Monitor question..

[Wilson]

I have a question about CRT monitors. At work I'm using a Lacie ElectronBlue 22" and it seems to be pretty good. The only thing that is bothering me is that there seems to be two very thin lines running across the screen. One line on the upper half of the monitor and the other line on the lower part of the monitor. What does this mean? Does that mean there's a dead pixel? Or is it supposed to be like that?

Any help on this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[mkrishnan]

I have a question about CRT monitors. At work I'm using a Lacie ElectronBlue 22" and it seems to be pretty good. The only thing that is bothering me is that there seems to be two very thin lines running across the screen. One line on the upper half of the monitor and the other line on the lower part of the monitor. What does this mean? Does that mean there's a dead pixel? Or is it supposed to be like that?

Any help on this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Dead pixels are really an LCD issue, not a CRT issue. All monitors that use an aperture grille have a couple of thin lines like this (monitors like yours use a grille of vertical bars instead of a screen of circular holes, which is called a shadow mask, and is also used on monitors). If you look at most high quality large CRT monitors (which are usually aperture grille, for instance any Trinitron, most any Unix workstation monitor), you will see the same lines. Apparently the lines are an artifact of the grille itself, like from some kind of support structure inside the screen or something like that.

 

[Wilson]

So all high quality CRT's are like that? Don't these lines get annoying or is it just me? Would these lines also appear on a Lacie 19" ElectronBlue monitor?

 

[mowogg]

Trinitrons all have them

That's the wires that hold the apeture grill in place. All trinitrons have them. I used to have a Sony 14" that had one line. My 18" had two. I don't think there are more than two on any monitors.
It was even noted in "Macs for Dummies" years ago (page 232) and was attributed to the fact that Sony made the Apple monitors at the time.

 

[mkrishnan]

So all high quality CRT's are like that? Don't these lines get annoying or is it just me? Would these lines also appear on a Lacie 19" ElectronBlue monitor?

There *are* some high quality shadow mask screens (what everything else that isn't Trinitron or something-tron is), but in general the screen quality of Trinitrons is much better. To me, in general an aperture grille monitor looks comfortable at least one resolution setting higher than a shadow mask of the same size.

If you want a very sharp screen without the two lines, your only other option I think is LCD, which is to me better all around, but you may have issues if you're doing anything color-critical enough to use something like that Lacie. If you're color matching to published output or something like that, then you should be careful on LCDs. What exactly are you going to be doing?

 

[phonic pol]

As posted previously, it's a Trinitron thing. The wires hold the screen in place. Two wires on 17" and above screens; one at top third and the other at bottom third. One wire for below 17" screens, at top third of the screen.

I remember ringing my tech support line when I came across this because I thought my monitor was faulty! Once you know their supposed to be there they cease to be a problem

 

[mkrishnan]

- What's wrong?
- I saw a line. Then, right after that, I saw another line that looked just like the first one.
- How much like the first one? Was it another line, or was it the *same* line?
- I don't know. Just two lines holding up the screen.
- Oh, good. For a second, I thought we were in the Matrix again.



I felt stupid for the longest time, wondering if I was the only one who noticed the lines...cuz you know, you can get into all kinds of arguments about which monitors flicker and which don't, because some people claim to see flicker and some people don't.