More Awesome Than You!

Until now I've been a fierce CRT supporter, but recently I've gotten tired of the image distortion around the egdes on my monitor and how I can never get the view to be a perfect rectangle. I'm also a bit tired of the space the 19" CRT takes on my desk (I don't like keeping stuff on top of my monitor, so that space as a storage area doesn't work for me). So, I'm thinking of switching to an LCD at last. But I want to make sure the LCD screen I get is free from distortion also. I'm now testing my husband's 19" LG Flatron, and everything else looks pretty good to me, but when I fire up the Sims 2 (using the same resolution as the native resolution of the screen, 1280x1024 pixels) the image looks slightly squished: shapes that are supposed to be round are slightly oblong. Since the aspect ratio of the screen is 5:4, does this distortion mean that the signal of the game image is actually 4:3 or something like that, and that it gets squished to fit the 5:4 screen? Or why does this happen? Also, do all of the 19" of the standard shape have the same aspect ratio? I'm not talking about the pixel dimensions/native resolution, because those are always the same, but the actual, physical dimensions of the screen. Because when I compare the physical measurements of my CRT and hubby's LCD, which are both 19", the aspect ratio of the measurements is different: the LCD is 5:4 while the CRT is 4:3. And does that aspect ratio then change when you go up to a 20" or 21" LCD screen (standard, not wide screen)? When I look up LCD monitors online, they never mention the physical aspect ratio of the screen, so it's hard to tell from that information what it is. I would very much appreciate if someone knowledgeable could clarify this for me. I'm pretty OCD about image aspect ratios being correct, and I don't want to spend hundreds of Euros on a monitor I'm going to hate.

Have you tried the square pixels setting in the game options? This is meant to stop distortion in game due to differing monitor aspect ratios.

Yes, and I didn't notice any difference whether or not the square pixels options was selected  :(

Also, some monitors (like mine) have an option to leave black bars top/bottom or on the sides as appropriate, to avoid stretching or interpolating pixels. That shouldn't be an issue if you have the game set to run at the LCD's native resolution, but thought I'd throw that out there anyhow.

And I know where you're at regarding making the switch. I had played around with Samsung and LG LCD models and wound up running back to my old trusty NEC CRT; but then a year and a half ago, I finally found what I was looking for. I luuurve my ViewSonic Pro Series display, running off the digital signal from my nVidia card. (I'm sure you already know that a digital input is a must; and that lightning-quick response time, such as these ViewSonics have, is important for games.) The color is, admittedly, still slightly less satisfying than a CRT; but never having to monkey with impossble-to-get-just-right screen geometry ever again, that is a wonderful thing. Calibration is such a snap with an LCD running off a digital signal.

The thing on my LCD that's tough to calibrate is the contrast. LCDs like contrast that's a bit more extreme than CRTs.

That sounds like a cool option, will have to keep an eye on that.


Yeah, based on what I've been reading over the past couple of days, DVI seems to be strongly recommended (although nobody ever explains in detail exactly how it affects the image quality). And for the response time I've been looking for 8ms or faster.

Less processing steps.  DVI keeps the whole signal path digital, while the standard video path to a CRT has to change the signal to analog at some point.  And if you put a digital monitor on the standard VGA output, then the monitor has to convert the analog signal back to digital.  So in all those back and forth changes, the signal can get distorted a bit.

If you're getting weird distortion around the edges, try moving your speakers away. CRTs can be affected by the magnetic fields generated by the speaker magnets.

just puttin my two cents worth in.   I am glad to know that I am not the only one that can't get their CTR monitor to be a perfect square.   what the hell is a pin-cushion anyhow?   ::)

some days when I am in a manic mood I will fool with my monitor for hours trying to get it to look right and other days I just say" heck with it,  I don't care if its round today or square or si-goggaly. I'm not in the mood to fool with it  today.    rolf

In my experience, only top-end CRTs have near-perfect geometry. I've never seen it on a sub-US$500 CRT. I had it with a 15-inch MAG back iin the days when that company made high-end monitors, and more recently an Eizo FlexScan FX-C6 (17-inch) I had also had near-perfect geometry. Of course, it was $650 when I bought it in 1998.   :P

Using a modern graphics board that supports dual monitors, I have an upper-end LCD for Windows work and an inexpensive CRT for games. Works very well.  :)

I don't have any speakers on my desk (I use ear phones only), so, unfortunately, that's not going to help, either :(.


