There are two different types of monitor technology on the market today, shadow mask and aperture grill. Sony developed aperture grill technology. Sony's trademark for this technology is called Trinitron. The patent for this technology has expired and many other companies use Aperture grill technology.
Shadow mask monitors use a metal sheet full of tiny holes that act to make certain the electron beam hits the intended red, green or blue phosphor. Aperture grill does basically the same thing only it uses fine wires stretched vertically between the electron gun and the phosphors. Because these wires are very susceptible to vibration, they put two horizontal damping wires across the screen. Some people are distracted by the horizontal damping wires that are always visible on aperture grill monitors. These are most noticeable when using applications with black characters on a white background. Then there are people who will never notice them.
Monitors have features that make them better suited than others do for certain tasks. For example, if you'll be doing color prepress work, you'll want to pick a monitor with a strong color range and good color controls, such as a aperture grill display.
If you'll do lots of work where you will be looking at thin lines on a dark background like word processors or spread sheets, then the superior convergence, focus and dot pitch measurements of a shadow mask display should have a higher priority.
In general shadow mask monitors tend to give sharper characters for a few reasons. They tend to have a tighter horizontal dot pitch 0.22mm, better convergence specifications and the fact that the tube is curved in two directions makes it easier to adjust focus uniformity and convergence at the factory. This is not to say every shadow mask monitor will provide better text, these attributes simply increase the odds of getting better text. Monitors vary model to model and lot to lot.
The ability to display fine detail on a computer monitor involves many factors including resolution, dot pitch, spot size/shape and convergence. IMHO convergence is one of the most important aspects of a monitor's performance. It determines how sharp the characters in your text document or spreadsheet look. Convergence has a direct effect on the monitor's apparent focus. Unfortunately, convergence is a spec that few manufacturers publish. To my knowledge none of the aperture grill CRT brands publish convergence specs.
For more information on the difference between shadow mask and aperture grill monitors, check out the following link.
http://www.bigmonitors.com/learning_center/technology_101/index.htm
"Bandwidth" is the range of video frequencies that can be adequately handled by the video amplifier of the monitor. However, there are so many different ways of measuring the "bandwidth" of the video amp - some relevant, and some not. Without knowing how the manufacturer measured the bandwidth it may not be a very useful specification for comparison purposes.
I hope this help
Jim Witkowski
Chief Hardware engineer
Cornerstone / Monitorsdirect.com
http://www.monitorsdirect.com
Jim at
http://www.monitorsdirect.com
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram