cathode-ray tube display screens pricelist

Average personal computer prices have plummeted in the last several years in spite of the fact that PCs continue to get better and faster, but the market for desktop displays remains a curious anomaly in an era of frenetic price-cutting.

"You can increase processor performance exponentially without increasing the weight of the product, but when you blow up the screen size, the monitor weighs a lot more, which means when you have to ship it anywhere, it costs more," said Rhoda Alexander, a senior market analyst for Stanford Resources, a firm that tracks the display industry. Since the monitor is larger, more raw materials such as glass are used, which also adds cost to the system.

There are other factors too. "What"s important to remember is that when you are talking about [processor] prices relative to display costs, a lot of [display] price drops happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s," Alexander said.

The display industry is a relatively mature one that has already realized manufacturing efficiencies in commonly sold products, such as the 15-inch monitors, analysts say. As a result, changes in price and monitor performance are much more gradual than in the PC industry.

If price were no object, flat-panel displays would probably take over the computer monitor business overnight. These slender new displays, which are essentially desktop versions of the liquid crystal displays attached to high-end portable computers, take up only a fraction of the desktop space hoarded by conventional computer monitors, which are known as cathode-ray tube displays.

Despite steep price reductions in the last few months, flat-panel displays still cost more than twice as much as conventional CRT computer monitors with comparable screen size and resolution.

In the last year, prices for flat-panel displays have fallen by as much as two-thirds. For example, in June 1997 the list price for a 14-inch Think Panel LCD Model 9514 from I.B.M. was $3,000. Today it is $999. Earlier this month, Apple slashed the price of its 15-inch Studio Display LCD to $1,299, from $1,999.

The plummeting prices are a result of better manufacturing efficiencies, weak financial conditions in Asia where all the LCD makers are located and increased competition among display sellers here. On top of that, computer companies are preparing to introduce a new generation of digital LCD displays this fall that hold the promise of even better performance and lower prices. There are some complications

Given the price difference, even the most technologically ardent consumers -- the fabled ""early adopters"" -- may find it hard to look a spouse squarely in the eye and argue that the flat-panel monitors are worth double or triple the price of an equally good or superior CRT display. Analysts say flat-panel monitors will not capture significant shares of the consumer market until the price ratio between LCD and CRT is 1.5 to 1 or lower, and that is not expected to happen any time soon.

Barry Young, vice president of DisplaySearch, a market research company in Austin, Tex., said prices for flat-panel monitors are most likely to continue falling this year before stabilizing in 1999, when demand catches up to supply.

Even so, some flat-panel customers can justify the price differences. Hospitals and medical offices favor LCD displays because, unlike CRT monitors, their signals do not interfere with nearby sensitive equipment. Banks and financial institutions array them on the previously groaning desks of traders who need multiple monitors to track different markets. Office workers crammed into small cubicles love them for their relatively petite footprint, which yields more working space, or room for more clutter, on the desk surface.

Come to think of it, these thin displays would seem to be ideal for apartment dwellers who are torn between a desire for a bigger monitor and the lack of space for it. The Internet has fueled a demand for bigger screen sizes, but CRT"s typically are as many inches deep and wide as the screen size, measured diagonally. Apple"s 15-inch Studio Display, in comparison, has the same viewable area on screen as Apple"s 17-inch CRT, and it can fit on a shelf 10 inches deep and 15 inches wide.

But flat-panel displays are intrinsically digital, mapping their images on a rigidly defined grid of tiny ""on"" and ""off"" cells. This is not a problem for the LCD panels attached to laptop computers, which send digital signals directly to the digital display. For LCD monitors to work with most desktop computers, however, they must convert the incoming analog signal back to digital.

There is a major catch, though. I.B.M."s digital flat-panel displays will adhere to a new video interface standard called Plug and Display (P&D), which has been endorsed by major makers of computers, video cards and monitors. The first P&D computer and video card systems will begin appearing in the fall and will work with both analog and digital flat panels. To get digital flat-panel monitors into the marketplace sooner, however, Compaq and some other companies adopted an interim standard called Digital Flat-Panel Port (DFP). In essence a subset of Plug & Display, the DFP system uses a different and, of course, incompatible set of connectors.

Compaq executives acknowledged that DFP is a ""transition technology"" and said the company was committed to supporting the Plug & Display standard when it becomes practical.

It is possible that a simple and inexpensive hardware adapter can be developed to allow DFP systems like Compaq"s to connect to Plug & Display video systems in the near future. No such adapter yet exists, however, so for now the conflicting standards are confusing not only consumers but also the companies that make the equipment.

William Lempesis, executive director of the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), an international standards organization for video display systems, said efforts are under way to try to resolve the incompatibility between the two rival systems.

FOR people who have more money than space, flat-panel displays sound almost too good to be true. Naturally, there is a catch or two, or six or seven, said Raymond Soneira, creator of the popular Displaymate utility program that helps both manufacturers and users get optimum performance from their monitors.

""They are quirkier,"" Mr. Soneira said of the flat-panel monitors, which have a liquid crystal display (LCD). The flat-panel screens require more adjustments to achieve the best picture, and even then they may exhibit odd and perplexing behaviors that would be unacceptable in displays of cathode-ray tubes, or CRT"s.

LCD panels typically have one or more bad pixels, including some that are stuck annoyingly in either the ""on"" or ""off"" position. Laptop computer screens often have similar freckles.

The newest LCD monitors, specifically the type known as TFT (Thin Film Transistor), like those used for laptops -- are much better, although every one we tested showed some degree of color shift as a result either of a change in viewing angle or of variations in lighting across the screen. In terms of retaining contrast at wider viewing angles, though, newer LCD displays are comparable to CRT"s.

