Switching to CRT to LCD

[Mark Rejhon]

you can buy super expensive good LCD to minimize LCD issues to minimum or buy cheap Trinitron CRT and minimize CRT issues

Right.
Viewpixx LCD (five figure $), or Eizo FDF2405W (four figure $) comes to mind.

Are there really any CRT that actually do have green trails?

Are you familiar with phosphor ghosting on medium/longer persistence CRT's? Remember the old radar tubes at air traffic controllers? The ones with the spinning line? That's intentional extreme ghosting on a CRT. An extreme case of longer-persistence phosphor, mind you. Phosphor closer to the type found in glow-in-dark toys. But even short/medium persistence in monitors, the phosphor still glows for a bit -- just millisecond timescales, not minutes/hours timescales. This creates phosphor ghosting if the phosphor isn't fast enough, and the motion is fast enough on a bright edge on a black background.

Some CRT monitors such as Sony FW900 use medium-persistence phosphor, and have minor ghosting that is seen during very fast bright-on-black motion such as www.testufo.com/#test=blurtrail&thickness=8&height=-1 -- you'll see a minor CRT ghosting trail on the Sony FW900 (use full screen mode, turn off all lights, and scroll the window to only show moving bar), as an example. This phosphor ghost becomes dramatically more visible if you use maximum brightness (on a fresh CRT at least), and becomes much better at lower brightness. As FW900 is a bigger widescreen CRT computer monitor with such a fine grille pitch relative to screen size, it needs a slightly slower phosphor than an average CRT television, in order to keep brightness sufficiently high. Very minor ghosting also happens with this test pattern on plasmas (but ghosting is much shorter and smaller; and yellowish-colored instead, on the trailing edge). The ghosting behavior is very different from LCD's, and is a function of the glow-in-the-dark phosphor decay effect. (Like a glow-in-dark toy, but on a much faster/shorter timescale).

Although ghosting does vary on LightBoost monitors, there is less motion blur and less ghosting on XL2420TE/VG248QE/XL2411T, than on a Sony FW900 CRT which isn't the fastest CRT in the world for motion blur, but it shows how the fastest LCD's can outperform (blur AND ghosting) some of the slower CRT's such as Sony FW900's. Generally, a FW900 will have far better blacks and colors, and FW900 are nicer in many aspects (resolution independence), but today as of year 2013, it's no longer true that all LCD's always have more blur/ghosting than all CRT's, because the ghosting & motion blur performance overlap happened recently. Certainly, some LightBoost monitors have had bad LightBoost double-image-ghost artifact (e.g. certain VG278HE units, older XL2420T's, etc), especially with fine checkerboard-pixel-patterns, but that's not true for all LightBoost monitors.

If your W900 or FW900 is performing perfectly, great blacks, bright colors -- keep it running well.
Certainly not disagreeing that the "The best CRT's outperform the best LCD's" statement, which is true in terms of blacks and color.
But I'm correcting the "All CRT's always outperform all LCD's in ghosting and motion blur" statement.

Unfortunately picture quality of such LB monitor is nowhere near picture quality of CRT...

Correct, colors are not as good as a pristine, well-calibrated CRT. I know, as I've owned CRT's for many years, and owned a NEC XG135 CRT front projector with a 92" wall projection screen. Imagine having a CRT with over 20 times the effective surface area of a GDM-W900! CRT's are becoming fewer and fewer alas, with LightBoost outperforming a failing FW900 with worn flyback transformers, with grey-colored blacks, blurriness, and poor colors.

For many former CRT users, often a decision must be made; do you repurchase a monitor on Craiglist/Kijiji/eBay, or switch to LightBoost, or to IPS, etc. And OLED isn't yet a suitable heir just yet (burn-in, motion blur) while they're refining that technology. There are many FW900 users that say their LightBoost is better quality (in all aspects, black levels too, colors too) than the Sony FW900 they replaced. That's a testament to how worn-out a well-loved well-used FW900 can become; and it's hard to constantly replace them.

That said, if you get CRT eyestrain, definitely steer towards a PWM-free LCD instead of LightBoost. LightBoost is really good if you really loved high-refresh-rate CRT's, and didn't get eyestrain from them, and you want something easier/lower maintenance (especially in a larger widescreen format). But I know there are many use cases where a PWM-free monitor can be more appropriate -- software/web development, browsing, etc.

Again this link shows how big-time a CRT owner I was, as well as I also worked in the home theater industry too, as well.

 

[bloodyheller]

both LCD and CRT have their issues but those are kinda exclusive. You won't find CRT with bad light spectrum or bad viewing angles and similarly you won't find LCD which have sharpness and geometry issues

I know about those problems with LCD. But eye-fatigue issues (if any) concern me more.

 

[gothic_hobbit]

Most CRT's would have degraded by now I would have thought.

