Flat Screen Monitors Sales to Reign This Year

swimfastom writes "Yahoo! News reports that sales of flat-panel computer monitors will top sales of bulkier traditional models this year, signifying a long-expected turning point in the computer monitor market. Flat-panel screen sales are expected to grow at a 49-percent compounded annual growth rate from 2001 through 2006, giving them an 82-percent share of the desktop computer market."

I don't buy it

[silicon_synapse]

I don't see it happening. There has to be another alternative. LCDs just don't look as good as CRTs. They just cannot display colors as well. Hard core gamers, graphic artists, etc. will demand better. What ever happened to those really thin CRTs I heard about a while back?

Seems a little slow to me.

[Capt. DrunkenBum]

I have been saying for the past couple of months that flat panels will replace CRTs for monitors within 2 years. I think thay are being VERY conservative, it their estimates.

Price showdown

[davisshaver]

Has anyone calculated the price per inch of flat screen monitors and of CRT's. It would be interesting to compare those rates to monitors 6 months ago.

Re:I don't buy it

[mindstrm]

Well.. I'm a fairly hardcore gamer.

The 15.1" LCD on my laptop is HELLISHLY good looking.

Gimme a break.You can talk about latency and whatnot, but I guarantee a gamer won't notice a degradation in his gameplay due to a good LCD screen nowadays. I would rather look at my LCD anyday; especially when rendering systems take into account the sub-pixel control they can use.

As for colors.. yes, that's an issue, and one that will affect graphic artists for sure... but only those who need to move color into the real world (film, print). Those doing computer only will have to put up with display mechanisms that use lcds anyway.. so it's moot.

Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

For gamers, price isn't SUCH huge concern for the screens, but the ghosting itself. Sure, the ghosting for these guys are getting better, but still aren't nearly close to what a CRT can do. Also, refresh rates are very poor compared to CRTs, so playing a fast paced game with a high end video card doesn't look as good when the screen is tearing (most LCDs are at 60 or 75 hz, my monitor will do 120hz at those gaming resolutions). Sure, not everyone is a gamer, but gamers are finicky and won't convert unless the solution is perfect. Nothing worse than killing someone and listening to their complaints about their low FPS system lag.

Re:I don't buy it

[Rev.LoveJoy]

As for colors.. yes, that's an issue, and one that will affect graphic artists for sure... but only those who need to move color into the real world (film, print). Those doing computer only will have to put up with display mechanisms that use lcds anyway.. so it's moot.

That's a really good point about color. One of the areas where I have been buying flat screens like there's not tomorrow is for our CAD people. The fact that flat screens are geometrically correct makes all the difference in the world when you spend your day drafting on one. Color doesn't come into it (who cares what color your lines are in AutoCAD? you can specify the plot colors to be whatever you like!)

Cheers,
-- RLJ

Depends....

[Wister285]

I think that this is a good thing, but flat panel technology still has to improve drastically for me to use it over my nice Samsung 955df. The newest flat panel I have used was a laptop screen, but I have seen some of the nice flat panels at CompUSA. From my experience, view angles are still a big issue for me to upgrade. While more people site in front of their computer, I like using my monitor with my TV Tuner and I don't want to sit in front of my monitor all the time. Speaking of 19" monitors, I can't take out a loan to buy a 19" flat panel.

The laptop monitors and flat panels that I have use are not highly advanced like CRTs are, but this will come in time. They don't like resolutions other than their native resolution, they don't have nice full colors all the time, and they some panels still have ghosting! This is all ok for web browsing, but for image editing, web design, programming, anything to do with graphical design, and gaming flat panels are not adeqaute for my need. Maybe I am just bitter because my laptop doesn't go over 800x600 unless I want to scroll the actual screen. :-)

Flat panels surely have their advantages. The technology just needs to mature a little.

I already own a nice CRT...

[Nyktos]

So logically the next thing I would buy would be a fancy schmancy flat panel.

Are these figures skewed for reasons like this?

They already have 100% share of the Media market

[serutan]

Have you noticed that in every recent movie and tv show, and every commercial for any kind of product whatsoever, almost every visible computer monitor is a flat-screen? Walk around in the real world and they are far from universal, but in media-land EVERYBODY has one.

Their product placement investment must be through the roof!

What about the quality?