Lighting is a crucial distinction between LCD and CRT monitors. The cathode-ray tube generates its own brightness across the screen as electrons excite layers of phosphors and cause them to glow.

But LCD screens are illuminated only by a background light that typically runs around the perimeter of the screen. These fluorescent backlights are known to dim and darken over time.

LCD monitors have only one optimum, or native, resolution. CRT displays, in contrast, typically can switch among several standard resolutions. Problems often arise when the LCD monitor tries to display a nonnative resolution, resulting in poor image quality.

Some LCD models -- not all -- offer high native resolutions (up to 1,280 by 1,024 pixels) and colors (16.7 million shades) that rival their sumo-size counterparts. Of the half-dozen flat-panel monitors tested for this article, however, none could display large areas of black reliably. While colors are quite good, they often lack the richness, or saturation, of CRT displays.

Some LCD screens also have slower response times than most CRT"s, Mr. Soneira said, which can lead to disappearing cursors when the mouse is moved quickly, or substandard, jerky performance when full-motion video images are displayed. However, we found no problems when playing DVD movies on the screens.

The Displaymate software for Windows has a list price of $79. More information is available at www.displaymate. com, or by calling (800) 932-6323. PETER H. LEWIS

Whether you’re finally modernizing or just have a few clunky Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitors and televisions taking up room and gathering dust, it’s important to understand the hazards they pose, especially if damaged. So, before you decide to move one around – and if you’re thinking about disposing of it yourself – it’s important to understand the hazards, proper disposal, and things to watch out for.

Risk of Explosion: As implied in the name, the “tube” of the CTR is under vacuum. A break in the tube – which is fragile at the “neck” behind the screen, causes an implosion followed by an explosion of glass.

When storing Cathode Ray Tube monitors, never rest the monitor down or have the monitor pressing against hard or sharp objects. Always get a hand moving larger units – their weight and size make them dangerous to handle alone. CRTs were banned from Massachusetts disposal facilities starting in 2000, so they need to be taken to municipal recycling collection programs, donated, or taken to a collection center like NEDT.

Rainy days boot very dark, this is because moisture is too heavy, often open there is no problem. The TV is sometimes like this. In addition, the color of the display is red, there are several possibilitiesFirst, the screen is magnetized, you can check the display around there is no larger magnetic appliances or accessories, if there is, after a few hours away, this problem will not occur. There is the display comes with degaussing function, you click on it.Second, see if the video card is loose or the video line of the monitor is broken and broken. Now, if you have, you can change the root line to solve the problem.Third, may be the display of the temperature control unit there is a problem, is perhaps the only time high temperature caused by the use of capacitor foaming, open the cover check; if there is capacitance blistering is like it, find a same capacitor or compatible change up on the line. This step is a bit complicated. Please repair the TV set if you don"t understand it. Basically, the above points can solve the problem. You can do it step by step. If it is because of the hardware, the proposed repair.Q:When I CRT some time ago on display only the middle line (horizontal), the Internet look like. What...... and put in a period of time after the boot turned well.. I had... The refresh rate is 85HZ... Is not before. The refresh rate is too high to display stand? I put the refresh rate adjustment back to 60HZ now, do not know do not have this problem? What happens if you turn on a black line in the middle? I don"t want to have the electric iron...... go to the shop to repair, arbitrary price, just want you to buy a new...... which user can solve this problem, I appreciate it.

This is the foot of the output block, because of the prolonged heat and cold alternating, resulting in poor contact. If you have some knowledge of electronics, find a connection tube radiator with integrated block (single) is (note there are some models with discrete components but with radiating plate), the welding foot on it.Q:I have several 17 inch universal display, and several 15 inch monitors want to sell, please give us a reference price, and now the purchase price is generally how much ah?

As follows:1, the CRT display has been out of the market, and gradually replaced by LCD and high definition display.2, CRT display recycling price: with understanding, 17 inches in 70 yuan, 15 inches of about 50 yuan.3, according to the location, the display price is also different.Q:Experiments need to hope that the refresh rate can reach 120Hz, but the LCD screen rarely has 120Hz, and the resolution does not need to be too high. So I want to find out if there is a suitable CRT display, and recommend. Refresh rate 120Hz+, resolution does not matter

At present, LCD is suitable for families, schools, offices, is the mainstream display, can meet the demand, but it shows the effect of miss CRT, CRT imaging as home tube televisions, the theory can be displayed on the infinite color and picture saturation, dynamic picture response time is 1 milliseconds, but the heavy body, while LCD is the liquid crystal display, lightweight and slim, but can only display hundreds of thousands of limited colors, but high resolution, good static images, but the dynamic response time is about 5 ms. Professional video and animation are now using CRT monitors. ]Q:Aren"t the monitors of rice hill and apple good???Is the monitor of Zhuo Zhuo EIZO good? Someone used to introduce, and compared to the previous Sony, how about? Where can I buy it? What about the 21 inch price?Thank you！！！！！Could you tell me Telilong display what brand is best? Sony, Eizo, Dell, sun, HP. Are these Sony"s best??? Can I buy new ones now?Just look at Sony or Eizo"s high-end display. The answer is what Samsung or Philip this garbage brand, do not understand ah. What a waste of time.

CRT refers to the display of a picture tube!Q:Not damp, not what is abnormal, there is a little blurred, eyes look very difficult, but do not know how to adjust the clear, before Baidu seemed to see some people say that computer has focus, master who will not be a problem here. How to tune?? please give me a detailed modulation step point.

