[autoexec]

LCDs didn't replace CRTs because they offered better quality to consumers. They were worse for all the reasons you mentioned and then some. LCDs were cheaper to make, much lighter and less frail so they cost less to ship, and they took up much less space while in transport, and while sitting in warehouses, or on store shelves. We were sold an inferior product so that other people could save money. Gradually, some of those savings made it to consumers, especially when it became possible to generate profit continuously though TVs by collecting our data and pushing ads, but it was always a shitty deal for consumers who wanted a quality picture.

I imagine that in the future, people will look back at much of the media from recent decades and think that it looks a lot worse than we remember because it was produced on bad screens or made to look good on all of our crappy screens.

[jq-r]

While I appreciate a bit of sarcasm, I'm not sure if this is what actually happened. In the CRT era, you either had good monitors which were expensive or a bunch of actually crap monitors. I had the former, but most of the people had latter and using those monitors for any extended period of time would give you headaches and dry eyes because of poor refresh rates, and terrible flicker.

As a personal anecdote: when I was choosing components for my first desktop computer (instead of using dad's work laptops), I selected components which are affordable. Also, as a coincidence a local IT magazine had a big test of desktop CRT monitors. So I've chosen some inexpensive one which wasn't terrible and as every kid asked parents for money. My mum who was already working on computers on her job had a look through that magazine and said that she'll pay for the whole computer only on the condition we buy the best monitor on that test. So we did (it was a trinitron Nokia @ 100Hz which was a lot), and I think with that move she saved my eyes long term, as I'm in my early 40ties and the only healthy thing I still have are my eyes. In any case, I've soon realized when I got that monitor is that I'll never save money when buying stuff which I use all day long.

Back to the topic. CRT monitors also were space heaters, and had a large volume which was only fine when being permanently placed on a geek's desk.

When LCDs arrived they actually were considerably better than average CRTs. The picture was rock solid without flicker or refresh rate artifacts, perfectly rectangular (a big problem with an average CRT as a matter of fact) and very sharp and crisp. All for a little bit more money. After two or three years they were actually even cheaper than CRTs. And I forgot to mention, they took much less space so you could place it on a POS counter or wherever. It took much more time to replace the top end CRTs, but I guess this is always the case when talking about some tech product.