5 ms·

The sales pitch was that "HD" was all anyone was supposed to care about. What we got in exchange for HD and some extra desk space was terrible color accuracy, w

The sales pitch was that "HD" was all anyone was supposed to care about. What we got in exchange for HD and some extra desk space was terrible color accuracy, worse contrast and grey blacks, low refresh rates, high latency/input lag, motion blur, dead/stuck pixels, poor viewing angles, fixed resolutions, backlight bleed, and DRM. We also lost the degauss button. Kids today will never know how fun that was. Some of that has gotten better over time, but it'd be nice if in 2024 we had screens at least as capable as what we had several decades ago.

didntcheck 3y ago
Perhaps I just had poor ones, but my memory of CRTs was inferior blacks in practice due to the much higher reflectiveness of the glass surface. So while technically it was a perfect black in terms of direct emissions, it didn't help much when I could see the room behind me reflected in that "black" patch. In a dark arcade it's fine of course, but most of my monitor use is in a well-lit room. And I still dislike glossy modern monitors
- autoexec 3y ago
  It's true that there were CRTs that performed worse than others and that glare was an issue. CRTs could develop some weird image issues when they started failing too so for a lot of people used to old CRTs that needed repair getting a new LCD probably did seem like an upgrade. Very few people who'd been using a well functioning Sony Trinitron would have felt that way though.
  - NikkiA 3y ago
    As someone that had a 22" Sony trinitron monitor on my (sagging) desk in the late 90s, no, I was glad to switch to LCD.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
    There's a Sony Wega that's been sitting outside my back door for 10 years because it could only handle a toddler pouring apple juice inside it twice. Should probably make a trip to hazmat drop off one of these years. Anyway, no. The reason said toddler was able to damage it was because I replaced that sucker with an LCD TV the instant they didn't cost an arm and a leg and moved the CRT into the basement for the kids to watch.
    - EvanAnderson 3y ago
      I'd post it on your local craigslist, etc, as a free pickup. No more Trinitron tubes are being made. It's possible it has value to somebody. No point in it going to landfill if somebody can make something good out of it (and you potentially don't have to move it).
      - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
        > been sitting outside my back door for 10 years I'm thinking you missed that part :-) He and I talked about it today and it's probably been out there for closer to 12 years.
        EvanAnderson 3y ago
        There's still a decent chance the tube itself is salvageable.
  - nyanpasu64 3y ago
    Sadly with CRT monitors (at least today) there's a tradeoff where at low brightness (black level) settings, dark areas of the image are underexposed, and at high brightness even pitch-black emits a bit of light. The ideal solution would be a nonlinear gamma-like curve where dark areas of an image have a higher slope than the rest (but without decreasing the slope of whites compared to mid-tones).
- dbttdft 3y ago
  CRT black levels compared to LCD are night and day. Even a game like Genshin Impact (shit game I know, but it has good graphics) looks unimaginably better on CRT than any LCD, due to the high contrast as a consequence of the low black level. CRTs generally have less reflection than a glossy LCD due to some different kind of coating or glass treatment hard to find info on it). Last summer I used a CRT that is 99% dead (99% brightness / contrast) with the windows open every day letting sun in on a ~90 degree angle, and there was never an issue, nor with cheaper ones.
toast0 3y ago
LCDs do give consistent color convergence over the whole display, and perfect vertical and horizontal lines. That counts for something, although you're certainly right about the cons.
theamk 3y ago
Wait what, "HD"? Sales pitch where? I don't think I ever watched traditional ads for monitors, it was always catalogs (with dry specs) and computer magazines / friends (which always mentioned latency). And if there were any resolution-related acronyms, it would be SVGA, XGA and other weird things no one took seriously. Here is a period shopping catalog: https://archive.org/details/computer_shopper_2000-07/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/computer_shopper_2000-07/page/n5... (page 5). Note you had a choice PerfectFlat E2 CRT panel (1280x1024, 17" viewable) and ViewPanel LCD (with same spec). At that time (2000's), LCDs were 2x-3x times more expensive than CRTs, so most people would still go with CRTs. HD is a relatively new term which I think appeared when LCD came for consumer TVs? By that time, LCD monitors has long ago became prevalent with the PCs.
- dbttdft 3y ago
  This is the correct history. LCD was pushed with only 3 points: - sharp image - less power consumption - less space taken and less weight
xcv123 3y ago
I remember the constant eye strain from years of CRT monitor use. Blurry and flickery pieces of shit. I dumped mine in the trash and never looked back. Good riddance. > it'd be nice if in 2024 we had screens at least as capable as what we had several decades ago You don't know what you're talking about. Try using a high end LCD that was manufactured in the past 10 years. The screens today are way better than the shit we were forced to use in the 90s. https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/ https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/
- autoexec 3y ago
  I fully admit that they have improved, but they still do not support everything CRTs did. I haven't tried that particular monitor. I'm unwilling to pay for the $1,000 monitor stand (sold separately), or the $20 proprietary Apple Polishing Cloths, but I really should stop into an apple store sometime to see in it in action for myself.
  - xcv123 3y ago
    LOL the $1k stand. It wasn't until I bought a $200 stand when I realized how they can justify $1k for something that works properly. These days I'm using a Chinese "professional 4k" monitor that covers 98% of DCI-P3 color gamut and the entire monitor costs less than the Apple stand. Can't compare this to any CRT I used in the 90s. https://www.innocnmonitor.com/products-category/4k-professional-monitors.html https://www.innocnmonitor.com/products-category/4k-professio...
- dbttdft 3y ago
  You don't know what you're talking about. LCDs were completely unusable until the mid 2000s, even then they were all 60Hz/75Hz with no black frame insertion, which made any animation what so ever, even text scrolling blurred to crap. It took me years to figure out that this was why I suddenly couldn't read any text scrolling on logs on terminals. Yes, CRTs, flicker, it's a feature, it prevents motion blur. You're meant to put them up to 85Hz or so and flicker becomes less of an issue. There are two different types of flicker, the flicker fusion threshold, which is when humans still see flicker when looking directly at a flickering light source, and just general perceptible flicker, which can be seen easier at the corner of your eyes and in my experience goes up to 100s of Hz. The latter is an issue for all CRTs, and basically all LCDs up until 2015 or so when they started pushing flicker free. Before 2015, basically all LCDs flickered, typically between 100Hz-300Hz, and it was always visible, and also left artifacts on the screen during image panning (such as in a 3D game or when scrolling a map). Yes, low end CRTs had lots of blur but by the late 90s any mid ranged model had somewhat acceptable levels of blur, and moreover much less blur than you get the moment an image pans across an LCD. As an experiment, if you simply move an image across the screen at 15pixels per frame on a 60Hz LCD, it will already be blured to hell. Those Apple monitors have terrible grainy coating which some monitors choose to have for some reason. There's no tradeoff there, since there are plenty of LCDs without it. They also have bad viewing angles like all IPS contrary to marketing. The only advantage they have is high pixel density, and high color gamut which may or may not be functional or desirable but this is another can of worms. Wide gamut on a monitor is not just automatically good.