Open the cabinet cover (most display using buttons instead of screws, such as PHILPS in machine buttons on both sides of the upper part, in case the corresponding hole demolished when the press can open, look carefully under the authority not hard breaking). In the right after the motherboard has a large component, there are two thick lines into the tube and seat tube, this is called a flyback transformer, high voltage. It is often said that. In the bottom of the high pressure package, there are usually two knobs, and some do not remove the shell can be adjusted, the two knobs are accelerated focus potentiometer, remember the initial position, be careful to try to adjust, the range is small, the speed is slow. When the potentiometer is adjusted, the screen is bright and dark, and the focus potentiometer is clear and fuzzy. After the test, adjust the acceleration potentiometer. After the start of high voltage package has Shijiqian volt, the main floor carefully oh!!

Behind a nondescript Manhattan storefront, Chi-Tien Lui is stockpiling objects many people wouldn’t think twice about trashing: cathode ray tube televisions. The first floor of CTL Electronics — whose clientele includes the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, and other museums across the country — is lined with a rich mix of vintage TVs, from tiny boxes to big, looming screens. In his bedroom upstairs, Lui has a 1930s mechanical television, an early image transmission system that passed light through a spinning metal disc. In his workshop, there’s a grid of old screens that once sat inside the Palladium, an iconic New York nightclub that closed in 1997. “They used to have 16 of these, rotating in the club — everybody danced underneath,” Lui recalls. “When they went out of business I took all the equipment back. And right now, I’m restoring them.”

CRTs were once synonymous with television. By 1960, nearly 90 percent of American households had one. But at the turn of the millennium, their popularity rapidly decayed as LCD panels flooded the market. Even though CRTs comprised an estimated 85 percent of US television sales in 2003, analysts were already predicting the technology’s demise. In 2008, LCD panels outsold CRTs worldwide for the first time. Sony shut down its last manufacturing plants that same year, essentially abandoning its famous Trinitron CRT brand. By 2014, even stronghold markets like India were fading, with local manufacturers switching to flat-panel displays.

Despite all this, picture tube televisions continue to linger. You’ll find them in museums, arcades, video game tournaments, and the homes of dedicated fans. But as the CRT slips further into obsolescence, devotees like Lui are navigating a difficult transition between simply maintaining an aging device and preserving a piece of technological history.

The concept of television predates the electronic CRT display by decades. Scholar Alexander Magoun’s book Television: The Life Story of a Technology describes it as a natural extension of the telegram, fax machine, and telephone. In 1879, a cartoonist envisioned families communicating across continents via a wall-mounted “telephonoscope.” In the 1880s, German inventor Paul Nipkow imagined capturing slices of an image through holes in a spinning disk, then projecting the light patterns through an identical disk on the other end. Russian scientist Constantin Perskyi reported on this new theory of “television by means of electricity” at the 1900 Paris world’s fair, coining the term that we still use today.

Toward the end of the CRT era, manufacturers began directly competing with the plasma and liquid-crystal displays that were threatening to overtake the market. The mid-2000s saw a brief enthusiasm for “ultra-slim” models, which touted tubes as miraculously thin as 15 inches. Some manufacturers adopted new high-definition HDMI connections. These machines maintained a tenuous advantage at first: new flat-panel TVs cost thousands of dollars, and consumers had to sort through a confusing assortment of unproven display technologies. But as these screens got cheaper, bigger, and had higher-resolutions, there was no way for the CRT to win. Its design relied on a fat glass tube, which became deeper and heavier with every added inch of screen space. Sony’s hulking 40-inch Trinitron from 2002, one of the biggest consumer CRTs ever produced, weighed over 300 pounds. A modern 40-inch Sony TV, the second-smallest option in its current lineup, weighs less than 20 pounds.

But flatscreens haven’t won everyone over. Ian Primus, an IT repair technician and CRT aficionado, has amassed a basement and storage unit full of old TVs. He has a reputation as one of the increasingly few people who will take CRTs off people’s hands. “If you let people know that you’re looking for old TVs, suddenly you’ve got three or four people calling you,” he says. He gives out his number to thrift stores that have decided the bulky sets are more trouble than they’re worth and want to direct donors elsewhere. Sometimes he simply drives around at night before garbage collection, looking for castoffs.

A video game’s look and feel is often highly dependent on specific hardware setups, and for most of the medium’s history, those setups often involved a CRT. The iconic black scanlines we associate with old games, for instance, exist because consoles would tell a TV to only draw every other line — thus avoiding the flickering that interlaced video could produce, and smoothing out the overall image. (For more detail, retro gaming enthusiast Tobias Reich maintains an exhaustive guide about scanlines and other CRT rendering issues.) Old games may look torn or feel laggy on a new TV. That’s in part because LCD screens process an entire frame of an image and then display it, rather than receiving a signal and drawing it right away.

Some games are completely dependent on the display technology. One of the best-known examples is Duck Hunt, which uses Nintendo’s Zapper light gun. When players pull the trigger, the entire screen briefly flashes black, then a white square appears at the “duck’s” location. If the optical sensor detects a quick black-then-white pattern, it’s a hit. The entire Zapper system is coded for a CRT’s super fast refresh rate, and it doesn’t work on new LCD TVs without significant DIY modification.

As with many debates in the gaming world, there’s disagreement over whether new TVs are truly unusable. Not everyone believes the lag is bad enough to justify keeping an old CRT around, especially as flat-panel displays have gotten more responsive. But for now, visiting the Melee section of an e-sports tournament is a little like stepping back in time, as sleek LCD screens give way to bulky black boxes. Some of those boxes belong to Primus. He leases them out to gatherings around his hometown of Albany, as well as larger events across the region, like the Boston-based tournament Shine.

Shi Deng, co-founder of Shine’s organizing body Big Blue Esports, estimates the tournament used about 100 CRTs last year. Some events let players bring their own displays, but Shine doesn’t; they’re a pain to set up, and there’s too much liability if someone drops a 50- or 100-pound television on the ground. (An abandoned CRT caused real panic at one Detroit tournament last year, when police shut down the surrounding block out of fear it might be a bomb.) Instead, they rent from a handful of providers, who might truck the screens in from hundreds of miles away, coordinating tournament dates so there are enough TVs to go around.

