Specifications

The 23-inch Apple Cinema HD Display has one-third the footprint, is nearly one-fourth

the weight of a bulky 24-inch CRT display, and consumes just one-third the power.

Excellent Visual Quality

Today’s best LCDs deliver about twice the brightness, sharpness, and contrast of a CRT

display. They are also flicker-free and resistant to many of the environmental factors

that affect the visual performance of CRTs.

Brightness and contrast

Active-matrix LCD displays are twice as bright as comparable CRT displays. When

designing CRT displays, engineers must always make a tradeoff between brightness

and sharpness. If the CRT screen is made brighter, the text typically becomes less

sharp. That’s because CRT technology is based on phosphors emitting light after

they’ve been excited by an electron beam. The more energy in the electron beam,

the more the phosphors will glow. Unfortunately, as a given phosphor glows brighter,

it becomes harder to distinguish it from neighboring phosphors. The result is that

adjacent pixels become less distinct and therefore less sharp.

Flat-panel displays don’t suffer from this limitation. They simply turn each pixel on

and off using transistors directly in the screen that activate the liquid crystal layer

with electricity. This means an LCD can be made very bright without reducing the

clarity of text or graphics. A key benefit of a bright screen is that it allows you to

view fine details and subtle color differences even in well-lit standard office and

home environments.

Another benefit of increased brightness is better contrast ratio. Contrast ratio is

defined as the ratio between the whitest white and the blackest black on a display—

its dynamic range, if you will. Because flat-panel displays are brighter, they can create

brighter whites, thus instantly increasing the contrast ratio. On the other hand, the

glass surface of a CRT screen tends to scatter the ambient light of well-lit environ-

ments, further reducing the contrast ratio and washing out colors. An LCD does not

exhibit this effect, so it displays blacker blacks in standard office illumination settings.

You can see the difference by comparing an LCD and a CRT side by side when they’re

turned off.

Technology Overview

Apple Cinema Displays

• 1/3 the footprint

• 1/4 the weight

• 1/3 the power consumption

• Equal amount of workspace

24-inch wide-format CRT (22.5-inch viewable) 23-inch Apple Cinema HD Display

20.6 inches

7.3 inches