Any good 19" CRT's left in the world?

I'm looking to build a new computer system (pc) and really want to

stay with a CRT monitor (can't afford the $1700 it takes to get a

good LCD). I'd love to get the 19" LaCie or its NEC/Mitsu

equivelant, but it looks like none are available anymore (even the

LaCie refubs.) The NEC 19" CRT available is a Multisync.... not the

Diamondtron anymore. They state it's pretty general-purpose (non-

aperture grill).

 

Does anyone make an aperture-grill CRT in 19" anymore? I don't

quite have the room or budget for the LaCie 22".

 

thanks!

 

-George

Dunno about 19 inchers, but I bought one of the old 17 inch Diamontron Apple CRTs last year for 100 dollars, and it started shorting out, and died within a year. I bought another, they were unloading the whole store of em, for 5000 yen, or around 50 dollars. It died within a week.

 

So, I went out on Saturday, to Akhihabara, the electronics district here in Tokyo, and scored a brand new Dell 17 inch LCD moniter for 10,000 yen or about $100. The snag was that there was no ac adapter. So I cobbled one together myself (you can buy em for 35 bucks new).

 

So, it seems to me, yoy could afford to find a decent LCD for less than 1700 dollars. Maybe a 19 inch set would only be around 3-400 dollars.

FWIW, I picked up an NEC LCD1735NXM at the local discount store for about $270. It has a better greyscale and color rendition than any CRT I've ever owned, and I'm not even using the digital input. No convergence problems, no difference from center to corners, and minimal heat generation. And this is a pretty low end LCD. I just don't buy the argument that CRTs are better; CRTs are going away fast and you should reevaluate your desire to continue down that path.

Hi, I have just answered a similar question. There are plenty of Lacie monitors around on ebay but the problem with any CRT monitor that is more than 3 years old is that they are no longer colour stable/accurate. This is not a problem with LCD/TFT and I would highly recommend the Dell 1905fp (certainly not $1700)as it uses a Samsung 8 bit screen which will display the full gamut of 16.7 million colours. Most of the other TFT displays use 6 bit screens and interpolate to get the full colour spectrum which is not as good. The only downside of the 8 bit screens is a slightly slower response time (currently 20ms), although claimed response times should not be taken too seriously and this would only really be an issue if gaming was a priority.

I was hearing from several sites (such as the Will Crocket site) that anything under 10 bit isn't up to par with CRT's. The ColorEdge 19" is $1700. The 22" is $2700.

 

www.shootsmarter.com/infocenter/wc034.html

 

Now.....

 

I'm all ears about being talked out of CRT: Has anyone been suprised with their TFT monitor matching to prints? I'd love to hear about a skeptic being converted by seeing their r2400 spitting out perfectly matching tones from a $400 TFT. If so, I'll jump.

 

I'm looking into the Samsungs... heard they are nice. 10 bit seems holy grail, but if most everything (in the cheap dept) is 6 bit then 8 bit might be a happy place for me....

 

Thank you for any and all advice!

 

-George

Hi George,

 

Prior to my purchasing the 1905fp I had been running the older Dell 1702fp which I think also had a Samsung screen. I calibrated it regularly with Spyder Pro and have always had a good enough colour match with profiled prints that I have been very happy with TFT. I am aware that for true colour accuracy a CRT is better by far, but my space considerations also had to be considered. Before I bought the 1905 I had considered a Lacie Blue (very cheap secondhand) but in the end the shorter lifespan was enough to put me off (and secondhand could mean very short). The 1702 has been working flawlessly for the 3 years I used it. It would seem that the major criticsm of most current TFT's is the loss of shadow detail but again, for me, that has not been a notable obstacle. I am certainly very happy with my new 19" Dell and it has always been given good reviews when it comes to graphics use. Incidentally I picked the 1905 up on Ebay for a 3rd less than current retail.

 

BTW, I think you will find that Sony still make CRT's for graphics use.

Just bought a used Lacie 22" Electron Blue for $300 -- it's da bomb.

Once again, thanks for the advice...

 

"BTW, I think you will find that Sony still make CRT's for graphics use."