[deragon]

Anybody got quality concerns? I have never seen an LCD screen which colors come and crisp display come close to my CRT. And what I hate the most about LCD, its that the colors change with the angle of viewing; a little slight tint change when you move your head. Its very anoying. Some people say that this only occur with passive LCD screens, but then stores only sell passive LCD screens because I never saw an LCD without this tint changing effect.

They better substantially increase the quality of the displays before I buy one, and I hope keeping my CRT at work until the quality improves.

But, I agree that business might buy them for saving power, space and avoid the "bad" radiations emitted by CRTs.

Re:Flat PANEL not Flat SCREEN

[Door-opening Fascist]

Trinitrons techincally aren't flat. The external curvature of the screen might be zero, but Sony introduces a slight internal curvature to minimize edge distortions. See the FD Trinitron Technology Tour [sony.com.sg] website for details.

LCDs

[be-fan]

There is a funny thing about LCDs. The desktop LCD market is a bit behind the laptop one in screen quality. My laptop has a 1600x1200 15" screen, and it has perhaps the most perfect image (color aside) I've sever seen. At 133 dpi, text is rendered more than one pixel wide, which improves quality immensely. I've yet find a desktop LCD, however, that hits that high a DPI. Which is a shame, because high-DPI LCDs are just the thing for people who stare at text all day (a large percentage of computer users!)

Re:The Actual Report..

[subsolar2]

I just plunked down $289 for a 15" for the wife because her desk did not have space for anything larger. I'm waiting for the 18" and larger ones to get below the $400 mark before I upgrade. A co-worker recently got a 14" flat panel for his son for similar space reasons.

I think the next two years will see LCDs replace CRTs for all but the very low end and large (20"+ virewable) displays. I'm personally tired of dealing with the large bulky monsters. Environmentally they are probably be easier to dispose of than CRTs. The power, space savings, and ergonomics are another big plus for buisness.

subsolar

Why do they bother? Image. :)

[Bilby]

I've noticed that LCD screens have been appearing all through the department in which I teach - administrators, who constantly argue that there is no money for us to spend buying equipment for teaching and research, seem to have a great love of LCD monitors, in spite of the increased cost. As I'm still happy with CRTs (for the reasons outlined in the above posts) I was curious as to why. Most of the people I asked said that it was because they took up less desk space.

I had to laugh - all of these people, spending hundreds of extra dollars on LCD monitors in order to save desk space, keep putting the monitors on top of their desktop computer cases. :) Thus saving no space whatsoever over a CRT. And thus I conclude - as per normal in a university, the major reason why people buy LCDs is image. As they certainly aren't performing any of the other professed roles. If just one person moved their case under the desk or something I'd be happy - but no, not one did.

Re:The Actual Report..

[lostchicken]

When I had a CRT, the only reason I could see for using an LCD was desk space.

Then I bought one. The image just looks better after several hours of staring at it, there is virtually no eyestrain, and the geometry is always perfect, sharp and straight (so very good for CAD work).

I have yet to find a person (although I have the feeling I'm about to...) who has used a desktop LCD as a primary display for at least a month, and wants to switch back to a CRT for reasons other than size.

Stop harping on the desktop space issue!

[Junks Jerzey]

I see a lot of posters ranting away because they don't think LCD monitors save much desktop space. Okay, fine. But you're missing lots of other issues:

1. They're much lighter and easier to move. You don't need a heavy-duty desk that's able to withstand a 50lb monitor.

2. They're much, much easier to see in normal sunlight and well-lit rooms. No glare. Geez, just walk into Best Buy and look at how awful CRTs look in the store lighting.

3. A perfectly sharp, rock-solid image that is much easier on the eyes. It isn't worth sticking your head in the sand about this. It's your eyes we're talking about.

If you factor in the lower power consumption, we have a winner.

flat?

[khold]

Am I the only person irritated by calling LCD monitors "flat screen", when there are plenty of CRT monitors where the screen part is entirely flat. Calling an LCD monitor flat panel seems to be fine, where you label the entire panel as flat instead of just the screen.

I Love my Laptop's Display

[peterdaly]

I have a Dell C800, with a 15" LCD which can display 1600x1200. I love the thing to death. My eyesight has improved a great deal since switching from a 1600x1200 21" monitor to the LCD.

I would love to find the same screen, or similar in an LCD. 15" is fine for me as long as I can do 1600x1200. I havn't done much research, except browsing in stores, but none of the 15" LCD's seem to do 1600x1200. What gives?