The CRT’s slow extinction is also becoming a pressing problem for arcades, especially with the rise of arcade bars over the past decade. Establishments like San Francisco’s Brewcade, Portland’s Ground Kontrol, and Chicago’s Emporium Arcade Bar all line their walls with dozens of nostalgia-inspiring cabinets and by extension, dozens of CRT displays.

Barcade, one of the largest — and most strictly retro-focused — chains, has about 350 games spread across seven locations. It has almost an equal number in storage. The company carefully preserves original, untouched cabinets for games like Centipedeand Tetris. But it also buys a lot of sloppy “conversions” — machines that arcade operators hacked to install new games, with different paint jobs and controls. It strips these down for parts, operating out of what Barcade co-founder and CEO Paul Kermizian jokingly refers to as a “secret lair” on the outskirts of New York City. They give the cabinets to collectors for restoration, swap individual components into vintage machines, and hold onto the tubes until they can’t possibly be fixed.

These places may eventually have to start installing LCD monitors in cabinets, and the results might not be disastrous. Software filters can approximate a CRT’s trademark image distortions, like scanlines or the curve of a screen, and a tinted glass panel can enhance the illusion. Not all arcades are so dependent on CRTs, either. Classic arcade series like Street Fighter switched to LCD-based cabinets years ago. A wave of indie game developers have designed a host of cabinet-based games with modern displays, ranging from weird, arty experiments to traditional-looking two-player boxes.

Barcade, for one, will hold onto CRTs as long as possible — and Kermizian thinks that will be a while. “I think there’s plenty around for at least 10 years, before anyone even stresses about it,” he says. It’s still cheaper to buy old parts than to retrofit a cabinet for LCD, a process Kermizian says would cost about $350. And paradoxically, he says fear of an impending shortage could free up more tubes, as some competitors preemptively adopt LCD displays to get ahead of the curve.

“The day maybe will come when we have to do an emulation of a CRT. We’ll be pretty sad,” he says. “But there are a lot of tubes out there. It’s not dire at this point. Not for us, anyway.”

It’s one thing to round up screens for a video game tournament, or even swap out the tube in an arcade cabinet. But what if an artist has turned a mass-market television set into something truly one-of-a-kind and that television set is about to wear out? This is the question that Chi-Tien Lui has built his life around, and one that few people are so well equipped to answer.

Today, Lui specializes in maintaining pieces like Paik’s Untitled (Piano), a player piano piled high with televisions displaying closed-circuit footage of its interior workings. He’s been fixing TVs for so long that he knows exactly which brands have compatible parts, across decades’ worth of hardware, including the now-rare Korean monitors that Paik favored. That’s particularly important for the museums that hire him to help replicate the precise original look of video art installations. It’s a task that’s much easier if you can just replace a broken tube with one of the right shape and size, rather than replacing the entire set. When he eventually retires, the prospect of losing that expertise makes the future of CTL Electronics — which employs Lui’s daughter and a handful of other employees — uncertain.

CRTs are tough pieces of hardware, but as they age, plenty of things can go wrong. The electron gun can weaken, giving screens a dim, yellowish tinge. An electrical transformer can blow out. The phosphor can burn away unevenly, leaving permanent, ghostly outlines of images behind.

Lui works with a German engineer who helps refurbish tubes — by installing a new electron gun to fix yellowing, for example. Much of his work involves sifting through the vast but shrinking pool of CRT detritus. He scours eBay for old TVs and parts, snapping them up in bulk, and hopes that most of them will work when they arrive. “It’s getting harder and harder, and the price goes up and up and up,” he says. He gestures toward a sizable Sony Trinitron, one of his prize finds. “Ten years ago, I could get them under $100. Now it’s $2,000. Certain TVs, everybody wanted to grab.”

Getting rid of the broken or unwanted CRTs, though, is a nightmare. “CRTs are essentially the bane of the electronic recycling industry,” says Andrew Orben, director of business development at Tekovery, one of the companies Barcade uses to dispose of irrevocably broken hardware. The tubes contain toxic metals that could leach into a dump site, and 18 states specifically ban sending them to landfills. They’re made of raw materials that are often impossible to sell at a profit, primarily glass that’s mixed with several pounds of lead. When CRTs were still being made, that was a useful resource, but recyclers have struggled to find other uses. Companies could once export the tubes abroad, but as LCDs become more commonplace, CRTs are becoming less and less attractive.

Tekovery doesn’t dismantle the CRTs it receives, and Orben says few e-waste companies in America will handle that part of the operation. Over the past few years, several supposed CRT “recyclers” have been caught secretly abandoning their old displays in vast television graveyards. Iowa’s attorney general sued the now-defunct company Recycletronics in January for storing 4.6 million pounds of leaded CRT glass, along with other e-waste, across eight facilities in two states. A lawsuit last year targeted a former partner of Recycletronics, which kept a staggering 113 million pounds of glass in two Ohio warehouses.

“There are companies in the industry that are specifically looking for long-term solutions” to the CRT recycling question, says Orben. But they’ve faced their own difficulties. Nulife, a company that legitimately smelted down old tubes for commercial sale, was ordered to scrap its backlog of glass after failing regulatory checks. It pulled out of the US market last year.

In the meantime, he has no intention of moving into the world of repairing flatscreens. “When the iPod, iPad came out, I quit learning new things,” he says. The new generation of electronics, he says, is fundamentally different from the old one. You could go to a factory training program and learn how to repair a CRT. “The new TVs, they don’t want you to repair.”

