CRTs, TVs, Monitors, Cubes & Flatscreens – What’s the difference? A glossary.

A lot of people get confused by the difference between the various types of video display equipment we use and their terminology, so if you’re

CRTs

CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube. It is a big heavy glass tube which fires photons at a surface at the front in order to create a moving image. It is the reason some older people might refer to the TV as “the tube” and where youtube” got the ‘tube part of its name. The glass front bulges out and is curved at the corners- a shape which is also responsible for influencing the red youtube play icon.

With their low resolution and distinct, slightly pixelated aesthetic, soft image and rounded image, the CRT produces a video image which is unlike any other, and is the reason so many people come to us to use them to display art films, video installations and content for music videos both on their own and build into larger video walls.

TVs

A TV can be a flatscreen or a CRT, or indeed any other video display technology. The key feature of a TV is that it is built to receive live TV signals. Therefore it will usually have the capacity to receive RF video signal (now defunct) or a digital TV signal. Although we sometimes refer to our CRT walls as TV walls, strictly speaking this is not correct. Instead we refer to our video walls made with our CRT cubes as CRT video walls. This is to differentiate between a wall made of actual TVs, such as the one below we made many years ago.
We no longer stock CRT TVs like these, as they are almost impossible to maintain and often unsafe to stack.

FLATSCREENS

A catch-all word for various digital video display technology, such as LCD, backlit LED, or plasma. We stock only backlit LED screens as they have a great picture, even when viewed at a sharp angle. As the name suggests, the front of the screen is flat, compared to the convex curve on a CRT, and the corners are sharp right angles.

CUBES

Cubes refers to the form factor of both our CRTs and Microtiles. Since they are designed to be stacked into video walls, they have been specially designed inside a cuboid case. Hence we refer to any of our Hantarex, Barco or Seleco CRT screens as “CRT cubes”

SCREEN

The screen is the front of the video display device on which you can see the video. It can also refer to the combined effect when multiple screens are put together in a spanned video wall, to make one big video made with lots of smaller video screens.

MONITOR

A monitor is the name we give to any video display divide which shows a picture, but does not receive a TV signal. Instead it is sent a digital or analog video signal only.

Think of it like this: Monitor + ability to receive live television signal = TV