New video monitor.. LCD or CRT

Ron,

Get a 19-inch Diamondtron CRT. They're about $380. If you can go a little over budget, look at the 22-inch Diamondtrons.

Joe

Currently I use a pair of NEC 1810X (18" LCD) monitors at work and a Misubishi Diamond Pro 920 (19" CRT) at home. To my eyes the CRT has a small advantage, with slightly sharper focus rendering images with more depth. It also has a huge cost advantage, the LCD were £1800 last time I looked! I'd say the main reasons for buying an LCD screen are space and power saving, for ultimate performance I think CRTs are still just ahead.
John

For CRTs Iiyama are good. Don't buy cheap models.

I expect to be moving to an LCD next though, 17-18", 1280x1024 panels seem to be in the £500-600 region at UK price levels, which is rather more than a CRT but I think the physical benefits are valuable. And, FWIW, I find my laptop screen at 1024x768 rather more comfortable to look at than most small CRTs I come across.

Paul

I have a Mitsubishi Diamond PRO 920 like John's and cannot recommend it highly enough. Its cheap as well at about $500 US list and even less online. The 22" version (Diamond PRO 2060u) is about $900 US.

Make sure you get the proper one from the Diamond PRO range with a DiamondTron NF (Natural Flat) tube. The cheaper ones are a false economny. Lots of other companies badge engineer Mitsubishi tubes including Ilyama, Viewsonic, etc. and the best of these are arguably as good as the Mitsubishis and are slightly cheaper.

If you want better than a Mitsubishi then you can stump up an extra few hundred $ to have your Mitsubishi painted blue by Lacie or else you are into high-end stuff like Barco.

For critical work CRTs are still significantly better than LCDs although the single most anal person I know with respect to image quality uses an LCD screen and claims the only reason nobody else uses them is becuase they are girly-men who cannot adjust them properly

The differences between LCD and CRT are nicely sumed up at http://www17.tomshardware.com/display/02q1/020114/lcd-02.html

Lots of reviews at http://www17.tomshardware.com/display/index.html

Matthew

A large TFT screen [I've got an 18" LG L1800P] is sooo bright & crisp that any CRT looks dull and blurry beside it. Cleartype doesn't really work at this size, and you can see every pixel, which can be rather ruthless. Therefore for viewing images, the very bluriness of CRT wins every time. However, TFT is very seductive, and it doesn't take your brain very long to adjust to the difference - like the way a flat tube initially looks concave ..... then after a few hours a conventional FST looks like a goldfish bowl. Size may be significant - have you seen how big a 22" CRT is?? Will your desk be able to take it?

throb

A modern 22-inch CRT doesn't take as much room on the desktop as you might think. My jumbotron at work is only 18 inches deep. It's only a little bit deeper than the 17-inch Sony it replaced.

Joe

I have a SyncMaster 770 TFT 17" LCD (1280x1024) which I much prefer to the 21" Trinitron that it replaced. Reasons:

• Crisper and brighter than the CRT
• Uses much less desk real-estate (its only 2" thick)
• More energy efficient
• Produces no heat
• Instant-on from standby (CRT would take 20secs - seemed like ages)

Mine has zero dead pixels, which I understand is relatively rare. Apparently as many as five dead pixels out of the box are not enough to justify a return.

-John

LCDs look so bright because they are backlit but because the contrast is so low they make images look (relatively) flat and dull. You can make a CRT look exactly the same by turning the bightness up and the contrast down.

Or to put it another way, hands up all those LCD owners who can see the difference between A,B and C and X, Y and Z in the following grayscale:



Matthew

I can't see the difference between X, Y & Z on my crappy NEC MultiSync XV17+ CRT at work.

-John

[This message was edited by JohnS on FRIDAY 16 August 2002 at 00:47.]

Ron,

Choose a CRT. The LCD's are good for some uses, but not for displaying images to their best.

I would choose a Trinitron tube.

Obviously Sony make these, but you can find them in other monitor makes. Look out for two very faint horizontal lines 1/4 way up & down from the top/bottom.

