Are CRT monitors 100% dead ?

Soapy Sam said:
I'm still looking for a way to run XP in greyscale. Can it be done on a CRT?
I can find no way to do it on an LCD.
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Most CRT's I've had in the past would allow you to turn the color down to desaturate it, but this doesn't answer the problem of finding colors that don't turn the same shade of gray when they're desaturated. Windows 3.x used to have a grayscale color setting, designed for monochrome laptops and monitors, but I can't find anything like that in XP either in the themes for windows itself or in the video settings. I suspect you're out of luck.
 
You could convert the VGA to composite video and display it on a black and white display. :p

I hate CRT's, good riddance. I give them maybe two more years, until the HDTV standard fully kicks in. Is anyone even making 16x9 CRT's?
 
LCD is the worst thing that's happened to the monitor market for people with low vision.

I recently bought an LCD monitor to replace my 19 inch Trinitron. I found out the hard way that with LCDs, you get a choice. Either use it at its native resolution or get fuzzy text. At the native resolution of 1600x1200, I can't read anything with my 20/100 vision. So I down-rez to 1368x1024. The display is now the proper size, but the text is ultra-fuzzy and hard to read. I could run it at 800x600 to get an exact multiple, but that would be ridiculously large. I run the CRT at 1024x768.

Now the LCD is sitting in a box, unused and I'm using my old CRT again.

For TV, I'm just going to avoid LCD technology altogether and get the smallest plasma I can find when I upgrade from my 27" CRT TV. You can get 40" plasma units for less than $2000 now. By the time I'm ready to upgrade in 2008, I bet they'll clear $1500.
 
RPG Advocate said:
LCD is the worst thing that's happened to the monitor market for people with low vision.
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Soapy Sam said:
I'm still looking for a way to run XP in greyscale. Can it be done on a CRT?
I can find no way to do it on an LCD.
Click to expand...

You can do that with a mouse click on a Mac. Additionally, there's a contrast slider and a button to reverse to white font on black background. And a neat zoom feature. Since this is in the operation system, it works with everything, not just web pages.

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I've found a problem with CRT's that no one has mentioned. The local dump wants $12 EACH! to drop them off. I have about 30 in perfect condition, 17" that no one wants and just to throw them away will cost $360 (how's that for a round number?). I can't give them away and even the thrift store won't take them as donations. If it's like this in other parts of the country I predict that you will start finding CRTs in ditches along with the old washing machines and tires.
 
Ripley Twenty-Nine said:
The idea of having to run in 'various resolutions' is going to be outdated fairly soon.

New (and upcoming) Operating Systems, including Windows Vista and Apple OS X Leopard are essentially 'resolution independent'. The idea is that all bitmaps, controls and fonts will scale based on your resolution.

So on an 800x600 display, everything on screen will be the same size as with a 1280x1024 display; though obviously it will be much sharper on a higher resolution.
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Spoken like someone who doesn't play video games much. Taking a game designed for 800x600 and stretching it out to 1280x1024 would be a disaster. It would look far worse than a CRT that was in a native 800x600 resolution.

CRTs are still far and above the better choice with games. Very expensive LCDs are good enough, but still not the same.
 
Molinaro said:
Spoken like someone who doesn't play video games much. Taking a game designed for 800x600 and stretching it out to 1280x1024 would be a disaster. It would look far worse than a CRT that was in a native 800x600 resolution.
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It wouldn't be good, no, but 800x600 --> 1600x1200 would be fine because it's an exact multiple scale-up.

When I first got my LCD I thought the graphics looked slightly "blocky" at 1600x1200. Then I realised this was only because the display was so sharp I could clearly see each individual pixel.
 
Kopji said:
You could convert the VGA to composite video and display it on a black and white display. :p

I hate CRT's, good riddance. I give them maybe two more years, until the HDTV standard fully kicks in. Is anyone even making 16x9 CRT's?
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The problem with that, as I found out many years ago when I got my first TV-monitored computer (a Tandy color computer) is that simply running iin B&W does not change the video output to compensate for colors that render the same in gray. You can't play chess in monochrome if the red and green pieces come out the same shade of gray!

Some of the same problems occur if you simply desaturate Windoze. The video output itself must be altered to produce distinctive shades.
 
Molinaro said:
Spoken like someone who doesn't play video games much. Taking a game designed for 800x600 and stretching it out to 1280x1024 would be a disaster. It would look far worse than a CRT that was in a native 800x600 resolution.
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I'm not sure I understand your argument. What kind of games are you talking about?

