Are flat panels better for the eyes than CRT monitors?

[astroruben]

Are flat panels better for the eyes than CRT monitors? Where can I get more information about it?

Thank you in advance.

[freak_in_cage_10k]

erm, there are 2 possible reasons for why tft may be better:

1) Most tft monitors have a max resolution of 1024x768- this is fine to view on. CRT monitors can go up to much higher resolutions and i guess eye stain could be caused from looking at a monitor running a very high resolution?
2) tft screens are flat. however, crt monitors dont have a TOTALLY flat face and so ppl may consider viewing a totally flat screen more pleasant.

so, personally, unless space is a concern you may as well buy a cheaper crt monitor and just run it at reasonable resolutions (eg 1024x768 or a bit higher! reason no 2) is probably non-existant!

[MOVIEGEEK]

Having too low(<85hz) refreshrate gives me a headache.
Slightly off-topic..a friend of mine has a LCD monitor and to me the picture was blurry and it caused eye strain after just 15min.LCD monitors are notorious for losing their sharpness and color over time.
Here's a CRT vs LCD article:
http://compreviews.about.com/library/weekly/aa-crtvlcd.htm

[BJ_M]

Having too low(<85hz) refreshrate gives me a headache.
Slightly off-topic..a friend of mine has a LCD monitor and to me the picture was blurry and it caused eye strain after just 15min.LCD monitors are notorious for losing their sharpness and color over time.
Here's a CRT vs LCD article:
http://compreviews.about.com/library/weekly/aa-crtvlcd.htm

he hasnt seen a good quality LCD it appears .. though true - it will be expensive ..

[energy80s]

LCD monitors are no use for judging colours on. Also they have quite low angles of view. I wouldn't recommend them for any type of picture work. Nothing beats a good quality properly setup CRT.

[BJ_M]

LCD monitors are no use for judging colours on. Also they have quite low angles of view. I wouldn't recommend them for any type of picture work. Nothing beats a good quality properly setup CRT.

you havnt seen a pro LCD either it appears .. which have excellent color and 180degrees of angle .

i use both crt and lcd though myself ..

[vitualis]

We use LCD screens for viewing radiology now (X-rays, CT scans, Ultrasound). The colour reproduction is fairly good...

Regards.

[energy80s]

LCD monitors are no use for judging colours on. Also they have quite low angles of view. I wouldn't recommend them for any type of picture work. Nothing beats a good quality properly setup CRT.

you havnt seen a pro LCD either it appears .. which have excellent color and 180degrees of angle .

i use both crt and lcd though myself ..

As I work in the BBC I have daily access to LCD monitors. They are only used for quick "look see" checks on location as the colours are inaccurate compared with a CRT display.

[BJ_M]

there are different types of lcd ... apple cinema displays , sgi panels, pro viewsonic panels all make units which have stunning color reproduction ..

[gmatov]

BJ_M,
I could argue, but I am not the arguing type, that you cannot see 180 degrees. That would be looking past the edges of the bezel. I could not see 180 on my bulging 17 inch, non-flat, CRT, without looking in a mirror. I haven't checked the latest specs, but the old ones were something like 70 or 80 degrees before the res lost its sharpness. (I may be behind the times.)
The biggest reason the makers give is that they only weigh 7 or 8 pounds, but, realistically, most people set the old CRT on the desktop and just rotate it to their best viewing perception. We don't move it room to room, risking a hernia.
They do have a "native resolution" that is the optimum, 1024, or 1200, or even 1600, but anything other and they do not (so I've read) appear as desireable.
My own is set at 1024 X 768. Any higher, and I'd have to get stronger reading glasses. As is, I can't read it with my prescription bi-focals. The top is too weak, and the bottom is too strong.
The only thing I MAY suggest, is that the electrons may cause eye damage. After all, they tell you not to lift a running TV unless you want a chest X-ray, and we old farts always told our kids to not sit so close, they would ruin their eyes. There may just be something to that.
LCDs are simply switched on and off. (The transistors.) CRTs are a continous electron beam causing the particles to flouresce at a min. 60 times per second.
If I didn't sit 4 feet away, in my easy chair, I might consider an LCD display. Hell, I'm starting to worry ME.