Since my first post I've been reading more, and did eventually find out that the 20" monitors with a pixel resolution of 1600x1200 do actually have a 4:3 aspect ratio, as opposed to the non-desireable 5:4 ratio of the 19"/1280x1024. I think I'll go for that. I'm now seriously considering Samsung SyncMaster 204B (20.1"). It appears to have all the options I'm looking for. Now, if only I could test the game on that also before buying it.



I understood that, yes, but the people who recommend getting a DVI, saying "it looks so much better!", they never specify how it looks better, where they notice the difference. But, yes, I'm going for DVI in any case.

Color be damned, those things are UGLY! Giant and bulky and just seriously, seriously fug. (Okay, so maybe not some of the Mac monitors, but still, they're HUGE!) I switched to LCD yrs ago, before they were even standard, and I've never once considered going back.

So how your monitor looks on your desk is more important to you than the actual image on your monitor? Ooookay then. I guess they have to sell cars that get like 5 miles per gallon to someone too. ::)

When they start making LCDs that are as good with color as my el cheapo CRT, AND at a reasonable price, I may consider getting one. Until then, I'd rather not spend hours upon hours trying to get an acceptable color value on a monitor and only ending up with "passable".

I have no idea what this "color value" business is. It seems like strange babble, as I've never fiddled with any kind of "color value" on any monitor. However, LCDs dissolve into a blurry mass of poo anytime you scroll about or do anything which causes motion. And THAT is bad.

I have two computers for playing TS2 on (my daughter plays on one of them)

One has a CRT 19 or 20" set at 1024x768 I believe, the other (mine) LCD 20.1"  set at 1280x1024 in-game and out and frankly I don't see much of a difference between the two when playing. Colors are slightly different but hell I've seen that between CRTs.

certainly haven't seen it dissolve into a blurry mass of poo when I scroll about  ::)

Well, for what it's worth, I'm using an AG Neovo F-419 LCD and I've never had any problems with it in conjunction with... well, anything, Sims 2 included.  And it certainly doesn't go all wonky when scrolling.

I'm using a Samsung SyncMaster 913n, playing all games at 1280 x 1024. No colour problems, no distortion and no wonky scrolling. Prior to this I was using a 17" LG LCD and before that I had several LG CRT monitors. I've liked them all but I like this one best. I only know two people who still use CRTs, one is a traditional animator who has only just got in to computers because he got given someone's old kit and the other is a dealer who is inordinately cheap and lives in something halfway between a hovel and a squat.

LCDs are very sharp and crisp when the image is static, but the moment it begins to move, anything moving looks like a watercolor painting someone pissed on until it stops.

Pescado, have you seen any of the newer LCDs with fast response times? I believe the faster response times are supposed to reduce the blurriness in movements.

With DVI the image is crisper and doesn't need to be tuned, since the digital monitor is not having to try to sync up with an analog signal. It's the difference between the video card telling the monitor "light up a few pixels right around here", and it specifying precisely which pixels to do exactly what with.

It's a more important consideration for text than for gameplay...but how many of us here don't spend hours at a time staring at computer text?

And I don't know what monitors Pescado is looking at, but I don't get blurry masses involving any sort of excreted substance...but then, I also don't use any LCDs with a response time longer than 8ms.

OK, placed an order on the Samsung Syncmaster 204B 20.1". Will likely take a couple of weeks until I get it, the store is out of them and will get more from the importer on October 3rd.

New shiny stuff on order! How exciting!

Be sure to let us know how the new display works out.

The LCD display I use is a Samsung 193P (19-inch), connected to the DVI output on the graphics controller. I find it excellent even though the backlighting is not uniform across the entire display area (not uncommon with LCDs). Native resolution is 1280x1024 (5:4), which is as high as I would like for a display this size (any higher and text would just be too small). It had three gray pixels out of the box, in use they are invisible—I can't even find them now.

