TV sets
Its been a month since my last blog entry, iam not sure if thats bad or not, anyway heres some more halfway offtopic crap, i want(ed) to buy a new TV set as the one i have here is _old_ and doesnt really work very well …
First question CRT or LCD?
CRTs, are old, many shops dont have any CRT based TV sets anymore and everyone seems to know they are old and inferrior
LCDs, shiny new technology, flatter and better, well wait, why exactly does every LCD TV below 1000€ have a _vastly_ inferrior picture quality then my mothers el-cheapo noname CRT TV which probably costed < 200€ … and iam not saying the ones above 1000€ where better, just out of my acceptable price range and many showing high resolution HDTV which made fair comparission hard …
Size
for CRTs size seems strongly correlated with quality and features, no 55cm 100hz TV sets for example, it also seemed like larger isnt realy more expensive, for LCDs of coarse larger is much more expensive …
100hz CRT vs 50hz
50hz flickers, and actually i somehow cant get rid of the feeling that its stronger flickering then 50hz TV sets had a few years ago
100hz dosnt flicker, wait, actually i found just one 100hz TV set <300€ which didnt had at least part of the image flickering, all others had parts of the TV channels logo flickering also with 100hz you can choose between some residue interlacing artifacts or “staircase” artifacts on moving objects, ive not found any 100hz tv set which didnt show some artifacts allthough in the end i prefer 100hz over 50hz the artifcats are less annoying then the flickering IMHO
Comparing TV sets
Well you walk into a shop with TV sets, many TV sets … all showing different stuff, and if you are lucky and they show the same then its a crappy dark low quality music video from MTV completely unsuitable for comparing, but wait one shop had remote controls “attached” to each tv set so customers could change settings and channels as they liked, sadly less then half the remotes where working …
Summary, conclusion and personal oppinion (yeah as if the whole blog was anything but subjective personal oppinion)
LCDs have imporved, more in the written numbers then in reallity, CRTs seems to have become worse but still LCDs are behind CRTs both in quality and quality per price
many TV sets be it CRT or LCD show terrible artifacts
50hz CRTs: flickering
100hz CRTs: staircase or interlacing artifacts on moving objects
CRTs in general: some cases of brightness-size dependance, most have oversharpened and too strongly saturated images (yeah last 2 are purely an adjustment thing, probably done as most customers are idiots and prefer oversharpened and too strongly saturated images)
LCDs: washed out blurry images, colors more or less wrong, aritifacts caused by slow reaction times not to mention 2-4 times as expensive as CRTs
Having recently purchased a CRT HDTV set (Christmas 2005), I can say that with adjustment the oversaturation and brightness issues can be reduced to a near-perfect image.
I’ve shut off the sharpness features, the cableclear features, the brightness brought down to reference levels for nominal room lighting, contrast evened out, and red reduced to ‘correct’ levels.
The end result is a beautiful picture I have yet to see reproduced on any LCD or Plasma TV. I’ll admit that some high-end Plasmas look pretty nice, but their darkness reproduction is terrible (low light-levels in shadows, for example, show very clearly on my set). Brightness compared to LCDs is also amazing — there are HDTV scenes (esp. in CSI) that make me almost wince.
It seems TV companies have gotten out of making CRT HDTVs, which is a shame since they can still out-do LCD and Plasma (and in some cases, DLP) at a very low cost. The only down-sides to CRTs I’d readily admit to are size (depth/weight) issues and screen real estate (lower than large plasma tvs)
Comment by Michael T. Babcock — 2006-05-18 @ 06:21
If I was getting a small tv as a second unit I would look at CRTs. However flat screen tvs have the advantage of space and intergating into a living space better. To get a widescreen CRT at 63 inches the unit would be huge.
Comment by plasma tv — 2007-06-29 @ 02:31
dear “plasma tv” while i appreciate all on topic comments, i do not appreciate missusing the homepage URI for advertisements, so ive removed the URI
next time you try this you are permanently baned
if you want some advertisement for 63 inch plasma tvs from your employer, just send me a 63 inch plasma tv for free and we can talk about it ;)
that said it wont change my oppinion about CRTs vs other currently existing systems
also if you do have the money to buy a 63inch plasma tv you likely have a house big enough so a similarely sized crt would not stand in your way
Comment by Michael — 2007-06-29 @ 13:08