[gmatov]

As an addendum (Sorry to repost, but I always forget something), it IS possibe that the people who get eye strain from a wrong refresh rate are sitting too close.
Moviegeek says less than 85 Hz gives him eyestrain. Not too long ago it took a hell of a good computer, and a better video card to even REACH 85 Hz refresh. So his eyes were shot before the new super cards came out.
My own monitor says it can do "this". My VooDoo 3000 says it can do "this". But if I try to set a, say, 75 Hz refresh, it blacks out, resets to default, and more or less says try again. I haven't the foggiest notion what "adapter default" is. It may be 42 Hz, and it may be 120 Hz. I know I can't see any flicker. And I know it looks pretty damn good for a 70 buck, after rebate MAG display. These ARE commodities, y'know. They HAVE to sell them to keep the lines running, and if they make 2 bucks per unit, they are happy, not 200 bucks per unit per LCD. And I'll be damned if I'll buy a 15 inch LCD because it is almost as big as a 17 inch CRT, no overscan, etc.. There may be half a dozen guys on this site who absolutely REQUIRE true color display, fidelity, etc, but as most of us are backing up DVDs to play on our own players, no one else will ever see them, what is the point? It's like a 5000 buck plasma display to view colorized John Wayne movies from 50 years ago. You sure as hell are not going to make an actor out of him by the cost of your display!
Ah, well... your money.

[energy80s]

It's like a 5000 buck plasma display to view colorized John Wayne movies from 50 years ago.

Don't get me started on Plasma screens!! As we have found out, they are very suseptible to burn-in!

[gmatov]

energy,
I understand that they leak, and go dead at a rather alarming speed, also.
They are not a liquid to leak, they are a very high voltage gas, but will leak and render the display inoperable in a short period of time. Not all. Just the defective ones, but the good ones are the only ones you hear of, I've got one and wouldn't trade it for Cinemascope, etc.
If anyone would dig, they would find that the first incandescent bulbs, the screw in lights we use today only lasted about an hour when they appeared on the scene, they might feel differently about being early adopters.
I guess it doesn't matter. Everyone has too much money, so they spend it on the fad of the day. How else can you explain someone asking if they should buy CCE Pro, at 2 grand, to copy 5 DVDs, rather than buy 5 original DVDs as backups. I don't give a damn how good the program is, it will not make a better backup than an original.

[energy80s]

Yeah, a lot of things these days don't make sense! Whenever you work with professional gear rather than so-called pro domestic gear you soon see through a lot of arguments. As with anything in life, you get what you pay for and anyone who thinks that a pro DV camcorder (like a Sony PD150) at £2500 will give similar results to a DigiBeta kit at £60,000 is deluding themselves. We've had a lot of problems with Plasma screens (they run hot and the cooling fans are bloody noisy) and LCD screens are just out of the question so it's video projectors that are used the most in TV studios.

[EddyH]

Adaptor default usually means 60hz.. though it can be 56 or interlaced 87/43hz for some high resolutions with really cheap or "unknown" monitors..
If you're unsure of it all, Optimal generally does the trick: from what i can tell this selects 75hz or whatever the next lower available one is. Good enough. Personally 75hz is good enough for me, and aside from the ol' Atari which used a TV-standard scan, i was practically raised on 75hz even the old 486/66 video card and cheap 15" monitor could handle that at 1024x768, guess we were blessed.
(it may depend on the phosphor latency though - had a 50hz hercules amber display for a while, where the glow persisted for a good 1/10th sec, which was enough to make it effectively flicker free despite having a scan rate that's quite literally unusable on a modern, quick-response SVGA)

Eyestrain at a high rez will usually come from the refresh being too high, unless you've somehow managed to get a monitor where you can set it to a crazy high blurry resolution whilst maintaining a high scan rate. Generally aim for whatever the greatest setting that gives you 75 or 85 on your screen is, and that's pretty much as high as you can go before it starts to defocus anyway, so it's a happy crossover. High resolution by itself isn't a problem. High resolution when your screen is too small, eyes unable to focus, or circuitry unable to scan it quickly is likely to hurt though.

LCDs are a good idea in theory - very little/no scan flicker even at 50hz, ultimate sharpness at the intended resolution, etc. This works well in laptops as they have a direct digital input (and on the vanishingly small percentage of desktops connected this way). Analogue SVGA and non-optimal resolutions less so. A 640x480/800x600/1280x1024 image resampled to 1024x768 just looks horrible in all cases other than a photograph. Text looks blurry and misshapen, and it just doesn't work. Even the coarsest CRTs have a comparitively tiny dot pitch and so are effectively resolution-free.. it eventually blurs, but any rez looks as good and undistorted as the other. Plus the perennial problems of viewing angle, brightness (and dirt! they show dust and grease far worse than a CRT), though TFT has tackled it somewhat..
Focus when using an analogue signal is another problem, though it may be circuitry dependent. PCs in the university library all have 1024x768, 16" LCDs, and very nice they look too. They looked even better when first installed, though they required a few moments to auto-detect and fine-tune the image parameters. Now something seems to have gone out of kilter or needs resetting inside a large number of them, they cannot get a good image no matter how many times you hit the refocus button - or manually twiddle with each technical setting in the menu - and are blurred, unaligned, show ghosting and all sorts of things you wouldn't see on a CRT.

