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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)

#211

Post by fomine3 »

ardit33 wrote: post #106
nichch wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had a 240hz monitor for a while now and I wouldn’t say 144hz is a waste. I do agree 100-120hz is the sweet spot, good balance of refresh rate and graphical quality. I would not suggest a 240hz monitor if you are not playing competitive shooters a majority of the time.

I agree. By 'a waste', I didn't mean that it is not better, but I meant that it is a diminishing returns curve, and you will end up sacrificing a lot to achieve it (resolution and graphical quality, as computing is not free) and it doesn't feel that much better. Going from 60HZ to 120, or even 90HZ is very noticeable by everyone, even in normal 2D content. Past 120 it is like, eh, just a bit better. Between 120HZ 4k,…

BlurBusters argues even 1000Hz worth, interesting.

https://blurbusters.com/blur-busters-law-amazing-journey-to-...

Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)

#212

Post by tuatoru »

jiggawatts wrote: post #167
skybrian wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like 4k is pretty darned wasteful part of the hedonic treadmill. At a more reasonable resolution, this processing power could be used for higher-end graphics algorithms, better AI, longer battery life, and so on.

I've had 4K monitors on both my work laptop, my PC, and my TV for as long as that was possible. Nearly 7 years. This has cost me thousands and thousands of dollars. My logic is that when I use a computer, it's the monitor that I'm looking at. I don't sit next to the case staring at RGB LEDs. I can't "experience" a processor in any aspect except speed, and that's been perfectly acceptable for a decade. But I'll stare…

I feel this way about high refresh rate.

Having a 120Hz monitor feels like having a computer that keeps up.

(Provided your input devices are also fast enough.)

Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)

#213

Post by sevensor »

Many a year ago, in college, I was helping a friend move. He had a giant 21" CRT, which seemed like it weighed eighty pounds. It was the dead of night, in the middle of winter. We were walking on ice, carrying it together. (We both had late-90s computer nerd biceps.) He slipped, and with a great exertion I managed to grab his side and prevent a fall to the pavement. Neither of us had much in the world at the time, and that sweet monitor was one of his most valuable posessions. Needless to say, he was grateful that I'd rescued his 1600x1200 view into the future.

Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)

#214

Post by TuringNYC »

imstate wrote: post #124
ChuckMcM wrote: post #97

Heh, everything is better on Tubes whether it is guitar amps or gaming monitors? :-) I can pretty much assure you that with a 240Hz refresh rate 4K LCD monitor it will look better than your CRT :-) But it is perfectly valid to say "What is the best experience I can get for $X?" and find that CRT solutions out perform LCD solutions at various price points. That said, I suspect it is less about the "superiority" of the…

The CRT monitors do have a faster response time and higher refresh rate (I've seen up to 640x480@480hz But you would be sacrificing fidelity for this "competitive advantage".

Are you talking about specialty industrial monitors? I've seen 60-90hz normally. I heard there were 120hz...but 480hz? Which company made that?

Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)

#215

Post by jlokier »

cmurphycode wrote: post #32
hombre_fatal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always wished the Macbook’s lowest brightness setting was subdivided two or more times. It’s still too bright when I feel like reading in my dark room perhaps on the way to sleep. I have to use an app called Shady to cover the screen in a dimming overlay.

Have you tried using option-shift-[f1] to subdivide? or the brightness slider in the settings.

Wow, I had no idea that was available.

Unfortunately it doesn't reduce the dimmest level on my MBP. The bottom 4 subdivisions look identical. Like level 0.25, 0.50, 0.75 and 1.00 are all the same brightness, only 1.25+ starts to get brighter.

The lowest level is still too bright at night. That's unfortunate.

However it does reduce the dimmest level of the keyboard illumination!

That's great. I always found the keyboard too bright at its lowest level at night, but some illumination at night would be helpful for obvious reasons. Now I can enjoy 3 subdivisions lower - thank you :-)

Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)

#216

Post by tzs »

hvis wrote: post #184
ImaCake wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read somewhere that you lose high pitch hearing first, which is why the young could hear the CRTs when the elderly could not. I tried to google for this (actually DDG) but all I got was SEO spam.

