD is limited to being able to reproduce about 72% of the AdobeRGB colour space. This is all very well, but I have been unable to find out how much colour my rather more run of the mill CRT can display.

I would be looking to spend a max of £500 on a monitor and a colour calibration tool of some sort, so I'd probably be looking at a £400/£100 split respectively. The NEC LCD1990SXi appears to be the most highly regarded monitor for colour management in this price bracket. Details here: http://www.nec-display-solutions.co....6174,group=all
What I don't want to do is spent this kind of cash and find that although I've gained a lot of desk space and cut my electricity bill, I get the over-bright cartoon colours that seem so typical on the "gamers PC" flat panels I'm used to seeing.

So, am I better off waiting a couple of years until the technology is better and prices have fallen? The problem with this approach is that there is always something else better just around the corner, it is the nature of technology. Should I stick with my CRT? Is a cheap CRT still better than a £400-£500 LCD?

Your opinion would be appreciated.

BTW, I did find this in my research. Very, very interesting post.....
http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/...01&#entry54301
Posted at the very end of 2005, so things have moved on a bit, but I wonder how much.

Duncan

CRT, CRT, CRT, CRT!

THE best CRT on the market is the Trinitron from Sony. Used examples can be less than £100!

I use a Sony Multiscan E250 (low end) that I purchased from PC World 'clearance' for £75!

Image will appear softer than LCD/TFT as they apply sharpening to your image. Good CRT's apply little or no sharpening so image sharpness and colour is faithful.



And...one more bonus on colder days you need no heating in your room :D

I have also been looking to replace my CRT but there is no way I could work with any LCD's that I have seen so far, I have only seen LCD's up to about £500 but they do not come near to a reasonable CRT IMO.

I was in the same position as you, and looking around, reckoned I would have to pay about £600 for a decent 21"+ TFT. I decided to buy a used 19" Iiyama Vision Master Pro CRT for £60. TFT prices are dropping and quality rising all the while. The next big thing seems to be OLED displays which offer huge contrast ratios, much more even illumination, and a broader gamut. But they have been 'about to appear' for some years now.

www.TrustedReviews.com seems a good place for reviews.

I'd stick with CRT. The colors are so much clearer and accurate.

When I was working close to a professional photography studio all their computers were still using CRT monitors where all the others (eg. reception) were using LCDs.

Thanks for the input guys. I'll stick with the CRT and save my £400. Probably still buy a calibrator widget though. Anybody got any advice on those? £100-150 max.

Duncan

I second that, I once went through my work to a well known portrait studio and guess what.... All using Catpure One RAW converter, Photoshop CS2 displayed on large CRT's

Hey I just thought...

Is there anything stopping you from using CRT and LCD? ;)

Quite a few graphics cards allow you to connect more than one monitor at a time to one PC.

I'm suggesting this because LCD monitors are "eye friendly" as they don't cycle the display like CRT monitors do. Many offices and other such work places move to LCD because very few people get headaches while using them like they do with CRT monitors. PAL systems run at 60Hz which also happens to be the same frequency of the human body - the two clash.

If you mostly use your computer for graphics and not much else then stay with just a CRT. If you use your computer for lots of other things as well then it's worth a thought...

Zeb,

I had already thought of this, and my graphics card does support two outputs. The trouble is, the thought of switching to LCD was driven by the need to recover some desk space. I'd need a skyhook to use two monitors, and I'd end up getting neck ache.

Duncan

ooo, probably not a good idea then :D

Allow me to correct a few inconsistencies.

PAL employs a 50Hz scanning frequency and the human eye is fooled in to believing motion by more than 25 still images per second. PAL uses two fields to make one frame hence 50Hz (25 images). CRT monitors have been scanning greater than 50Hz for years and years.

Ouch! Silly me - I meant to say 50Hz :o

After all the years programming for 50Hz and 60Hz systems and video editing I can't believe I made that mistake! :o

Thanks for pointing that out!

The days when a good CRT outperformed a good LCD are gone, dead and buried.

First, it's just about impossible to buy a good CRT anymore. One by one, all the top-class CRT manufacturers have bailed out of the industry. So you will almost certainly have to go second-hand - and accept that you will be getting an old, possibly rather tired monitor, with poor prospects for repair should it need that anytime soon - spare parts for CRTs are also hard to get.

