Samsung 700nf CRT in 2011? Calibration+Pics!

Out of curiousity I thought I would hook up my dads 10+ year old Samsung 700nf CRT that was crying, alone in the basement and calibrate it with an Eye One Display 2 Colorimeter +verify the results with BasICColor.

-Color was off , there are no "color presets." I set it to 6500k and it seemed off (6500k=6800k according to Eye One Match 3). Setting the Color Temp to 6200k=6500k according to Eye One Match 3.

-Calibration required to get decent color accuracy and shadow detail. Didn't bother actually measuring the default values, next to a calibrated panel the inaccuracy was very obvious.

-Gamma was way over 2.4 just by eye, shadow detail was extremely crushed. Think Samsung F2380 black crush x2. The before/after Eye One Match results also verified this.

-CRT+black+"Day time lighting," is just plain offensive, similar to some plasmas due to the light filter. I find dark content unwatchable due to the extreme washout.

-I haven't used a CRT for 5 years (nor have any real experience adjusting them), noticed the flickering right away (16x12 max res=75hz)
Fortunately setting it to the recommend res (1280x1024) enables 85hz=no more flickering.

-Fiddling with the Size/Position/Zoom

-Screen/rez to small for desktop use after using a 24" 1080p LCD

+Max luminance=106cdm/2 after Calibration. Delta E avg was high at 2.03+107cdm/2! Very usuable brightness!

+After re-calibration white is now much more tolerable, not as good as Glossy LCD white.

+Response time is perfect in PixerPixAn vs 60hz TN LG W2442PA except on the flag test and blacks which shows the phosphor lag. Same can be seen with a white mouse on a black background. Typically LCD's show a lot of ghosting with a white mouse on a black background, I found the CRT to worse than any LCD.

+ANSI contrast is great @1300:1 (0.08cdm/2 black) @106cdm/2 luminance

+Dark content looks good, but only in the dark. vs Acer (0.13cdm/2 black @120cdm/2 luminance). From Monsters Blu-Ray

5ms 60hz Acer G245H TN Motion vs CRT @85hz

So what was the point in this exercise? After reading all the CRT enthusiast comments on here I thought I would fire one up. I think I would die after using only LCD's for 5 years and having to souly use a CRT. Not really sure what I am really doing when trying to set up the size/fit the image properly

It is ok for reading with the lights out and movies after calibration due to the good black level. Text is ok, need to adjust the sharpness/fiddle more, can't see using it for general uses for long periods of time. There is no flickering @85hz, I think after fixing the sharpness a bit this is a preferable choice over LCD's with AG coating (even C-PVA).

Still have to try some games.

I keep my two IIyama (VM1451 and VM505) calibrated with an i1D2 as well and use both CRTs daily for my work. Since I do a lot of colour-critical image editing and also video-editing I need both good colour accuracy as well as well high refreshrate, a combination which isn't being offered by LCDs at this point.

Note that there's a lot of variation in quality between CRTs, not to mention the way they were treated and stored will have an effect on their performance.

Not sure about the quality of my Samsung, it was definately treated/stored properly.

Very interesting, the Contrast/brightness were nearly maxed @80, setting both to 100 greatly improved image quality with 0 negative effects!.

Contrast is now great @1300:1 and the brightness is a very usuable 107cdm/2!

Dynamic range also became unmeasureable w/o using HCFR (BasICColor reads 0cdm/2 black on a full black screen).

That's more like it

I'd go back to my Sony FW900 CRT in a heartbeat if it was working. I used one for 5+ years and it was by far the best CRT Ive owned.

Gaming & Movies is where CRTs shined for me. I never had problems with daytime washout but I dont have any overhead lighting in my room, A tall lamp in the corner behind my desk did the trick.

My friend loves my Glossy Acer and offered to buy it, so I figured I would try the old CRT and see if it could tide me over while waiting for the Samsung PLS displays or 27" 120hz screens. I think it will.

