Over the weekend, my once-trusty refurbished 22" CRT has started occasionally 'popping', indicating it's near the end of it's life =-( I much prefer CRTs to LCDs for many reasons, among which are higher resolution for less cost. Unfortunately, quality CRT displays such as the ViewSonic P225FB don't seem to be manufactured any more, so I'm struggling to find a quality monitor. The largest CRTs I can find are 19" and have very poor refresh rates for 1600*1200 =-( The best almost-affordable LCD I've been able to find so far is the ViewSonic VX2640w, which runs at the nice (but widescreen) resolution of 1920x1200, has a nice contrast ratio, fast response time, etc. In other words, it sounds like a decent display, but since it's an LCD, it's far more expensive than a comparable CRT would be (if they were still in active production). The only two things I'm not sure about are ViewSonic's dead pixel policy (I'm not paying that much to have broken pixels, and different pages on their site give different numbers) and the maximum refresh rate at the maximum resolution (yes, I know it's not the same as CRTs, but it limits the unique frames per second all the same), but I've sent an email to viewsonic for that information. I have two and a half questions for GDNet: Are there any quality high-end CRTs still being manufacturered? Are there any LCDs comparable to the P225FB for any reasonable price, or any LCDs better than the VX2640w with a similar or lower price?

This? It looks like it would be pretty decent, and the price isn't all that bad. I'm normally a samsung fan, but they always seem a bit more expensive than other similar offerings.

I think I remember hearing that Dell buys their panels from samsung. I may be completely wrong on that though.

Dell has excellent monitors. I highly recommend them. Is there a reason you need to go that big? There are much better prices in the 24" range. The Dell that Moe mentioned has a response time of 5ms which means roughly 200 updates per second.

Quote: Original post by tstrimp
Dell has excellent monitors. I highly recommend them. Is there a reason you need to go that big? There are much better prices in the 24" range. The Dell that Moe mentioned has a response time of 5ms which means roughly 200 updates per second.

You're wrong about the response time being equal to refresh rate - if you look at the resolution specifications, it specifically mentions 1920*1200 @ 60Hz. The response time just means that once it has a new image, the old one will fade out very quickly and there won't be significant ghosting.

Part of the reason I want to go big is that I won't be able to play games at the maximum resolution and I don't want horribly distorted images with stretching, so I'm going to be using black borders in games. Thus, with a larger screen, I might still be able to get a nice-sized image once I tone down the resolution for games. I don't need the large size, but among the ViewSonic models, it's the only one with all the features I want (at least 1600x1200, 1000:1 contrast, 5ms bwb, and the 400 nits brightness is better than the standard of 300).

Speaking of which, on the forums, it seems there were some significant issues with previous Dell displays where they wouldn't allow the black borders (1:1 mode) at high resolutions, which is an absolute must for me (some games I can play in 1600*1200 and they either don't support or I don't want to use a widescreen mode, and 1080p is 1920x1080 and I don't want that stretched to x1200). I can't seem to find any posts complaining about this problem on the newer monitors, but I'd like to find some confirmation that it was fixed.

I'm also curious what the difference is between the two Dell models E248WFP ($375) and the 2407WFP-HC ($699)? As far as I can tell, the primary difference is that the more expensive model has a 178 degree viewing angle while the less expensive one has a 160 degree viewing angle. Will that really be a $325 difference? What other factors might contribute?

Something I noticed I left out of my original post that I don't know about the ViewSonic is how good it's color gamut is. The Dell that Moe linked to claims "92%", but I wonder what that is 92% of - sRGB, perhaps? That would be a rather big turn off, but the VX2640w might be just as bad =-(

Quote: Original post by Extrarius
I much prefer CRTs to LCDs for many reasons, among which are higher resolution for less cost. Unfortunately, quality CRT displays such as the ViewSonic P225FB don't seem to be manufactured any more, so I'm struggling to find a quality monitor. The largest CRTs I can find are 19" and have very poor refresh rates for 1600*1200 =-(

I've got an Iiyama Vision Master Pro 454 which does 1600x1200 @ 85Hz, which was about as good as I could find a few years ago without spending silly amounts of money. The image is nice and crisp too, so if thats suitable it might be worth checking to see if they're still being made.

Personally I really don't like the disappearence of quality CRTs - LCDs seem to have replaced everything but still end up being inferiour in terms of image quality and rescaling options. [sad] Even more annoying is that if I want to replace my CRT I'm screwed since all the LCDs at an equal or higher resolution cost ridiculous amounts of money compared to what I paid for this in the first place.

Sorry, I cannot help you with CRT monitors, as I've switched over to LCD a long time ago.

One thing you need to be careful about with Dell. They don't use the same panels in the same model monitor. Over time, they replace the panels with cheaper models, so while your friend might have the same model as you do and love it, you might hate yours.

As for scaling, practically every monitor has 1:1 scaling. What they don't have is aspect scaling. (1:1 will have a super small image depending upon your resolution, which could have black bars on all 4 sides while aspect scaling would take up the whole height, and have black bars on the side).

If what you're after is good color reproduction, try to find a monitor with an S-IPS panel (easier said than done now). You can get super great monitors which are comparable to CRTs from Sun and IBM, which will probably be way out of your price range. For normal graphics, on the expensive side is EIZO.

Now, for dead pixel policies, you can abuse Dell and Best Buy. For a place that offers a zero dead pixel policy for $40 is NCIX, which I took advantage of. It's peace of mind knowing you won't have to worry about getting a bad monitor.

Extrarius, would you by chance be anywhere close to a university? Mine just had a sale of sorts where they were selling off older equipment, including CRT monitors. They apparently had a few 21" CRTs. You might be able to find something used at a similar sale at a university near you.

Quote: Original post by OrangyTang
[...]I've got an Iiyama Vision Master Pro 454 which does 1600x1200 @ 85Hz, which was about as good as I could find a few years ago without spending silly amounts of money. The image is nice and crisp too, so if thats suitable it might be worth checking to see if they're still being made.

Personally I really don't like the disappearence of quality CRTs - LCDs seem to have replaced everything but still end up being inferiour in terms of image quality and rescaling options. [sad] Even more annoying is that if I want to replace my CRT I'm screwed since all the LCDs at an equal or higher resolution cost ridiculous amounts of money compared to what I paid for this in the first place.

I agree 100%. The retail price on the P225FB was around $400 several years ago when I was checking out what I would get next, and even today you can't get an LCD that even supports the same resolution for less than $1000, and the scaling will still be worse since LCDs have fixed physical pixels while CRTs do not. =-(

On the Iiyama USA site, it seems the largest CRT they produce now is 19", which is the same as with ViewSonic. I _really_ don't want to downgrade to a smaller monitor, but I might anyways since it'll save $200 or more. =-(

You could always get a pair of 19" CRTs... assuming you have a desk that can handle the weight and room.

Quote: Original post by Moe
You could always get a pair of 19" CRTs... assuming you have a desk that can handle the weight and room.

My desk is one I built to be sturdy. It could support 3x 22" CRTs with no problem =-)
Unfortuantely, I can't stand having two (or more) monitors =-(

Hrmm, it can be _VERY_ difficult to find LCDs on various company websites. Does hitachi only make LCD TVs? Apparently they're the great innovator, but the only links I could find to computer displays on their site are broken. Does LG.Philips sell LCDs or just the components? It'd be great to find a website that carried all the various high-end LCDs out there so I could actually compare prices and do a bit of shopping. Having to use different websites for different models makes comparisons difficult =-(