"Blur" or trails on an LCD is a concern when running games with lots of fast motion—driving games and first-person shooters. Unfortunately, the publicized response times dished up by manufacturers are highly suspect, being open to a lot of fudging—there is more than one way to test response time, and real-world testing can reveal that an 8 ms response time is more like 16-20 ms when gaming. The best LCD tests I have found are those on Tom's Hardware.

I have played TS2 on this Samung LCD and it's okay—nothing particularly wrong. However, one of the big weaknesses of LCDs is their difficulty in displaying subtle gradations and shadow detail. Some of this is the technology and some is because of the backlight. This is why CRTs are still preferred for serious photo-editing (also because LCDs are more difficult to calibrate with a colorimeter—monitor calibration is necessary if you want your image to appear the same when printed as it does on your monitor, or if you want the color balance to be correct when the digital file is displayed on someone else's computer), with the exception of a few very expensive graphic LCDs like the Eizo ColorEdge models (US$1700-2700 for the 21-inch models). Sadly, high-quality CRTs are disappearing:  Sony, NEC/Mitsubishi, and Eizo have all seem to have discontinued their pro graphics models, although NEC still does have a few lower-performance CRTs. My gaming CRT is a 19-inch Samsung that cost around US$170; it's fine for games but I wouldn't want to use it as my only monitor. OTOH, I wouldn't use the LCD for photo editing.

The Samsung 193P is not rated for a particularly high response time, but I have played Half-Life on it and didn't have any problem with trails. What I did have a problem with is the poor performance with tonal gradations, which made it difficult to see much of anything in dark environments. It didn't help that Half-Life (as far as I remember) doesn't support the Samsung's native resolution, and with the screen image reduced to 1024x768, the degradation of image quality was quite apparent. TS2 does support 1280x1024, and the game works perfectly well on the LCD ,but it looks significantly better on the CRT, set to 1280x960 to match the 4:3 aspect ratio of the montior (Samsung 997MB). On the CRT, the 3D looks more three-dimensional, and shading and gradation of colors looks better and more smooth. The overall image is both more smooth and has more apparent depth on the CRT than on the LCD, even though the LCD cost more than three times as much as the CRT.

No decent modern LCD should show swimming or smear when scrolling around the screen in Windows. The primary cause of LCD displays looking like crap is that a large proportion of LCD users insist on setting the resolution too low, so that the image needs to be "blown up" to 1024x768 or 800x600 using software built into the monitor, and this generally makes the screen image look terrible—text is blurry and everything seems to have a shadow around it. Running an LCD at less than its native resolution pretty much defeats the image-quality advantages of the monitor, which should display razor-sharp text (as long as you don't enable the ClearType font-smoothing built into WinXP; this may make the character looks smooth, but it also makes them look blurry).

One thing to note about many LCD monitors (and new CRTs as well) is that out of the box they are way too bright. It is often necessary to back way down on the "brightness" (black level) until you can approximate a true black on a grayscale chart. Also, the standard color temperature setting of 9300K is too blue for most uses—6500K is probably a better choice. Some Samsung monitors come with rudimentary calibration software, and Samsung users should use it. Photoshop used to ship with Adobe gamma (does it still?), and I have found it easier to use than the Samsung software. But really, it's best to use real calibration tooks like Gretag-McBeth's One Eye (http://www.gretagmacbeth.com/index/products/products_color-mgmt-spec/products_cm-for-creatives/products_eye-one-photo.htm) products to get not only your color but your brightness and contrast settings correct (and no, with CRT monitors it is not automatically best to set "contrast" (white level) and brightness at maximum!). Setting contrast and brightness doesn't need to be guesswork—there are tools and procedures that allow you to set these with considerable precision. I can't tell you how many LCDs and CRTs I've seen with such wrong-headed settings that they would induce in me a nasty headache within ten minutes of continuous use.   >:(
http://www.normankoren.com/color_management.html

See, the problem w/ 5mpg cars is that, surprisingly, anyone with a functioning brain would notice.