didntcheck 3y ago

Perhaps I just had poor ones, but my memory of CRTs was inferior blacks in practice due to the much higher reflectiveness of the glass surface. So while technically it was a perfect black in terms of direct emissions, it didn't help much when I could see the room behind me reflected in that "black" patch. In a dark arcade it's fine of course, but most of my monitor use is in a well-lit room. And I still dislike glossy modern monitors

autoexec 3y ago
It's true that there were CRTs that performed worse than others and that glare was an issue. CRTs could develop some weird image issues when they started failing too so for a lot of people used to old CRTs that needed repair getting a new LCD probably did seem like an upgrade. Very few people who'd been using a well functioning Sony Trinitron would have felt that way though.
- NikkiA 3y ago
  As someone that had a 22" Sony trinitron monitor on my (sagging) desk in the late 90s, no, I was glad to switch to LCD.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  There's a Sony Wega that's been sitting outside my back door for 10 years because it could only handle a toddler pouring apple juice inside it twice. Should probably make a trip to hazmat drop off one of these years. Anyway, no. The reason said toddler was able to damage it was because I replaced that sucker with an LCD TV the instant they didn't cost an arm and a leg and moved the CRT into the basement for the kids to watch.
  - EvanAnderson 3y ago
    I'd post it on your local craigslist, etc, as a free pickup. No more Trinitron tubes are being made. It's possible it has value to somebody. No point in it going to landfill if somebody can make something good out of it (and you potentially don't have to move it).
    - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
      > been sitting outside my back door for 10 years I'm thinking you missed that part :-) He and I talked about it today and it's probably been out there for closer to 12 years.
      - EvanAnderson 3y ago
        There's still a decent chance the tube itself is salvageable.
- nyanpasu64 3y ago
  Sadly with CRT monitors (at least today) there's a tradeoff where at low brightness (black level) settings, dark areas of the image are underexposed, and at high brightness even pitch-black emits a bit of light. The ideal solution would be a nonlinear gamma-like curve where dark areas of an image have a higher slope than the rest (but without decreasing the slope of whites compared to mid-tones).
dbttdft 3y ago
CRT black levels compared to LCD are night and day. Even a game like Genshin Impact (shit game I know, but it has good graphics) looks unimaginably better on CRT than any LCD, due to the high contrast as a consequence of the low black level. CRTs generally have less reflection than a glossy LCD due to some different kind of coating or glass treatment hard to find info on it). Last summer I used a CRT that is 99% dead (99% brightness / contrast) with the windows open every day letting sun in on a ~90 degree angle, and there was never an issue, nor with cheaper ones.

