How did the world allow lcd's to take gamers a step backwards and away from CRTs?

How the heck did LCD's take over CRT's? How come people haven't struggled to get CRT's?

Just saying because no matter how you look at it, LCD's just plain suck. You can take a needle and stab an LCD and watch this nasty liquid spill out (they always have a nasty plastic polluted smell too); try stabbing or punching a CRT as much as you can and you'll be left with broken knuckles and a pretty screwed up hand.

How is it, that gamers have gotten accustomed to 60hz (or even 15-30hz with tearing on consoles)? What happened to playing Quake 3 on unlagged servers on a common 17" CRT with 1280x1024 and dropping the rez to 1024x768 for at least 85hz (vsync off of course with framerates around 100-180 on a Geforce 3). Anything less than 85hz always resulted in noticeable animation breakup. And yes you can see the framerate easily since the display is a non-moving 2D object (it's like when you're reading a book and you focus on each word or sentence. It's not like you got 85 monitors flying past your face each second for 85hz; it's the other way around).

Also, LCD's have the worst possible way to render pixels and lines. Seriously, if you buy a 1600x1200 LCD and want to drop down resolution because of frame-rate issues, you're f^#ked. Not only will you get nasty interpolation (uneven pixels like you see in those nintendo emulators being interpolated into deleted details), but you get a dose of additional lag. There's already lag to begin with at native resolution. CRT's don't even have a native resolution; all resolutions are native. If you want higher framerates without dropping down to 1024x768 for instance, you have to spend a f^4king ridiculous amount of money for a new video card that can handle the highest resolution the LCD outputs (AKA native rez); and you need an LCD that does over 60hz at that highest rez. $hittie$t f^4king display on the planet. That's not even considering console games that internally scale a lower rez game (say 640 lines) to 720 or more lines.

Another thing is the colors. CRT's always have true full color RGB. You have to spend an arm and a leg ($1,850. It's funny cause I have 1994 17" CRT that used to be around $1000 but it needs new capacitors) to get an LCD that can manage up to 98% of adobe's RGB color space with minimal dithering: http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/new_eizo_professional_lcd_offers_outputs_98_of_adobe_rgb_colors.html That monitor uses the same amount of watts as a 21" CRT. You don't even get pure black on LCD and you have to be deadly centered infront of the display or the colors and brightness f^7k up.

We had the best displays for the longest time since Doom in 1993 (1280x1024 monitors existed in the 80's). It's like we have all these more advanced graphics now but yet, we have $hittier displays.

Is China taking over, or did satan shove his dick up everyone's ass?

WTF?

Here's a 22" Lacie (CRT) that does 2048X1536 @ 86hz. http://www.lacie.com/download/datasheet/blueiv_en.pdf

CRT's have some small advantages over LCD technology, but LCD displays are nowhere near as bad as you claim. A good LCD with good viewing angles, low to near non-existent input lag and near 100% coverage of the sRGB color gamut sets you back about 400$, like this one. It's got some of the best viewing angles and no noticeable input lag.

You wouldn't want one that covers the AdobeRGB color space anyway, as there isn't a game or movie designed to make use of that gamut, which means you just get over-saturated colors. If you still need that gamut coverage, you're still not breaking the bank much, like with this one.

As for the 60Hz - 85Hz stuff, some LCD displays can reach 120Hz if needed, though those usually use cheaper panel technology and compromise. While LCD technology still has to catch up a bit there, 60Hz is not as bad on LCD's than it was on CRT displays, on which you could almost see the electron beam race across it.

Lastly, CRT's are huge. The 17" one I once had took up over half the desk. Now there's two larger ones taking up less space, so I can fill the rest up with my personal collection of clutter.

The colours on LCD screens really suck. I miss having a CRT for Photoshop, I could make out incredibly subtle variances in shade. On a LCD, sometimes I have to tip the damn screen and look from an extreme angle to see shades of (for example) lighter greys in the middle of whites -- sometimes stuff you do not want to miss before sending a graphic off to be printed somewhere; where it will show up.

And don't get me started on 'motion flow' fake inbetweening and lag for games...

Fucking CRTs take a lot of fucking space and if my laptop had a fucking CRT, I fucking couldn't put it in my fucking backpack.

By the fucking way, we can fucking say fuck here. No need for a fucking half-assed censorship that just looks fucking ugly.

Gez said:

Fucking CRTs take a lot of fucking space and if my laptop had a fucking CRT, I fucking couldn't put it in my fucking backpack.

