TFT LCD Monitors and Glare

[Mochan]

I wanted to ask about this since I'm seriously considering buying an LCD monitor right now.

I think the deciding factor for me will be how much glare the thing will have. Right now glare is a serious problem for me; during the day with the windows open the mirror effect on my 17" CRT monitor is so great that I can see the details on the leaves of the trees in the background. Not to mention the bright blue sky that prevents me from seeing anything on the screen whether I'm playing SWAT 4 or watching the latest episode of Eyeshield 21.

To you TFT LCD owners out there, how is the glare situation?

[Friend_Bear]

I'd love a good LCD monitor, when I was in bestbuy earlier they had some good ones on sale, my monitor is kinder sucky, so I spent $30 on ebay and brought a decent filter for it, so far one of my better purchases.

[Suicides-by-Steve]

Glare? You don't get any glare from a LCD screen. I can find the lightbulb on my ceiling easily enough on my CRT (essentially a mirror image), but on my LCD screen, only a washed out corona is visible. Now washed out images... due to light intensity? That may be another thing. I would suggest increasing the contrast/brightness in this case.

[Mochan]

Ok, I'm sold. Next opportunity I'm going out and buying me an LCD.

[moya]

Yeah I've been thinking about getting a flatscreen monitor for a while. My CRT is just too bulky although it's served me well for 5 years.

[DBS]

I have a 19 inch crt trinitron monitor and a 17 inch dell ultra lcd flatscreen and I thinkt he lcd is actually the better monitor even though everyone says for gaming go with a crt. The colors are brighter and crisper looking and I am impressed with it.

[Mochan]

I have two main concerns, the first being glare during the day, and the second: the less radiation, the better. My brother just got prescription glasses today and even though it's probably a hereditary condition, it reminded me that I should be taking as much care of my eyes as possible. Size and bulkiness is of little import to me considering the setup of my desk, I've got more than enough space, but the glare is a real bother and since I spend all my time in front of my PC, I better lessen the health risks.

[Suicides-by-Steve]

Yeah, while I was doing some research on the topic of radiation, I found out that the doses of radio frequency radiation coming from the machine are negligable, while Ionized radiation are like taking potshots in the dark. My readings on physics and a background in Biology makes me realize that this guy knows what he's talking about (not to mention his credentials, heh)... You gotta love the cynicism as a last comment.

"On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, Jim Lux wrote:

> > SO I wouldn't worry. I don't worry much about cell phones, either.
> > Microwave ovens, I worry about. TV sets and CRT's in general I worry
> > about (they produce soft X rays and other ionizing radiation with some
> > probability, especially close to the tube).
> I wouldn't sweat the TV set/CRT... Color TVs used to emit Xrays back when
> they used vacuum tube rectifiers and before they used lead glass in the
> rectifier tube envelope (Color TVs running at anode potentials of 25 kV or
> so, compared to the 10-15 kV for a B&W set..).. The front face of a CRT is
> lead glass and quite thick, just for this reason, as well (since what makes
> that spot is the electron beam stopping at the front...) (I seem to recall
> reading that there is 2-5 kilos of lead in the average monitor dumped in the
> landfills...making it a significant hazmat problem)

The lead alone is an excellent reason to use flat panel monitors,
although they may well have heavy metal problems of their own (e.g.
arsenic in their silicon). Still, arsenic is less toxic than lead and
there is a lot less of it.

However, lead or not, I'd want to see a spectral analysis of the
downstream radiation, sampled over weeks to months, per monitor, before
I stop "worrying" about a given CRT or TV, as what the FCC or OSHA
considers "safe" may not be what I consider "safe". I have spent
(many!) years of my life sitting within two meters of the front face of
one monitor or another over the last couple of decades, and ionizing
radiation is "different" from RF. The risk is quantum mechanical --
either a given photon hits something it shouldn't and causes it to break
all at once or it doesn't, on a purely statistical, quantized basis. It
isn't like being in a field of RF radiation and gradually absorbing
enough energy to heat and "burn" tissue and break bonds. Even very weak
sources of ionizing radiation will cause cellular damage at some
probabilistic rate -- the only question is whether one is "unlucky" and
one of the transitions initiates cancer or damages retinal cells (one at
a time and very slowly) that don't repair or replace themselves at a
rate so that over twenty years of gradual exposure vision is
significantly affected or melanomas start popping up on your face. The
fact that your cancer was unlikely doesn't leave you any less dead.

A cynical person is also just naturally curious about multiple
scattering and equipment malfunction and whether or not design/safety
guidelines adequately protect against the unexpected as well as expected
modes of operation. Multiple scattering can deflect an electron so that
its path isn't what you think that it is so it produces its potentially
ionizing photons around the periphery of the screen, possibly unblocked
by the lead (?). Low probability I'm sure FOR CORRECTLY FUNCTIONING
EQUIPMENT. Equipment malfunction, however, is subject to the laws of
Murph. A small resistor burns out, and suddenly every electron beam
sweep is scattering along pathways the manufacturer never intended or
imagined. Another burns out, and suddenly the beam current is increased
by some unexpected factor. A capacitor blows, and a single inductive
surge delivers a voltage ten times larger than expected to the electron
beam, for a very small period of time, showering one is a burst of
middling hard x-rays.

Do monitor safety guidelines protect against all of these things (and
ones I haven't imagined)? Maybe, probably, mostly, but Murphy says
there are almost certainly surprises both in the steady state and in the
unpredictable catastrophic state of operation. I try to sit back a
couple of meters from any CRT anyway, as I'm indeed a low cynical type.

CRT's haven't been in ubiquitous use for much more than 20 years at this
point (PC revolution being from maybe 1982 to 1986 or 1987, by which
point nearly every office desk had them). Long term health problems
caused by all those CRT's, leaded screens or not, may not surface for
another 20 years, and engineering guidelines in the meantime are
dictated by what what people IMAGINE to be an adequately safe exposure
level. The same people who did nothing when the Ctrl and Alt shifts
were moved into carpal tunnel position on a keyboard, the people who
still allow monitors to be built that run at 60 Hz scan frequencies, the
very same people who regulate the amount of mercury and sulphur
permitted in coal burning power plant smoke, the people responsible for
keeping things like snake-head fish far from our shores, the ones who
regulate the industrial exploitation of our oil fields and forests. Our
government and industry leaders, who clearly have our best interests at
heart, always.

So sure, CRTs are safe. I'm certain of it.


rgb

--
Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:rgb at phy.duke.edu"

So while you'll hear alot of naysayers going on about no radiation being eminated from a CRT, bear in mind these peeps are generally talking about RF radiation. Soft X-rays and the like. Fill them in on how accelerated photons hit your body while sitting in front of a CRT and about the risk of how one of those stray photons could potential shatter a DNA strand so a tumur could result due to ionized radiation, and see what there response is...

I try to stay away from most forms of RF radiation, even go so far as not to use my cordless phone, and cell phones there's NO chance in hell of me using one for extended periods of time. It's too bad really. They're cracking down on smoking in public here in Canada, while filling the air with electromagnetic, and RF radiation so it's inescapable... It's really a head scratcher.