Only buy a "pro" model. Your budget of $800 will easily get this.

Thank you all for your collective advice. I have just purchased through e-bay a 21-inch Dell CRT monitor that is based on a Trinitron screen. Pixel size is 0.24. Although used this was 'only' $329... far cheaper than even a mediocre 15inch TFT goes for new. I think this will greatly facilitate the image editing that I am spending increasing amounts of time on. The fact that many of those images will be b/w, the ability to display a wide contrast range is of paramount importance. I take pains to make sure that there is a wealth of tonality on my b/w negatives but almost always do some software based curve shifting- and usually around more than one point. A low contrast monitor would not allow me to see the effects of small changes (if what I read is correcct).

Here is an absolute beginners question... how do I calibrate the monitor to ensure the colours on screen are what they are supposed to be? I am thinking specifically about obtaining digital prints that look like their on-screen equivalents. I just don't want to dick around for ages getting flesh tones right on screen to end up with hepatitic printed results. Is there also some sort of printer calibration that needs to be done?

Do screens work better on Mana?

Ron
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>> Look out for two very faint horizontal lines 1/4 way up & down from the top/bottom <<

All aperture grill monitors have such lines not just Trinitrons so they are visible on Diamondtron based monitors as well.

Trinitron Vs Diamondtron is possibly an argument older and more boring than Ekos Vs ARO. They are very similar in performance except that genuine Sony Trinitrons seem way better than the badge-engineered versions whilst lots of people seem to be able to make good Diamontron based monitors so the latter are generally cheaper.

Matthew

Ron said "Here is an absolute beginners question... how do I calibrate the monitor to ensure the colours on screen are what they are supposed to be? I am thinking specifically about obtaining digital prints that look like their on-screen equivalents"

Two possible methods:

1) Set up your monitor using something like the Adobe Gamma utility that comes with Photoshop then do test prints, compare print with monitor and tweak monitor/printer settings accordingly to get something that look pretty good.

2) Dismiss above as foolish and old fashioned. Read 5 large books on colour management, browse numerous websites, possibly invest in rubber suction cup device to stick to monitor and perform endless profiling tests on monitor, printer and scanner. After 2 years achieve results not entirely disimilar to 1)

Matthew

My old Toshiba laptop clearly shows the ABC of Matthew's grey scale, but WXYZ are all pretty much 'black'...

OTOH not bad for a four year old portable.

Paul

quote:

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... hands up all those LCD owners who can see the difference between A,B and C and X, Y and Z in the following grayscale:

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I see these differences easily. I'm using an NEC MultiSync LCD 1700V. No special settings, 1280x1024 resolution. My office is lit by a moderate amount of fluorescent light. No tweaking and no tricks.

It's a very nice monitor and it frees up a good deal of desk space that my previous monitor chewed up. Seems to do a respectable job on images so far. For critical image editing and viewing, a good CRT monitor is probably better.

.. do I feel that the LCD vs CRT debate is sooooo similar to the CD vs LP one? One is far more portable, easier to keep running and 'hi-tech'.. the other is far more cumbersome and anachronistic, slowly withering in the marketplace and yet better. Must be the pixels (pits) vs scan lines (grooves in vinyl). Perfect vision, forever.

Ron
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quote:

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...I have just purchased through e-bay a 21-inch Dell CRT monitor...

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Ron,

You might as well have bought a Lacie Electron, which is an exceptionally accurate monitor dedicated to graphics. And if you need colour accuracy, these are the ones for which you can purchase a hardware calibrator.

Cheers,

Edo

"I see these differences easily. I'm using an NEC MultiSync LCD 1700V"

Well that's probably the LCD to buy then if you are intertersted in graphics. None of the ones I've used (from NEC, Philips and LG) have got close and usuualy come adjusted towards he highlight end. In my experience you get proper steps between X & Y but Y & Z are either very close or else identical and at the shadow end A, B & C and sometimes D are essentially the same.

"do I feel that the LCD vs CRT debate is sooooo similar to the CD vs LP one?"

