You can also force some games to run widescreen, including Age of Mythology and the Battlefield games. It's a matter of adding some code to the shortcut that tells the game what res to run at.

I figured I wouldn't find something at exactly 1920x1080, and if I really wanted bragging rights I'd be throwing money at an awesome LCD HDTV to use as a monitor. Truth is I just want something a little better than what I currently have, which has been VERY satisfactory the last 7 years. That's why I was worried about lower resolutions, refresh rate, ghosting, and black levels. You guys have made very convincing arguements for the first three, but the last I seem to still be divided on. I took Neophyte's advice and checked out the selection at a local computer store, and I have to say the blacks look darker, and the colors more vivid on the CRTs (with the exception of the very high end LCDs where the difference is negligible but the price is astronomical). In my defense I'm very picky about graphics and I work in a very dark room where the difference woul d be most noticable.

Would you guys lynch me if I said I was still considering a CRT?

Would you guys lynch me if I said I was still considering a CRT?

YES. You dafty.

I stared at a CRT until I was 18 and now I wear glasses. Since I got my TFT my peepers have been a lot better but my parents definitely blame my video gaming addiction for me not being able to make out a numberplate without specs.

Now with my TFT I get a lot more womens.

This post rocks mainly because I managed to sneak in the word "peepers".

took Neophyte's advice and checked out the selection at a local computer store, and I have to say the blacks look darker, and the colors more vivid on the CRTs (with the exception of the very high end LCDs where the difference is negligible but the price is astronomical).

They still had CRT's at your local computer store?
And what brand LCD's were you looking at? I mean I worked at a computer store this past year and the LCD's I've seen are pretty insane, and they only cost about $250.  There's lots of room for customization for your LCD's too, since you can change the mode on the monitor depending on what you're doing(gaming, reading, etc).
The colors look much more vivid in gaming mode than the factory settings of the LCD.

What is the difference between LCD tvs and monitors? I have a LG lcd that also works as a TV, the only thing I used it for other than as a monitor was to watch a DVD and the image quality was rather bad

I picked up a 19" Widescreen HD LCD screen for less than $150 by shopping around and sending in a mail-in rebate. And generally LCD monitors are pretty cheap and (IMO) look better than CRT. They're also thinner $$.

EDIT: And by less, I mean $129 including tax.

Would you guys lynch me if I said I was still considering a CRT?

omg dude, yes. yes I do want to lynch you. 

Let's look at this point by point.

CRT Monitors
Behemoths (good luck finding room for one on your desk)
Heavy (40lbs+ usually)
Painful on the eyes (unless you have a CRT with insane refresh rates... even this won't be as good on your eyes as a 60hz LCD)
Great color (but even printing companies are moving to LCDs where color matters so what does that tell you)
Blacks are true (but who cares... this piece of shit is consuming your desk even at 17")

LCD Monitors
Ultra thin (hey I have room for my keyboard now!)
Light (LAN parties are suddenly much more feasible now!)
Widescreen (hey watching widescreen movies is suddenly much more enjoyable!)
Ghosting - doesn't exist anymore on new LCD's
Poor color - is really only found on the really cheap models - even this can be fixed with your video card's color correction
Blacks not black enough - usually they are black enough. If not this can be corrected with the video card to a degree*.

Also, please note that places like Best Buy feed out a signal to all the monitors that isn't even specialized or optimized for each particular one. I often see a slide show running on a 24" widescreen going through VGA running at 1024x768 (NOT A WIDESCREEN RES!). Also, usually the colors haven't been optimized through the LCD which can be a matter of turning the contrast up.

EDIT*: fixed as per recommendation of inri.

No, the not-black-enough can't be corrected with different videocards because LCDs have that back-light and even when it's supposed to be showing black some of the light leaks and this results in the black not looking black enough, but I think that when they invent LED monitors this won't exist anymore

Your right. I meant 'to a degree'. Without color correction my LCD blacks don't look black at all. With color correction, they're much better.

But what about a completely black screen?

But what about a completely black screen?

Turn off the monitor.

The black on my LCD look pretty black compared to plastic surrounding it.

Video cards can help compensate for color richness and black levels, but it doesn't completely do away with it. It comes down to what the monitor can display and not the data that it's receiving. My ONLY gripes are the colors and the blacks, I could care less how big it is or how heavy it is. And it's only painful on the eyes in low refresh which is why if I get something with decent refresh at 1920x1440 then everything below will go even higher and therefore not be an issue (specially since ill probably use lower resolutions than that most the time anyways). My old monitor is 21' CRT that must weigh 40-50 lbs, and I'm not transporting it anywhere so it's not an issue. What is an issue is when I ask my friends who have CRTs and LCDs in dual monitor to switch to clone mode and load up a game, I can DEFINITELY tell the difference. The darkest blacks are not only a dark grey in comparison, but even the color gradients look like the LCDs are just unable to show the same amount of colors on screen. When on desktop, I agree, I can't tell the difference there. But I'm not interested in that, I'm a gamer at heart. The only time they look comparable is when I look at the very high end models at circuit city. But this isn't really LCDs vs CRTs, its "whats the best monitor for $200-$300 that wont just look like I have a very big cell phone screen". Considering CRTs have no doubt improved as well, and all the articles I can pull up comparing the two show that pro's of CRTs are still the color depth and the clarity of lower resolutions. If I can have the better image quality at the cost of size and weight, that's something I can live with.

CRTs only still exist for the freaks out there like me. Even if LCDs got me more women I'd still complain.

I found $209 Viewsonic G90FB-4 19' that goes up to 1920x1440 at 75Hz (so thats an easy 85-90Hz at 1920x1080), so right now I'm pretty much looking around for an LCD thats comparable to it (since you guys got me rethinking about LCDs so much).

I bought a used 22 inch crt that does 1920x1440@75 for 50 dollars almost 2 years ago. So 200 is a bit expensive (plus they probably will make you pay for the shipping). So yeah, I don't think I would ever buy a crt new today.

also 19 inches for 1920x1440 is way too small, you will hurt your eyes. You will probably end up using 1600x1200 (which it can probably do at 85hz). Also, you will probably never use the CRT set to a widescreen resolution (if that was what you were talking about). There is so much wasted space on the screen.

And as for me, I have used CRTs my whole life, and unless I am using a 1k dollar LCD, I can tell that colors do not look good and blacks aren't the blackest. You loose detail in colors the darker you get. So, I am assuming you are someone who has been using CRT your whole life too and you will notice these problems if you get a budget LCD. But at the same time if you just suck it up and buy some LCD, you will get used to it's flaws and forget about it in like a week.

Ah, a fellow CRT enthusiast :d

Well you did buy it used, and this is one of the better viewsonic CRTs. If it lasts anywhere near as long as this current one did it will be well worth the cost.

I'd just want to go that high for 1080 HD movies, I'd probably still do gaming at 1600x1200 (probably get 90hz-100hz on that, imo) or even 1280x960 if it's something very straining like crysis. And yea, I've been using them my whole life, and have had times when I had to use LCDs temporarily, and I always can tell the difference when I go back.

Just so you're aware, a good 30-40% of your screen is going to be black bars if watching a full 1080 widescreen movie. That's where the widescreen monitor has an advantage - it's much closer to the resolution movies are recorded at.

I have this monitor:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009108


it works gr8.

I'd say to go with something like it if you want a cost effective monitor.

I hear plasmas have horrible life spans, and are prone to suffer more dead pixels than LCDs.