Second, TFT screens have come of age. Good ones are really good these days.

But note well: cheap, games-oriented TFT screens are hopeless for photographic work. If you go TFT, you need one that is designed for doing real work on, not some jumped-up games console display with rapid refresh and lousy colour.

Types of TFT

Twisted Nematic Film is the common sort. It's reasonably cheap to manufacture, easy to make fast for games and movies, and has good contrast if it's done right. But it has bad viewing angle problems and (in most cases) cannot display 24-bit colour. You can put 24-bit colour in, but the monitor electronics clip the 8 bits per channel down to 6 bits. Worse, it has linearity problems - i.e., as well as having a smaller number of colours, it switches between them in an undesirable way. Bottom line: don't do photographic work on a TN/F screen.

S-IPS. Super In Plane Switching panels have much better colour accuracy, and are viewable at a much wider range of angles. They are slow (which doesn't mater if you are not into games) and have poor contrast. They are also significantly more expensive to manufacture. There are several variations on S-IPS which apparently deliver much better contrast and are thus well-suited to photographic work.

MVA and S-PVA. There are so many MVA variants marketed that it is hard to keep track of what is what. The original MVA was decently fast, had good viewing angles, and good contrast, but poor brightness and colour. Newer developments of MVA are apparently much better in those respects. Samsung's S-PVA is a variation on the MVA theme, which provides excellent colour, contrast, and viewing angles, with decent speed as well.

Which TFT screen should you get?

For the fine detail, you will have to make up your own mind. But so far as the big picture goes, it's easy. Do not even think about any of the popular TF+N screens. They are, for photographic purposes, pretty much useless. Better to keep your old CRT than go down that road. If you are going TFT, get something decent.

I have not used any of the modern S-IPS panels, so I can't comment from my own experience, but from my reading I'd say that you would probably do just fine with one.

I have used Samsung's magnificent S-PVA panels, and the day I got my first one of those was the day I stopped using my CRTs for photographic work - and it wasn't as if I had cheap and crappy CRTs, I was running an excellent old Hitachi 19 inch and a simply wonderful, top-of-the-range Mitsubishi 22: at the time, pretty much the best readily available monitor money could buy.

The Samsung 214T was AU$1200 - a lot of money considering that a typical reasonable quality 19 inch TFT was around $380. I ordered it on spec, sight unseen, as much in hope as in expectation. 24 hours later I picked up the phone and ordered another one - it was that good. I couldn't bear swapping back to lesser screens after using the 214T, not even the Mitsubishi 22. (Oh, and the 214T has pretty reasonable ex-factory settings. I have calibrated mine, but the factory default colour settings aren't atually all that far out - much better than most screens. I now own three Samsung S-PVA screens. I added the smaller 19 inch brother of the 214T to go in the showroom. Unfortunately, people see it there, admire the picture quality, and wind up buying it. I keep replacing it.

I'm sure that there are other good TFT screens around, but they are hard to find in this gadget-riden, throwaway world, and nearly everything you will see in the shops will be yet another crappy TN Film screen. You have to look hard, ask questions, and be prepared to pay for quality.

Prices. No point quoting you Australian prices. Even if you do the currency conversion, prices change all the time and your market may be different anyway. But I can do it this way: let's say a typical "good quality" 19 inch TF N screen costs 100 clamshells. A cheap one will be around 70 or 80 clamshells. And the Samsung 19 inch S-PVA will be around 140 clamshells. The 214T will be about 300 clamshells. I imagine that the prices of the S-IPS screens will be about the same as the S-PVA, probably a bit more, but I'm only guessing.

One more thing. Viewing angle matter. Matters a lot. You see, with a monitor that doesn't have excellent viewing angle technology, every time you move your head the tiniest little bit, the colours change. You just can't tell if your picture is too bright, too dark, or what. You end up guessing all the time, which just isn't good enough.

Yes. In most cases, you can output to two diferent screens no worries, but a lot of video cards are unable to output at two different frequencies at the same time. This means you have to run your CRT at 60hz, which looks terrible! (Your particular video card may be different, but it is essential to check this before you buy.)

