CRT vs LCD vs eyesight?

I personally find it easier to stare at my CRT at home all day vs. the LCD's at work... My eyes get strained very easily at work, and it looks like I have a bad case of red eye after I'm done..


Personally I think it's the damn flourescent tubes, and I'm very anxious to see what happens when they switch the back light in the near future.. Until then, I'm all about a high quality CRT on a high ass refresh rate that has been calibrated nicely using either the monitors direct calibration tools, or something like the AVIA dvd..
 
agentzero9 said:
LCDs are easier on the eyes, resulting in less eye strain. YMMV

As for the long-term effects of CRTs, it may be too early to tell. Only in the last decade have we seen the birth of a generation (both young and old) that spend a thousand hours a year 14 inches away from a CRT screen. It may not be until the year 2020 until we see the damage inflicted by extended viewing of CRTs.

And on the other hand, we may find out there is nothing to worry about at all.
Click to expand...

Used CRT's since I was around 7 years of age. I wear glasses now, started wearing them last year, got a LCD monitor last year. Coincidence?

My optometrist even recommended I dump my CRT displays for LCD.
 
Elledan said:
CRTs don't damage your vision, eye strain does.

I'm willing to bet that over 90% of the CRTs currently being used are configured improperly. Low refreshrates, poorly calibrated vertical and horizontal sync circuits, brightness and contrast levels set way too high or too low, etc.

Fact is that CRTs are more difficult to configure than LCD displays. The electron guns must fire at exactly the right moment at exactly the right spot in order to get the best image possible. This requires a good design of the CRT and someone to adjust the circuits until they work optimally. In other words, blame that cheap CRT you bought and the manufacturer of it, but not CRTs in general.
Click to expand...

CRTs are impulse-type displays. The electron guns paint the screen and it decays until the next refresh. This type of flicker causes eye strain. Since LCDs are hold-type (or static), your eyes don't have to be subjected to this constant blanking.

If you were to spend as much on a CRT as you would on a low-end TFT and then pay an expert to calibrate it for you, then you'll be amazed at the image quality.
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone's debating image quality. Most CRTs still best LCDs in that in many categories.

Of course, some people are very susceptible to the flickering caused by a rapidly refreshing display, but those people can't even watch TV if it's a CRT one without getting an instant headache.
Click to expand...

Yes, this is the main thing that causes eye strain. However, I am fine watching CRT TVs (long-distance), while gaming close-up on CRT monitors gives me horrible head/neck aches. I can't remember the refresh rate I was using, but I believe anything under 100 Hz caused it. Or, maybe it's just because I'm sitting too close. Whatever the reason, CRTs give me eye strain and LCDs don't. If you put a 100 Hz CRT next to an LCD I bet I could tell you which one was flickering. If you took the LCD away I wouldn't be able to tell the CRT was flickering at all though.

Of course if you have your LCD at 300 nits, your eyes are going to be in a lot of pain. Personally, I use a calibrator and calibrate mine for 120 nits. It looks great, colors are vibrant, and it's easy on the eyes.

Another argument is that the fluorescent backlights of LCDs cause more eye strain than the warmer image painted by the CRT. That's true, but I doubt it'd be a problem as long as you run at a comfortable <150 nits.

Blurry text, misconvergence, and poor geometry on CRTs cause further eye strain. You might not realize how blurry it is until you adjust the focus knob.
 
crt technology is as old as dirt. the space and heat they take up and create are enough reasons alone to warrant lcd screens exclusively. im really surprised it took this long to come up with another technology that could keep up with crt's. at least its finally to the point where crt's are obsolete beside the small niche market they will always hold value in.
 
krupted said:
crt technology is as old as dirt. the space and heat they take up and create are enough reasons alone to warrant lcd screens exclusively. im really surprised it took this long to come up with another technology that could keep up with crt's. at least its finally to the point where crt's are obsolete beside the small niche market they will always hold value in.
Click to expand...


If weight , space & heat are enough to warrant an LCD then you obviously arent very picky about image quality & overall performance ;)

There are various reasons why I still prefer CRT over LCD ,such as a higher refresh rate, this allows me to run games without vsync (very little to no screen tearing @ 100hz), running without vsync on an LCD at 60hz looks terrible, I also believe the way LCD's draw each frame makes the lack of vsync look even worse,I say this because when I compared my CRT & LCD side by side with *both* monitors at 60hz the screen tearing effect was more noticeable on the LCD.

Black levels ...well most know by now a properly working CRTs is capable of much deeper black levels (CRTs average 10,000:1 contrast ratio). But at least newer LCDs are improving at displaying the bottom end of the grey scale which is a good thing.

Resolution flexibility , No contest here .. CRTs can display a wide variety of resolutions without sacrificing image quality.. With LCDs you're stuck using its 'Native res' if you want the best image quality. For example I run my desktop @ 1920x1200 but when gaming sometimes ill use a lower resolution such as 1600x1024 or 1280x800 depending on the game.

Input Lag (not to be confused with response time), CRTs dont have this issue at all, See here for more info.

I also dislike the matte screen surface most LCD have , it gives images a slightly 'grainy' or 'gritty' look, this symptom becomes obvious with a CRT sitting next to it ,but If I had to choose an LCD right now I'd pick the NEC 20GMX2's just for its glossy screen alone (and it happens to be the most promising LCD from all user reviews etc.). It's just a little to small ..We'll see how the upcoming 24" version performs.

Ive been using CRTs since 486/33's were "high end" and my eyes are fine, Ive always made it a habit to use at least 85hz refresh rate. If anything the extremely bright output of my LCD made my eyes tired much quicker than my CRT.