WASHINGTON – A federal grand jury in San Francisco today returned a two-count indictment against the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd. for his participation in global conspiracies to fix prices of two types of cathode ray tubes (CRTs) used in computer monitors and televisions, the U.S. Department of Justice announced today. This is the first charge as a result of the Antitrust Division’s ongoing investigation into the cathode ray tubes industry.

The indictment, filed today in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, charges Cheng Yuan Lin, aka C.Y. Lin, a resident of Taiwan, with conspiring with others to suppress and eliminate competition by fixing prices, reducing output and allocating market shares of color display tubes (CDTs) to be sold in the U.S. and elsewhere, beginning at least as early as Jan. 28, 1997, until at least as late as April 7, 2003. The indictment also charges C.Y. Lin with conspiring with others to suppress and eliminate competition by fixing prices for color picture tubes (CPTs) to be sold in the U.S. and elsewhere, beginning at least as early as March 12, 1997, until at least as late as April 7, 2003.

"This conspiracy harmed countless Americans who purchased computers and televisions using cathode ray tubes sold at fixed prices," said Scott D. Hammond, Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division. "The Antitrust Division will continue to prosecute individuals, wherever they are located and however high their position on the corporate ladder, who engage in price fixing aimed at U.S. businesses and consumers."

On Feb. 3, 2009, Lin was indicted for his participation in a separate conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition by fixing the prices of Thin Film Transistor-Liquid Crystal Display (TFT-LCD) panels.

Electrically operated display devices have developed from electromechanical systems for display of text, up to all-electronic devices capable of full-motion 3D color graphic displays. Electromagnetic devices, using a solenoid coil to control a visible flag or flap, were the earliest type, and were used for text displays such as stock market prices and arrival/departure display times. The cathode ray tube was the workhorse of text and video display technology for several decades until being displaced by plasma, liquid crystal (LCD), and solid-state devices such as thin-film transistors (TFTs), LEDs and OLEDs. With the advent of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), integrated circuit (IC) chips, microprocessors, and microelectronic devices, many more individual picture elements ("pixels") could be incorporated into one display device, allowing graphic displays and video.

One of the earliest electronic displays is the cathode ray tube (CRT), which was first demonstrated in 1897 and made commercial in 1922.electron gun that forms images by firing electrons onto a phosphor-coated screen. The earliest CRTs were monochrome and were used primarily in oscilloscopes and black and white televisions. The first commercial colour CRT was produced in 1954. CRTs were the single most popular display technology used in television sets and computer monitors for over half a century; it was not until the 2000s that LCDs began to gradually replace them.

A derivative of CRTs were storage tubes, which had the ability to retain information displayed on them, unlike standard CRTs which need to be refreshed periodically. In 1968, Tektronix introduced the Direct-View Bistable Storage Tube, which went on to be widely used in oscilloscopes and computer terminals.

1968Direct-View Bistable Storage Tube CRT retains static information displayed upon it, written using a steerable electron beam that can be turned off. The DVBST was used in vector displays of early computers and in oscilloscopes.

1984 Super-twisted nematic display (STN LCD) to improve passive-matrix LCDs, allowing for the first time higher resolution panels with 540x270 pixels.

Prior to the digital revolution in electronic instrumentation, oscilloscopes displayed waveforms on cathode ray tube screens. Modern digital oscilloscopes universally have flat screens. The flat screen is light, thin, consumes far less energy, and is less expensive to manufacture. All agree that it is a great improvement. The one advantage of CRT technology is that it is easier to understand.

Sealed in a large, funnel-shaped glass envelope, the CRT as used in old-style TVs is of necessity fairly heavy because the glass envelope contains a vacuum. In the event of breakage, a substantial implosion sends glass shards flying everywhere. There are two reasons for the vacuum. The glowing filament, as in an incandescent light bulb, would burn out instantly in the presence of oxygen. And second, a vacuum is required for the beam of electrons, generated at the narrow end of the tube, to travel to the screen at the large end where a phosphor layer resides. The first CRTs had cold cathodes, but by the 1920s incandescent filaments were added. They heated the cathode, stimulating more intense electron emission.

The horizontal deflection plates cause the spot made by the beam to move parallel to the horizontal X-axis at a user-determined rate in response to the horizontal scale knob. Depending upon the frequency of the signal to be displayed, the rate is some number of microseconds per division. (Most oscilloscopes have a time base made up of 10 horizontal divisions across the display.)

The vertical deflection plates cause the spot on the screen to move vertically parallel to the Y-axis in response to the rapidly changing signal amplitude. Thus, the spot, responding to vertical and horizontal deflection voltages, moves throughout the area of the display, drawing the trace.

The flat screen display produces a similar end product, responding to time base and signal amplitude. But there is no electron gun or electron beam. Because of its low cost, ease on the eyes and great portability, oscilloscope manufacturers will probably not be looking at competing technologies.

For a few years, plasma panels were common. A plasma display is made up of two glass plates separated by a thin layer of neon or similar gas. The plates have parallel electrodes situated at right angles to one another. Applied voltage causes the gas to glow and thus the image is formed.

Like the CRT and for similar reasons, plasma panels have fallen out of favor, replaced in most applications by liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Liquid crystal seems like a contradiction in terms. After all, isn’t a crystal generally thought of as a transparent or translucent hard solid with flat geometric facets? But as we shall see, LCDs incorporate liquids that are crystal-like insofar as they polarize light and block polarized light in a highly organized way depending upon the applied voltage.

Voltage applied to the crystals counteracts the effect of the alignment layers, causing the crystals to straighten out so the screen goes dark. All this happens individually at a pixel level, and that is what creates the display. There is no gun or vertical and horizontal displacement and scanning as in a CRT. Overall the flat screen, using LCD technology, compared to the CRT, is less expensive. And there is less shock and implosion hazard and less heat dissipation, so it is easy to see why flat screen has displaced CRT usage in oscilloscopes, computer monitors and TVs.