Yes. It similar to the CD/LP debate as it was around 1985

LCDs will eventually be just as good as CRTs, they will become very cheap and all the obvious practical advantages will make them clearly the best choice. At this point you will be able to sell your Dell for 3 times what you paid for it on eBay to someone from the Cathode Addicts mailing list.

"You might as well have bought a Lacie Electron, which is an exceptionally accurate monitor dedicated to graphics"

The LaCie Electron is basically a Mitsubishi DiamondTron NF in a blue case with a matt black hood so you don't have to recalibrate your colour if the sun goes behind the cloud or someone turns an extra office light on. They are very good but, AFACIT, no better than the equivalent Mitsubishi and you could always make that hood yourself from a few bits of black cardboard.

If colour is really that critical you probably need something like a Barco Reference Calibrator.

Matthew

I can also easily distinguish A,B,C and X,Y,Z on my NEC monitor.
John

Much as I love my Powerbook's LCD, I have to say for your purposes I'd go for the big CRT. My work is CAD & Photoshop based, and CRT still wins for these purposes everytime, not least because colour is still slightly strange on LCD - limited in gamut and dynamic range.

If you have the deskspace, for the money IMO it's hard to beat the 21" Mitsubishi Daimondtron; these also accept being driven up to very high refresh rates (>100Hz @1280x1024 for example), which I find essential to comfortable use for any length of time.

Monitors this size are very deep front-back though, and you need to get it a sufficient distance from you to focus comfortably. Given it weighs c. 60lbs it is for large desks only...

What I'm using right now is a Dell laptop with a 1600x1200 resolution TFT screen. This is fabulous to use, as it crams so much in at a sensible size (i.e. the majority of text on the screen is of a similar size to that of the 'typical' printed page).

It's one drawback is colour - whilst better than most TFTs I've used, the viewing angle makes this hit or miss for the really fine graphical colour-matching stuff.

It's biggest plus is how sharp it is, corner to corner - certainly in a different league to any CRT monitor I have ever seen (and believe me I've owned, used and seen a few - my home monitor arrangement is 2x15" Philips LCD monitors on either side of a 19" Ilyama Visionmaster Pro 450, which is okayish. The laptop screen beats 'em all (apart from the Ilyama for colour work).

What I'd like to see is a 17" TFT/LCD monitor at the same standard and ppi resolution as the 15" on the laptop - say, a resolution at 17" of 2048x1536 - which would allow even bigger desktops*.

* important to me as I spend hours each day as a developer in front of multiple monitors, just to allow a decent window arrangement.

TC '..'
"Girl, you thought he was a man, but he was a Muffin..."

Well, the Dell 21" (not sure what that is in Euros) came in yesterday. Although not as absolutely bright as some of the LCD monitors I've seen, it is far richer and subtle. The 2820dpi scans I've made off 6x7 negatives display a wealth of tonal gradients that were not even hinted with the previous Generic Brand 17". There even seems to be depth to the images as well. Although I've not used it for such yet, I should imagine that image editing (I am thinking about spot removal here) will be far less of an eyestrain. For the price I paid (circa $350) I cannot imagine an LCD coming even remotely close. Yes, the best of analog still can outperform entry level digital.

Ron
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Firstly you were right to go for the CRT, it will provide a better image than an LCD currently. This is important if you are using your monitor for games or DVD - most people use their monitors for all sorts, so flexibility must be key - an LCD screen will blur when given a tracking shot and blacks are not as black..

Coming from a printing background, it is rarely possible to colourmatch what you see in print and what you get on-screen. And most dektop printers aren't that accurate anyhow..!

I am in the process of determing which monitor to buy to replace my Sony Multiscan 400PS,
Currently it is very difficult to set the contrast and brightness to be able to see the U to Z sections in the greyscale from DPREVIEW that MR attached on the previous screen.

With the monitor set to default S to Z appear the same.

So I am interested on the collective views on monitors for photo work plus regular computing in 2004

THanks for any comments

Derek

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On flat screen monitors there are only two main players in my opinion, apple and sony.

I really like the sony flat screens.