Flat Screen Monitor versus Regular Monitor

[wfcentral]

I read through all the post with much interest, but found that it appears people are talking about two different pieces of hardware.

I think the original question concerned the difference between Flat Panel (as in LCD) screens vs Traditional (CRT "tube") displays.

The thread got confusing when people started saying that they own a "flat screen" monitor.

There are dozens of different types of monitors, but the three mentioned here were...

Flat Panel - the new trendy thin panel displays that are LCD (liquid crystal display) and come in Analog or Digital (or both) models. Analog will plug into a standard video card, digital requires a card that supports digital signal.

Flat Screen - this is really a CRT (tube type) monitor that has a perfectly flat surface (usual square in the corners as well). People often say "flat screen" will they mean "flat panel."

CRT - the standard "wish I had a newer" monitor with a glass tube, rounded on the front face, etc... everyone has seen these...

So to go back to the original question. Which is better. I agree with most that LCD flat panels are much sharper than CRT screens. These is also no frequency flicker which causes eye strain. When you visit a computer store and see the display models they may be blurry. This is usually because of several factors.
1. customers checking them out have played with the menu and got it out of focus.
2. the store is running a demo on 15 monitors at once and the signal or image they are displaying is not best for each monitor. I always see the same bitmap image at one store and it looks bad on the larger monitors because it is not running at the screens optimal resolutions. For example, I just set up two 15" NEC flat panels for a customer. If you run them at 800x600 they look slightly blurry. The manufacturer suggest that the monitor runs at 1024x768 - they look razor sharp at that resolution. So when I visit the computer store they have low-end to high-end monitors all running a demo at 800x600. The smaller monitors look better than the 17" models because the 17" monitors should be running at or above 1024x768...

Hopes this helps, not meant to offend anyone. I just do a lot of consulting and had to research all this myself already...

Robert

[Klaus Nordby]

Robert: "If you run them at 800x600 they look slightly blurry. The manufacturer suggest that the monitor runs at 1024x768 - they look razor sharp at that resolution."

And that's why LCDs suck for serious graphics work - at least for those of use who like to change the monitor "resolution" for various purposes: CRTs will always be sharp at all the various settings it can display.

And of course, computer store salesmen don't understand ANY of this LCD/CRT issue, which one reason (among several) why they display all those crummy screen images to potential customers. It's virtually impossible to evaluate the actual quality of monitors in stores.

For what it's worth: The best graphics cards are the Matrox cards: they are noticably sharper in output than ATI. And all those fancy gamer-cards from nVidia are irrelevant for 2D graphics people. If you value sharp, non-moving images, go with Matrox.

[ivan louette]

...when you said:

"And all those fancy gamer-cards from nVidia are irrelevant for 2D graphics people."

But those nVidia cards have indiscutables advantages for working with 3D programs which use Open GL like LightWave I use personnally. In that matter those cards are now very close to much more expensive professionnal 3D cards. I didn't have a so quick redraw and so much freedom to move complex objects with my previous ATI and Matrox cards.
But of course Matrox is perhaps a better choice to work with Xara X.

Kindly,
ivan

[Earl]

I'd have to side with Flat CRTs for serious graphics work. My desk and home office is extremely crowded, so I've been looking at using a flat panel LCD or Plasma display for a long time. I have yet to find an LCD flat panel that meets my standards for color, quality, sharpness, and reliability. Last year I purchased a 19" 0.20 dot pitch flat screen CRT monitor, and I have never been more satisfied with a computer display. And Klaus you're right - changing resolutions on the fly and not wanting to reset your display is a very key issue to graphic designers who design graphics for digital (web or video) mediums.

Quick note about video cards: Ivan's got a very good (and often over looked point). For use with 3d programs, Matrox cards are just unacceptable. I used to be a die-hard Matrox fan up until they decided that they didn't want to compete on the 3d level. Using LightWave 3D on a Matrox card is a joke - it's too slow and the Matrox's OpenGL support (which is software accelerated only) is flaky. Unacceptable for a production environment. For standard 2d graphics work - Matrox is the way to go, but for 2d/3d graphic designers, I wouldn't go with anything except nvidia (they are the only company to show competitive, quality support for 3d acceleration). Personally, I haven't been disapointed at all with the 2d quality of my GeForce 3.

[mckinney]

I just came across another nice article on LCD flat panels in the February 26th 2002 issue of PC Magazine. The article is authored by Alfred Poor and is viewable online at:

Flat-Out Brilliant (February 26, 2002)

While he doesn't spend a lot of time comparing LCDs to CRTs, he does discuss and compare a large number of 17 to 18 inch LCD displays and makes the reader aware of things to look for when purchasing such a display.

- Pete

[pinkbat]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ivan louette:
I didn't have a so quick redraw and so much freedom to move complex objects with my previous ATI and Matrox cards.
But of course Matrox is perhaps a better choice to work with Xara X.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hmmm ... my Matrox is desperately slow on screen redraw in Xara - it's enough to drive me nuts!
So for my next one I think I'm going to go for an nVidia card, like you Ivan - I'd be happy to trade a slight decrease in image quality against nippy performance and 3D ability.

Regards,
Britta