CRT to TFT - Experiences?

[Speed]

Hello,

Basically at the moment I own and use a Sony A220 17" Pure Flat 0.24/25 CRT Monitor. Now although it getting on now, it’s still working and as good as when I first purchased it. The main problem is the sheer amount of room it takes up on my desk. Now I've never owned a TFT monitor and I've always had CRT's. Basically I'm wondering what peoples experiences have been when they moved from a high quality CRT to TFT.

I gather you get what you pay for, but do any reasonably priced TFT's match up to a good CRT?

Did anyone make the move and has never looked back? Or had to go back?

I'm interested in anyone’s thoughts on the matter.

Regards

Speed
(Mark)

[TiG]

Its as simple as i will never go back to a CRT. I've had my TFT in sig for a good 6months+ now and its just no comparision. I work with a 21" dell branded sony CRT flat triniton and i still prefer my 17" Hyundai TFT at home.

TiG

[Stoo]

I went from a rather nice Nokia 19" crt to a 20" Viewsonic VP211B TFT, both have the same maximum resolution (1600*1200), but the tft is far better in terms of picture quality, much sharper, much more vivid colours.

I paid just over £720 for the tft, and nearly £400 for the crt about 6 years ago, you really do get what you pay for

[Spud1]

It all comes down to a few things, mainly personal preferance and how sensitive you are to the differences.

Many people will swear blind that TFTs are better than CRTs, giving better colour definition/range etc. Theres an equal number of people (inc me) who disagree 100% though.

Both my housemates have high quality TFTs, one of them has a lovely
Dell Ultrasharp 2005fpw, and the other one of those cheap sub £200 17" ones from aria.

First of all comparing those tfts, the quality difference is staggaring (ignoring the size). The dell is much brighter, crisper and has much better colour definition - to see the difference the easy way is to run something like 3Dmark 2001 - the nature test there shows the difference.

Granted niether of the displays have ghosting problems - that seems to be a thing of the past nowadays.

Now comparing them to my samsung syncmaster 1100DF 21" CRT.....again ignorning size. The differnce between the cheap 17" and mine is once again staggaring, everything just looks..better - sharper, clearer, richer on the CRT. With the dell TFT tho theres not really much difference. I cant really tell if one is better than the other, and I would happily reccomend one

That said I dont have ~£500 to spend on a tft

My point is that after comparing a few personally, I would say that to get a tft worth replacing your CRT with you have to spend ALOT of money, or you wont be happy. - Stoos example above shows this nicely

doubtless lots of ppl will disagree with me/flame me for that but its just my opinion based on my own tests, different opinions are welcome

[Speed]

Hello,

Yes, this was pretty much what I thought and what I was worried about. In order to get anything that comes up to the standards of a good CRT, I'm going to have to spend quite abit of cash. Cash that I don't have!

Thanks for everyone's feedback and advice!

Regards

Speed
(Mark)

[Kumagoro]

My eyes feel much better in front of the TFT.

[davidstone28]

Comparing CRTs to TFTs is like bit like comparing apples to oranges.

I've owned about 8 different TFTs - have 3 at the moment - and have also evaluated several more. For video work, fast motion games, graphic/art design, photography, a high quality aperture grill CRT is superior to TFT in almost everyway.

For office work, I prefer TFTs because I find that they give me less eye strain as you don't get the 'torch shining into your eyes' effect of CRTs.

Guess it depends on what you're after - I can't live with the amount of space that CRTs take up.

[Timmy!!!]

I have an LG L1710B Flatron TFT and its absolutely fantastic. I notice no ghosting effects and its crisp, clear and bright. Its a great TFT and isnt that expensive really. When it arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see that it actually has a nice thin bezel, unlike all the pictures of it are.

Im sure that you can get much better CRTs and TFTs because you get what you pay for. But I am pleased with my choice and I would never go back to CRT.

Whenever I use a CRT now I just cant use it, it just hurts my eyes to look at it. TFTs are a lot kinder to the eyes.

[Gunbuster]

I've owned a TFT for almost 2 years now (Samsung 712b) and I'm happy (although I wish I had got a DVI one). I've only seen a few others so I can't full comment on all TFTs. I never found ghosting a problem for me, 25ms is slow by todays standards, but I noticed a friend's 12ms Dell had much more noticable colour banding/dithering. Colour acuracy and range bother me as much as response time. We have cheapy CRTs at work, one even has a dead pixel on it.