Strange that cranking the contrast+brightness to max actually improved image quality, increasing the brightness almost always increases the black level.

Only problem now really is the daytime washout, convergence/sizing/tilting and size+sharpness issue, hopefully I can fix the sharpness.

Going to use HCFR later to try and measure the Dynamic Range.

NCX said:

Strange that cranking the contrast+brightness to max actually improved image quality, increasing the brightness almost always increases the black level.

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Increase the dark levels on LCDs yeah, but on CRTs I dunno actually. They work so differently.

Yeah, brightness and contrast are completely different in CRTs. Brightness too high will clip white tones and too low will clip dark tones. It has to be set correctly.

Contrast control seems to just clip the white luminance as far as I can tell.

I looked at all the gradients on Lagom, everything is perfect, but then it is on my TN as well

Still love my crts. Spent most of Sunday fixing them from a bad Windas adjustment. Now they're both perfect and I'm gonna use them for years to come.

I miss the fear induced by the degauss button on my 21" mitsubishi. I can't imagine what it'd be like on an FW-900

I used to have a 900NF. It was a pretty nice monitor back then but yeah, daytime washout has always bothered me with CRTs. I never really use my computer in a dark room so even an LCD with a fairly poor contrast ratio produces visually darker blacks. The only thing I'm really missing are the perfect viewing angles. Zero color and gamma shift, head on or off angle, no distortion of colors whereas LCDs range from pathetic to somewhat acceptable in that area. Well that and much better motion but that isn't too big of a deal as I don't game much anyway.

BTW I know you're aware of this but the recommended resolution is the wrong aspect ratio. I don't know why so many 17" and 19" CRTs were "recommended" to run at 1280x1024 when they were all 4:3 instead of 5:4 I used mine mostly at 1280x960.

Walker said:

I used to have a 900NF. It was a pretty nice monitor back then but yeah, daytime washout has always bothered me with CRTs. I never really use my computer in a dark room so even an LCD with a fairly poor contrast ratio produces visually darker blacks. The only thing I'm really missing are the perfect viewing angles. Zero color and gamma shift, head on or off angle, no distortion of colors whereas LCDs range from pathetic to somewhat acceptable in that area. Well that and much better motion but that isn't too big of a deal as I don't game much anyway.

BTW I know you're aware of this but the recommended resolution is the wrong aspect ratio. I don't know why so many 17" and 19" CRTs were "recommended" to run at 1280x1024 when they were all 4:3 instead of 5:4 I used mine mostly at 1280x960.

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Yeah it's weird and many people don't notice the slight stretching of 5/4 into 4/3 (can be adjusted though)

wagoo said:

I miss the fear induced by the degauss button on my 21" mitsubishi. I can't imagine what it'd be like on an FW-900

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lol well FW900's degauss every time you turn them on, unless they were in standby mode. It wasnt very loud actually. My 34XBR960 CRT on the other hand has a pretty mean degauss cycle, especially on a morning cold start.

Played some games...flicker @85hz w/o Vsync, Glossy LCD>CRT for gaming despite the higher contrast, for some reason it still looks washed out with games in the dark.

Lots of phosphor trailing as well particularily with whites and yellows during movies and games, far worse than the color streaking on the Samsunt C-PVA panels actually. When there isn't any trailing the extra motion clarity during fast camera pans really isn't that much better than a fast TN, but still an improvement.

Other wise when there is no phosphor trailing movies, particularily DVD 's look great since there are no res scaling/stretching issues. Watching TMNT again...

http://i1093.photobucket.com/albums/i432/240hzTeslaStorm/Samsung 700nf CRT/TMNT027.jpg

http://i1093.photobucket.com/albums/i432/240hzTeslaStorm/Samsung 700nf CRT/TMNT033.jpg
.