Maybe your eyes detect a different color spectrum or something, but frankly, I've never noticed any difference at all btwn CRTs and LCDs, and if a difference exists, it must not be very drastic since very few pple even know it exists.

So...ugly monstrosity that, gee, shows a couple more colors!, or sleek flatscreen that appears to perform just as well...Hmmm...

Well, I am very picky about color. CRTs don't just show a few more colors; the contrast, shadows, color richness, etc., are all far better than any LCD I've ever seen, including really pricey models. I can see the difference just on the Windows desktop, let alone in the many computer games I play. My CRT is a flatscreen anyway, and I like how it looks. My kitty can sit on it too ;D.

For the record, I'm with you on this one.  While the LCDs easily win the race in several aspects, when it comes to the actual richness and color of the display, not to mention that horrid motion blur JM mentioned, CRT still blows them away.

I suspect that won't be the case for too much longer, since the technology going into various types of monitors and displays has practically been leaping exponentially for a while now, but until they've gotten these annoyances worked out to my satisfaction, I'm keeping my huge old 21" Hitachi.

It's got a great picture, and the edge distortion is so slight I really have to specifically look for it or I don't even notice.  I'm sure one day they'll come out with some uber high def LCD generation 5 or some crap that just makes me drool when I see it, but for now, I'm content, and my kitty loves the big case.  :D

-Kitt

One thing eludes me: Why, on Earth, should I pay more money for a newfangled solution even if it manages to break even with the OLD method? Everyone knows the old thing is more reliable. Newer + more expensive = quickly broken. Old technologies are mature and more reliable. If the newfangled gew-gaw doesn't offer any real advantages over the old one, why should we switch? This is obviously a ploy by monitor-manufacturers to get you to pointlessly pay more for the same functional item so that it will break sooner and make you buy a new one faster. Plus, LCDs do not hum. They always *FEEL* broken because they sound WRONG: There's no diagnostic hum. Practically no CRT fails on you without a hum that tells you something is wrong months in advance. You can nearly always tell, barring some kind of catastrophe. LCDs? No warning whatsoever. As befitting their nature of as an unreliable new-fangled gew-gaw, they also do not respond to percussive maintenance like CRTs do. An ailing CRT can be goaded into working with a few stiff whaps. LCDs? If you whap an LCD, it will fly across the room, smash into the wall, and fly into a million pieces. Lousy overpriced piece of junk.

Well, this is a very subjective issue, since the advantages pretty much depend on what you happen to consider important. I wouldn't say, for example, that a smaller size, lighter weight, smaller energy consumption, lack of geometric distortion or less glare aren't any "real advantages". For those who care about them, they are real advantages. Those who then care more about a lower price, better color depth, flexible screen resolution and better durability will make a different choice. I wouldn't waste time and energy on arguing about personal preferences since there isn't an objective answer to which choice is better.


Edited to add: Regarding the image distortion I reported in the first post on the 19" LCD and with TS2, on closer inspection, there was no distortion, everything that was supposed to be round was perfectly round. I realized that I had been playing the Sims 2 on my CRT at a 1280x1024, which doesn't match the aspect ratio of the screen, and therefore the image on my CRT was always distorted, but I was so used to it that I thought that's how it's supposed to look. Silly me.

You probably want 1280x960 on the CRT.   ;D

Pssh. It's a MONITOR. You stick it on your DESK. It's not SUPPOSED to move, and being heavier helps prevent it from shifting when things bang into it. And there's no distortion, unless you've miscalibrated the monitor.

Maybe fixing the distortion on some CRTs is possible, but it wasn't possible on mine. From what I've been reading online, it's a fairly common problem.

I don't know about your monitor, but mine needs to move every once in a while  ;D. One less humongous and heavy box while moving from apartment to another is definitely a plus. I've moved with a CRT monitor a few times, and I certainly can't carry them myself, they are harder to move than some pieces of furniture. And, when you have several computers like hubby and I do, carrying several CRTs around and up and down the stairs is not what I call fun. Current apartment is on fourth floor, with no elevators.