 

[JeffDC]

Our Mitsubishi 2040u has been aging more than gracefully over the last 14 years. It got continuous use the first few years, then sat largely unused (because of a Sony F500R which eventually died) for close to 10 years, and now we're back to it. We're up to 90 for brightness and 85 for contrast, but otherwise gamut, geometry, convergence and everything else is today as it was when it was new. Diamondtrons are gamut monsters and we've not found an affordable LCD that comes close.

I wish I knew what monitor manufacturers are thinking. OLEDs are still out of reach for almost everyone and LEDs can't begin to handle 120fps without gimmicks. CRTs seem to be an answer to these and quite a few other problems.

 

[Mark Rejhon]

LEDs can't begin to handle 120fps without gimmicks.

Define "gimmick".
There are no gimmicks involved in 120Hz LED-backlit LCD monitors.
And LED's currently have less motion blur than OLED"s.

If the word "gimmick" is in reference to strobe backlights, I should point out strobe backlights are not a gimmick. It is sometimes almost more elegant, true and "pure" technological solution to motion blur elimination, than the beautiful Rube Goldberg contraption of vaccuum-filled glass balloons ("CRT") containing an electron gun that shoots a beam of electrons, cleverly controlled by magnetic fields to aim through holes of a shadowmask/grille, slewing the beam back and forth (raster scanning), hitting luminescent material (phosphor) of three primary colors, to finally paint an image that's only useful to trichomat beings of certain wavelengths (human eyes) at the end. They 'flicker' (as seen under high speed camera) by incidence of the phosphor, and is responsible for CRT's excellent motion resolution.. Hypothetically, you can imagine an alien civilizations that never invented CRT's -- witnessing a CRT tube and getting puzzled by how that contraption works. From that perspective, CRT's and LCD's are both bandaid technologies on the route to Holodeck perfection.

I loved CRT's too, by the way, but I'm just saying it's no less Rube Goldberg than a strobing an OLED or LCD.
And Sony has had to strobe its Trimaster OLED PVM-2541, too.
Yes, CRT's are superior in many ways, but calling 120Hz LCD's "gimmicks" is quite silly, when vaccuum-filled glass balloons aren't??!?

That said, the appropriate question is to ask -- what are we trading off? Black levels? Colors? Etc.
But certainly, LCD's have already solved the motion blur problem without needing gimmicks (relatively speaking, all things considered), so they "can" handle 120fps, for sure.

P.S. Photographic proof of my love for CRT's -- my 92" NEC XG135 CRT projector (over 15x the surface area of a Sony W900!)

 

[jbltecnicspro]

Define "gimmick".
There are no gimmicks involved in 120Hz LED-backlit LCD monitors.
And LED's currently have less motion blur than OLED"s.

If the word "gimmick" is in reference to strobe backlights, I should point out strobe backlights are not a gimmick. It is sometimes almost more elegant, true and "pure" technological solution to motion blur elimination, than the beautiful Rube Goldberg contraption of vaccuum-filled glass balloons ("CRT") containing an electron gun that shoots a beam of electrons, cleverly controlled by magnetic fields to aim through holes of a shadowmask/grille, slewing the beam back and forth (raster scanning), hitting luminescent material (phosphor) of three primary colors, to finally paint an image that's only useful to trichomat beings of certain wavelengths (human eyes) at the end. They 'flicker' (as seen under high speed camera) by incidence of the phosphor, and is responsible for CRT's excellent motion resolution.. Hypothetically, you can imagine an alien civilizations that never invented CRT's -- witnessing a CRT tube and getting puzzled by how that contraption works. From that perspective, CRT's and LCD's are both bandaid technologies on the route to Holodeck perfection.

I loved CRT's too, by the way, but I'm just saying it's no less Rube Goldberg than a strobing an OLED or LCD.
And Sony has had to strobe its Trimaster OLED PVM-2541, too.
Yes, CRT's are superior in many ways, but calling 120Hz LCD's "gimmicks" is quite silly, when vaccuum-filled glass balloons aren't??!?

P.S. Photographic proof of my love for CRT's -- my 92" NEC XG135 CRT projector (over 15x the surface area of a Sony W900!)

Agreed. The technology behind CRT's is definitely "gimmicky," and I also love them (obviously, check sig). I've recently gone back to the LCD (FW900 is in the closet), and I guess I have a good one because its blacks are definitely better than the LCD's. Then again - I'm using a TN, but still. It's much newer than the Sony, but still - the Sony's got much better blacks while having no black crush. It's too bad CRT's are ultimately consumable, and it's too bad they have the negatives that they do.

And to the other poster - as to why they left CRT's. Isn't it obvious? CRT's cost more to make (way more complicated), and LCD still has its own set of pros. The biggest being that you don't have to calibrate the damn things on regular intervals. I'll bet most CRT owners aren't even aware that to really get them to age gracefully, regular calibration is required. I didn't know it myself. LCD, for the most part, is about convenience. Kind of like how compressed music formats have taken over, in spite of the technological advances in audio formats. CRT versus LCD... In my opinion, both have their places. My LCD is great for regular office work, and it rocks for DAW work. I mean, my Sony has better colors and blacks (and a much better image altogether), but I don't need it for music composition on the DAW.