LCDs are volatile flat-screen devices. To retain an image, the display must be periodically refreshed. That is why in bad weather when reception in a satellite dish TV system is interrupted, the picture pixellates and becomes unintelligible. Non-volatile flat panel displays are bistable, so that images are retained throughout a powered-down interval.

Flat-panel displays were originally envisioned as substitutes for CRTs in radar installations. Besides TVs and computer monitors, LCDs are used in many applications including instrument panels and aircraft displays for pilots. The size range is enormous, from wrist watches, hand calculator and smartphones to huge outdoor signs. Additionally, they are common in DVD players and watches. The prices have dropped dramatically, especially in medium sizes such as wide-screen TV’s and large computer monitors, which are now affordable for home use.

(IDG) -- The marriage of cathode ray tubes (CRTs) and computers is headed for the rocks. After decades of pairing with PCs, hulking CRT displays are being supplanted by thin and flat LCDs. But until the transition is complete, you"ll find increasingly great CRT bargains.

Despite the jump in LCD sales, three out of four monitors bought in the fourth quarter of 2001 were CRTs, according to market figures. Drastic price drops for LCDs are credited with eroding CRT sales. The switch will only get more dramatic: This year, 40 percent of monitors sold in the United States will be flat screens, according to market researchers at ARS.

What"s more, analysts say CRTs are an endangered species. Prices have about bottomed out and innovation has hit a brick wall, says Barry Young, CRT analyst with Display Search.

"In parts of the world, like Japan, you have to really hunt around to even find a CRT in stores," says Rhoda Alexander, director of monitor research at Stanford Resources-Isuppli. CRT technology has hit a dead end, Young says. "Research and development dollars are now pouring into flat panel display technology, not CRTs," he says.

Apple Computer has ditched CRT monitors altogether and only sells LCD displays with new systems. CRT manufacturers NEC Mitsubishi and Hitachi have both stopped making CRT monitors, but both continue to sell CRTs manufactured by third parties.

Those monitor traits are important to graphic artists and fans of fast-paced shoot-"em-up games. For everyone else, flat-panel LCD"s newly affordable prices, crisp colors, no-flicker displays and small footprint are convincing selling points.

Even less likely is significant new development in 60-year-old CRT technology. Some manufacturers have shortened the monitor"s tubes, and therefore its depth. But the main development is flat-screen CRT displays. The display"s edges are flat and don"t distort images and text like most fish-eye CRTs.

Because diamond wafers don"t need to be heated to the same temperatures as cathode ray tubes, Extreme Devices" monitors enjoy some of the same benefits as LCD displays -- including instant activation and a 25 percent power reduction. The monitor"s depth is halved, says Kalar.

Kalar expects the monitors will ship to consumers in 2004. He promises brighter screens, smaller pixels, and better picture clarity than today"s CRTs. By then, the CRT could truly be a novelty.

SAN FRANCISCO - Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today announced a preliminary approval of settlements resolving allegations that LG, Hitachi, Panasonic, Toshiba, and Samsung, companies all based in Japan or Korea, fixed prices on critical components of televisions and computer monitors from 1995 to 2007. Those critical components, known as Cathode Ray Tubes or CRTs, were used to display images on computer monitors and televisions screens before they were replaced by flat screens. The court has approved the settlement pending valid objections submitted within 60 days.

In 2011, after the Office of Attorney General Harris conducted a confidential investigation into price-fixing involving CRTs, Attorney General Harris filed complaints against these companies for having entered into a price-fixing conspiracy of critical components of television and computer screens. That conspiracy involved top-level meetings of key executive decision-makers in Asia and Europe to set prices and outputs of CRTs. It also involved worldwide meetings among lower-level executives to exchange confidential information. Californian subsidiaries of these companies were involved in this conspiracy and took on the role of monitoring the prices of televisions and computers in California stores.

It"s true. Running modern games on a vintage CRT monitor produces absolutely outstanding results - subjectively superior to anything from the LCD era, up to and including the latest OLED displays. Best suited for PC players, getting an optimal CRT set-up isn"t easy, and prices vary dramatically, but the results can be simply phenomenal.

The advantages of CRT technology over modern flat panels are well-documented. CRTs do not operate from a fixed pixel grid in the way an LCD does - instead three "guns" beam light directly onto the tube. So there"s no upscaling blur and no need to run at any specific native resolution as such. On lower resolutions, you may notice "scan lines" more readily, but the fact is that even lower resolution game outputs like 1024x768 or 1280x960 can look wonderful. Of course, higher-end CRTs can input and process higher resolutions, but the main takeaway here is that liberation from a set native resolution is a gamechanger - why spend so many GPU resources on the amount of pixels drawn when you can concentrate on quality instead without having to worry about upscale blurring?

Then there"s display lag, or rather, the complete lack of it. Imagery is beamed directly onto the screen at the speed of light, meaning zero delay. Even compared to 240Hz LCDs I"ve tested, the classic mouse pointer response test feels different, faster. The advantages in terms of game response - particularly with an input mechanism as precise as the mouse - need no further explanation.

On a more general level, there"s a sense that games and hardware have "grown" into CRT technology over the years. Visuals are more realistic than they"ve ever been, and there"s something about the look of a CRT presentation that further emphasises that realism - aliasing in particular is much less of an issue compared to a fixed pixel grid LCD. Secondly, PC hardware has evolved now to the point where running at higher refresh rates than 60Hz is relatively simple - and a great many CRT monitors can easily run at much faster frequencies, up to 160Hz and even beyond, depending on the display and the input resolution. This is all pretty good for a technology that essentially became obsolete soon after the turn of the millenium.

