A direct view television screen that is generally flat. Most direct view television screens bow out somewhat in the center and curve in toward the edge like a cut off section of very large sphere – they are convex. A “flat-screen” television eliminates a great degree of the screen curvature making it close to a flat plane. he advantage of a flat screen is that images on screen do not bow out at the sides. On rounded picture tubes, images may bend slightly on screen due to the curved nature of the screen. This may make a perfectly straight vertical line look like it bends slightly at the top and bottom. Such distortion is essentially eliminated with a flat-screen picture tube because the curvature causing the bowing is eliminated. While a flat-screen picture is preferable to a similar curved screen, the flat-screen television is more costly to manufacture and thus more costly to purchase in general terms.