Something like this? https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/age-related-heari... https://playback.fm/hearing-test and "gradual loss of sensitivity to higher frequencies with age is considered normal" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range )

I wish there was audiophile equipment for older people that took that into account. Headphones and speakers, say, that only go to 14 KHz instead of 20 KHz. By not needing to design for as wide a frequency range, they should be able to either make them less expensive, or more accurate, or both.

Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)

#217

Post by willis936 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #154
imstate wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CRT monitors do have a faster response time and higher refresh rate (I've seen up to 640x480@480hz But you would be sacrificing fidelity for this "competitive advantage".

You might find this note[1] interesting to read. I would love to see a commercial off the shelf cathode ray tube (CRT) that could do 480 Hz, so please share with us a link if you can find it in your notes. A CRT monitor, with a refresh rate of 480 Hz, allows just 2 mS (2.083333 mS to be precise) for excitation of the phosphor. As you know, (here is a similar explainer [2]) the phosphor is excited by the arrival of el…

P22 phosphors are the ones used in all trinitron PC monitors. I get conflicting numbers on the actual decay time of these phosphors, but with a 240 fps camera the decay time is difficult to judge by flipping through frames. I’d have to make a proper set up to try and even give an estimate.

I can safely say the P22 decay time is below 1 ms. Here [0] it is stated to be 100 us for G & B and up to 1 ms for red. A commonly referenced list of phosphor decay times [1] lists it as “medium”. In general, CRT phosphors seem to have sub 1-ms decay times unless you want a long persistence.

The limiting factors will be in a monitor’s max horizontal scan rate (typically 130 kHz or lower) or the DAC’s maximum pixel clock (it used to be 400 MHz but most VGA adapters these days struggle to keep 200+ MHz stable).

0. https://www.epanorama.net/documents/video/phosphor_decay.htm...

1. http://www.bunkerofdoom.com/tubes/crt/crt_phosphor_research....

Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)

#218

Post by mlyle »

bserge wrote: post #105
vidanay wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christmas LEDs are technological abominations. They literally hurt to look at.

I don't understand what it is about some LEDs that make your eyes hurt when you look at them. Best way I can describe it is that my eyes can't focus on them and are constantly trying to.

The worst LED lights are 60Hz, very short duty cycle, very quick flash, with no diffusion. They're seemingly-infinitely small pinpricks of pure chroma flashing at an unpleasant speed. The worst are the blues.

Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)

#219

Post by willis936 »

TuringNYC wrote: post #214
imstate wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CRT monitors do have a faster response time and higher refresh rate (I've seen up to 640x480@480hz But you would be sacrificing fidelity for this "competitive advantage".

Are you talking about specialty industrial monitors? I've seen 60-90hz normally. I heard there were 120hz...but 480hz? Which company made that?

I’m used to seeing VGA CRTs with maximum vertical scan rates of 170 Hz and horizontal scan rates of up to 130 kHz. Impressive stuff to be sure, and still relevant compared to LCD in terms of motion clarity. If you can afford a 4K 120 Hz OLED with black frame insertion, that has all of the technical advantages.

However, CRT TVs playing 240p games still have those thicc scanlines and good nostalgic feels.

Re: A 20-year-old CRT monitor can be better than a 4K LCD (2019)

#220

Post by zapzupnz »

skybrian wrote: post #178
jiggawatts wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had 4K monitors on both my work laptop, my PC, and my TV for as long as that was possible. Nearly 7 years. This has cost me thousands and thousands of dollars. My logic is that when I use a computer, it's the monitor that I'm looking at. I don't sit next to the case staring at RGB LEDs. I can't "experience" a processor in any aspect except speed, and that's been perfectly acceptable for a decade. But I'll stare…

A larger monitor I can understand, but on a laptop, how can 4k resolution be visible if it's... too small to see?

Well, you wouldn't run the computer at a 1:1 resolution, it would be a logical lower resolution displayed at a higher resolution. For a 4K display, everything would show at the size it would be on a 2K display — but actually rendering at 4K, everything is much crisper rather than just blown-up pixels.

Apple calls it Retina Display, Windows calls it display scale. Apple made it mainstream in 2010 (iPhone) and 2012 (iPad, Macs) whilst Microsoft seems to have made it much more mainstream since Windows 8 and the introduction of its Surface computers.

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