I said "the average consumer". Of course there are niches, but the target audience is not as big as we would like it to be.
Just look at this thread. Even on a forum like this the majority of people will be fine with run-of-the-mill Full HD TN panels. For CAD there are enough expensive panels with good color reproduction. For "hardcore gaming" there are perhaps different groups of people. Some still swear by CRTs (for good reasons obviously), but I believe that most have switched to LCD at this point and just adapted to it. Also there are 120Hz "3D" monitors now.

Yes, LCDs and other display technologies are catching up and the gap is slowly closing now. But that is just because these are still being improved and CRTs are not. Just imagine what kind of CRTs we would have, if they had still been in production. Even until the end they kept on improving, while the technology itself has been around for over 100 years. Just look at the huge jump I talked about, in power efficiency and brightness, in just a short amount of time. Imagine CRTs today, with sub-0.1mm dot pitch using nano-technology, 1000MHz pixel clocks with today's fast electronics, things like that.

Oh well. It's fun fantasizing about, but I guess I'll just have to accept the fact that the CRT is history. But that doesn't mean I won't be collecting and using them until they are all gone, or until LCDs finally catch up, or until an even better display technology appears.

I hope I did make my point clear: I do think CRTs were phased out way too early. Sometimes I wonder how much politics were involved, in the ever ongoing left-wing quest to "preserve the environment". That would not suprise me at all. But I might be completely wrong here.

I don't disagree with you at all in case you thought that. I merely explained that the average joe doesn't care about such technical details and only wants something that is light and doesn't take much space. Heck, most people probably don't even notice the horrible stretching that is going on with old 4:3 shows on modern TVs. And then you expect anyone to care for CRTs?

LCDs are simply cheaper to mass-produce. You don't have to worry about vacuum tubes, blocking X-ray emission etc. Still I'm sure that CRTs are still being produced somewhere around this planet. I guess military/aerospace applications and stuff like that. Nothing for the regular consumer anymore unfortunately. That's why I'd already be content if at least good hi-res 4:3 LCDs were widely available...

@jw, have you looked at any of the OLED displays yet ?

I guess I can see your point, you want your display to look the way you want it not something less.

I think part of the reason people don't question 16:9 or complain about aspect ratios in general is that they don't understand what's going on in the first place or why an image doesn't appear right on their monitor. Even fairly computer literate people have no idea if their LCD has a scaler chip built in, because it's been taken care of by the GFX card or otherwise.

By the same note, people don't understand how those "black bars" got there in the first place when watching media content. The idea of image scaling is a little abstract for them, so you're left with the literal L.C.D. (lowest common denominator) of the industry, 16:9 just to appease idiots and save a few pixels of mfg cost.

You can pretty much blame the massive adoption of cheap laptops for low quality panel types too and especially the dominant 1366x768 sub-HD crap out there. If high quality high res desktop LCD's were the norm several years ago instead of super cheap laptop screens, I think there would have been a different display race, instead of just a general race to the bottom.

FWIW, I'm holding onto this ZR24w 16:10 IPS panel for dear life.

I use to feel like jwt27 a few years ago but after multiple CRTs dying, outrageous shipping on those big heavy bastards, I made the switch to LCD permanently.

The only thing I miss is speed, but it's been replaced with size and image quality that has not diminished a bit in 3 years.

I though 1080p was some kind of HD hype/jargon - all it means is 1920x1080 resolution? I've had a 1920x1200 24" Dell 2405FPW for about 5 years now - nothing fancy but one of the most worthwhile PC purchases I've made! Yikes I don't even know if it's HD [doubt it] but looks good enough for me and wasn't too expensive.

d1stortion wrote:

I don't disagree with you at all in case you thought that.

My "making my point clear" comment was more adressed to everyone who read my last few posts, not to you personally 😀

And that political thing, please anyone, DON'T reply to it unless you have factual evidence proving me right or wrong. I don't want to see this thread end up like the one about youtube.

BigBodZod wrote:

@jw, have you looked at any of the OLED displays yet ?

Yes I have, and I think that is a very promising technology! But, not counting the degradation issues, it still has some of the same problems as LCD. For example the single "native" resolution and no true multi-sync. That might not be much of a problem if it can display 120+ Hz at it's native resolution, but for low-resolution material, it certainly is.

BigBodZod wrote:

I guess I can see your point, you want your display to look the way you want it not something less.

That more or less sums it up, yes. But it provokes another question. What exactly is "the way I want it to look like"? 😉

duralisis wrote:

literal L.C.D. (lowest common denominator)

Good one! 🤣

duralisis wrote:

You can pretty much blame the massive adoption of cheap laptops for low quality panel types too and especially the dominant 1366x768 sub-HD crap out there. If high quality high res desktop LCD's were the norm several years ago instead of super cheap laptop screens, I think there would have been a different display race, instead of just a general race to the bottom.