By the fucking way, we can fucking say fuck here. No need for a fucking half-assed censorship that just looks fucking ugly.

You using a f^4king LCD?

Gez said:

Fucking CRTs take a lot of fucking space and if my laptop had a fucking CRT, I fucking couldn't put it in my fucking backpack.

Summed up my thoughts pretty closely.

Over here we used up all our CRTs in the last siege as ammunition for our catapults.

You write like a stereotypical privileged, spec-obsessed, adolescent gaming nerd, who can't conceive of more important concerns than his own. The display market is driven by mainstream consumer and business needs, and gamers are a secondary concern at best.

The shift to CRTs to LCDs was driven by the former being far too big, too heavy and too power-hungry. Even if LCDs couldn't, and still can't, match the best CRTs in some technical respects, these fundamental advantages ensured LCDs would triumph as soon as they became "good enough" in other areas, and became cheap enough to manufacture competitively.

Whenever a new technology replaces an older alternative, there are inevitably areas where quality regresses. That is because the incumbent has had far longer in the marketplace to be evolved and finessed. And sure enough, there will always be die-hard adherents to the legacy approach who view the new one as nothing less than a horrific, illuminati-sponsored conspiracy to ruin their lives by foisting something inferior upon them.

In reality, LCDs are just better than CRTs in ways (size, weight, etc.) that matter more to more people than refresh rate and gamut size. Moreover, LCDs will gradually improve in many of these areas, whereas CRTs are never going to not be big and heavy. Eventually, LCDs themselves will be replaced by a new technology, and people like you will take to messageboards to decry the switch away from them because whatever replacement tech won't, at first, be able to match their colour depth, refresh rate, etc.

Haven't used a CRT in years, and I don't miss them. I'm not convinced they have any kind of advantage over modern displays.

Holering said:

Just saying because no matter how you look at it, LCD's just plain suck. You can take a needle and stab an LCD and watch this nasty liquid spill out (they always have a nasty plastic polluted smell too); try stabbing or punching a CRT as much as you can and you'll be left with broken knuckles and a pretty screwed up hand.

Dumbest argument I've ever heard. If you're going to try to argue for CRTs then at least stick to points that are actually relevant.

CRTs are loud, slow, inefficient, and above all have shitty picture quality due to pixels the size of postage stamps (but maybe this outdated technology has been advanced in the past years- I don't know, because to me it's been outdated crap since 1997). Like the other guy said, you seem like some whiny self-centered kid. I much prefer playing Doom on my LCD than lugging the CRT out from the dungeon next to the pile of records and playing Doom on that.

fraggle said:

Haven't used a CRT in years, and I don't miss them. I'm not convinced they have any kind of advantage over modern displays.

They do have one big drawback for image quality: their curvature. LCD and plasma screens are perfectly flat.

Holering said:

You can take a needle and stab an LCD and watch this nasty liquid spill out (they always have a nasty plastic polluted smell too); try stabbing or punching a CRT as much as you can and you'll be left with broken knuckles and a pretty screwed up hand.

What are you, some sort of fucking mong? Why does this matter? Who the fuck goes around stabbing LCD's and punching CRT's?

At least CRTs can withstand random acts of violence, when Winblows decides to go BsoD.

I've never witnessed any BSOD with all three of my windows PCs and two laptops because I always know what I'm doing. :B

What a fucking shitty fucking thread.

Actually, the correct question is how did the world allow cheap ass LCDs take the place of quality CRTs and quality LCD types. Well, it's obvious, just like with a lot of other consumer electronics: because they're ass-cheap and "sleeker and smaller than the old, bulky boxes" (though people bought them even when they co-existed with CRTs, and even bad LCDs cost as much as a decent mid-level CRT).

How hipster.

The only people who cared about CRTs were Quake pr0s. And even they don't give a shit anymore. You're 5 years too late and a community away. Most people here would crush you at Doom even with their shitty LCDs.

I had a Trinitron(TM) monitor once. That thing weighed as much as my girlfriend in 2002. Stupid. Then my brother drew on it with a marker that ate whatever coating was on the screen. Bastard.

The really bad LCDs have mostly gone away. I still have one plugged in with poor colour rendering, but it use it as a secondary that only displays IM windows most of the time.

Sometimes I wonder if the dramatic change in colours used in Windows 8 is due to the number of low-quality LCDs around. My main monitor was pretty good in 2008, but it has issues with that pale yellow Windows has used for things like tooltips for decades. Windows 8 never seems to use that colour.