Suggested things to look at anyone? I bought my last CRT about 3 years ago (a great Sony Trinitron 21"), I know my next monitor purchase will be an LCD.

I have been putting it off due to the price, although that aspect has come along quite a ways. I am sure there are others like me putting off CRT purchases and planning to go with LCD's instead once prices seem reasonable. 1600x1200 LCD's arn't cheap. LCD sales will only pick up once my "market segment" decides to shell out the cash.

-Pete

KDS RAD-5 and Loving It

[Powercntrl]

I moved into a new house almost a year ago. (Am I starting offtopic enough for you?) As anyone who has moved knows, things get broken in the move... My 17" CTX CRT was one of the casualties of the move. While I was carrying the monitor from one side of the room to the other, I tripped over some misc. stuff that happened to be on the floor and down the monitor went. Fortunately, instead of imploding violently, it had just cracked and *slowly* lost its vaccuum.

If I wasn't moving, I'd have probably just got another CRT to replace it... But since I still had a few more weeks to go at the old house and whatever monitor I bought had to move with me, I started looking at LCDs. After reading a few comparisons and reviews, then finally going to the local Best Buy, CompUSA and Office Depot stores, I decided on the KDS RAD-5.

Since the majority of my computer usage is just browsing the web, wordprocessing, photo cropping, using VB and some very infrequent gaming, the slower refresh of an LCD hasn't been a problem. While DivX and DVD movies seem to look fine on the monitor, I prefer using my video card's (a Radeon 8500) TV-out for video - 15" is just too small for good movie enjoyment.

Besides the sharpness and the perfect screen geometry, the other thing I like about LCDs is that they give off very little heat. My old 17" CRT was having a space heater on and would quickly heat up the entire room. I have a feeling though that when I upgrade from a PIII 850MHz to an Athlon XP2000 that the computer will pick up where the monitor leaves off in the heat department.

My "switch" story ...

[MattRog]

I, too, used to think flat-panel LCD monitors were useless in the home desktop mixed-application (office apps, coding, gaming, etc.). I do a lot of outside contracting so my home computer occasionally doubles as an after-hours workstation. I long ago discovered the joys of multiple monitor programming and so for several years had two 19" Sony Trinitron-tube monitors running - it still allowed for high-color gaming and I was able to split my code windows up over the two displays (it is nice to have code on one screen and the output and references on the other).

As luck would have it, I also own a wonderful Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop with the 15" 1600x1200 display. For the longest time I was running Windows 2000 on it, but when I heard about ClearType (sub-pixel font rendering) on Steve Gibson's site (GRC.com) I thought I'd give it a try. I was pretty impressed and decided to try the full-blown item with Windows XP Professional a try.

It was, in a word, mind-blowing!

Never before had text looked so sharp and clear - and after using it for several multi-hour coding sessions (aside from only the single display) it didn't give me headaches like my two CRTs did (even though I'd tried virtually every refresh rate setting from 60 to 120Hz).

That made the difference for me, so I slowly replaced my two 19" CRTs with two 17" Iiyama black LCDs (retail around $640 US for the digital versions, $610 for analog). Remember that CRTs cheat and don't really measure the actual diagonal, so that the 19" CRT is much more like 17.something (mine were 17.8"), whereas the LCDs are ACTUAL diagonal. So those who are saying, "Not until they have affordable 19" displays!" are missing the boat - for all intents and purposes a 17" LCD *is* equal to a 19" CRT in terms of usable display size. The LCD goes from bezel edge to bezel edge with ZERO loss in quality in the corners, something my CRTs could not claim. So in practice, I would guestimate the actual screen real estate are about equal.

As I didn't have the cash right away to drop on two, I ran for quite a while on one LCD (digital through my GeForce4 Ti4400) and one CRT. The differences were astounding - the CRT was noticeably not as bright as the LCD, and text was HORRIBLE to read. It was like trying to focus on a blurry photograph - your eyes keep trying to find the right focus and could never really adjust. It game me a TERRIBLE headache after only a few minutes, so I sold the CRT and waited for my next paycheck and got the second one. While both displays are digital (along with secondary analog inputs) my Ti4400 only has a single DVI output, so my secondary monitor is in *analog* mode until I can fix that (maybe a PCI card with digital?). I won't lie and say they look identical, but it is not nearly as dramatic as the CRT comparison.

