Saber Cherry wrote:...
Don't you think that's kind of harsh? For probably 90-95% of computer users a TN panel works just fine. As someone said they're cheap and easier to manufacture. For everyone else who cares they can spend the extra money to get the better panels.
Even you have to admit that not all CRT's were created equal. Just due to the technology there was a whole lot more variability in CRT's than matured LCD's. Particularly after the CRT has aged. The screen will naturally darken. The high power electronic components age and change value. Certainly LCD's have their problems but I don't believe they are as severe as you're letting on. Modern LCD monitors are good enough. Again, most people don't need anything more than what current TN panels offer.
Maybe I am being a little harsh. But first off, 90% of computer users I saw - back when CRTs were still used everywhere - had them set at the default 60Hz refresh rate, which made me nauseated, and didn't seem to notice at all. In fact, when I had to help someone, and they took too long to understand what I was talking about, eventually I would have to adjust their monitor to reasonable settings so that I did not get a headache in the meantime... and typically, they claimed to not notice a change from 'before' to 'after'. So it's pretty irrelevant what 90% of people think, when they are so unobservant, uncaring, or just dumb.
My parents, for example, bought a Samsung "HDTV" (actually 1366x768) which is incapable of 1:1 pixel ratios, but rather stretches every image to fill the screen, because the engineers were retarded. When fed an SD 16:9 aspect ratio input (with black bars on the bottom and top), it will dutifully stretch it to fit the screen, making the black bars wider, too. And there is no setting that circumvents this idiocy. Why do I bring this up? Because my parents didn't notice at all
. It took me about 10 minutes, including flipping through channels to find one with a full moon, and getting them to turn their heads sideways, to convince them that maybe
circles came out distorted as ovals.
Non-discerning customers will buy anything and not even realize that what they got was awesome or terrible until someone discerning tells them (and usually it takes a bit of effort, if it was terrible). So they really don't matter from a theoretical or practical standpoint, since they buy anything and don't contribute any useful thoughts. What is
important is what the other 10% think, since they can influence the 90% before they make purchases.Even you have to admit that not all CRT's were created equal. Just due to the technology there was a whole lot more variability in CRT's than matured LCD's. Particularly after the CRT has aged. The screen will naturally darken.
not all CRTs were equal, and that mine was upper-tier but not pro-grade. But as they age, both CRTs and LCDs dim. And I think CRTs have far less random variation than LCDs - you don't have to worry about stuck on/off pixels, for example, and the problems of nonuniform lighting and randomly patchy (around the edges) backlight bleed are similarly nonexistent. In terms of uniformity, CRTs come out better.
Really, it is only the small size, high mass, X-rays, and very gradual increase in blurriness over time (on the right side)... and occasional faint, yet annoying, high-pitched noise (maybe 1/20 times I turn on the monitor) of my CRT that make me consider LCDs. But they just fail to be better, after all these years, in any way directly related to performance except for blurriness (LCDs are [or should be] always perfectly sharp at native resolution) and viewable area (my desk would not support a 24" CRT). Despite my initial hopes for the technology, LCDs are - and it seems that they always will be - worse in every other (performance-related) way, though I expect/hope LED-LCDs to at least exceed CRTs in color gamut. Oh, and the contrast ratio seems about equal to CRTs now, too... despite the fact that LCD "contrast ratios" typically have more to do with the largest number known by anyone in the marketing department than anything grounded in reality.
A bigger question than why I think most LCDs fail is... why do you care whether 90% of people are satisfied with something? Most people are satisfied with Vista. Before that, most people who had WinME were satisfied with it. Before DVD, most people were satisfied with VHS. And before CD, most people were satisfied with audio tape. Most people are just generally satisfied with what they have, no matter what it is. And whether these people's opinions are more or less valid than ours, the opinions of such people have no place or weight in a forum of people who are enthusiastic about increasing quality and performance through technological advancement... just as the opinions of vegans have no place or weight in a meat-processing plant design forum, or the opinions of radical fundamentalist Christians have no place or weight in evolutionary biology or geophysics forums, or the opinions of someone like me (who abhors rap music) have no place or weight in a rap music forum.