Low End Mac's James Kachel posted a rebuttal of sorts this week to recent articles by myself, as well as others, suggesting the CRT monitor's imminent displacement by the flat screen LCD.

James contends that despite Apple's discontinuing their last free-standing CRT display, the 17 in Apple Studio Display, the old vacuum tube and electron gun technology will be around for quite some time yet.

Actually, I don't disagree with James on that point. Steve Jobs' decision to terminate the floppy drive on the iMac three years ago hasn't exactly killed off the floppy on the Dark Side, although few Mac users bother with floppies anymore. If you need to though, there are several freestanding floppy drive options. In fact, SmartDisk (Žne VST) just announced a new one for the titanium PowerBook last week. Similarly, the CRT will soldier on for years, even as the LCD, and likely the LEP (of which more below), take over as the computer monitors of choice for most of us.

The main reason the CRT will stick around, as Jeff notes in his article, is price. Compared with a LCDs, CRTs are dirt cheap. This isn't because of profiteering on the part of flat panel manufacturers. Each TFT LCD screen has hundreds of thousands of tiny transistors clustered together, which makes manufacturing them very expensive, and quality control a nightmare. CRTs are relatively crude and simple technology that has been developed and refined over the past 103 years.

CRTs support multiple resolutions much more gracefully than LCDs do, and also have the edge in consistent color balance and viewing angle, which is important to some users, particularly graphic artists, who will likely continue using CRTs for some time to come. (However, Mitsubishi claims its new range of LCD screens are true color, and can be used with Pantone color-matching systems, among others).

On the other hand, CRTs are ugly, absurdly large and heavy, wasteful of raw materials, and, being shielded with lead, constitute an environmental hazard to dispose of. They also use vast amounts of electricity compared to an LCD, and yes, they emit hazardous low frequency radiation, while their flickering, (subliminally detected in most cases), glaring, image causes eyestrain and headaches for many people, including this writer.

LCDs are compact and light, don't flicker, don't use much electricity, are completely flat, which minimizes image distortion, and being purely digital devices, have the potential to avoid signal degradation or electrical "noise." An LCD's usable viewing area matches its nominal size, unlike CRTs (the iMac's "15 in." CRT monitor has only a 13.8 in. viewable area). LCDs are ideal for use in medical offices and hospitals, because their low electromagnetic radiation levels don't cause interference in high-tech medical devices.

I thank James Kachel for being kind enough to reference me several times in his article, but as the foregoing paragraphs indicate, my objection to CRTs and preference for LCDs is not solely based in personal health concerns.

Still, despite the CRT's manifold shortcomings, many people, even Mac users, will continue to find the CRT's low cost compelling for the near future. Even with Apple apparently discontinuing CRT monitors (except, for now, in the elderly iMac), most Macs have VGA ports, so the option of hooking up one of the vast selection of PC monitors will still be there.

LCD prices are dropping, but it remains to be seen where the effective floor will be. It seems logical that the CRT might always have a price advantage (although you should factor cumulative power costs for operating the CRT over the period of ownership into your purchase decision). However, one other matter that could help level the cost playing field would be governments imposing a levy to cover the cost of disposal of CRTs.

This week the European Parliament passed, despite industry opposition, a law requiring manufacturers of electrical and electronic equipment to reduce hazardous substances and to pay for the cost of recycling of their products.

"Electronic equipment is one of the largest known sources of heavy metals,
toxic materials and organic pollutants in municipal trash waste," said
Leslie Byster of Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. "The new European law
sets high standards for producer responsibility and tougher requirements
for attaining higher recycling rates. If the high-tech companies in Europe
can follow the Directive, there is no reason to believe that they can't
follow the same practices in the U.S. and elsewhere."

Then there are expected increases in LCD display manufacturing efficiency. This week the Daily Mac's Amy Hoy reported that IBM has:

"...devised a way to use electrically charged atoms to position the crystals with a lower [LCD manufacture] failure rate. A very thin layer of carbon is spread over the LCD-to-be and then they use an ion gun to "shoot" aside the surface carbon atoms, forming the rows on which the crystals can be accurately placed. This new mode of manufacturing-replacing a 20-year-old process —— promises to increase accuracy and quality of screens, decrease defective screens, and bring them to market faster. They expect to begin production using these new techniques by the end of the year."

The real breakthrough in thin film, flat panel displays is likely to come not with somewhat cheaper LCDs, but with the aforementioned LEP (light emitting polymer) or OLED (organic light emitting diode) displays.