 

Nope. They cancelled Trinitron Production except for the Artisen.... which I can't even find on their website anymore. Seems like most manufacturers are going to LCD.... makes sense, Why keep an assembly line open to a product that only is desirable to a select few individuals?

 

Looking at the 22" LaCie... still a bit big and expensive. There are a few on Ebay, but once again who knows how old they are....

 

-George

I've spent a little while on Ebay just now. It's startling what these monitors are worth; which is to say, next to nothing.

 

Relatively new examples of Sony's GDM FW900, a $2000-retail 24" FD Trinitron generally considered the best CRT of them all, go for a couple hundred. And the prices just tank from there.. if you pay attention, you can pick up a 19"-21" Triniton/Diamondtron for $150, shipping inclusive.

 

As to which models in particular.. I couldn't even tell you. PCWorld still hosts Top-10 reviews for various screen sizes, though they haven't been updated since 2003.

 

I was tempted to go bid on something immediately.. but even just researching this, I felt as if I was desperately clutching to the railing of a sinking ship.

 

DI

Hey Mark, that's what I bought the other night, a 1702FP. It is very nice indeed, but I still think the Apple CRT I had was better in many respects, it seemed more "real." but I have no regrets. The dell was only 100 bucks, and it looks good, and does not take up much space.

From Fry's Electronics, the 19" Samsung SyncMaster 910T LCD is $399. It is a true

16.7 (8bit per channel display). I calibrated this monitor using ColorEyes Display using

the X-Rite puck on a Mac Powerbook G4, targeting D50 (5000K) and using L*

(perceptual similar to gamma 2.5) instead of using a specific gamma (like 2.2 or 1.8).

I used their 16bit LUT ICC profile output choice.

 

This LCD does NOT have a 10bit LUT, so I didn't use the DVI (digital) cable. Instead I

used the standard VGA cable to the monitor so the video card's high precision LUTs

are adjusted to calibrate the monitor.

 

Here are the settings I ended up with on the display controls,

Contrast 80, Brightness 80, Red 50, Green 35, Blue 18,

Gamma choice 3 (the highest gamma / darkest output).

 

And the results after verification with the software.

Maximum Delta-E -> 0.43.

Average Delta-E -> 0.20.

Luminance -> 185 cd/m2.

 

And looking at the ICC profile using ColorSync.

Contrast Ratio (Y ratio of white to black point) -> 370:1.

Which I believe would put the black point at somewhere around 0.5 cd/m2.

The color gamut looks about the same size as a very good CRT.

 

So do you need $1700 to get a good LCD? Perhaps not.

 

I used the following internet resources when looking for an LCD display,

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/display/index.html.

http://www.behardware.com/.

They both had real calibration results and seemed creditable.

One has a review comparing the LCD to CRT.

The 910T was not in any reviews, however it's sister the 910N (no DVI input) was.

 

- Timothy Farrar -- Farrar Focus

For those who have not color calibrated a display, my previous post will not be of

much help. However one thing to remember is that typical LCDs from the factory are

usually way off in color calibration so you will have to do this anyway to get good

results.

 

Below I have included some links to full reviews of 2 pro LCD monitors (one LaCie and

one of a $1900 Eizo). Keep in mind that color calibration of all displays is much

tougher at low color temps (like 5000K).

 

From the results I got, it seems as if the 910T at 5000K calibrated to about as good as

the $1900 Eizo with 14bit LUTs at 6500K. Except the 910T might have a slightly

lighter black point. So the combination of good LCD (16.7 not a 16.2) and good color

calibration using a VGA cable (and hence the video card's LUTs) can yield extremely

good results.

 

Here are the web sites showing the 910N, http://www.behardware.com/articles/534

-8/comparative-test-of-low-priced-8-12-16-and-25-ms-19-lcds.html, a LaCie321,

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/display/20050706/professional_lcd-08.html, and

an Eizo FlexScan L997, http://graphics.tomshardware.com/display/20050830/

pro_lcd-06.html.

 

Hope that helps for anyone who is looking for a good LCD for proofing.