Shame really, seeing as they each occupied about 1/10th the volume of the 15" i'm currently looking at. Would sure cut down on the weight and bulk when moving the PC between home & dorm.

[gmatov]

EddyH,
My Voodoo3000 won't let me go to optimal with my Mag monitor. Adapter default only. I'm getting to think my card's too old. Sandra says it can do 1024 X 768, 256 color, 75 hz. It also says default and a buss speed of 50, so maybe I am running at a 50 refresh rate, as I have 16 bit color set. ( Don't ask me why, I am not a gamer,and 256 colors should be enough. )
Since I can't see any flicker, I'll just live with it till I get another. Or I'll check the SIS, TV out, same as this one, and see if it can do any better. I don't use the machine that's in except for conversions.

I can see where it would be better for you, having to lug it home and back couple times a year. Lucky me, when my youngest decided she needed hers at school, she was living off campus. I didn't have to haul it all over the place. Specially since she had a brand new, huge 14 inch non-interlaced one.
Them was the days!!!

George

[EddyH]

That's very wierd, it could be a driver problem. I've had an ancient Trident card that could do 800x600 at 72hz, an Avance Logic that could hit 1024x768 at 75hz, a Voodoo Banshee (like a Voodoo 2 with a 2D segment, so an *earlier* generation of your 3000) that went higher than we could ever use it (think it was once tested at 1280x1024, 85hz...?), and now a V4 4500 that's similar, but with more VRAM so it can do 32bit all the way, rather than ending up being stuck in 16bit or even 256 colour mode at the top resolutions.
Believe me, 256 colour mode is not something you want to be stuck in, ever, unless you're doing just base levels of word processing (and for that.. get a palm 100 series with a pocket keyboard instead ). It'll make your pics, webpages and videos look horrid for one thing, and your documents pretty awful if you do DTP, cause program incompatibility in some apps (seen it happen when stuck in compatibility re-install mode, in a prog which only used about 4 colours!), play with your desktop colours something rotten, and not be any faster than 16bit.. slower in some cases. I think it's only included for compatibility any more, and may soon disappear along with 16-bit (in much the same way that 16-colour modes any higher than 640x480 have vanished).. PCs will be permanently in 24 or 32 bit colour mode, and you'll only have the resolution to bother about.
Even if you're not a hardcore gamer, you may want to play something at some point, and when you do, it'll complain. Loudly and angrily. This is the only reason for why we ever upgraded from the Avance Logic (that and seeing photos properly).. even fairly simple games that were old by that point didnt like it.

Also, a friend's Gateway PC (bleh!) came with a V3000 built in, and never any problems like that, even with a 17 inch monitor that we maxed out for the hell of it.

I don't know this Sandra program or what it means by the "Bus Speed" - unless it means your PCI or AGP slot is running at 50mhz... which is really, really, really strange, it should be 33 or 66 unless you've done some *severe* FSB-based overclocking and the motherboard hasn't compensated. (that's on a 1.6ghz chip running at 2.5ghz speed boost kind of scale).
1024x768 in 256 colours is old, old 486 news even at 75hz (heck, with an extra ramchip installed, the trident could have done it, interlaced... and i pulled *that* VGA card from a *286*!!). The Banshee could happily run 24 bit (16million) colour at that resolution, though it could only do games at 16 bit and was generally happier running the desktop that way.

Though I hate giving such advice, get a hold of your drivers disc/CD, and put any appropriate updated ones on a floppy or CDR, then try uninstalling the voodoo back to bogstandard VGA, and putting the drivers back in, see if that does any help. Also check (futilely) for a montior disc, and make sure it's properly installed into windows if possible, or that it's properly capable of sending the right signals if setup as "plug and play".

