Totally agree about the relevance of viewing distance.

From 5 feet or less my Trinitron has superior SD PQ.
From distances over 5 feet my Bravia wins.

In my living room my viewing distance is 10 feet. If I had a very small living room and large bedroom I could be tempted to switch the sets around.

I still have 2 operational CRT sets, which I love, and hope to get many more years of use from, but my main TV is the Bravia and (IMO) the pros far out-weigh the cons.

I suppose the point I'm hoping to make is...

You don't need to buy the new technology just because it exists, but also, by that rarionale, you should not fear the new technology just because it exists. You may be pleasently surprised; I know I was.

i went from a top end 25" trinitron to a top end 40" bravia, and in my opinion - (and remember opinions are individual and not fact) -

for SD pictures produced by the TVs own tuners the CRT wins

and thats at 8'
but SD through a sky HD box & HDMI, then the bravia wins

unfortunately i cant bear to watch old videos on it

8 feet is really too close for a 40 inch set, so you would expect it to be poor.


Try it via RGB SCART, you'll find it probably just as good, but in any case completely acceptable. Then set the HD box to output PAL instead of RGB, and see the difference - they don't handle analogue composite inputs very well - if you try the FreeView tuner in the set (assuming you can get it) it's much better than analogue as well.

What an interesting thread!

I had a 22" Sony Trinitron in my front room until, after many years use, it expired with an irritating intermittent fault that nobody could fix. I replaced it with a 26" LG LCD (the 26LC2R). The LG is OK, but I preferred the CRT picture over the LCD.

Now I'm considering replacing the TV in our kitchen where we currently have an aged 14" CRT cheapo portable. I'd like to replace it with something that's capable of widescreen - mainly because it's the dominant format for new material and it's recently become more and more obvious that we're missing a big chunk of the image. However, my recent experience of looking at 'small' LCD screens in the high street retailers hasn't been encouraging.

I'd assumed that we'd need to replace the 14" CRT with a 17-20" LCD widescreen. We don't have the space for anything larger than that, and we'd be limited to 15" if we stuck with a 4:3 CRT format. CRT widescreen isn't an option - we just don't have the space.

Having had a look at a few LCD TVs in the 17-20" range, I wasn't particularly impressed. The thing that struck me the most is that shots like facial close-ups reveal more detail than we'd see on our 14" CRT, but when the image moves the detail disappears until the shot again becomes static. Not sure I could get used to that!

So, what's the solution?

We're used to sitting quite close to the 14" CRT - maybe that's the first problem if we switch to LCD? Is this a limitation of all LCDs, or are those with a faster (5ms is the bset?) response time less susceptible?

We view the 14" CRT from about 6 feet most of the time - what's a sensible viewing distance for a 17-20" widescreen?

I've read about LCD's suffering from poor contrast ratio. How much of a problem is this compared to, say, a cheap CRT TV? The retailers always seem to have all their TVs at the back of the shop in the dark, so I found it difficult to make comparisons with the fairly bright viewing conditions in our south-facing kitchen. And, of course, it's almost got to a point where it's hard to find somewhere still selling CRT TVs so that you can make a side-by-side comparison of performance.

Who makes the best LCD TVs in the 17-20" range, or am I on a hiding to nothing until some better technology comes along? I don't mind paying over the odds for 'the best' LCD offering on the basis that the cost difference is nearly always trivial if you consider it over a 10 or 15 year lifetime, but only if I'll be happy with the results

Any advice most welcome.

Thanks,

Mike

How many SCARTs do you have on that 4:3? If the answer is more than 0, then you are a new kid on the block. Both my CRTs are RF only! :=))

I had two CRT's die on me this year one an 8yrs
old portable in my workshop and a 12yr old 20inch Mitsubishi in my bedroom (office). I work from home and I used both TV's every day so they didn't owe me anything.

So far I've only replaced the one in my bedroom with a Samsung 26inch LCD which took me a few weeks to get used to it.

For the most part I think the picture is better until you have something moving infront of a busy background such as trees or bricks.
However I have no problem with football or motor racing which alot of people complain about.
The viewing angle does suck though, I don't remember what it said mine was but in reality to get a good picture you do have to be watching head on otherwise it's way to washed out.

Even though it's HD ready I haven't used it as I'm not paying extra for it and I don't yet have a DVD Recorder.

Let's not forget that the few 33 and 37" CRT's that were available (at a price) never performed that well, especially when viewed closeup.

It was accepted (we're talking 10 or more years ago) that anything over 32" didn't look great unless at over 8 feet or more.... so we shouldn't really compare 42" plasmas / 37" LCD's at the same viewing distance as you'd watch your old 25" CRT.

I agree that some LCD/Plasmas look terrible and attrocious but some quality ones look really good, considering you can get a screen that's really very large for a low price.

I'm still using my Sony 28" CRT though until it packs up!