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Comment by cannam | Hacker News Reader

I can't imagine loving a monitor the way I loved my iiyama Vision Master Pro. 1600x1200 at 71Hz driven from a Matrox Millennium (4MB VRAM and no 3D acceleration whatsoever) with soft-edged pixels and no visible grain or mesh. It was by far the best computer-related object I had ever owned. But that would be so impractical now, given its bulk and what else is available.

We actually still have a CRT as our main TV here - a 28" Sony - not for any exciting retro reason but just because we've had it from new and it still works. We have a bigger LCD in another room. We bought that to watch films on, but it was always disappointing for that - it's too clean, it feels as if you're watching the making-of documentary rather than the film itself. So we hardly ever use it and mostly stick with the CRT. It's satisfying to watch, but part of me hopes it'll stop working so we can get the space in the corner back.

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> feels as if you're watching the making-of documentary rather than the film itself.

Isn't that because of many picture enhancers that come with modern tvs? I think major offender is the interpolation to go from cinematic 24 frames to higher frame rate. I believe it's commonly called soap opera effect...

Yep, but there's no reason to use it. Just go to the settings menu and turn it off. While you're in there, set the color settings to "movie" mode too so the colors are more faithful.

Modern TVs look absolutely horrible out-of-the-box, because they're made to look cool in showrooms, but if you fix those settings they look great. Even better, turn on a YouTube video that shows how to adjust the black and white levels and tune them.

The Matrox cards were awesome, I had a 21" sony monitor that could be pushed up to 1800x1600 with those cards. I probably have some in the stack somewhere still.

Be aware of the energy you are wasting, a modern tv uses much less power than a crt.

Be aware of the energy you are wasting, a modern AI uses much less power than a human.

Older technology like paintings just sitting there in a museum and Greek sculpture used way less power than AI.

Now you listen, If I’m going to be replaced by an AI it’s not going to be for some boring economical reason.

It’ll be because I‘ve been deemed surplus to requirements by the algorithm and smooshed down into base nutrients with everyone else, thank you very much.

Depends on what modern TV since most people are buying bigger TV's now. An 28" CRT uses about the same amount of power as a 55" OLED so replacing the former with the latter does not improve energy use.

Besides that, energy is not wasted if it's used to make pretty pictures ;).

Of course but to make an intelligent decision, one needs to be aware of the costs.

Residential TV power use is probably not a big factor (unless you have a TV problem), and even though CRTs got nice and warm, modern OLED TVs do just the same. Many even have cooling fans for the panel.

A good point. I just checked - the CRT draws about 120W and the 40" LCD about 70W. The latter is more than I expected, given that it's not particularly big by modern standards - though it is a few years old itself by now.

LCD monitors have strong backlights but most of it is lost. You have diffusers, polarizers, color filters, opaque elements between pixels, and this is before the blocking done to construct the final image. I think the overall intensity loss is over 90%.

Manufacturing the new TV costs energy. When you buy brand new you’re just paying the energy cost upfront. Depending on the usage this may or may not break even.

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