My rule of thumb is:
- Make sure its DVI
- find out what the Dead Pixel Policy is
- make sure its response time is what it states (ie 12ms at best vs 16ms all the time)
- find out its colour depth (16.7mill vs 16.2mill)
- find a review that has checked colour accuracy

[Mblaster]

I went from a Sony Triniton Flat CRT mnitor to a 17" Hyundai Q17 TFT about 8 months ago and it's great. I don't notice any ghosting and the image quality is as good if not better, and I now have some room on my desk

[slugs]

may biggest issue it that my 19inch tft is only 1280x1024. I was used to a 19inch Ezio and running at 1600x1200 or upto 2048 x 1536 when circum stances demanded it.

[Speed]

I have an LG L1710B Flatron TFT and its absolutely fantastic. I notice no ghosting effects and its crisp, clear and bright. Its a great TFT and isnt that expensive really. When it arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see that it actually has a nice thin bezel, unlike all the pictures of it are.

Im sure that you can get much better CRTs and TFTs because you get what you pay for. But I am pleased with my choice and I would never go back to CRT.

Whenever I use a CRT now I just cant use it, it just hurts my eyes to look at it. TFTs are a lot kinder to the eyes.

I've been looking at the next model up from yours Timmy, the LG L1720B. Reviews seem to rate it quite well, anyone got one? Shed some light on how good it is?

Gunbuster how big of an effect does DVI have? as the LG1720B doesn't have it. There is a LG1720P which does and has 12ms as aposed to the 16ms of the "B" version, but costs £100 more

Thanks for everyone's feedback, just shows how good this forum and the users on it really are!

Regards

Speed

[Timmy!!!]

I've been looking at the next model up from yours Timmy, the LG L1720B. Reviews seem to rate it quite well, anyone got one? Shed some light on how good it is?

Gunbuster how big of an effect does DVI have? as the LG1720B doesn't have it.

Im not gunbuster but I can say that on my LG LCD it makes no difference that I can see. I use the DVI connection with my shuttle and the VGA when connecting to my laptop for dual screen . At first the VGA connection was extremly blurey, but I pressed menu on the moniter and navigated to the phase settings. I altered this and once set correctly I could not tell the difference between the two connections.

The only niggle I have with LCD monitors is that you have to use it in the native resolution or the screen looks awful This is fine for me as I love high resolutions, but when people go on it with bad eye sight they really complain! dam them

If you can get a DVI capable LCD get it, but dont worry too much if you dont have one. If you have a good quality graphics card, quality cable and a good monitor VGA will look just as good.

[Speed]

Right I've taken delivery of a LG L1915S which is 19" 12ms. Now both impressed and slightly disappointed. I’m really impressed with the sheer size of the screen as of course 19” TFT’s are actually 19”. I’m also impressed with the space it saves, the brightness and colours.

What I’m slightly disappointed with is I’ve come across what I assume is bleeding. Now I’m not much of a gamer, but I do play things like farcry, full spectrum warrior and on so. Playing farcry you can only really slight blurring when turning fast and it doesn’t really bother me that much. What I have noticed however is when I’m just using windows for web browsing, desktop work etc it’s more visible.

Now I assume this is bleeding but please tell me if I’m wrong. If you open something like my computer, make the window smaller than the desktop. Then you click and hold the blue bar to move the window around. Watching the text in the window and then move the window about and varying speeds. I can see the text going darker and getting thicker and I assume this is bleeding.

Could people with TFT’s try what I described in the above paragraph for me and tell me if this is normal and to what extent they can see this?

Thanks in advance!

Speed

[davidstone28]

It's motion blur - some people call it lag or ghosting. And largely (though not entirely) related to the pixel reponse times (the 12ms you refer to).

It happens with ALL TFTs. Don't let anyone tell you any different. Its just a question of degree. You'll learn to live with it after a while. You probably notice it more now, simply because you're used to CRTs.

There'e a techie report somewhere - linked from Inquirer or Register talking about the whole issue and in particular, a technie engineering company saying you will still get that effect to a certain extent even if the response time is 0.1ms. It's all to do with LCD technology itself.

BTW, you're "12ms" monitor is unlikely to be operating anywhere near 12ms. It's response range is probably somewhere near 20ms - 30ms.

[Speed]

Thanks for the reply, yes I assumed it was something like that.

Thanks for the info, very helpful.

With regards to the ms, yes I've been told things like this. But even if it isn't operating at what it should, it still seems a pretty good deal.

Thanks again

Speed