In other news, I got the monitor faster than I expected, and the Samsung Syncmaster 204B is now sitting on my desk. The only complaint I have so far is a brightness uniformity issue on the screen, with the bottom being a bit brighter than the top. A couple of people online have mentioned the same problem. Other than that, everything looks very sharp at 1600x1200, using the pivot function is a breeze, and the colors are looking pretty good to me, too, although I'm no expert on that. And no geometric distortion, which is a nice change from the old tube. Have yet to try any serious gaming.

Yes, but most people are horribly lazy and can't be bothered to simply fiddle a few knobs, or they put their speakers too close and the magnets are warping the beams.

And you wonder why people these days are so flabby and weak. I suggest you get a nice hefty dead monitor and practice lifting it. Also, a dead LCD is totally useless. A dead CRT can be dropped upon besiegers.

Clearly, IgnorantBlisses are whiny wussies who need more exercise. Hefting that large heavy monitor is good for you!

True. Very true.

Not all of us are such devoted knob-fiddlers as you.

 :P

That was very Jelenedra.

It is true that I'm lazy, but it's also a fact that I'm small, with short arms, and no exercise can make me able to wrap my arms around a huge box. That's what I have a tall husband with unusually long limbs for. He's also useful for getting things from high cabinets or changing light bulbs.


It's possible that for some people the problem is simply with not turning the right knobs, but I've spent far more time than I'd wish fiddling with the settings, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about the image distortion on that particular CRT. End of issue.

Ever consider maybe you're scrawny and have short arms because you never exercised those arms? If you had spent more time swinging from trees as a kid, maybe you'd have longer arms. Perhaps the pressure stretching them out promotes length. You're also not very good at the entire improvisational thing, apparently, if merely putting something in high cabinets forces you to fetch someone else to get it.

Either you set the resolution wrong, or maybe the image distortion is caused by YOU. That, or it was simply broken. I've never seen a non-broken, non-misconfigured CRT with image distortion of any kind.

No, you got it wrong. Having somebody else get the items from high cabinets is just easier than doing it myself with the help of a tall chair or similar. I can do it myself if I have to, but I prefer not to. Having lived by myself for many years, I'm going to use all the advantages I can get from having a live-in husband now. In return I bring home more money than he does and buy him nice gadgets. It's not that hard to keep a man happy, and making him feel useful every once in a while is just a plus. That's what I call symbiosis.

Methinks IgnorantBliss doesn't quite get Pescado's stupid humor. (http://joanneblessing.com/furballs/eh.gif)

(edited to fix the url of the emoticon)

Or someone else doesn't get my humor  ;)

Me confused now. ???

At least Pescado got my stupid humor. (Even if he beat a particular dead horse, yet again, in barking back.)

I was referring to staroverthebay, not Pescado. staroverthebay was under the impression that I was taking Pescado seriously, while I thought my posts were written in a way that it should be obvious I was also joking when talking about a tall husband being useful for changing light bulbs and so on.

Well, I bought your posts hook, line, and sinker.

But then, I was married to a short woman, who was wont to praise me for being able to reach high things all the time. (Come to think of it, that was one of precious few things I was regularly praised for...)

P.S. I think this thread is good and hijacked now. Is Pescado going to boot it? And does the fact that he was the prime instigator of the hijacking have any influence on the answer to that question?

Well, you have to take the praise you get, right?  :P


I don't think there are any rules against thread-hijacking here, as long as the thread stays entertaining. Or, at least I was under that impression.

This is nothing.  ;)  By the way, I remember having a tall husband, and it was nice to have someone to reach things for me.  He said he enjoyed doing things like that for me.  At least until he got tired of it and told me to do it myself.  :P  But now that he's gone, I've had to be creative about reaching stuff or just put it where I can reach it.  In the grocery store, there is usually someone around who is happy to help if there is something too far back on the top shelf for me to reach it. 

Then again, I never change lightbulbs anyway. Changing lightbulbs is for wimps who are afraid of the dark.