I do realise people dont really have a choice anymore but to buy LCD (which is a damn shame) ,unless you can settle with used or refurbished CRTs (my CRT is 5 years old & used but I couldn't be happier, It still looks great), Anyhow just thought I'd post my opinion ;)
 
but you act like lcd's are garbage. in my opinion, the benifits of lcd's clearly outweigh that of crt's. power and heat are a big deal, we already use too much energy on earth.

and its not like your sacraficing image quality. if you want to compare lcd's to high-end crt's then you need to weigh them against high-end lcd's.

there is a reason crt's are being phased out. many reasons. i understand your love though, i think of it as when car's adopted the unibody and threw away the full steel chassis. truth be told i still drive a truck...
 
krupted said:
but you act like lcd's are garbage. in my opinion, the benifits of lcd's clearly outweigh that of crt's. power and heat are a big deal, we already use too much energy on earth.

and its not like your sacraficing image quality. if you want to compare lcd's to high-end crt's then you need to weigh them against high-end lcd's.

there is a reason crt's are being phased out. many reasons. i understand your love though, i think of it as when car's adopted the unibody and threw away the full steel chassis. truth be told i still drive a truck...
Click to expand...

CRTs own even excellent LCDs in image quality in all respects except geometry & convergence (and that's ignoring ghosting and lag). These, however, can be tuned on a CRT to be near perfect enough.

As for power and heat, I don't give a damn about them. Image quality matters most.

Personally LCDs strain my eyes more. Can't say why. Probably the excessive brightness. But neither display really strains that much to begin with.


I don't get why everyone likes them. I figure it's like Super Bass on a boombox. People turn it on because it "sounds better". When all it is doing is messing up the original sound. People are attracted to the excessive brightness and image "pop" of an LCD. That, and the "it's a sexy flat panel" thing.

The goal of a device should be to reproduce the image as close as possible to its creator's intent. And CRT still does that best. Only a quality plasma comes acceptably close to reproducing the black details of a CRT.
 
krupted said:
power and heat are a big deal, we already use too much energy on earth.

and its not like your sacraficing image quality
Click to expand...

Power and heat are not a big deal. Newer LCD's save you, what, $10 a year over CRT's?

You ARE sacrificing image quality. On LCD, your blacks and dark greys are always going to suck. On any LCD other than IPS, you're going to have color shifting due to viewing angle problems. 10-bit LCD's are only just coming out.
 
If you were to spend as much on a CRT as you would on a low-end TFT and then pay an expert to calibrate it for you, then you'll be amazed at the image quality.
Click to expand...

CRTs, by their nature, can't have the perfect focus of an LCD. You can get close through calibration, but the fact remains that CRTs are very high-precision analog devices, and it doesn't take a lot to throw them off their optimal operating point. I've owned some expensive Trinitron CRTs in the past, and none had the focus of a decent LCD.
 
On LCD, your blacks and dark greys are always going to suck.
Click to expand...

It's not so much a sacrifice as a trade-off. I'm fine with giving up marginally better blacks and response rate for perfect focus, perfect convergence, and increased sharpness.
 
Anyone know how monitor size and viewing distance affect eyestrain?

Perspnally, I don't have trouble with either display type... so long as it's not a CRT at 60HZ. Those hurt my eyes like hell. 75HZ isn't too hot either.
 
when I was configuring a few new computer for friends, I have their 20" LCD connected to their new computer while I look at the 20" LCD, it just seems bright, and when I turn and look back at my CRT 19", it's dimmer, not as bright. And by moving back and forth, it's a bit to adjust.

I thought if the LCD is so bright, it can't be good for your eyes in long hr.?
 
Excessive brightness causes eye fatigue, yes. Cheap LCD's are too bright to have accurate colors even at 0 brightness. Some of the better models can manage brightness very well.
 
I've always had a normal right eye and near-sighted left eye. I was okay without glasses when I was small. Then I got into computers around 1999 (at first 15" CRT and then 19" CRT) and soon noticed that after some while on the computer I would instinctively lean closer toward the screen - like 20cm close.

In 2002 I got my first eye glasses and that helped with the issue - I could keep using the computer at normal viewing distance.

In 2005 I upgraded from 19" CRT to 24" LCD, the Dell 2405FPW. In 2015 I upgraded to 40" LCD, the Philips BDM4065UC, which I'm still using.

Then in 2017, after breaking my eye glasses, I thought I would try how it is to live without the hassle of using glasses. For the past three years, I've been able to use computers just fine and have not noticed the tendency of leaning close to the screen. So I would say that LCDs are better on the eyes than CRTs. 👍
 
It turns out that brightness is actually good for your eyes. Particularly in the high-energy range.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5233810/

The "damage" from staring at LCDs and CRTs seems to be more about prolonged viewing depriving you of the high-energy light radiation that comes from spending time outside, than that they were particularly detrimental themselves. Ironically CRTs would probably have been better for you had they actually emitted some more than visible radiation. P.S. Your parents were right if they told you to spend more time outside instead of staring at a screen, too. They just didn't know why.
 
I remember a decade ago, I hooked up the old CRT that I used to use growing up. Night and day difference in terms of eye strain. Just looking at that thing for a few minutes started giving me a head-ache. They are intense.
 
I could never use CRTs at 60 htz refresh always had to make sure it was at least 75 or more. The last one I used was always set at 100 refresh, but at least now LCDs can do that finally.
 
Since we're necroing an old thread... My eyesight's still fine. I use LCD more than CRT because work monitors. But I'm typing this out on a CRT, and other than it being a little soft, it's fine. My eyesight is still just as good as it was 10 years ago for now. I'm 32.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top