Resolution-wise 1280x1024 is not a big deal to me. I enjoy my laptop's 1600x1200 and would hope we start seeing 17" affordable desktop LCDs in that range soon, but it isn't killing me. XP's ClearType provides for amazingly sharp text as it is, so the slightly larger fonts look pretty anyway. :) In short, you won't notice lack of clarity due to resolution size difference.

Gaming, or LCD's *supposed* Achilles' heel. I play a couple games - Half-Life Counter-Strike, UT, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Stronghold Crusader - and have noticed ZERO blurring problems. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Get it? It's a NON-ISSUE. Perhaps my system (Athlon 1.333Ghz, 512MB PC2100, ATA100 HDD, 128MB GeForce4 Ti4400, etc.) is not fast enough to get the frame rate above the pixel response rate, but it is not a problem with my Iiyama digital LCD displays. Certainly it can be an issue with older or slower displays, but anything in the sub 30ms rate should be fine. The calculation (from Tom's Hardware) to turn response into FPS is: 1 / (rate * 0.001). So 30 ms = 1 / 0.030 = 33.3 images displayed on the screen per second. 25ms = 40fps. Your eye notices things at 25fps or higher to be continuous 'full-motion' and at 30 it seems to be the 'magic number'. Remember to read the fine print on each monitor since some companies will list 'average' display rate or some other random numbers. Find the worst-case percentage and see if you can live with it. The only problem I've noticed is that when the games exit and the video mode switches the LCD panel never 'wakes up'. I am sure everyone knows what I am talking about - the screen flickers, the green indicator turns amber for a while, and then it dumps you back to your desktop. Well, the LCD (or my Beta 4 Detonator drivers) must give up early on the video card and goes to a 'You have nothing hooked up' screen. I have to turn it on and off to re-cycle the display.

I have noticed that certain extremely light web-page backgrounds (the old background pattern on http://www.angsttechnology.com for example) the colors appear to be washed out (you could only see a little bit of the pattern) but it is generally not an issue for anything you are *actively* looking at (games, photos, etc.). Contrast seems to be better than my CRT as well, and the images appear to be more saturated on the LCD, somewhat startlingly so. When playing something like Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 (or any other real-time strategy game) the colors are MANY TIMES more vivid - it is hard to explain but a really cool feeling the first time you fire up a game. First-person shooters look different as well; generally I have to turn the gamma up a notch or two since they all appear BLACK in the dark areas. I am not sure if that is how it *should* be and my CRT was inadequate or it is an LCD artifact, but I generally noticed LCD improvement over the CRT images.

I also notice that certain images online are not as smooth looking on the LCD. Again on InkTank (http://www.angsttechnology.com/AT/index.cfm, a really good geeky comic; if you have time check out the archives!) you can see 'jaggies' or anti-aliasing artifacts far more clearly on the LCD. It appears to happen on thin black antialiased lines more than any other. The black outline on PennyArcade looks (I think) how it should be, but the lines on Ink Tank were the #1 first thing I noticed after I got the displays. Now, of course, my eyes have gotten adjusted and so I no longer see them any more.

Anyways, to make an entirely too long post short, I have no misgivings about the LCD purchase. You often get what you pay for, and a cheap panel will probably yield a poor display picture. Mine is pretty much perfect. Give it a try, you might like it! :)

www.LCD.com/switch :)

Re:Gaming with a LCD screen

[theLOUDroom]

Your 17" LCD is not equivalent to a 19" CRT. It is equivalent to an 18" CRT.
And 40Hz, isn't very good. At your resolution my 17" CRT (Samsung 700IFT) will handle 89Hz. When is play FPS games is usually drop down to 1024x768 at which, my display can handle 116Hz. Your TFT has .264mm dot pitch while my 4 year old CRT has .24mm dot pitch. The current model of the Samsung 700IFT [samsungusa.com] has .20mm dot pitch and can handle 1920x1440.
I find what matters so much is not, LCD vs CRT, but flat screen vs non-flat. Once you start watching things on flat displays you just don't want to go back. Now have a flatscreen tv too.
I just don't feel like the value is there yet for LCDs. If I can get a faster, sharper display for less, I can handle lifting it twice a year.
You may wany to check out this comparison of TFTs vs CRTs. [tomshardware.com]
You'll note that CRTs have better:

• contrast ratio
• viewing angle
• color
• pixel response time