Retro Review: The CRT Monitor
By Craig Lloyd on Feb 28th, 2010 at 12:23PM
Ah yes, the familiarity of CRT monitors astounds me. We’ve all used one at some point because it was the only thing we had. LCD monitors didn’t become extremely mainstream until just a few years ago. Heck, it was only last year that I made the switch from CRT to LCD and some people are still rocking the ancient display technology to this day. For this month’s Retro Review, I’ve decided to dive into the mysterious world of the one technology that changed the planet, but now serves as a stupid inconvenience and a desk space waster.
CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube. A CRT is basically a vacuum tube that produces the image when an electron beam strikes the display surface, which is made of phosphor and glows when the electron beam hits it. The first CRT ever made was invented by Karl Ferdinand Braun, a German scientist, back in 1897 when he used it in the first ever oscilloscope. So, to think that you’re current CRT monitor is using 100-year-old technology is pretty astounding if you ask me. However, it wasn’t until 1931, when Allen B. Du Mont created a practical way to implement CRTs in consumer televisions.
So why are people still using CRT monitors? Well, there are many different reasons why. Some are more geeky reasons than others. First, there’s the price. Obviously you can grab a decent CRT monitor for next to nothing nowadays and some people are just too cheap to upgrade to newer technology. Others like CRTs because of their great picture quality. Believe it or not, CRTs are highly capable of delivering “true blacks,” good contrast, and excellent, overall color performance. Plus, CRTs can last a freakin’ long time and are very reliable.
Then again, we all know the cons. Literally, they’re big cons. The size of CRT monitors are astounding and makes you wonder how you dealt with it all your life. They’re also extremely heavy. I was lucky enough to not be a LAN party goer during my CRT days, but I can easily imagine how crappy that would be. Another con is that CRT monitors are just plain uncool. When was the last time you bragged about your CRT monitor? Can’t remember, can you? Now ask yourself when the last time you bragged about your awesome, Full HD 24″ LCD monitor….exactly.
Nonetheless, the CRT monitor was the most important component to a computer. Without one, we wouldn’t even be able to see what we were doing. I will definitely miss the days where I had to pull my desk away from the wall to compensate for the immense size of my 18″ ViewSonic. RIP.
I’m still rocking CRT a nice 21in CRT actully 1600×1200 came with my IBM in 1999 a nice big flat screen, still using it today, I take it to lan parties and don’t mind simple reason is, the LCD users get to share a table, my CRT takes a table all to itself so I don’t have to share my space. I choose it for gaming after looking at LCD and being quite disapointed in LCD’s black looks like dark grey to me, color definition just isnt there for me, and to be honest the idea of someone touching my screen and breaking it quite worry considering i live with 2 small children i prefer to know if they touch my screen all i need is some windex not a 100 dollar repair bill.
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Tim Hage Reply on March 24th, 2010 at 11:22 AM
@thesandman, A true hero of the internet.
Nice post, since I also work in IT, I had like 10 CRTs in the office, I mean 15″. We scrapped them in the late 2008. I like CRT because of it’s lifespan, unlike some LCD’s that only lasted 2 years.
I have never owned a CRT for myself though, I started out computing with LCD… :D
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I am still rocking my dual monitor setup with two 19″ CRT babies, running at 1280×1024 @ 85HZ. With a fabrication date of 2002 (so they are only 9 years old now), these beauties can still last me another 5 years easily. This is 110lbs of pure monitor heaven. It makes my desk all wobbly, but who cares? Hell yeah, old school ftw!
No, seriously, I hate these ugly heavy things. I would love a nice flatscreen monitor. But truth be told, I really don’t want to spend money on that, and these old ugly CRT’s still provide me with a crystal clear picture. Running them on 85hz also gets rid of the annoying flicker and eye-fatique. So I probably will only ditch them when they break. I hope that time will come soon… But while they are still working, I’m not gonna throw them away.
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