If all else fails, see if you can get a hand on the manual and hunt for technical specs (such as max horizontal scan, in khz) and post 'em up or email me. I might be able to tell you what other monitor to substitute in it's place in setup, or send you my own custom file if it happens to fit my monitor's specs
(there aren't really many different specifications for monitors out there - these days it mostly hinges on max horizontal and vertical scan, and those tend to conform to four or five different main profiles)

You may be surprised what you can squeeze out of some apparently crappy monitors when you go outside their over-conservative plug and play settings. I have an old 14" IBM PS/VP 6312 (probably very similar to your sister's one ) in the cupboard back home, had that running a just-squeaked 960x720 at 70hz (or 800x600 and 83hz.. on a good day, with some fiddling of the vertical size) til i finally decided it was time to spend £50, get a refurbed 15" and play with the 1024x768 big boys..
When we first got a replacement one on the 486, it worked fine at 75, until a long time later we upgraded to a pentium MMX, and changed the video card to a banshee. It alluvasudden "detected" a maximum preset scan of 70 at top resolution
(so, we turned off the plug and play, and continued just as ever, but with more colours)

Feel sorry for those who can 'see' anything under 85hz. Sitting in front of 75hz too long can hurt a little (and can just detect it in peripheral vision, though more of a waver than the rolling effect of 60hz), but that's usually a sign that you should go to bed because it's been 8 hours . They must get assaulted on all sides by flickery things.
If you cant see any problem at 70hz or so, or even 60hz, and it doesnt cause pain or strain, then fine, stick with it - so long as you're not inflicting it on anyone else Like my fool teachers did... A $70 screen, even in this day and age, may not be able to do anything better than 1024x768 at 70hz and is probably sold as "reccomended resolution: 800x600 at 85hz, maximum 1024x768 non-interlaced". If it's clicking out to blackness when you try 75hz, and leaving you to wait til windows resets, then that's probably what's up (an older monitor would show a messed-up, desynched and rolling pic instead, so you're not missing much). Have you tried 70, 72 instead of Default?
If they're even available... voodoo cards have some, ehm, 'interesting' blindspots when it comes to certain resolutions at certain rates. A proprietry utility like Powerstrip or HzTool may help with that, they're able to workaround any gaps in windows' rate lineup (as well as many other useful functions). Which is how i got my old 14"er to work so well, though these days, i only keep the programs for the extra features

Pity monitors haven't paralleled the advances in CPU speed, memory and hard disc space that have happened elsewhere in the electronic world. The amount of R&D cash going into CRTs is probably near-zero nowadays. How long ago was it the base VGA standard was introduced now? 15 years, probably more. Likely the only few PC parts that have lasted anywhere near as long are the beeper-speaker, 3.5" disc drive (though only the 720k one..), ISA slots (um.. near-dead now), Parallel/Serial ports (ditto) and the internal 18.3Hz timer.. oh yeah, and the AT/PS2 keyboard
And well, I think we can earmark a large number of those as being due for an overhaul (except the keyboard.. well.. strip out a few F-keys and insert, scroll/numlock anyway, and ban those stupid windows keys).. why not bring all monitors up to a minimum of at least the 60khz (1024x768x75 horizontal scan) standard too?

Ah, memories of when most computers used TVs, or RGB monitors that worked like TVs (even into the early-mid 90s for some of them - dual RGB and VGA capability), giving 320x200, or 320x400, or 640x200, but never 640x400, even when the hardware punishers got really clever... The fun of a 50/60hz toggle that was then lost til Playstation hacking matured; with such low response, interlace-standard phosphor you couldnt actually tell much difference in flicker between PAL and NTSC mode, but 60hz made the music play funny and the pixel lines had gaps between them.. 256 colours without any software trickery seeming magical.
And hi-rez monitors were specialist, monochrome 12 inchers, mustered about 400 vertical lines (or 800 interlaced!), and were thought to be easy on the eyes as they managed to scan as much as 70 times per second, pushing the envelope of what the hardware could manage.

Good luck...

[gmatov]

EddyH,
Sandra is SiSoft Sandra, a complete what have you got utility, all your system info,benchmarking, etc. Since, other than Control Panel>Display, I don't have any way to tell my refresh rate, I tried it and it gave me the Buss of 50 Hz. No, I have an AMD 2000+XP (or XP+) and don't o'c AMDs. They have enough heat problems at design speed. I think it must be 50hz refresh, as it's an AGP card, and AGP 2X is, what, 66 hz?
I don't intend to drop to 256 colours ( English, doncha know ) We drop the "u". "Course we push phonetic spelling, too, so....
3dFX is defunct, but I have dl'd the latest drivers from the "after death" loyalist support site, and installed same, as well as the monitor drivers, from the mfg site. I run nothing with default drivers.
I think that Powerstrip is on one of the disks I got with MaxPC mag. I'll have to give it a try. Speaking of mags, I like your PCPlus, but it's 15 USD, and unless it has software I want, I usually skip it. Hey, Borland C++ 4.0, Cold Fusion 2.0, other stuff you would pay big bucks for the latest V of, for the price of the mag. One of the latest had Installsheild (I don't program) that a friend who does paid about 1000 USD for ver. 1.0. I think he went to get it.
Good grief, the further I read as I try to reply to this, the older you sound! You're talking 20 year old stuff! I liked plugging my old VIC 20 into the TV. My kids liked the Atari connected to the new 19" that was the latest thing.
That was my youngest daughter, not my sister I referred to. (And, I never get tired of saying this, she's making me a grandpap again in about 3 weeks.)
The monitor is a Mag Innovision DJ702e, decent, not spectacular, but worlds of difference when I went to it from my old 15". I think I got screwed a little when I returned it under warranty. I think I got it for Father's Day '99, and Sandrs IDs it as made in Dec. '96, so they replaced it with a refurb 3 years older. Not nice at all, but it works well.
I recently bought a refurbed 17" Dell for 25 at a Computer show, slight burn-in, only when off, very decent display.
I'll not trouble you with getting my rates up, as it looks pretty good as is. I will check to see if new drivers have hit the net.
Ah, yes, as Energy80s says, projectors. I think I'd love to try one of those.
4 foot or whatever on the wall. Don't know what it would look like on my textured plaster. And the cost of a replacement bulb,when it burns out. Then, too, I'd have to reposition my easy chair, or get a crick in the neck.
Good luck with your studies. You're pretty sharp.