Well it's not "sub-HD" according to their own stupid definition. It's a bit above "HD ready". Also I don't think notebooks are to blame exclusively. Panels with this resolution were also extremely common in TVs. While the notebook ones at least have good response times as you would expect from TN they used some 100ms crap on many of those TV sets, just because TV buyers are generally even more oblivious to this than monitor buyers.

LCD tech probably fits 99% of the users out there. Office work does not require multiple resolutions and low input lag. I've seen some serious design work done on a TN panel (sure, not the cheapest one, but still TN). I've been holding to my CRT as a primary display until 2006 IIRC, but I found it much more tiresome to work on as opposed to an LCD. And I had high quality BNC cables (much crispier than a VGA cable) and 85Hz refresh (which seemed to be the sweet spot between crisp image and no flickering)...I noticed I was really tired after a few hours, while I was much more productive on my laptop at the time.

My 5 year old HD4850 can run newest games at 1920x1200, not with all the details and not with 100+fps, but good enough for me that I hadn't felt the need to upgrade yet. A high quality TV can really produce a stunning image if the source is OK and while I probably still watch more than 50% of the non-HD PAL content, the upscale is ok if you don't have a cheap china noname LED TV (I don't like Sony as a company that much, but in my experience they produce the best damn TVs you can get, worth every cent).

In all, I feel that even with a few shortcomings, the tech is a step forward. Sure, there are some stupid marketing decisions that drive the development and deliver a sub-standard product but hopefully an informed buyer will have an opportunity to buy a good product. As one of the biggest shortcomings - only 1 native res - this is really a problem only until the native resolution is high enough. Have a 16K (when did we switch from measuring vertical resolution [720p, 1080p] to horizontal [4K]?) or some other insanely high DPI display and the pixel size is small enough for the resample not to be noticeable.

gulikoza wrote:

(when did we switch from measuring vertical resolution [720p, 1080p] to horizontal [4K]?)

Twenty-one, Sixty (i.e. 3,840 x 2,160) doesn't roll off the tongue as well. Though they aren't even really 4k (i.e. 4096+), so it's basically a marketing gimmik, which annoys me more.

gulikoza wrote:

Have a 16K ... or some other insanely high DPI display and the pixel size is small enough for the resample not to be noticeable.

And ah, a 16k display. Too bad the best you can do now is multimonitor, but that spans a desktop quickly, and the bezels always bothered me.

duralisis wrote:

You can pretty much blame the massive adoption of cheap laptops for low quality panel types too and especially the dominant 1366x768 sub-HD crap out there. If high quality high res desktop LCD's were the norm several years ago instead of super cheap laptop screens, I think there would have been a different display race, instead of just a general race to the bottom.

FWIW, I'm holding onto this ZR24w 16:10 IPS panel for dear life.

1366 x 768 is better resolution than 720p so it is HD. If you want to count pixels, it's actually even better than 1080i since 1080i shows the same number of pixels on the screen at the same time as 540p only 1080i has blanks between the scanlines, 540p doesn't.

Yes they are HD and the 1080 are called full HD 😀 Subtle distinction, but correct.

After 6+ years of using laptops (much to my dislike but I need to drag my pc with me several times a week) I could no longer stand the craptastic 15" tn display. A week ago I bought a Dell Ultrasharp U2412m pretty much the cheapest 1920x1200 IPS screen that is of proper quality.
I will probably use his screen until it breaks or until 4k 24-27" screens become affordable.

The U2412m seems like a good deal, I paid $530 for my U2410 little over 3 years ago.

sliderider wrote:

1366 x 768 is better resolution than 720p so it is HD. If you want to count pixels, it's actually even better than 1080i since 1080i shows the same number of pixels on the screen at the same time as 540p only 1080i has blanks between the scanlines, 540p doesn't.

Wha? There aren't any "blanks".

1080i still has 1920x1080 pixels, it's just interlaced to make better use of the bandwidth.

SquallStrife wrote:

sliderider wrote:

1366 x 768 is better resolution than 720p so it is HD. If you want to count pixels, it's actually even better than 1080i since 1080i shows the same number of pixels on the screen at the same time as 540p only 1080i has blanks between the scanlines, 540p doesn't.

Wha? There aren't any "blanks".

1080i still has 1920x1080 pixels, it's just interlaced to make better use of the bandwidth.

What do you think interlacing is? They only show every other line on screen and put blank lines in between them. You never get a full 1080 display with 1080i, only with 1080p. Try putting your face up close to an interlaced display and you can see the blank lines clearly.

Um, only if you are transitioning between an image and a blank screen. The gaps are normally filled in with the lines displayed from the prior refresh, just one frame behind.

kolano wrote:

Um, only if you are transitioning between an image and a blank screen. The gaps are normally filled in with the lines displayed from the prior refresh, just one frame behind.

No, you can always see lines in an interlaced image. Only half the image is ever on screen at any time.

Is it possible that this depends on the display device?

On a CRT it's definitely as sliderider puts it because that's what the electron beam does, draws even lines, then odd lines, then even...

But on a LCD I don't think you would ever see black lines, let us say you use a high FSP camera. Or do you? Hmm.