What has happened to the CRT?

area, plus lots of fluorescents overhead. It seemed

LCDs and plasmas have a number of shortcomings, such as

- black not really being black (CRT - trinitrons really excel here) or if you want better dynamic range

- burn-in (plasmas are more sensitive to this, but so are LCDs)

- response time, which still lags quite a bit behind CRT, action scenes are a pain to watch on a slow display. My cousing plays games a lot and won't touch LCD with a pole. Things are improving here, though.

- colour reproduction (CRT reigns here)

- plasmas age faster than CRTs (and are not as bright to begin with)

- cheaper displays (which are still much more expensive than the CRTs) can display unbelievably crapy picture when you have a large portion of the screen covered with almost the same color, the sky, for example. I believe it is due to 6bit D/As and associated limited number of colours. Check this before you buy!

- colours changing with viewing angle

You're paying A LOT more for what is in more than one way an inferior picture quality. So if you don't care much for size, saved space & energy, CRT is still better.

I own a large Dell 22" wide-screen 1680x1050 LCD PC monitor and it works great for what I use it. But I'll keep a CRT in the living room for a couple more years at least.

I have 8 CRT'S in use and two TV'S old style,and am very satisfied with them. Am not using LCD yet.

We have a Hitachi TV that lasted 25 years, before the Caps dried up. New Caps still works.

Went out and bought another hitachi a few years ago. I expect another 25 years out of it.

Same for the Computer monitor, Samsung 700ift, should last ten years. Perfect for scanning and photo work. LCD's arent any good for reproducing colors acurately.

Cheers

with

stove.

The carbon in the wood was only recently in the air.

Really? And they don't produce CO2? The global-warming people are going to be all over you for that ;-)

Around here most wood-burning is banned for smog reasons, unless it is your only source of heat (rare in Arizona).

Actually, in this part of Arizona and southward, man-made heat is rarely needed... what with high daytime temperatures and good insulation. Last night it got down to 45°F outside... inside it didn't go below 72°F.

...Jim Thompson

...and does a whole projector cost less (like a complete printer ususally costs less than a cartridge)?

Recently ?:-)

Revisionism has even reached into Chemistry ??

...Jim Thompson

The 3RP1A will live forever!

As for TV usage, I'm working on "Smellovision". So far the only smell I can reliably reproduce is that of a burnt selenium rectifier.

Tim.

naebad, It's really too bad that nobody makes a moderately sized CRT with the new 16:9 aspect ratio, because the contrast ration of a CRT is far superior to LCD, DLP, LCOS, Plasma, etc.. I think the problem is that to get the same width picture on a CRT without "letterboxing", you would need a CRT that is approximately 30% wider than the 4:3 CRTs that are now available. Without a breakthrough in deflection schemes, the set would probably have to be about 30% deeper as well. I don't think the average consumer would tolerate this. Regards, Jon

Wood is our only heat, other than the propane cookstove when we are fixing dinner. If it weren't for the fact that electronics is my bread and butter, we could cut PG&E off tomorrow with little consequence.

The kerosene powered sweep generator and computer are a bit much though.

{;-)

Jim

I remember the demise of the nixie tube but I blame that on an early start to the hobby. :-)

Ken

What do you mean by "moderate"? You can get 26" TVs with that aspect ratio, but they are a bit pricy and big. Here's Panasonic's model, Toshiba (IIRC) has an almost identical model:

Tinyurl version of above huge URL:

At anything above about 32", the things get enormous and enormously heavy (I think a 36" analog HDTV CRT alone weighs around 40kg). The

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Talk Radio completely revitalized it in the '90s. Ironically, while some solid technical improvements to AM came along in the '80s (primarily AM stereo), we were almost completely back to 'generic' AM by 2000 (I think there's less than a dozen AM stereo stations left in the U.S. today). But now, iBiquity has been doing a pretty good job of greasing the heels of the Powers That Be in the FCC to get HD radio off the ground. I haven't yet heard any mention of traditional AM broadcasts ceasing, although you can bet that if HD radio _does_ take off folks like iBiquity do have a financial incentive to try to kill it!

I expect a 32" LCD TV will end up being cheaper than a 32" CRT by the end of this decade...

BTW, Joerg -- where do you live? I've been enjoying reading your posts about, e.g,. powering the old Cray X-MP out in the barn off of the methane produced by the cows (just kidding!).

---Joel

the area, plus lots of fluorescents overhead. It seemed

won't

display

covered with

D/As and

picture quality.

better.

great

more years at least.

Not sure I agree - I have a 19" Sony Triniton at home and a 17" LCD at work and the LCS is better. Not to mention the space problem - the Sony is massive. (6 years old and still going strong!)

McC

screen 16:9.

with

and right.

Ah, I'm sure you're correct. It's not like I've cracked the manual. ;-)

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Better in what way?

Watch a news ticker on CNN or other (faster scrolling perhaps) channel on a LCD and you'll see what I mean.

The response time is one of the strongest selling points so I suspect some manipulation has been going on there as far as specs are concerned. Units from various manufacturers internally with identical physical LCD are sometimes quoted with different response time.

I believe this is due to the "stretching" of the usual 3:4 tv format to wide screen 16:9. Usually there are a couple choices in the menu, one with black stripes with no aforementioned distortion. The "unlinear" one you mentioned is really ugly, with stuff kept at normal ratio in the center and than stretching it in the far left and right. Than there's usually one with cut off top and bottom.

That's why I went for the usual 3:4 with my last set, the "stretching" is just plain ugly. Its only great for watching dvd movies. For the rest you get same picture area with the 3:4 tv set of smaller diagonal.

I have not looked at all the best new computer screens, but LCD looks too speckly to me.

Screens aside, my 36" CRT Toshiba seems to have very good resolution, or perhaps too much. When viewing digital programs, especially football, all I see is digital artifacts. The grass looks real funny, like vertical bars. Its real easy to spot these digitally processed programs. On this or larger screens, digital TV looks terrible, with all the large area artifacts appearing, usually on very even backgrounds. Iguess I'll have to switch to HDTV sometime.

greg