 

- Timothy Farrar -- Farrar Focus

Unfortunately, my level of experience with display technology is not yet at the point where I could follow all of the information about calibration. I switched from CRT to LCD before I got to the point of wanting to do serious proofing on my monitor. What I ended up with is a fairly inexpensive 17" Princeton LCD. I recently bought the ColorPlus calibration package from Pantone. Assuming I have done the calibration correctly, I still have one major problem with this LCD setup vs CRTs. It seems that the image is highly dependent on the angle of viewing. It seems the slightest movement of my head up and down, whether I'm sitting totally straight or slouching a bit at the end of a long day, makes a huge difference in the brightness and color balance.

 

Does this problem exist with all LCDs, even the high end ones? What are the other tradeoffs between LCDs and CRTs?

 

thanks

Some LCD's suffer more than others from the viewing angle problem. My 17inch

Powerbook G4 has serious viewing angle problems. Even at the same angle the screen

gamma is inconsistant from the top to the screen. The other, and perhaps the most

serious, problem with LCD's is screen uniformity. Basically the intensity and even the

color shifts across the screen. Usually best in the center and gets worse as you get

closer to the edges. Sometimes the problems of viewing angle and uniformity are hard

to seperate. In the case of the 910T the viewing angle does not seem to be a problem,

however it does have uniformity issues.

 

To put this in perspective,

 

Looking at uniformity results from various expensive ($1500+) LCD reviews on

www.tomshardware.com,

 

The 23" Apple Cinema has uniformity that starts at 80% on the edges and goes to 95

-100% for the center of the screen. The Eizo L997 ranges in the 100-95% range for

most of the screen and down to 85-90% in one corner. The LaCie 321 seems to have a

rather poor 80-85% for a good amount of the screen.

 

From my understanding, it seems as if Delta-E is the difference between two colors in

LAB color space, so in terms of a brightness difference, a Delta-E of 1 is like a 1%

brightness difference between two colors. The tomshardware tests use a photodiode

to check uniformity, so the 0%-100% of the uniformity tests is intensity instead of

brightness. To convert intensity (I) into brightness (L) is, L=116*((I/100)^0.33)-16. So

here would be the translations of uniformity=deltaE: 95%=2.0, 90%=4.0, 80%=8.3.

 

On my inexpensive 910T screen I went and checked the maximum delta-E as close as

I could get to the 4 corners of the screen: 2.29, 2.73, 3.15, 4.43. The worst uniformity

I could measure was about 89%. It seems to do on par with the Pro LCD's.

 

I no longer have a good CRT to test uniformity with. However my opinion is that this is

one area where the CRT is many times better than even the best Pro LCD. Even though

you can calibrate a large part of the LCD screen well, the edges are always going to be

visably out of calibration.

 

In practice, if you have a LCD (such as a laptop) that has viewing angle problems, use

something like a Adobe Gamma style background image so that you can check that

you are always editing at the same viewing angle. If you want I can give you some

really good tile-able backgrounds that show a very visable color shift based on

viewing angle. This is what I use on the road for my laptop.

 

- Timothy Farrar -- Farrar Focus

First I'll make the disclaimer that I've not read all of this thread yet (yea for impatience). I own the Mitsu Diamond Pro 930SB and just wanted to let you know that it's not all it's cracked up to be. There are some semi-bad convergence issues with my sample (that I can't correct) and in less than a year of 4-5 hour/day usage, the intensity of the screen is now down to ~80cd/m^2 with brightness and contrast set as ColorVision's software likes it. So it's already worn out from less than one year of usage. And the intensity started at >100 cd/m^2 when I first got it.

 

I know this isn't so hot to take, but at this point, the remaining CRTs still made seem to be rather lacklustre in performance. But at least they're cheap. At this point I'd just get an LCD with >8 bit DACs. A number of Eizo Flexscans have this (not the pricey Color Edge models). It's not ideal, but CRTs are already a dead end.

I ended up getting a Viewsonic G90f after all was said and done. No Trinitrons or Diamondtrons left (new) in the world. It gets the job done quite nicely... but after it has hit the end of its days, I'll have no choice but to get all LCD's. Hopefully the Eizo's will come down in price or the quality from them will trickle down to lower-priced units.