Nope. Not even close. PAL is TV, nothing to do with monitors. Same with NTSC: TV technology, and very old TV technology at that.

CRT computer monitors - pretty much anything made since IBM introduced the first VGA screen in 1987 - can run at any of a wide range of frequencies. A properly adjusted monitor runs at 85hz or better. The rule-of-thumb is to adjust your refresh frequency up until it looks good, then go up a bit more till it starts getting fuzzy or weak, then go back a step or two.

You need about 85hz on a CRT to avoid flicker. In most cases, there is little or no point in going beyond that - it just stresses the electronics harder for no tangible benefit. CRT screens, remember, actually only have one pixel lit at any single instant. The illusion of a well-lit, even screen is created by a combination of phosphor latency (the glowing dot takes a while to fade) and the human eye (past 85hz or so we can't see the flicker, so it effectively ceases to exist, so far as humans are concerned).

Running a CRT at 60hz produces a very stressful, flickery picture. Many (most?) video cards default to 60hz or 72hz or even an eye-destroying 50hz because these very slow refresh frequencies are the only ones certain to work on any monitor, even a very old, cheap one. But all modern video cards (since about 1985) allow you to adjust the refresh rate, and that is the first thing you should do after you pug a monitor in and adjust the display resolution.

TFT screens work a completely different way. Essentially, each dot on a TFT screen is switched to a particular brightness level and then stays there until further notice: it doesn't pulse the way dots on a CRT do. No flicker. So refresh frequency for TFT screens is a non-issue. Most default to 60hz, which is fine. But they could be 160hz and wouldn't look any different, or 0.6hz and the only difference would be very slow screen redraws.

Good stuff Tannin and thanks - the technicalities are a bit above me but it looks as if there are good TFT's out there if you know what you are looking for. The Samsung SyncMaster 214T goes for around 500 GBP in the uk so I am going to see if my local PC world has any to take a look at. I am still working on a old (but still very good) 17" CRT, Gateway VX700 which I believe is a Sony engine but would like something bigger.

Cheers and thanks again
Roy C

Is a Dell M993s CRT better for general graphics than a mediocre LCD, definately yes, no comparison!!! See here for full spec and reviews. http://www.retrevo.com/search?q=Dell...=review+manual


Model number M993s CRT (19")

Screen dimensions

Preset Image Size
(This is the Dell-recommended viewing image)Diagonal 17.32 inches(440 mm)
Horizontal 13.86 0.16 inches(352 4 mm)
Vertical 10.39 0.16 inches(264 4 mm)Viewable Image Size (VIS)
(This is the maximum viewable image) Diagonal 18.00 inches(457.2mm) Max
Horizontal 14.37 inches(365 mm)
Vertical 10.79 inches(274 mm)Dot Pitch0.236 mm Deflection angle90° Phosphor typeP22 (R,G,B, medium short persistence)Faceplate coatingAnti-static/anti-glare non-diffusing, multi-layer coating, high gloss value (spin coating)Resolution

Horizontal scan range30 kHz to 96 kHz (automatic)Vertical scan range50 Hz to 160 Hz (automatic)Optimal preset resolution1280 x 1024 at 75 HzHighest preset resolution1600 x 1200 at 75 HzHighest addressable resolution1600 x 1200 at 75 Hzhttp://support.dell.com/support/edoc...phics/note.gifNOTE: Dell does not guarantee image performance on non-preset video modes.http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...phics/note.gifNOTE: Dell guarantees image size and centering for all preset modes listed in the following table.Supported Resolutions



nirofo.

Thanks, I'd found the specs for my current monitor, and know that it's better than a cheap consumer LCD panel. I'm trying to gauge if it's any better than a TFT designed for photo editing such as the NEC 1990SXi, this is a S-IPS panel. Detailed spec here:
http://www.nec-display-solutions.co....6174,group=all
Paste below

MultiSync® LCD1990SXi
Price: £379.00*
*suggested street price (price excluding VAT)

1990SXi-MonitorViewFrontalBlack: 16.5 kb
1990SXi-MonitorViewLeftBlack-Face: 27.6 kb
1990SXi-MonitorViewRightBlack: 16.2 kb
A new 90s range high-end 19 inch professional display as an entry level model for the CAD/CAM, DTP, financial market and medical sectors.

