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Monitors generally employ one of two types of tube technology - shadow mask or aperture grille. A conventional CRT, or cathode ray tube, is a common example of shadow mask picture technology still available in the marketplace today. Aperture grille tubes are an alternate technology, offering improved clarity and sharpness; their vertically flat screens reduce reflections from overhead lighting. Aperture grille monitors use modern stripe pitch technology which measures the distance in millimeters between adjacent stripes of the same color that make up a screen image. Shadow mask monitors use conventional dot pitch technology which measures the distance in millimeters between adjacent dots of the same color. The pitch of aperture grille and shadow mask monitors cannot be compared directly because the two technologies are so different. In both cases, the smaller the measured distance at a given CRT size, the better the picture. You may find monitors on the market today with a dot pitch as low as 0.26mm or as high as 0.41mm, or a stripe pitch as low as 0.25mm or as high as 0.31mm.
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Aperture grille technology employs a series of thin, closely-spaced vertical wires to isolate pixels horizontally. The pixels are separated vertically by the nature of the scan lines used to compose the image. To keep the vertical wires in an aperture grille properly aligned within the picture tube, one or two horizontal damper wires are required. These wires are located roughly one-third of the way from the top and bottom of the screen. Each wire casts a faint shadow that is visible as a light gray, horizontal line on the image. This shadow is normally not visible, but may become apparent when displaying a lightly-colored background.
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| Aperture grille technology allows more electrons through, resulting in a brighter image with better contrast. The vertical resolution on a monitor with aperture grille technology is not dependent upon, nor affected by, the vertical spacing of pinholes. Aperture grille technology is much less susceptible than a shadow mask technology to warping caused by heat. |
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