Hope I'm not hi-jacking this thread.

George

[EddyH]

Very odd that SSS is picking you up as a 256... "color" :P maximum then... either its having a brain fit or your drivers definately are on the blink. And the 50hz bus thing, I really can't fathom. The only other explanation may be it's showing how fast the card's processors themselves are running, but for that generation of Voodoo it should be somewhere between 90 and 133...

Or perhaps it's maximum RAMDAC speed (pixels per second.. which would be.. um.. gee, not much! again much less than the average voodoo), or most likely out of possible alternatives, what your current horizontal kHz output is. 50kHz rougly equals 1024x768 at 60hz (well, *should be* 48khz) or perhaps 800x600 at 75hz.

Aha, perhaps its telling us the monitor specs. Could be its 50khz max (which is **really** cheap, even my ancient 14" was officially that, and could muster around 54-55 tops), or somethings gone wrong and it thinks it can only do 50 scans per second which would lock you to 60hz in all modes as windows tries vainly to comply.

Dunno much about PC mags, havent bought one in a good long time. Or many others really, just the (very) occasional NewScientist or TopGear. Always seemed to be maybe one stand-out app that you'd hardly ever use in reality and the CD padded out with junk, a couple of half interesting articles, and five hundred pages of adverts. Usually missing half the page numbers too. If there was anything that could really make using a PC boring, it was PC mags. (they'll never slowly thin out and go broke, though, unlike the atari, amiga and sega mags!)

PC Gamer was good though, waybackwhen
And i suppose its the more concience-easing alternative to warez..

Mag Innovision DJ702e.... (toddles off to monitors.org) (...monitors.com?) (...monitors.net...) (goddamnit, what was that site?) (aha, monitorworld.com, thanks yahoo)
DJ, DJ, DJ... 702... E.. ok

Hmm, odd, it claims a max horizontal rate of 65khz and vertical of 120hz, which is pretty good. About the same as the one i'm using now even. 75hz should be no bother for it.. it'd have a good few percents in reserve even sticking inside the official specs. Heading more and more towards the video drivers / official monitor spec drivers being screwed up.

If your version of windows has a specification for a Compaq CPQ1331, give that a whirl. It should work just as well... (I briefly had a cheap CPQ - otherwise known as a V55 - but it suffered terminal failure due to a crappy power supply after a couple months... it was only cheap though, replaced it with this Dell, no problems yet and didn't even have to change the drivers)

Hm, a site with new Voodoo drivers, that sounds interesting.. seeing as i have a v4 and all

I'm not that old, I'm only 21... the Atari was a 16-bit, not a VCS or 400/800 got it when i was about 7 or 8 if i remember rightly. Trying to get it working on SCART based TVs again (no RF output!)... using it on the 25" back home would be a nice step up from the old 13" phillips cm8833.

Great machine... a whirlwind of sound (well.. sound-like substance ) and colour, and later, pretty good for doing 'serious' work and MIDI noodling on, til the 10-times-more-expensive 486 stole the show. Believe we had about 400 double-density floppies in the end, which are slowly becoming unreadable despite several salvage attempts. It seemed like such a lot.. and now I can fit all of them onto a CD... heck, an 8cm CD with a little blank-space-removal compression... and a similar quantity of *uncompressed* CDs will fit onto a hard disc that I can fit in my pocket (or again, if they're 8cm ones, into a breast pocket, inside a portable MP3 player). Sweet jeezus

Mmm.. projectors. All the better if given to you for free (who needs SVGA if you're just using videos