Colour Versions

* Silver Front Bezel, Light Grey Back Cabinet
* Black Front Bezel, Black Back Cabinet



Main Main
Details Details
Downloads Downloads
Certificates Certificates
Specials Specials
Media Media
Details
Panel Technology S-IPS TFT
Screen Size [inch/cm] 19.0 / 48.2
Pixel Pitch [mm] 0.294
Viewing Angle 178° horizontal / 178° vertical (typ. at contrast ratio 10:1)
Contrast Ratio (typ.) 600:1
Brightness (typ.) [cd/m²] 270
Response Time (typ.) [ms] 9 (grey-to-grey), 18 (11 white / black; 7 black / white)
Colours [Mio.] 16.77
Horizontal Frequency [kHz] 31.5 - 81.1
Vertical Frequency [Hz] 50.0 - 85.0
Optimum Resolution 1280 x 1024 at 60 Hz
Other Resolutions 1280 x 960; 1152 x 870; 1152 x 864; 1024 x 768; 832 x 624; 800 x 600; 720 x 400; 640 x 480
Connectors Digital: x DVI-D; Digital/ Analog: 1 x DVI-I; Analog: 1 x D-sub 15 pin
Plug & Play VESA DDC/CI; DDC2B/2Bi; EDID Standard
Adjust Functions Advanced NTAA (Advanced Non-Touch-Auto-Adjustment); Advanced User Menu; Auto Adjust; Black Level; Brightness; Colour Temperature Control; Contrast; Expansion Mode; Fine Adjust (analogue); Hotkeys; Intelligent Power Management; Language Select; Monitor Information; OmniColor™: sRGB and 6-axis-colour-control; On-Screen-Manager (OSM) lock-out; Sharpness; User Menu
Safety and Ergonomics CE; TCO'03; TÜV ergonomics approved; TÜV GS; C-tick; GEEA/Energy Label; Energy Star; FCC Class B; PCT/Gost; UL/C-UL or CSA; CCC; ISO 13406-2 (pixel failure class II); MPR II/ MPR III; PCBC/B-mark; PSB; RoHS
Power Requirements on Mode [W] 46 (max.)
Power Requirements Power-saving Mode [W] 1
Power Supply 100-120 V/220-240 V; 0.63 A/0.27 A; integrated power supply
Ambient Temperature (operating) [°C] +5 to +35
Ambient Humidity (operating) [%] 30 to 80
VESA Mounting [mm] 100 x 100
ErgoDesign®: Height Adjustable Stand [mm] 150
Dimensions (W x H x D) [mm] 402.3 x 410.7 - 560.7 x 247.3 (Landscape mode)
Screen Tilt [°] -5 to +30
Swivel [°] -170 to +170
Bezel Width [mm] 12 (left and right)
Cable Management yes
Kensington Lock yes
Weight [kg] 9.0
Specials Adjustable power LED (colour and brightness); Advanced NTAA (Advanced Non-Touch- Auto-Adjustment); AmbiBright; ambix³™; Auto Black Level; Auto Brightness; Auto Contrast; AutoBright Technology; CableComp with Sync Continuity Detection; ColorComp; DDC-CI; Direct brightness and contrast; EcoModes; GammaComp (12-bit look up table) and 12- bit gamma correction; L-shape Front Button Technology; NaViSet® and NaViSet® Administrator compatible; OmniColor™; Overdrive; Quick release stand and handle; Rapid Response Technology; RapidMotion; Realtime clock with scheduler (Power-On and Power-Off timer); Self diagnostics; TileMatrix and TileComp; TORO™ Design
Audio Functions Option: MultiSync® Soundbar 90
Colour Versions Silver Front Bezel, Light Grey Back Cabinet; Black Front Bezel, Black Back Cabinet
Shipping Content Monitor; Power Cable; Signal Cable DVI-A - VGA, DVI-D - DVI-D; CD-ROM; Sales Office List; Manual
Warranty 3 years warranty including backlight

Thanks Tony and Nirofo for the pointers.

Duncan