My wonderful, trusty, always perfect six-year-old Sony G400 19″ Trinitron CRT monitor expired this evening. (I’m typing this on the company laptop.) Which leads to a very interesting problem: How to buy a new CRT?

The question isn’t really a serious one, since you can still order CRTs via the web. But the number of models produced, along with their quality level, is diminishing almost down to nil because of LCDs. I haven’t bought a monitor since the G400, and in those six years the landscape has completely turned 180 degrees: LCDs are now the preferred monitor for new computer purchases. There are new models out all the time, their prices are dropping while sizes are increasing, and they have greatly reduced energy consumption and radiation levels.

My problem is that, for my needs, they all suck.

There is no LCD that can do what I need out of a display device. Before you scream “gaming!”, I am already aware that response times have gone down to 16ms and below, making a true 60Hz refresh rate possible. But I have two very basic needs, one old and one new, that LCDs cannot accomplish today — and, in the case of one need, will never be able to accomplish:

1. Color depth: I need full 24-bit color out of my display device because of the video work I do (yes, I also have an external broadcast monitor, but I like to work in resolutions greater than 720×576, thanks), and LCDs today are capable of about 18-bit (cheap) to 20-bit (expensive) color output. If you don’t believe me, create some (non-dithered!) gradients in Photoshop of red, green, blue, and luma (black to white) of levels 0-16 and 236-255. Make those gradients go all the way across the screen. You should be able to pick out each level, right? Well, try. You’ll see that some of them are getting posturized.
2. Multiple resolutions: LCDs have a fixed resolution. If you want to work in a different res than what the LCD provides — like, oh, I don’t know, lowres oldskool gaming — you have to settle for some stretching of individual pixels. No matter how good the algorithm, it looks like ass.

My CRT hunt begins. If you know of any decent, professional 19″ or 21″ trinitron CRTs for sale under $400, lead me to them :-)

March 3rd 2009 Edit:  I was able to repair my Sony G400, but it sits under my desk unused as I have to use a widescreen LCD for my MindCandy 3 HD work.  However, this isn’t terrible; while the LCD has a few issues that bother me, it is indeed 24-bit color (and cost $$$ appropriately to get that).

Also, here are some PNG files for Brolin who wanted to see what the difference was between a good LCD and cheap one:

What you will see on a decent LCD monitor

What you will see on a crappy LCD monitor

Oh yes it can. Here’s a story for you: In my teens, I had a friend who got the IBM 5155 (the Portable Computer — you know, the heavy luggable one with the monochrome CRT monitor inside it) from a Computerland. He was screwing around with POKE in BASIC and POKE’d a value somewhere into CGA-land, saw some pretty squiggles for about 3 seconds, then poof and we smell the familiar smell of ozone. We went back to Computerland, but they told him that there was no way that software could have damaged hardware and they weren’t going to repair it (thinking that he had dropped it or something). So my friend, with salesman watching with one eye from across the room, walks over to another one on display, takes the diskette out, boots into BASIC, writes a 1-line program, and poof, ozone, and no more monitor. Salesman didn’t quite know what had happened, so my friend walked over to another one on display and does it again, but steps aside so that the salesman can see it this time.

Let me tell you, I’ve never seen an overweight, balding, 50+yr old move so fast. He sprang like a gazelle toward us and for a second I thought I was going to get the crap beaten out of me. Thankfully, all he did was yell, about how we were going to have to pay for that, etc. This got the attention of the manager, who came out and said they’d honor the warranty and fix his machine if the kid would stop blowing up all the IBM 5155 monitors in the store.