toast0 3y ago

LCDs do give consistent color convergence over the whole display, and perfect vertical and horizontal lines. That counts for something, although you're certainly right about the cons.

theamk 3y ago

Wait what, "HD"? Sales pitch where? I don't think I ever watched traditional ads for monitors, it was always catalogs (with dry specs) and computer magazines / friends (which always mentioned latency). And if there were any resolution-related acronyms, it would be SVGA, XGA and other weird things no one took seriously. Here is a period shopping catalog: https://archive.org/details/computer_shopper_2000-07/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/computer_shopper_2000-07/page/n5... (page 5). Note you had a choice PerfectFlat E2 CRT panel (1280x1024, 17" viewable) and ViewPanel LCD (with same spec). At that time (2000's), LCDs were 2x-3x times more expensive than CRTs, so most people would still go with CRTs. HD is a relatively new term which I think appeared when LCD came for consumer TVs? By that time, LCD monitors has long ago became prevalent with the PCs.

dbttdft 3y ago
This is the correct history. LCD was pushed with only 3 points: - sharp image - less power consumption - less space taken and less weight

xcv123 3y ago

I remember the constant eye strain from years of CRT monitor use. Blurry and flickery pieces of shit. I dumped mine in the trash and never looked back. Good riddance. > it'd be nice if in 2024 we had screens at least as capable as what we had several decades ago You don't know what you're talking about. Try using a high end LCD that was manufactured in the past 10 years. The screens today are way better than the shit we were forced to use in the 90s. https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/ https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/

autoexec 3y ago
I fully admit that they have improved, but they still do not support everything CRTs did. I haven't tried that particular monitor. I'm unwilling to pay for the $1,000 monitor stand (sold separately), or the $20 proprietary Apple Polishing Cloths, but I really should stop into an apple store sometime to see in it in action for myself.
- xcv123 3y ago
  LOL the $1k stand. It wasn't until I bought a $200 stand when I realized how they can justify $1k for something that works properly. These days I'm using a Chinese "professional 4k" monitor that covers 98% of DCI-P3 color gamut and the entire monitor costs less than the Apple stand. Can't compare this to any CRT I used in the 90s. https://www.innocnmonitor.com/products-category/4k-professional-monitors.html https://www.innocnmonitor.com/products-category/4k-professio...
dbttdft 3y ago
You don't know what you're talking about. LCDs were completely unusable until the mid 2000s, even then they were all 60Hz/75Hz with no black frame insertion, which made any animation what so ever, even text scrolling blurred to crap. It took me years to figure out that this was why I suddenly couldn't read any text scrolling on logs on terminals. Yes, CRTs, flicker, it's a feature, it prevents motion blur. You're meant to put them up to 85Hz or so and flicker becomes less of an issue. There are two different types of flicker, the flicker fusion threshold, which is when humans still see flicker when looking directly at a flickering light source, and just general perceptible flicker, which can be seen easier at the corner of your eyes and in my experience goes up to 100s of Hz. The latter is an issue for all CRTs, and basically all LCDs up until 2015 or so when they started pushing flicker free. Before 2015, basically all LCDs flickered, typically between 100Hz-300Hz, and it was always visible, and also left artifacts on the screen during image panning (such as in a 3D game or when scrolling a map). Yes, low end CRTs had lots of blur but by the late 90s any mid ranged model had somewhat acceptable levels of blur, and moreover much less blur than you get the moment an image pans across an LCD. As an experiment, if you simply move an image across the screen at 15pixels per frame on a 60Hz LCD, it will already be blured to hell. Those Apple monitors have terrible grainy coating which some monitors choose to have for some reason. There's no tradeoff there, since there are plenty of LCDs without it. They also have bad viewing angles like all IPS contrary to marketing. The only advantage they have is high pixel density, and high color gamut which may or may not be functional or desirable but this is another can of worms. Wide gamut on a monitor is not just automatically good.