Odd I never had phosphor trailing issues on my FW900 or G520P CRTs with gaming, Motion was always very clear and crisp, my current CPVA panel is far worse as far as seeing trails being left behind moving objects, also you'll notice moving objects lose there details on a LCD while on a CRT details are retained.

Yeah, the only motion trailing I have seen the past years has been with LCDs, and a tiny bit on CRTs when I had a totally black background white cursor. I'd get a tiny bit of motion trailing there.

Like I said before, not every CRT is awesome quality

The only thing I can't stand about crt's is the refresh rate, even at 85hz I can notice a slight flicker, anything lower drives me nuts. Other than that if they made them still I would use one if they had bigger sizes.

munkle said:

The only thing I can't stand about crt's is the refresh rate, even at 85hz I can notice a slight flicker, anything lower drives me nuts. Other than that if they made them still I would use one if they had bigger sizes.

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I can't stand the flicker from many CCFL LCD backlights. CRTs in general are okay if they're above 60 Hz. 60 Hz on a modern CRT with its short-duration phosphor layer makes me want to throw up.

LCDs with crappy backlights tend to either give me dry eyes, a headache or a combination of both.

Currently running my CRTs at 3200x1200@85 Hz

Elledan said:

I can't stand the flicker from many CCFL LCD backlights. CRTs in general are okay if they're above 60 Hz. 60 Hz on a modern CRT with its short-duration phosphor layer makes me want to throw up.

LCDs with crappy backlights tend to either give me dry eyes, a headache or a combination of both.

Currently running my CRTs at 3200x1200@85 Hz

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I notice some flicker on cheap screens but my 3008wfp has 4 ccfls don't know if that would help you or not?

mathesar said:

also you'll notice moving objects lose there details on a LCD while on a CRT details are retained.

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Yep, not even the fastest TN can come close to a CRT in terms of motion clarity. It's not the fast camera pans that are a problem IMO as long as there is no actual ghosting. It's actually the slower consistent camera movement where an LCD really struggles. Like say FIFA, PES or any other similar horizontal scrolling camera games. On a CRT the players and everything else remain perfectly sharp when the camera is moving while on an LCD it turns into a blurry mess.

As for the flicker, I was one of those unlucky ones who noticed it at anything under 100Hz. Which sucked because the picture was always better and sharper at lower refresh rate on every CRT I've owned.

I can sort of see flicker at 75hz but I never had a problem at 85hz, I ran the FW900 at 1900x1200 @ 85hz for 5 years without any issues.

munkle said:

I notice some flicker on cheap screens but my 3008wfp has 4 ccfls don't know if that would help you or not?

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It's mostly cheap screens which have this issue, yeah. I'm actually waiting for OLED screens to become available (for cheaper than 5k Euro a pop) instead of opting for LCDs. If my current screens were to die and I couldn't find proper replacement CRTs, I might go for a good (IPS/*VA) screen, though

The CRT doesn't really look sharp during motion in games though, it still looks washed out even in the dark, I think in a side by side comparions (calibrated) most people would choose the TN I have over this CRT for games really. This was a cheap CRT though, my dad said he paid 500$ for it back in 99.

White mouse+black background=hardcore trailing. So what is the best way to go about sizing the picture? It has the Position/Size/Zoom options, and under another menu Clear Moir, Focus and Convergence. The text is hard to read, not blurry, but definately not as shart as my LCD.

There also seems to be a horizontal black line near the middle top of the screen, very visible with lighter colors.

I wonder what the ANSI contrast is on the Sony 900, would love to get my hands on one of those.

The black line is the aperture grille wire. All trinitron and diamondtron monitors had it. Larger screens had two of them. That's why I prefered Flatron by LG. Kind of a shadow mask/trinitron hybrid without the damper wires.

White objects leaving trails when moving on a black background is normal but it really shouldn't be that bad and the monitor should really perform a lot better in motion compared to a TN LCD. Almost sounds like there's something wrong with the monitor.