High end CRT vs High end LCD

Soldato
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The space consumption was the worst part of CRT screens for me.

With flatscreens you can have 3/4 of the depth of the desk free. With CRT it's the other way around although that did mean the screen looked bigger what with it being 20, 30cm closer...
 
Man of Honour
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As Hornetstinger implies, CRT phosphor persistence is significantly higher than 1ms. The formulation of the phosphor must give a decent tail-off in luminance otherwise you'll be subjecting the user to an unacceptable level of flicker and eventually eye-strain at the refresh rates a CRT typically runs (generally sub 120Hz).

Side by side, the old E400 and this LG (strobed) give a similar feel.
Yes, analogue CRT definitely has an edge; it just feels that bit more connected and "alive" (the hint of flicker). However, add in phosphor persistence, lower refresh (the E400 will only do 75-77Hz at 1600x1200) and all the caveats of CRT technology, and modern LCD doesn't really feel like second best at all.

Do a side by side test, dragging a white mouse pointer on a black background in the middle of the screen and the LG has less visible crystal persistence than the phosphor of the CRT.
What the LG does have is a second, single faint ghost of the pointer which is quite noticeable when near the bottom of the screen, but almost invisible near the middle.
And, of course a degree of processing lag and crystal transition lag (mitigated by strobing), though unless you're hopping from one technology to the other, you generally won't notice any difference. I certainly don't anyway.

All of the above in relation to LCD hangs on the strobing however. Switch that off and the LCD experience is much less impressive. I do feel I'd have been disappointed with any high refresh LCD without strobing given how the LG performs with it disabled.

Depending on the technology phosphor persistence can be as low as microseconds (though typically not used on your average monitor where it was more like 5-7ms) - difference is though while you get some tail off after an update it can change very fast in response to an update - far faster than the pixels on a LCD can adjust - in terms of Hz due to the difference there you can't really directly compare 75Hz on a monitor to 75Hz on a LCD though there will be some implications in respect to input latency.

The CRTs I used were in a different league to any LCD monitor I've tried so far and I've spent a lot money trying to replicate the experience - the closest I've actually come was the Samsung 2233RZ despite some downsides when you had the settings just right there was almost no residual/ghosting (at the expense of image quality) - even using lightboost I've not been able to get the same responsiveness as my old CRTs.
 
Soldato
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I got rid of my FW900 a few years back. I was sad to see it go for sure, but it was time. It still slays even the best current monitors I've seen in various areas - you'll need an oled for similar black levels and nothing matches it (imho) for pure picture quality and response - but it was as deep as it was long, only 24", needed maintaining, and no freesync/gsync/ultrawide. The thought of the picture quality it pushed out with today's tech/sizes would be a thing to behold indeed! Perhaps in a few years ...
 
Associate
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The last CRT monitor I owned was a 19" Sony G400 CRT. The monitor was binned around 2006. I was swooned by Flat panels. I still rue the day as it was mint.

Anyway, a couple of months back I picked up a Iiyama Vision Master 454 19" on eBay which cost £40.00 collection. Fortunately it was local and the seller was reliable.

It really depends on your usage. I purchased mine purely for retro gaming. Fire up a GOG game and say, use Doom as an example, it looks awesome. I accept that the nostalgia factor plays a key part. When emulating retro games on a current monitor; whilst great, just using original tech is priceless. However, when reverting back to day to day stuff such as browsing does take effort, the image or screen estate feels tiny.

Dropping from a 34" to a 19 or 21" in one go would be a big shock. Whilst the deep blacks and smoothness can only make up so much - Would I revert to a CRT full time coming from an 27" or 34"? Whilst it's doable, my concern would be that every time I go to work I would be reminded of the limitations of a smaller screen.

Whereas as a second screen/system and if you have the desk or set-up space - Definitely!

P.S. One other thing, I plonked my CRT on a desk, whilst you can alter the viewing angle; not the height. It know it sounds daft but I feel like a giant! With current monitors you can change the height so get a riser - a silly observation.
 
Associate
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This is interesting. I used to play UT and CS back in the day for a long time on CRT. I was talking to a friend in work about competitive gaming and I presumed that the pro's would be using crt. My friend told me they use 24" lcd. This surprised me. Maybe the latest monitors are as good, or is it all the crt are virtually extinct?
I have an older 120hz monitor and an OLED these days, and when I recently used a crt it still felt noticeably faster response to me. I would think the crt response would trump all image quality requirements.
 
Caporegime
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^^

IQ trumps all for me. Although I don't play the likes of CS any more, but back then, I would still have wanted good IQ.

However, I wouldn't put up with a display that was AMAZING for IQ but absolutely awful for motion and input lag.
 
Man of Honour
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My friend told me they use 24" lcd

Quite a few pro-gamers still run the older high refresh 24" LCDs with the resolution dialled down a bit - for some reason some still like 800x600 type resolutions :s CRTs are just too awkward these days for all but the most hardcore to bother chasing them.

It was interesting when the Samsung 2233RZ came out - one of the first proper gaming grade 120Hz LCDs and with a few tweaks it was not a million miles from having a CRT - it almost felt like cheating in games like COD: MW2 as so many players were on laggy 60Hz LCDs - even then CRTs had died out a lot - not to say I was a bad player but I know the display was giving me a significant edge on top of my ability due to the quality of display holding a lot of other players back - I definitely noticed the difference when high refresh displays started to become more common and I was having to work harder to get the same kind of scores.
 
Caporegime
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For those of you recommending OLEDs, have you have much of a problem with screen burn?

So far on mine, none at all, not even had any temporary image retention either.

Have played about 35+ hours of assassins creed origins on it now (which has a lot of yellow text and this along with red is the worst for burn in) and various other games too. Probably about 10-15 hours of gaming a week over the last 1-2 months.

Since I am using an OLED light setting of 30 and not running the likes of news channels or games for 7+ hours every day, I doubt I will see any at all, certainly not any time soon anyway.
 
Associate
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Quite a few pro-gamers still run the older high refresh 24" LCDs with the resolution dialled down a bit - for some reason some still like 800x600 type resolutions :s CRTs are just too awkward these days for all but the most hardcore to bother chasing them.

It was interesting when the Samsung 2233RZ came out - one of the first proper gaming grade 120Hz LCDs and with a few tweaks it was not a million miles from having a CRT - it almost felt like cheating in games like COD: MW2 as so many players were on laggy 60Hz LCDs - even then CRTs had died out a lot - not to say I was a bad player but I know the display was giving me a significant edge on top of my ability due to the quality of display holding a lot of other players back - I definitely noticed the difference when high refresh displays started to become more common and I was having to work harder to get the same kind of scores.

I had the Viewsonic that came at the same time. Great times using it for 3d vision and gaming. Used it for all games except UT. Had the crt for UT.
Like you it felt like cheat mode at times. Especially after playing on an IPS for a while before hand (pool after a game of snooker).
 
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