Avoozl said:

I've never witnessed any BSOD with all three of my windows PCs and two laptops because I always know what I'm doing. :B

Thanks to shitty drivers my current PC BSODs about once a month. Sometimes two. It has zilch to do with how much you "know what you're doing."

Quasar said:

Thanks to shitty drivers my current PC BSODs about once a month. Sometimes two. It has zilch to do with how much you "know what you're doing."

Exactly. BSODs are very common with bad drivers or broken hardware. The PC I had in 2007 would BSOD every time it got too cold. Well, that's what it did when running Vista. When it had XP installed it just locked up. Took a long, long time to find the pattern there.

>Winblows
>CRT

Fucking hell, Slashdot left the basement door open again.

The only bluescreens I've had for years have been related to bad memory and or graphics drivers. I had somewhat regular bluescreens on XP, a couple on Windows 7 and none on Windows 8.

I don't miss the CRT much. They flashed visibly, and for some reason pixel quality would degrade over time, becoming blurrier. And if the LCD is expensive, it will be as crispy as ever.

CRTs still surpass even the best LCDs in at least two areas:

• Color rendering: a CRT even today can totally destroy a LCD on that front at price parity, and it's the reason that dedicated CRTs for graphic designers/photographers/medical imaging still exist. No 6-bit color depth nastiness there, I'm telling ya.
  
• Response speed: try as you might, even "lag free" LCDs (which have to be specially engineered to achieve it) cannot match even the shittiest CRT on that front, simply because none of them does single-pixel updates by "chasing the beam". A CRT ALWAYS works with real-time signals, in pure analog style, and reacts as fast as the time it takes to draw a single pixel (this is what made some visual tricks on arcade games possible, BTW). A LCD has to first costruct at least one frame in an internal buffer (if it's "zero lag"), or more if it's the most common overdriven consumer type, which tries to hide the deficiencies of crappy panels through special driver electronics' shenanigans. I don't know if technologies such as plasma or OLED are any different than LCD on this front. Plasma, maybe.
  

Now, do those matter to most people? Answer: probably not. A "pr0 1337 gamer" buying a cheap-ass LCD monitor which buffers 5 frames ahead before rendering anything and then complaining about "input lag" really was asking for it. Why didn't he buy a "gamer rated" LCD then? Ah right, those ain't cheap...

For the rest, CRTs certainly do have their flaws, though mid 2000s models really had most of them ironed out (Samsung and Sony monitors KICKED ASS, and still kick).

The most valid concerns are about the type of electronics used. OK, so LCDs are almost 100% solid state, no vacuum tubes or high voltages used, so in theory they should be more reliable and less prone to aging and wear, right?

And yet, in several computer departments, I've seen many more unrepairable LCDs than CRTs. CRTs usually get retired when they are no longer viable due to space or supporting some ridiculously high resolution, but seldom due to electronics failures (they are tough SOBs, more reliable than CRT TVs!). LCDs also suffer from lamp aging and dead pixels over time, with a planned lifetime of no longer than 3-5 years. CRTs can literally last decades. A CRT can keep even performance over years, even with daily use, provided it's well-tuned at the factory and the vacuum is high quality, to prevent early tube failure/performance drops.

TL; DR version: LCDs are simply a product of their time: cheap, disposable, unrepairable and just good enough at getting the job done for 90% of people. Can't blame them for that. The other 10% of people with special requirements, if those are indeed so pressing, can always (?) pay for better alternatives or higher class LCD offerings.

I initially was hesitant to switch to LCD's because the first one I've used burned out in only two years (not to mention all those reasons in the OP). I stopped using CRTs after antidepressant-induced photosensitive seizures started occurring.

Ironically enough, some LCDs use fluorescent lamps for backlighting, which flash at twice the mains' frequency. I don't think those would be any better for your seizures ;-)

Holering said:

You can take a needle and stab an LCD and watch this nasty liquid spill out (they always have a nasty plastic polluted smell too); try stabbing or punching a CRT as much as you can and you'll be left with broken knuckles and a pretty screwed up hand.

What are you talking about? Use a goddamn hammer.

Maes said:

Ironically enough, some LCDs use fluorescent lamps for backlighting, which flash at twice the mains' frequency. I don't think those would be any better for your seizures ;-)

Nah, I've been taken off of the antidepressants after it was found out that it was a big factor to the seizures I had.