> I mean CRT is inherently bulky, it's hard not to see why LCD panels became popular.

But going from, say, a Sony Trinitron CRT [1] to one the first LCD was a huge step backwards, which is what GP is saying.

I did wait for the first LCD with DVI support before switching: for the difference in crispyness between an analog video cable and a DVI one was night and day (I also won many points when I helped friend set up a startup in southern california and we realized one person out of two had picked the VGA cable instead of the DVI one when setting up its desk / computer: so with the CTO late at night we went through every PC and changed all those with VGA cables to the DVI ones).

We're not saying modern days flat monitors aren't better than old CRTs: we're saying the first flat screens were complete suckage.

[1] even though on a Trinitron you could see two faint horizontal lines (Trinitron were still amazing)

To sellers, yes. The drop of visual quality when the top-down LCD push began was staggering.