• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

I'm still a big sucker for CRT MONITORS

B

barney

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 19, 2009
Messages
202
Location
Tampa, FL
I don't know what it is, but when I enter a thrift store and see a 15" Sony CRT Trinitron monitor I almost lose it. I get so damn excited over those old outdated monitors I have to sit down and catch my breath. I just bought a 21" Trinitron for $3 and I'm loving it big time.

Thats all....I just had to get that off my chest.

Barney
 
My next door neighbor is heading there (Tampa area) on Tuesday. Only problem is -- he's parking his car at the airport. :)
 
I must say, all this talk of CRTs has got me curious. I've got a bunch of miscellaneous ones squirrelled away but I don't think I've ever used a decent one. I've got a normal quality one that I use for playing around sometimes. My problem is that I like sharp high contrast type like letterpress books. The easier something is to read, the better. (I'm a complete loonie in that respecet.)

Are people here generally talking about the quality of photo image reproduction? If that is the case then I can see there being some advantages - particularly in the lower end of the intensity curve. I'm getting tired of always looking at this grey veil of dots on a LCD monitor. It makes LCDs completely useless for light shades - they simply can't reproduce them.

Outside of photos, I really prefer TTL which has the huge advantage of keeping programmers from pretending to be typographers. Still, it's nice to be able to see photographs on a screen and I'm hoping that we will soon come up with some more functional technology that doesn't use dots. LCD is a dead end technology as far as I can tell.
 
I still like some CRT's (model specific to 8/16 bit machines) and Sony CRTs. The larger CRTs (20+ and up) are still to bulky and heavy to keep around.
 
Ole, one of the reasons I enjoy these old clunkers is that I've got all of them connected to my fleet of old, but fully functional multisyncs.
 
I use mulstiple KVM's so I don't need 1 monitor for each computer (wouldn't fit in my house if I did).
 
I have one CRT that I still use daily, a 17" HP as it runs at 1280x1024@70 Hz. It also is capable of doing the old Mac's using a random whatever that connector was to VGA adapter I lost somewhere where all the LCD's complained that the signal was out of range.
 
I much prefer CRTs; the combination of ability to handle arbitrary resolutions without (inevitably piss-poor) scaling and better contrast/color makes a huge difference in image quality. Only problem is finding ones that can handle resolutions above 1024x768 at a decent refresh rate...
 
Ole Juul said:
Are people here generally talking about the quality of photo image reproduction? If that is the case then I can see there being some advantages - particularly in the lower end of the intensity curve. I'm getting tired of always looking at this grey veil of dots on a LCD monitor. It makes LCDs completely useless for light shades - they simply can't reproduce them.
Click to expand...

A cheapo TFN LCD monitor won't, but a wide gamut IPS panel might be what you are looking for. I still use a Sun GDM-20E20 20" Trinitron CRT in the basement as a bench monitor. Its big, its heavy, but its got damn fine picture on it. Plus its got a 13W3 connector (with VGA adapter), so if I ever run across any old Sun equipment.... Oh and it can do 1280x1024 at 75Hz.
 
njroadfan said:
A cheapo TFN LCD monitor won't, but a wide gamut IPS panel might be what you are looking for. I still use a Sun GDM-20E20 20" Trinitron CRT in the basement as a bench monitor. Its big, its heavy, but its got damn fine picture on it. Plus its got a 13W3 connector (with VGA adapter), so if I ever run across any old Sun equipment.... Oh and it can do 1280x1024 at 75Hz.
Click to expand...

If it has a grid, it can't reproduce the lighter tones because the colour of the grid will be mixed in. Size and resolution don't matter much. IOW, if you use dots they have to be extremely small (by several orders of magnitude than we use now) and touching each other. Current LCD technology is not even close to being able to reproduce colours correctly. I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime. Anyway, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if your Sun CRT is better in some ways.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I can well imagine that we'll be waxing nostalgic about old LCD displays when we're all staring at our OLED displays.
Click to expand...

I expect we will be forced to move to some other technology just because LCD monitors are pretty much commodity items now (not much profit). The same thing happened to CRT monitors all the big names quit making them because they could not make a profit, so they went to crappy LCD's (the early ones were very expensive and sucked for moving pictures).
 
All I can think about when using a CRT is the fact that they eventually made some with "low magnetic radiation fields." Which makes me wonder for the 10 years before that, what I was sitting in.... lol

Of course with all of the radio waves and the sun, I may be impervious at this point.
 
Newer CRT monitor glass is pretty thick, rays won't be getting out. The very early monitors and TVs were different.
 
I use a 21" hitachi cm821f dayly on my main pc, yes it's heavy and drains alot but it's very clear considering how old it is and from what i know it's a pro monitor, even has 2 vga in's and it displays 1280x1024 at 85hz so i'm happy, no way i'm going to lcd's or oleds any time soon as i got this one for free from a dumpster and it's been working fine :D, i also have a 19" sony 400ps trinitron behind my on my 2nd oldest pc, it also handles 1280x1024 at 85hz without problem.

Btw i don't even have a single lcd in my house except for some old laptops that is :p
 
Outside of laptops I have an old scratched up 17" LCD for repair/projects since it takes up little space and it easy to move and my main monitor is a Samsung Syncmaster 943 19" 1280x1024 LCD (hate widescreens) connected to a KVM in my room.

Most of the older LCD designs had crappy blacks and streaked (low refresh) for gaming so I can't see them being used for decades like a good CRT was ( I paid close to $800 for my Sony 17FS2 in the 90's and it still looks great in the basement connected to an ADB KVM connected to old beige macs).

Previous to this Samsung I had a 19" Sony 420GS CRT which died but is in the garage in case I get around to fixing it.

Truth be told I have over a dozen CRT monitors in the house including a few CGA, atari, commodore, and misc VGA ones compared to just 2 LCD.
 
The monitor I use day in and out is an old NEC Multisync LCD 2010. New, it cost around $4K, but that was a decade ago. The point is that there are some very nice LCD monitors out there, but be prepared to pay for them.

Take a look at the NEC color-critical or wide-gamut LCD monitors for some better-than average monitors, but be prepared to spend north of $500 for a 19" unit.

I got the last of my VGA CRT monitors out of there about a month ago--an old NEC Multisync XE15, an old Sylvania 19" and an Acer Acerview 19". None was particularly marvelous, so I don't miss them.

For my workshop use, I have a bunch of various cheap LCDs, all of which gotten for free and recapped to make them work (about 20 minutes of work on any one and maybe a couple of bucks in capacitors).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top