A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)
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Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)
#2that was a surprisingly good read
Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)
#3TL;DR: For gaming, because ‘input lag’.
[In a CRT] the electron-to-photon exchange happens instantly. While CRTs do have some sources of lag —namely, the time spent buffering each video frame and scanning each line of the frame from top to bottom on the screen —those delays are on the order of microseconds. When you move your mouse or press a button on the keyboard, the response time is imperceptible...
By contrast, an LCD requires physical movement on the part of every pixel. On an LCD, the back of the display emits a constant stream of white light, which passes through a polarizer and onto an array of liquid crystals. Applying voltage to each crystal causes them to twist, altering the amount of light that comes through the screen's front polarizer.
Compared to electron-photon conversion, the physical movement of liquid crystals inside an LCD display takes a lot more time, introducing input lag. It also creates blurriness when there's a lot of motion happening across the screen.
Also TL;DR: CRTs to look for.
Sony FW900 16:10 CRT [also sold as] HP A7217A, SGI GDM-FW9011, and Sun GDM-FW9010 ... 16:9 CRT monitors including the Intergraph InterView 28HD96 and 24HD96... [and] you'll need a graphics card with an analog output, such as Nvidia's 900 series and AMD's 300 series cards, or a digital-to-analog converter.
Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)
#4I have a different problem with LCDs. I still think they're too bright. With a CRT you could set everything to white on black and you had almost no light coming out of the screen. Also brightness meant brightness and you could turn it way down for when working in dim light or darkness.
Of course i'm talking about text work here.
Maybe when OLED monitors become affordable we'll go back to monitors that aren't basically a lamp shining into your eyes all day. At least the oled on my phone looks like it doesn't put out light where it shouldn't.
For gaming, i'm not latency sensitive, but then i don't play twitch shooters any more. I'm more the kind that buys mid-low range video cards and turns on the fps limiter where it's available.
Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)
#5TL;DR: For gaming, because ‘input lag’. [In a CRT] the electron-to-photon exchange happens instantly. While CRTs do have some sources of lag —namely, the time spent buffering each video frame and scanning each line of the frame from top to bottom on the screen —those delays are on the order of microseconds. When you move your mouse or press a button on the keyboard, the response time is imperceptible... By contrast,…
> a digital-to-analog converter.
How much latency would that typically add?
Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)
#6There was a really good article shared a few weeks ago about video memory on old systems that didn't use a frame buffer, instead the video data was streamed to only a couple of bytes and calculated in real time. This had the effect of nearly zero lag because sprite location could be calculated right up until the moment the first row was drawn to the screen.
I wish I could remember exactly what that article was.
Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)
#7Gaming LCDs these days boast response times in the low single digit millisecond range. Even at 144Hz that’s less than a frame.
If there’s framebuffer-to-photons lag, I’d point my finger at DVI decoding before the physical movement of liquid crystals.
Also, for all the focus on “physical changes” there’s no mention of phosphor fade rate, which is a physical property of the CRT screen with a built-in trade off between latency and flicker.
Please let’s not have CRTs become the new Monster Cables.
Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)
#8My eyes used to hurt a lot on CRTs. A few hours every day in front of one and I could not go outside without sunglasses, anything would make my eyes hurt.
Everything was fine if I went a week without using a computer.
With LCDs, that's not a problem anymore, and I like it.
Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)
#9I have a different problem with LCDs. I still think they're too bright. With a CRT you could set everything to white on black and you had almost no light coming out of the screen. Also brightness meant brightness and you could turn it way down for when working in dim light or darkness. Of course i'm talking about text work here. Maybe when OLED monitors become affordable we'll go back to monitors that aren't basicall…
Yeah I have no idea why the lowest levels on monitors are so bright. Are there models that can go really low without the PWM flicker effect kicking in (that's another problem I have with monitors, I can notice the damn cheap PWM backlight)?
Laptop (and phone) displays don't seem to have this problem, the brightness goes really low...
Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)
#10My eyes used to hurt a lot on CRTs. A few hours every day in front of one and I could not go outside without sunglasses, anything would make my eyes hurt. Everything was fine if I went a week without using a computer. With LCDs, that's not a problem anymore, and I like it.
I think this had a lot to do with low quality fluorescent light ballasts in offices. I agree that it seemed to happen a lot more with CRT, but I have experienced it with LCD too.