While these printed plastic screens would be similar in some ways to LCDs, they also will have some significant differences. For one thing, they emit their own light and will be usable in any ambient lighting from pitch dark to direct sunlight. They will also be viewable from virtually any angle and should be cheaper to manufacture.

Britain's Cambridge DisplayTechnology (CDT), along with Japanese partner Seiko Epson, has successfully made plastic display screens just by printing them on an ink-jet printer.

CDT calls the plastic screens light-emitting polymers (LEPs), a type of plastic that can be charged to change color speck by speck. LEPs are bright and sturdy. They need little power, no backlight, can be read at almost any angle, and will be cheap to manufacture,costing only an estimated 60 percent as much as LCDs to produce.

Production is projected to begin by 2002, concentrating first on mobile phone-sized screens, but the company is hoping to eventually wipe out the demand for LCD technology.

CDT, which is partly owned by Cambridge University, hopes that LEP screens can eventually be made from soft plastics that will allow them to be rolled up. They also hope to replace the CRT.

The developers claim that the LEP color display achieves color quality equal to current liquid crystal display (LCD) technology and is comparable to displays found in many notebook computers.

LEPs do not require the inefficient color filter required for conventional LCDs since color is generated directly on the front face using phosphors. Contrast, brightness, and color are the same from all angles of view.

Because LEP technology eliminates the viewing angle dependence of conventional LCDs, benefits include:
• more lines addressable (higher level of multiplexability)
• higher contrast
• less critical operating margins
• reduced temperature sensitivity
• larger displays possible

Based on a breakthrough manufacturing technique which uses ink-jet printing to deposit individual pixels made up of the red, green, and blue LEP materials directly onto the substrate, potential display size is limited only by the size of the available wafer with no impact on the overall throughput when deployed in existing manufacturing lines.

The LEP display has a number of other very attractive features. The response time is fast (sub-microsecond), switching occurs at low voltage (5V), and the intensity of light is proportional to current.If the electrodes are patterned, for example in orthogonal X and Y lines, light will be emitted from the area at the intersection of these lines.

The technology therefore combines the low voltage DC benefits of traditional LEDs with large area patternability associated with non-emissive display technologies such as LCDs.

A research project directed by Professor N. Peyghambarian and lead by Ghassan Jabbour, an assistant research professor in the optical sciences department at the University of Arizona in Tucson, is also developing OLED thin computer display screens so flexible that they can be folded and tucked away in your pocket.

Jabbour's technology uses organic (carbon-based) diodes that emitlight in different colors when stimulated by electric current. Three diodes -- one green, one blue, and one red -- make each screen pixel.

This research, partially funded by the Department of Defense, has adapted the technology of screen printing using a frame, a fabric, design stencil, ink, and a squeegee to deposit the carbon-based molecules that make up the diodes directly on a thin film of plastic.

Aside from technological breakthroughs, and lowered prices, a major factor that will drive the changeover to flat panel computer displays is that people simply like them, especially after they get used to using them.

Dan Knight of Low End Mac switched in January from using a desktop machine with a 19 in. CRT monitor for production work, to a new titanium G4 PowerBook with a 15.2 in. LCD monitor. Unfortunately, the TiBook, one of the very first manufactured, has had to go into the shop (which means sending it to Texas) for some warranty work, so this week Dan has reverted temporarily to the old 19 in. CRT and a desktop Mac substitute until his PowerBook returns.

I was particularly interested to note Dan's impressions of reverting to the CRT, after four months acclimatization to the LCD on the TiBook. As I would have predicted, the CRT, which Dan used to like very much, now suffers by comparison. Dan notes:

"[The 19 incher] has all sorts of reflections from lights and windows. It's a good reminder why flat monitors and flat panel displays are taking over from the traditional curved screens. While I used to love this monitor, the TiBook's screen has spoiled me."

Back in January, PC World Magazine reported on how the American Academy of Pediatrics offices in Elk Grove, Ill., has begun the transition to replacing 300+ CRT monitors with LCDs. The AAP's IT manager, Dan Shaughnessey, who was interviewed for the article, notes that the LCDs save a lot of desk space, allow for a more neat and attractive workplace, have a larger viewable area than the nominally same size CRTs they replaced, and that "people claim LCDs are easier on their eyes."

"Everybody who has one is very happy," said Shaughnessey, "and the people who don't have one are asking when they're going to get one."

'Nuff said.

Charles W. Moore

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