Certainly not 3D games, considering the 3D engine scales the graphics to whatever resolution you want to run it in. I don't like running 3D shooters at really high resolutions because they don't scale the heads-up display properly, and it ends up being tiny on the screen. This solution would fix that.

2D games? Who would release a game that had a native resolution of 800x600? Especially considering most LCDs have a native resolution of 1280x1024 or higher, that would seem to be a pretty bad decision.

Or are you talking about old games? Well, who cares about them?? ;)
 
I am absolutely talking about old games. Lots of people care about them. And lots of people would avoid buying a new piece of hardware that would make a fair amount of their old software less usable.
 
New LCD screens are less bulky and have a larger display area; as of mid-2006, LCDs have become directly comparable in price to CRTs of the same display area.
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? How do LCDs have a larger display area?

And LCDs are not comparable in price (yet).

wiki strikes again :rolleyes:

I love my LCD mostly because it saves space, is lighter, and near as I can tell I have lost nothing in terms of picture quality.

And yes most stores (at least that I've been in) don't even sell CRTs anymore. They are all but dead..
 
Molinaro said:
I am absolutely talking about old games. Lots of people care about them. And lots of people would avoid buying a new piece of hardware that would make a fair amount of their old software less usable.
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I understand. I was just being facetious anyway.

Most games run in a resolution independent of the Operating System anyway; which is why your monitor will go black and 'click' into the new resolution when loading a game.

Resolution independence for an Operating System would only apply to your desktop, and any programs running inside windows on the desktop. So King's Quest II would still run just fine on your 4GHz machine.

Joking again! :D
 
bigred said:
? How do LCDs have a larger display area?
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It's because of the 'bezel' of the monitor. The bezel is the frame around the viewable screen on a CRT or LCD monitor. When a monitor states the size as being 17", that usually refers to the viewable area, plus the bezel.

Bezels are typically smaller on LCDs, meaning the viewable area is actually much closer to the advertised size of the monitor.
 
Starthinker said:
I've found a problem with CRT's that no one has mentioned. The local dump wants $12 EACH! to drop them off. I have about 30 in perfect condition, 17" that no one wants and just to throw them away will cost $360 (how's that for a round number?). I can't give them away and even the thrift store won't take them as donations. If it's like this in other parts of the country I predict that you will start finding CRTs in ditches along with the old washing machines and tires.
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Again, why not use freecycle.

http://www.freecycle.org/groups/uscentral/#Iowa

Some people cannot spend the money for a new monitor.

Give it a try. In my region CRT monitors are changing hands very actively with freecycle,

nimzo
 
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wahrheit said:
You can do that with a mouse click on a Mac. Additionally, there's a contrast slider and a button to reverse to white font on black background. And a neat zoom feature. Since this is in the operation system, it works with everything, not just web pages.

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Danke, aber ich habe kein verdumplingischefriggendend Mac!
 
RPG Advocate said:
LCD is the worst thing that's happened to the monitor market for people with low vision.

I recently bought an LCD monitor to replace my 19 inch Trinitron. I found out the hard way that with LCDs, you get a choice. Either use it at its native resolution or get fuzzy text. At the native resolution of 1600x1200, I can't read anything with my 20/100 vision.
Click to expand...

What OS are you using? In XP, from "Display Properties" , "Settings", "Advanced", "General", "DPI Setting", "Custom", use any DPI setting you want and all the fonts will adjust accordingly (except maybe in a few applications developed by absolute idiots). You can also up the desktop icon size from "Display Properties", "Appearance", "Advanced". Very few apps will adjust toolbar icons and other image sizes based on the DPI though.

Most other OSes have similar capabilities.
 
Ripley Twenty-Nine said:
I understand. I was just being facetious anyway.

Most games run in a resolution independent of the Operating System anyway; which is why your monitor will go black and 'click' into the new resolution when loading a game.

Resolution independence for an Operating System would only apply to your desktop, and any programs running inside windows on the desktop. So King's Quest II would still run just fine on your 4GHz machine.

Joking again! :D
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Don't worry I get the tone of your posts :)

I actualy upgraded my pc to an intel dual core 2 months ago.. and decided not to get an lcd. I'm using an old Dell Trinitron 19" tube that I bought 3 years ago.. used.. for $150. And as a backup I have my old, old, old trusty 16" tube :D
 
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