And that"s where the negatives of CRT gaming start to hit home. The technology is outdated, which presents many pitfalls. The most obvious concerns form-factor: CRT displays are big, bulky and weigh a lot. I invested in a display widely considered to be one of the greatest CRTs ever made - the Sony Trinitron FW900 - a 16:10 24-inch screen. As the video hopefully demonstrates, picture quality is immense, but so is the heft of the screen. It weighs 42kg and with a 600x550mm footprint, the amount of real estate required is not insignificant.

Then there"s the input situation. CRT monitors use VGA, DVI-I or component RGB BNC inputs - and pretty much the most powerful modern GPU still to offer support there is the GTX 980 Ti or Titan X Maxwell. Thankfully HDMI, USB-C and DisplayPort to VGA adapters are available, but you"ll be spending a lot of time online looking for the right one to handle high pixel-rates if you intend to go past 1920x1200 at 60Hz. Very few widescreen CRTs are available and even the Sony FW900 has a 16:10 aspect ratio, meaning that console gaming isn"t really a good fit for CRT displays - 4:3 screens, even less so. Yes, you can run consoles on a CRT, but my feeling is that for many reasons, this is a pursuit best suited to PC users.

Finally, there"s the cost - which can cut both ways - along with the quality of the display you"ll actually get. The FW900 is a legendary screen with massive asking prices to match. However, John Linneman"s 19-inch 4:3 Sony Trinitron G400 cost him just 10 Euros (!) and still looks amazing. However, the fact is that in both John"s case and mine, the screens weren"t in optimal condition when we bought them - which is to be expected for screens well into their second decade of life. Suffice to say, getting image quality to the expected levels can take a lot of time, effort and plenty of research. And on a more basic level, CRT screens are made of glass and glare can be an issue. In shooting the video on this page, I had to film at night in order to show the screen in the best possible light.

There are plenty of pitfalls then - but the end results while gaming are highly satisfactory. Modern titles on a CRT can look sensational, you have the benefits of high refresh rates if you want them, you can turn up all the eye candy and you don"t need to worry so much about resolution as a major defining factor of image quality. Today"s premium-priced gaming LCDs are trying very hard to recapture CRT"s major benefits - low latency, high refresh rates and reduced input lag - but as good as many of these screens are, for our money nothing beats a good old-fashioned cathode ray tube display for desktop gaming - not even the very best LCD screens on the market.

Let"s say you have $1,000 to burn on a desktop PC gaming monitor. You could buy a brand-new 4K display with quantum dots, high dynamic range, and a fast refresh rate, or splurge on a curved QHD monitor so wide that it stretches into your peripheral vision while playing.Alternatively, you could venture onto eBay and spend similar money on a CRT monitor from 20 years ago.The latter option might not be as ill-advised as it seems. Within PC gaming circles, some people insist that cathode ray tube monitors, despite their lower resolutions, smaller screens, and considerable bulk, are superior for games because they respond to input faster and have less motion blur than LCDs. Although this argument"s been floating around for years, it just got a new wave of attention from Eurogamer"s Digital Foundry, which recently created a video extolling the outdated display tech.Advertisement"Today"s premium-priced gaming LCDs are trying very hard to recapture CRT"s major benefits—low latency, high refresh rates and reduced input lag—but as good as many of these screens are, for our money nothing beats a good old-fashioned cathode ray tube display for desktop gaming—not even the very best LCD screens on the market," Digital Foundry editor Richard Leadbetter wrote.

The case for CRT gamingOn a CRT monitor, the screen is coated in millions of phosphor dots, with one red, green, and blue dot for every individual pixel. To light up each pixel, an electron beam scans across the screen, focusing electrons on individual phosphor dots and causing them to emit photons. Applying more voltage to the system generates more electrons, in turn causing each dot to emit more light.That"s a lot to wrap your head around, but the thing to keep in mind is that the electron-to-photon exchange happens instantly. While CRTs do have some sources of lag⁠—namely, the time spent buffering each video frame and scanning each line of the frame from top to bottom on the screen⁠—those delays are on the order of microseconds. When you move your mouse or press a button on the keyboard, the response time is imperceptible.Advertisement"It"s the chemistry of the phosphors," said Barry Young, a longtime CRT display analyst who is now the CEO of the OLED Association. "You hit it with an electron, and it creates a photon immediately."By contrast, an LCD requires physical movement on the part of every pixel. On an LCD, the back of the display emits a constant stream of white light, which passes through a polarizer and onto an array of liquid crystals. Applying voltage to each crystal causes them to twist, altering the amount of light that comes through the screen"s front polarizer.Compared to electron-photon conversion, the physical movement of liquid crystals inside an LCD display takes a lot more time, introducing input lag. It also creates blurriness when there"s a lot of motion happening across the screen.Raymond Soneira, the president of display research firm DisplayMate, has found that this issue even persists on panels with faster refresh rates than the usual 60 Hz. This may explain why Digital Foundry"s John Linneman described the CRT experience as "cleaner, smoother, [and] nicer" compared to even the best LCDs."The issue here is that you"re comparing an electronic conversion—that is, from an electron to a photon—with physically twisting the liquid crystal," Young said. "The faster something moves across the panel, the less capable an LCD is with keeping up with the movement."In fairness, LCD panel makers have done a lot to close the gap with CRTs. Young points out that liquid crystals twist faster than they used to, and LCD panels can further reduce latency and motion blur by buffering an additional frame in their timing controllers or inserting artificial frames.AdvertisementAs the CEO of the OLED Association, he also argues that OLED displays provide the same responsiveness as CRT monitors because they also involve electron-to-photon conversion, only with organic chemicals (the "O" in OLED is for organic) receiving the voltage instead of phosphor dots."There"s really no difference between OLEDs and CRTs," Young said.Still, large-screen OLED panel makers to date have focused nearly all their energy on televisions, so the only OLED monitor on the market today is a 22-inch panel from Asus that costs $4,000. Young said the manufacturer of those panels, JOLED, is building a larger factory next year, bringing down costs, It may be a while until OLED monitors can compete with even the best LCDs on price.

