early lcd monitors free sample

Unused electronics are the bane of the modern life. Perfectly functional gadgets sit quietly in a corner of the store room, doing nothing. If you"re wondering what to do with old computer monitors, here are a few easy ideas to repurpose unused screens.

Perhaps the best thing to do with an old flat-screen monitor is a DIY DAKboard. The DAKboard is a LCD wall display that shows the current time, weather forecast, calendar events, stock quotes, fitness data, and news headlines. It"s all displayed on a soothing photo. You could buy an official DAKboard, but the makers themselves have shown how to build your own wall display with a Raspberry Pi. when you can build one for far less money and a little geeky fun, the choice is obvious.

Basically, you will be cutting out the polarizing film of the old LCD monitor. This film will then be put on a simple pair of glasses. Now your screen appears white, but the glasses can "see" the content. It"s one of the best ways to keep prying eyes out of your PC.

If you have a broken old LCD monitor, it can be re-purposed into a usable mirror; but if you have a working old LCD monitor, adding a Raspberry Pi can turn it into a smart magic mirror!

If you"re on a tight budget for a first-time DIY project, consider the $100 smart mirror. It"s not the best version of turning an LCD monitor into a smart mirror, but you"ll get the basic features and not spend a bomb.

All desktop operating systems support the ability to use dual monitors. It"s pretty easy to setup dual monitors on Windows, and you can then customize how you use the two spaces. To connect two monitors, you will likely need a graphics card with multiple HDMI ports, or use an HDMI and a VGA port on desktops.

Like any gadget, monitors have a limited shelf life. If you"re looking to upgrade, you now have a few ideas of what to do with your old monitor. And that age should influence which project you chose. For example, given the effort involved in building a smart mirror, don"t go with a screen that"s already shown signs of trouble. The Raspberry Pi-based projects are usually the easiest to keep changing.

Believe it or not, there’s an entire generation of people who have probably never seen a CRT in real life! So why are people in tech circles talking about this older technology today? What are CRT monitors used for? Isn’t modern display tech superior?

In the early days scaled images on an LCD screen looked absolutely awful, but modern scaling solutions look great. So it’s not much of an issue anymore.

In the past this was a good way to gain performance in 3D apps and video games. Simply lower the resolution to get a smoother experience. With the advent of LCD technology you pretty much had to output at the native resolution, which meant cutting corners in other areas such as texture and lighting detail.

Using a CRT for high-end 3D applications means you can cut the resolution, keep the eye candy and get good performance. With almost no visual hit compared to doing the same thing on an LCD.

LCD flat panels use a display method known as “sample and hold”, where the current frame stays on screen in a perfectly static way until the next one is ready. CRTs (and plasma screens) use a pulsed method. The frame is drawn on screen, but immediately begins to fade to black as the phosphors lose energy.

While the sample and hold method might sound superior, the perceptual effect is a blurry image in motion thanks to the way we perceive apparent motion. Sample and hold is not the only cause of unwanted motion blur on LCDs, but it’s a big one.

Due to the way LCDs work, it’s essentially impossible to display true black in an image. An LCD panel consists of the LCD itself, with its array of color-changing pixels and a backlight. Without the backlight, you won’t see the image. That’s because LCDs don’t give off any light of their own.

The problem is that when a pixel switches off to display black, it doesn’t block all the light coming from behind it. So the best you can get is a sort of grey tone. Modern LCD screens are much better at compensating for this, with multiple LEDs evenly lighting the panel and local backlight dimming, but true blacks are still not possible.

CRTs on the other hand can display blacks almost perfectly thanks to how it draws the picture on the back of the screen. Modern technologies like OLED does nearly as well, but is still far too expensive for mainstream consumers. Plasma was also very good in this regard, but has been largely phased out. So right now in 2019 the best black levels are still to be found in CRTs.

It’s also important to remember that flat panel displays at the time of the shift were far worse than those of today, yet people felt the pros of LCDs were on balance a better deal.

CRTs can be abundant if you have good places in your local community to look, but they are getting trickier to track down each passing year. And while nothing’s stopping you from using a modern LCD for retro gaming, you may want to track down a square-shaped LCD (mostly 4:3 aspect ratio) so your classic content seems a bit more “at home” — avoiding those black bars.

So whether you’re looking for a cheap 4:3 LCD to use with your MiSTER FPGA setup, have a classic personal computer, or just want something for watching “full screen” video content or a emulation box to run on, I’m hoping this guide is helpful in your shopping.

Granted LCDs, especially older models, aren’t ideal for retro gaming compared to CRTs. LCDs often down’t have as deep of black colors and there is input lag involved among some other issues.

However, LCDs are easier to move around and store and use less electricity. And even though there are many die-hard CRT fans out there, there are also many long-time retro fans that have been using the recommended monitors below for a while and been happy with their performance. I’ve even quoted and handful of enthusiasts to give you a good perspective on these recommendations. And don’t forget, eventually LCDs might be much easier to find and purchase remotely then the CRTs counterparts.

Early LCD monitors may show a lack of technical maturity, however, near some of the later ones that we are focusing on have some decent IPS technology with reasonable color and response times.

In the end, I thought this would be a fun, lighthearted look at some options for those that are interested. If you have any commentary on the matter, please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments section below. Just be respectful — not looking for CRT vs LCD wars