Ancient CRT monitors... are they made to be darker?

[darweth]

I watch many movies and tv shows on an ancient Compaq CRT. I always notice the videos are darker than norm and can never figure out a way to address it that keeps the color sanity or does not hurt my eyes. I can verify this more these days because I am watching an episode of Heroes I previously saw on an old tube Television.

Anyway --- the brightness and contrast settings of the monitor are high (75/100) and 70/100)...

In Nvidia settings --- i try brightness at 0.280-0.400 (0.0 is the default) and Gamma at 1.024 or 1.090. Going any higher does make it brighter, but it is not a brightness you'd want to watch anything at :D And it hurts my eyes... hrm.

I surely explained everything here poorly, but is this a common issue with CRTs? If I bought an LCD, would I have brighter and more vibrant colors with better quality and less eyestrain? (aside from blacks, of course)

[macogw]

i have an lcd and yes it's bright, but i wouldnt say it's without eye-strain. i tried to set firefox to turn all websites into black background/white text, but it won't so i use the "negative" thing on beryl for that. anyway, though, if you make it bright there'll be eyestrain whether its CRT or LCD. regardless of the way the picture gets there, if it's bright, you're essentially staring into a lightbulb!

[v8YKxgHe]

i have an lcd and yes it's bright, but i wouldnt say it's without eye-strain. i tried to set firefox to turn all websites into black background/white text, but it won't so i use the "negative" thing on beryl for that. anyway, though, if you make it bright there'll be eyestrain whether its CRT or LCD. regardless of the way the picture gets there, if it's bright, you're essentially staring into a lightbulb!

When I got my Dell 2007FP few days back the default brightness was at 50, damm that was bright. I now run it on around 20, but am constantly changing it and using the Negative feature in Beryl. Negative is so so helpful, colors may look a little jazzy but it helps so much with coding, no longer looking at a white background with lines and lines of coding, I love it :P

[mips]

http://applications.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/02/07/2244242&tid=47&tid=26&tid=7
http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibration.htm
http://www.displaycalibration.com/
http://epaperpress.com/monitorcal/
http://desktoppub.about.com/od/iccprofiles/ICC_Profiles.htm

If the above do not help then you will have to take it to a repair centre so they they do some internal adjustments for you. DO NOT OPEN THE MONITOR YOURSELF, IT CAN KILL YOU!!!


Keywords: Monitor, Color, Colour, Gamma, Calibration.

[Phatfiddler]

:KS Death by computer!

[EdThaSlayer]

I don't think that the CRT monitors have good brightness compared to an LCD moniter.

[mips]

I don't think that the CRT monitors have good brightness compared to an LCD moniter.

Hmm. Do you realise that the so called 'brightness' button on your monitor does not actually control brightness, it controls the 'black level' of your monitor. The 'contrast' button actually controls the brightness.

So when people refer to brightness on a monitor or tv 99% of them are actually talking about the wrong thing.

LCDs have not surpassed CRTs in quality yet. You need a pretty expensive LCD to come close to a CRT. many DTP/Photo Editing people refuse to use LCDs because of their shortcomings.

[prizrak]

CRT monitors work by shooting a stream of electrons at a light emiting substance (basically phosphorus) on a screen. The electrons excite phosphorus and cause it to glow. With time the substance starts to lose it's properties and can't glow as bright as it could before. So basically CRT's become dim with age.

LCD's work by having a light source behind a matrix of different colored LC's. They tend to be brighter because the light source can be of greater luminocity than phosphorus. However they also tend to get dim with age. Reason why you are not asking that about CRT's is because there aren't many old ones around.

[willieRwl]

Good info but what is your preferance? Can you stand a monster sized LCD 2 feet from your eyes?

http://www.mp3digitalelectronics.com

[prizrak]

Good info but what is your preferance? Can you stand a monster sized LCD 2 feet from your eyes?

http://www.mp3digitalelectronics.com

I generally think that anything larger than a 17" Wide is too much for a monitor that is being used as one. If you are using a huge 60" Wide monitor as your TV then it's fine. (Alot of HDTV's don't have a TV tuner so they are called monitors).

[macogw]

My boyfriend and one of the guys he works with both have 30" widescreen LCDs with their laptops extending the viewing area another 17". With a screen that big, you don't even need virtual desktops

[prizrak]

My boyfriend and one of the guys he works with both have 30" widescreen LCDs with their laptops extending the viewing area another 17". With a screen that big, you don't even need virtual desktops

That's nuts, how far are they sitting from it? I wouldn't have enough eyes to cover that area :)

[macogw]

Like 2 feet away...Some people use 2 19" LCDs so they can maximize something in each screen (cuz they maximize separately) and drag things back and forth. I know I sometimes feel like 15" is too small when I'm dragging things between Nautilus windows.

[prizrak]

I'd love to have a multiscreen setup for all the RDP stuff I have to do (I hate MS). I miss IM's and e-mails at work because to use RDP conveniently it has to be full screen.

[Lord Illidan]

Like 2 feet away...Some people use 2 19" LCDs so they can maximize something in each screen (cuz they maximize separately) and drag things back and forth. I know I sometimes feel like 15" is too small when I'm dragging things between Nautilus windows.

I can tell you, from 17" (1280x1024) to 15" (1024x768), I felt a tremendous improvement!