LCD vs CRT

[dhlucke]

I'm just curious, but have LCD's gotten to the point where you could replace a CRT with one and not have any regrets? This is of course especially relevent to gaming.

I noticed that my local Best Buy is phasing out CRT's and only carries 2 now vs a whole wall of LCDs.

Sooner or later I'm going to want to get something between 21" and 24" so I'm wondering where LCD's stand and if the premium price is worth it.

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[FancyShwancy204Z]

If you were getting a 17inch LCD monitor, I would say yes. Anything larger, and even smaller, is behind on response time and overall features that would make it good for gaming. Not to mention the price of 21 inch monitors can hover in the 1,500 dollar range. Whereas the best 17inch LCD would be about 1/3 of that price. Are you even sure about the sizes you want? 21 inches is dam big, and I didnt even know there are 24 inch LCDs.

 

[jlanka]

I just built a box for a guy which inluded the <A HREF="http://www.viewsonic.com/products/lcd_n1700w.htm" target="_new">Viewsonic N1700W</A> and UT2003 looked pretty good on it. And this LCD doesn't have the best response time.

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[p05esto]

I agree with needing a 21" - it's a must have. I wouldn't even think about spending so much money on a cool LCD without it being at least 21 + inches. I'm just waiting for the response rates on those to go down. I'm hoping this winter before christmas they'll be out...but I have nothing to base this hope on. Just positive thinking.

 

[einsig]

dhlucke: A few things to keep in mind regarding large screens. An advantage LCD has over CRT is that large CRTs have very short lifespans compared to any LCD. Also remember that a LCD screen advertised at 21" has 21" of viewable space where as a 21" CRT will have between 19-20" of viewable space. The other big thing to realize on large LCDs is their native resolution. Most 21+" LCDs have some seriously high native resolutions. That means if you want to run the thing with the best image quality you will need to play games and have the desktop set at this very high resolution. Also your games and graphics card will need to be able to run the native resolution properly. I'd stick with the 17-18" range with the fast reaction times. They still have pretty high native res (1280x1024), but it isn't something you should have issues with. If you need more realestate get two 17".

 

[the_Prisoner]

check out this link. On why CRTs are better.
<A HREF="http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,985158,00.asp" target="_new">http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,985158,00.asp</A>

This next article is 2 years old but talks about a CRT that is the size of a LCD.<A HREF="http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20010719S0011" target="_new">http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20010719S0011</A>

the Prisoner

I'm not a number, I'm a free man! 😡 <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by the_Prisoner on 07/15/03 03:36 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[dhlucke]

There's no way I'm going to get a smaller screen. I've had this 19" screen for years and I'm looking forward to getting something bigger. My brother uses a 15" LCD that looks pretty good but is way too small. I'm not sure what my budget will be when I make the purchase, but I hesitate to buy a CRT monitor that will break my desk. My old 20" POS was so too damn heavy and I'm sure a 21"+ is far worse. If a large CRT monitor looks better than a large LCD then I'll go that route, or visa versa.

A LCD won't run a game at a different resolution than what the desktop is set at?

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[Syndil]

A LCD won't run a game at a different resolution than what the desktop is set at?

No, thats not it. An LCD can run any resolution lower than its native resolution. However, since and LCD is using an array of fixed-size liquid crystal cells, when you run at a lower resolution, it must incorporate "rathiomatic expansion" - basically a form of dithering - when a lower resolution is selected. This is quite noticable, especially when displaying text. The text will be blurred and uneven. For graphics, this may not be as noticable, especially with everything moving, but it will certainly still be there. I suspect it would be most noticable on a game that uses a crosshair. Nothing worse than a dithered, blurry crosshair.

Here is an example to describe what is happening. A panel with 1280x1024 resolution has exactly 1280 columns of liquid crystal cells. So if you want run it at a resolution of, say, 800x600, the LCD must somehow spread out the image to cover the entire surface area of the panel. However since 1280 is not a multiple of 800, it can't simply double the width of each pixel, so it must dither the image. This effect is easy to reproduce on a CRT. Take any image in a format smaller than your desktop resolution, and set it as your background, but have Windows "stretch to fit" the image. This is basically what an LCD must do to display anything lower than it's native resolution. Doesn't look very good eh?

Now if the panel's native resolution is a multiple of the resolution you wish to display, then you are fine. For instance, if the panel was 1600x1200, and you wanted to display 800x600, the LCD would simply quadruple the size of each pixel in the 800x600. Each pixel in the 800x600 image would be painted in a 2x2 square of the panel's 1600x1200 cells.

A CRT on the other hand does not have this limitation, as the image is painted on the screen by an electron gun, which can easily display different-sized pixels.

The point is, if you buy a panel with a large native resolution, you better be sure you have a rig that can give you decent framrate at that resolution, or suffer a dithered image.

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[dhlucke]

Thanks. That was a great post.

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[p05esto]

Yes, I've heard that about how it's best to run an LCD at native resolutions too. And owning a laptop myself I know that's the case.

HOWEVER, I was just looking around at LCDs the other day at CompUSA and they had a couple games set up showing off their LCD screens. I actually was impressed at how well the games ran and looked at lower resolutions (non-native). I'm not a hard core gamer (I've played Star WarsJK, Serious Sam2, Aliens vs predator in the last couple years) so for me I'd rather get a larger screen size and play at non-native resolutions as I thought it didn't look that bad at all. The Sony I was looking did seemed to scale well.

Still - I won't spring for a 20" until the response rates are <20ms as I could see ghosting on the 30ms models.