shadow mask versus aperture grill

Getting to be about time for a new monitor. No LCD for me. I've currently got a 19" optiquest (regular good old shadow mask) thats gettin on 6 years old. Been a good monitor but lately I've noticed it's just not as bright as it used to be. Still works good, just have to up the brightness and stuff in the drivers. I always promised myself a nice 21 or 22 incher when I upgraded and I guess I'd better get one while I still can. Also don't want to fool with widescreen. Seeing lots of good deals on ebay and hoping you guys can help me pick one.

Back before the optiquest I had a 17" Mag Inno-something that at the time was all the rage and it was aperture grill, nice and flat and the picture was really crisp with good colors. Honestly though, the lines bugged me. Also, it was an absolute biatch to get straight on the corners. Seemed like I was always fooling around with pincushion settings. I'd get it straight on the top and then the bottom would curl up. Drove me nuts.

Are aperture grills any better today than they were then? Are the lines less noticeable? Does it take a doctorate in physics/geometric algebra to get the picture to fill the screen without the sides suckin in or the corners pointing different directions? Since I've been happy with a shadow mask all these years should I just stick to that? What kind of dot pitch should I be looking for and why do some say vertical and some say horizontal? (used to know but I forgot)

Thanks for reading. Why doesn't one of the resident experts make a monitor guide for the stickies like in the other sections here? (i know it wouldn't be easy but i gotta ask )

I have been using a trinitron aperature grill monitor for a couple years now...

My experinces:

The two wires you can see that hold up the grill are only really visible when the monitor is displaying a solid field of a light color. If they bug you there are options, like inverting the colorspace of windows so that text is white and backgrounds are black.
I had actually forgotten about them... Until You came along

Also, I don't know what the big deal is about the corners of the monitor being slightly less perfect than the center, because I usually look at the center of my monitor, anyway.

What are you using your rig for mainly?

Games mostly. With most of them being so dark lately it's probably not an issue. But I do occasionally e-mail, surf etc etc.

Wasn't really referring to blurriness at the corners so much as geometry-pincushioning and so on.

I like the fact that people say that the AG's are brighter. Thats the number one reason I want something new.

One thing you really want to go for is trying to find a monitor with as many tweakable settings as possible.. I didn't really appreciate that fact until my latest monitor. Being able to control landing in the corners, and seperate top/bottom convergence, etc. can go a long way in fixing some of the problems that, on most monitors, would be unfixable.

Also, on the true flatscreens, getting the sides to be perfectly straight is a bit difficult, but I think is partly an optical illusion. In my opinion though, the Trinitron aperture grill has produced some of the clearest looking CRTs I have ever seen. It just boils down to what brand and quality control. The Viewsonic P95f+ that I had seemed very crappy compared to the Sony monitors I have seen. The HP/Sony widescreen 24" CRT monitor I got off Ebay for $325 was built 2 years before my Viewsonic (which cost me $450 last year), and looks 10 times clearer and sharper than the VS did brand new!

I had a 19" Sony G400 till my cat puked on it and killed it. I really liked it, altho you did have to tweak it a little to get the geomatry correct, but it wasn't that hard to do. I would definatly recomend any of the Top of the line Sony models (Gxxx). I am thinking about getting the newer G420 or G520 soon but the other day I seen a Sony 24" widescreen CRT and have been trying to track one of those down but can't find one anywhere.

I'm using a Dell P1130 (rebadged Sony G520), and i upgraded from a Sony E200. I seriously can't really use any other CRT besides Trinitrons.

Yes, the G520 has individual controls for landing and contrast/brightness for each colour (red, green and blue). I have not problems with my 21" regarding pincushioning (and those similar problems) but i didn't notice slight pincushioning on the 17" E200.

Cheers.

Seems like a lot of votes for aperture grill.

Mitsubishi or Trinitron?

I am using a 19" NEC/Mitsubishi Diamondtron, sweet display!
My only complaint was slight blurriness of text at high resolution, but was fixed by playing with the focus screws on the side of the monitor.

Trinitron and Diamondtron are really the last good tubes made, cant go wrong with either.

Of those choices go Triniton...

Let my key in another choice tho...
20" TTX 2048 - 1600x1200 with 5 BNC / 15 D-Sub connectors on the back, soft control flip out from panel... Bright yeah., has a lot of tweaks for color, scaling, etc.., is switchable between inputs.

Just my 2 cents.

I prefer AGs over ISMs - better colors, brighter from everything I've seen.

I have monitors with both Trinitron and Diamondtron tubes. Both are beautiful (Sony FW900 and NEC FP912) once I got them calibrated correctly. I don't think you can really go wrong if you get a high end of either one. Finding a new one though, could prove difficult.

But having one with a boatload of controls is always nice. My NEC FP912 has even more controls than my FW900.

Besides the geometry Shadow Mask monitors tend to be a bit sharper across the screen, AG tends to be more vibrant/better color. I've always been a fan of the Hitachi Shadow Mask units, and the Trinitron AG.

I'd definitely go with aperture grille for the extra brightness and vibrant colors, I currently own a 2.5 year old 21" Sony G520P and a 3 year old 24" Sony FW900 and both still have awesome picture quality and great geometry & convergence.

Thanks guys for all of the replies.

Last question, I asked this in the original post, is about dot pitch. On a 21 or 22 inch monitor, what is the maximum dot pitch I should be willing to accept and am I looking for a rating on vertical or horizontal dot pitch? I see some that say .20-.21 vertical (iirc) and I see some that say .24-.25 horizontal.
What is ya'lls expert opinion?
Thanks again.

There is no dot pitch on an AG monitor. There is stripe pitch and that's only horizontal. .25 will give you solid UXGA on a 21" display.

21" means 20" viewable. That's a 16x12" display. an inch is like 25.4mm. You get 101.6 stripe trios in an inch. Mul that by 16 and you get 1625.6 "pixels" across the display.

Thanks again to everyone.