> No. They looked their best because CRT were able to reproduce more colors than an a LCD.
> LCDs with HDR come close to CRTs.
This is pretty meaningless and conflating gamut with dynamic range.
The vast majority of CRTs back in the day would be driven with 8-bit per channel RGB DACs, so not HDR, and most CRTs would have an sRGB or similar gamut (so not a wide gamut).
It is true that both the dynamic range and gamut of cheaper LCD panels is pretty poor (~5 bits per channel) and not even complete sRGB, and this set the tone for many low cost TN displays of the early 2000s (and still adorns the lowend of laptops and even some Thinkpads to this day).
However affordable LCD monitors have been around for YEARS with wide gamut (ex Adobe RGB or DCI-P3), superior to all but the most expensive reference CRT monitors that virtually no one owned, and long before HDR becoming commonplace. I bought a 98% Adobe RGB monitor about 14 years ago for less than $800, color reproduction and contrast wise completely blowing any CRT out of the water I ever owned. But even a cheap <$300 IPS display on sale for the past 15 years including all MacBooks will exceed most CRTs as well.
In practice CRTs also have middling contrast ratio as well unless you work in a pitch dark room, which almost no one does.
> I remember vividly my first LCDs who were marketed as 24 bit
IPS and true 8-bit TN panels have been mainstream for a long time now. Nothing to do with recent uptake of HDR.
> unless you work in a pitch dark room, which almost no one does.
Is that actually true? In the very early 2000s I worked at a start-up (with not quite well defined target, ended up in the game industry) with darkened office. At that time CRTs were still common and iirc we all used them and I don't recall to have minded. Twenty years later I worked again at a small software shop which had the main office darkened for unclear reasons (I suspect a personal quirk of the fellow running that part of the company) as we now all had LCDs (of course) and there was little to no visual media produced. In between, I visited the earlier company, which grew and moved a few times since, but still kept the office dark (not sure if to benefit content creators or as a fashion statement).
Personally, I rather not sit in the dark during the day for prolonged times; at the very least, it messes with the sleep rhythm.
Oh, flash-back to having visited the lab of a physics PhD student who was working on ultra-short pulse lasers in the early nineties. The underground lab was totally dark all day, only every five minutes or so briefly flooded in light meant to pump the lasers. That was the time I decided that physics isn't for me ...
> CRTs were still common and iirc we all used them and I don't recall to have minded.
I am addressing some CRT enthusiasts claim or pine for near infinite contrast ratios which of course is much better than any LCD - because the beam can theoretically be completely off or full on, unlike an LCD that is a filter. But the reality is that amazing contrast ratio is only with no ambient light and very little bright material displayed. Look up on/off CR and ANSI CR. These figures of merit are also distinct from black level.
At the end of the day it’s a box with a huge glass window.
> LCDs with HDR come close to CRTs.
This is pretty meaningless and conflating gamut with dynamic range. The vast majority of CRTs back in the day would be driven with 8-bit per channel RGB DACs, so not HDR, and most CRTs would have an sRGB or similar gamut (so not a wide gamut). It is true that both the dynamic range and gamut of cheaper LCD panels is pretty poor (~5 bits per channel) and not even complete sRGB, and this set the tone for many low cost TN displays of the early 2000s (and still adorns the lowend of laptops and even some Thinkpads to this day).
However affordable LCD monitors have been around for YEARS with wide gamut (ex Adobe RGB or DCI-P3), superior to all but the most expensive reference CRT monitors that virtually no one owned, and long before HDR becoming commonplace. I bought a 98% Adobe RGB monitor about 14 years ago for less than $800, color reproduction and contrast wise completely blowing any CRT out of the water I ever owned. But even a cheap <$300 IPS display on sale for the past 15 years including all MacBooks will exceed most CRTs as well. In practice CRTs also have middling contrast ratio as well unless you work in a pitch dark room, which almost no one does.
> I remember vividly my first LCDs who were marketed as 24 bit
IPS and true 8-bit TN panels have been mainstream for a long time now. Nothing to do with recent uptake of HDR.