Hunting for the CRT holy grailIf you"re convinced that a CRT monitor is the way to go, you"ll still have a lot of competition in finding a great one.Adam Taylor, who creates educational tech videos under the name EposVox on YouTube, has spent years trying to find a Sony GDM-FW900 in decent condition. He"s set up multi-keyword searches on sites like eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace, and regularly puts out feeler posts in his area to see if anyone might have any leads. For a monitor that doesn"t need any repairs and doesn"t have any major cosmetic issues, Taylor said in an interview that he"s willing to pay up to $500.The FW900"s big selling point, Taylor said, is its 16:10 aspect ratio, which is much wider than the 4:3 aspect ratio of most CRT monitors. Although a 16:9 aspect ratio is more common among LCD monitors today, most games still support 16:10, which would fill the entire screen on a FW900. The monitor also has a maximum resolution of 2304x1440 at a refresh rate of 80 Hz—pretty good even by modern standards—and it can hit a super-smooth refresh rate of 160 Hz when the resolution is cut in half.Advertisement"It can do ridiculous things while still supporting a modern workflow, because it"s 16:10," Taylor said.Beyond the FW900, Taylor said the same monitor has sold under different makes and models, including the HP A7217A, SGI GDM-FW9011, and Sun GDM-FW9010, but those are no easier to come by. A couple 16:9 CRT monitors also exist, including the Intergraph InterView 28HD96 (famously used by John Carmack to code Quake) and 24HD96, but they"re even rarer.Even if you can find one, you"ll need a graphics card with an analog output, such as Nvidia"s 900 series and AMD"s 300 series cards, or a digital-to-analog converter. You"ll also have to go in knowing the monitor may not last. As the phosphor inside a CRT ages, it will naturally lose its luminance, and that"s assuming it doesn"t suffer any other issues along the way. Repairing a CRT can be tedious and dangerous, Taylor says, and repair shops are practically nonexistent."It"s one of those things, you don"t get to keep it forever," Taylor said. "You know that getting into it, because it"s very old technology that is very prone to problems and needing maintenance."Still, Taylor is he"s glad to see CRT monitors getting another round of attention. That"s not always the case with some of his fellow CRT enthusiasts, who fear that more media coverage will inflate prices and bring in too many newbies, Taylor said. But outside of some occasional instances of people capitalizing on the hype (like the FW900 that sold for $999 on eBay) he hasn"t seen much evidence of price gouging. Most CRT monitor sales, he said, come from people who"ve hoarded them in garages and basements and just want to get rid of them.Besides, getting CRTs into the hands of people who want to play with them is better than having them wind up in warehouses, waiting for a recycling solution that never comes."We have no way established, at least in the U.S., to get rid of these things, and so to see people use them and have fun with them in a way that keeps them from just being destroyed pieces of glass and lead in the streets is a super good place for me," Taylor says. "There"s a whole elitist, "This is better," aspect to it, but just using the screens and having fun, I think, is really important."

The South Korean manufacturer is referring to cathode-ray tube, or CRT, televisions — the heavy boxes that have dominated the business since television was introduced at the New York World"s Fair in 1939.

Yet Samsung and a South Korean rival, LG Electronics Co., are refusing to abandon the old-style tube TVs entirely.  They continue trying to improve CRTs even as they and other television makers are building more and more factories that churn out super-thin LCD and plasma televisions.

CRTs — which some videophiles insist produce the best pictures — use a gun that fires electrons in a heavy, glass tube to light phosphors, far different from flat-panel TVs.  LCDs affix liquid crystals to thin plates of glass, while plasma uses special gases to light the screen.

Forget wall mountingMeasuring 16 inches deep and weighing 120 pounds, Samsung"s new 30-inch screen slimmer CRT is still far too clunky to hang on a wall.  But its $1,000 price tag beats many high-definition digital displays.  Samsung"s 32-inch screen liquid crystal display, or LCD, television may be only 4 inches thick and 36 pounds, but it lists for more than twice as much, at $2,500.

The company also plans a 27-inch model for $900 this fall and a 26-incher next spring at an undetermined price, though Samsung says it will sell trim CRTs at about half of similarly sized LCD screens, even as their prices plummet.

Testimony from Dr. Janet Netz of applEcon assisted purchasers of cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions and computer monitors to obtain cash settlements totaling $563 million from seven CRT manufacturers. applEcon supported class counsel throughout the legal process, submitting nine expert reports related to class certification, antitrust liability, damages, and other issues, and helping counsel with discovery, depositions, hearings, responses to motions, and settlement negotiations.

CRTs were the dominant technology used to display pictures in televisions and computer monitors in the 1990s and early 2000s. The defendants were CRT manufacturers that collectively controlled approximately 90% of worldwide CRT production. Plaintiffs allege that the defendants formed a cartel to fix prices to direct purchasers, including television and monitor manufacturers, and that these overcharges on CRTs were subsequently passed on through the distribution channel to class members, who purchased CRT televisions and monitors in 22 states of the US during roughly 1995-2007. Like the LCD case, in which Dr. Netz also testified, this case was complicated by multiple defendants, based in foreign countries, some of which manufactured both the components at issue (CRTs) and final goods (e.g. CRTs and televisions). Unlike the LCD case, only one defendant in the CRT case submitted a guilty plea.

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