Monitors to avoid?

[mikephotog]

Looking to buy a 19 or 21" CRT Monitor, probably a refurbished one.
Anyone know of anything in particular I should avoid?
What are the tubes that have a faint line running through them, I think one of the Dells at work has a tube with this problem/trait?

[avkomp]

from memory sony monitors have thin horizontal wires running thru them to hold the shadow mask in place.

it was one of those things that I didnt really notice, but when aware of them, found it impossible not to see them.

I suspect other manufacturers may have similar.

Steve

[Nnnnsic]

I'm looking at buying a 19" Viewsonic G90f+ because of how decently priced they are and how decent a monitor I hear they are.

[distudio]

from memory sony monitors have thin horizontal wires running thru them to hold the shadow mask in place.

it was one of those things that I didnt really notice, but when aware of them, found it impossible not to see them.

I suspect other manufacturers may have similar.

After the Sony Trinitron patent expired in the late 1990s other makers have utilised similar technology which is known generically as an aperture grille CRT. Instead of a perforated shadow mask set in front of tri-phosphor dots the aperture grille CRTs feature continuous vertical phosphor strips which are masked by a vertical grille.

The aperture grille tubes of 15" and 17" tend to have one horizontal stabilising wire in the mask and the 21-22" screens have a pair of wires. After a short while these wires really disappear from view, I had forgotten that they were there on my monitor until I read this, though I can see them now.

I wouldn't buy anything but an aperture grille CRT these days, any monitor from Viewsonic labelled SonicTron should be an aperture grille CRT, as would be Diamondtron tubes from NEC-Mitsubishi.

Cheers,