Posted by Richard Crowley on 10/31/07 20:40

"Igor" wrote ...
> I've been shopping for a CRT monitor and have been finding that they
> are thin on the ground. I suspect that within a year or two, it will
> be impossible to buy a brand-new CRT monitor.
>
> What are graphic designers, professional photographers, pre-press
> people, etc., using (or planning to use) now that CRTs are on the way
> out?

One of the newsgroups you cross-posted to is
rec.video.production where "monitor" has an ambiguous
meaning. But you appear to be asking about a comptuer
screen ratherer than a television monitor.

Video editing has much the same problem with proper
rendition of the image on the screen. The difference in
gamma between a comptuer screen and a television
monitor is very significant and many people come here
complaining that their video looks "dark" on their computer
screen.

Many of us continue to use conventional television monitors
(CRT) for viewing the video even as we use LCD (etc.)
computer screens for our non-linear editing functions, etc.

There are begining to be more LCD-based television
monitors available in the marketplace, but they still cost
many times more than CRT TV monitors, and many times
more than domestic LCD-based TV receivers.

The reason for this is that a television production monitor
is a calibrated piece of "test equipment", not just a pretty
screen to view the video. The most critical use is by the
"camera shader" who relies on the proper setup of the
monitor and his/her own eyes to adjust several parameters
of the TV cameras so that they will match when the director
switches between them. Not altogether different from the
function of a "colorist", except that it is done in real-time.

And of course, there are similar requirements for graphic
arts monitors. And some of the same equipment is used
to calibrate the (CRT or LCD) monitor screens.

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