LCD Round-up 346
TheKillerBee writes "The TechReport has posted a nice comparison of several different LCDs. A plethora of benches are present to help you decide how to spend that Christmas bonus check!" The screen update times still aren't fast enough for gamers, but they still are ever so delicious.
Hot Damn! (Score:3, Informative)
Be wary (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hello ignorance! (Score:5, Informative)
Don't bitch about lack of Apple LCDs (Score:4, Informative)
They are comparing these displays for the "PC" market - in order to use an Apple display on a non-Apple computer you have to get an expensive adaptor in addition to the already over-priced display. The ones reviewed are relatively inexpensive displays.
Cut them some slack, journalists have the right to review whatever the hell they damn well please - if you want a review comparing the Apple displays to other people's displays, do it yourself.
Screen updates (Score:3, Informative)
I forget the exact tech, but the basic idea was using a set of 'high-tensile' coupled LCDs instead of the regular LCD cells. Usually their nature means that they can only be cast to minute sizes, far too small for useful work (a 15" screen would require a minimum of 4096*4096 cells, and even then the display would be grainy due to the cell-pitch.
Philips tried to work around this by using flared-end fibre optics, but it'll come as no surprise that this produced an exceptionally blurry and dull image. Sony, however, have found a set of lab conditions under which HT-coupled LCD can be crystallised at sensible sizes.
It'll be expensive to start with, but this may well spell the end of the power hungry CRT.
Other reviews (Score:5, Informative)
Sexy LCD 17" Monitors - Part I [tomshardware.com]
Comparison of 17" LCDs: The Heavyweights Enter The Ring - Part II [tomshardware.com]
Cheers
Re:Hot Damn! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hello ignorance! (Score:3, Informative)
I've been using an LCD panel for everything, including gaming, for a little over a year now. At first, the "ghosting" from the slow diodes is a bit annoying when playing certain games, particularly FPS games and the like.
However, it's nothing you can't get used to, and in some games it is hardly noticeable at all. It's certainly no disadvantage to the player -- at our most recent LAN party I was kickin' a** in Unreal Tournament on my LCD panel. Everyone else had CRTs.
There are lots of pluses that you get with an LCD panel, such as: virtually non-existent refresh flicker, clarity and crispness, light weight (a huge plus if you need to tote your monitor to your LAN parties), small footprint, no glare, and less eyestrain.
I'd never give up all those benefits just because of the small amount of ghosting that I get.
Those aren't LCDs people buy (Score:4, Informative)
Personally, I would only consider the Dell 1702FP (a beaufiful 17" DVI panel) or the Dell 2000FP (a huge 20" panel that can be had for $1300 if you apply some Dell discounts). Samsungs are OK but I don't like their panels' piss poor black reproduction. If you want your computer to look hip go get a Samsung, but if you want a screen that delivers beautiful images then Dell is the better vendor even if their case styling isn't as nice.
Re:I'd hold off (Score:4, Informative)
This is not informative, this is pure BS.
Re:Don't bitch about lack of Apple LCDs (Score:4, Informative)
Flourescent Lighting... (Score:3, Informative)
A good flourescent system using an electronic ballast, however, increases the frequency to the kHz range and produces no visible flicker.
ViewSonic's the way to go if gaming (Score:5, Informative)
Oh and some of the other PRO's of LCD that make it totally worth it if you have the extra cash and have found one with a quick pixel disposal rate that you are comfortable playing games on:
1) one touch auto sync / setup. Match the res and contrast with a click of a button. No black boxes around your viewing area. BTW 17.4 means 17.4 VIEWABLE.. unlike in the CRT world.
2) no more areas of the screen that you just have to deal with distortion on... Cant count how many monitors are just slighly curved or crooked in the corners or discolored in a fashion that even a degaus coil won't fix.
3) LIGHT and small. This one is under rated. I had a 21 inch monitor at work that was soo big, I couldn't get it all the way in the corner section of the cube where the computer should go and still have a keyboard on the desk. What a joke.. I don't need a big set top TV thank you. LCD's pivot, twist.. all that... turn the screen show a friend. Move the screen to a new location, don't break your back.
4) low power consumtion... quit dimming the lights when you power on your RAY GUN.
5) multiple input and or tuners built in. Some of the lcds have multiple inputs (svideo, multiple analogs..), some even have tv and radio turners with PIP built in (I had a samsung that did that.. TITS!). I can have my ultra 60 and my game PC plugged into mine and hit the 'switch input' button and boom.. there's the other machine. And with all that space i saved for having an LCD, I can have 2 keyboard and mice! JOY!
Thats's about it. I like mine overall... it was 1600 bucks back in the day, now it's like 700 retail. I'm very happy with it... the moral is 'try em all' cause loads of them just do plain suck for disposal rates. I made the guy at the computer store play a DVD on all of them before I considered purchasing one
Why not included the best of breed (Score:4, Informative)
I've been using an AG Neovo 17.4" monitor for about eight months and it is absolutely fantastic (IMHO better than the mac 17's). The text is crisp and the color reproduction is oustanding. Yes, it's expensive (~$899US), but if I have to look at something for 10+ hours a day I'm going to spend the extra cash. Besides, how many slashdotters are there that don't seem to have a problem buying $400+ video cards twice a year to make sure they get the extra 200fps out of quake3?
As for gaming, I play UT2003 on it all the time without a single bit of ghosting. One thing from the article that the author should have made manditory was the use of DVI. Why anyone would buy a DVI-only lcd is beyond me. Having both inputs is great for using my laptop (analog output only), but the picture is noticebly better through the DVI connector.
Re:Hello ignorance! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:LCD vs CRT (Score:3, Informative)
Okay, I'll give you that one. CRT's are pretty huge if you're strapped for space
2. LCD's are silent, CRT's have a horrible whine.
If your CRT is making noise i have to wonder if perhaps something's wrong with it. Mine makes not a sound.
3. LCD's don't have that annoying screen refresh that gives people (me, anyway) an awful headache.
Buy a decent monitor. I had that problem too, until I ditched my 3-year old CRT and got a KDS flat CRT. Notched the refresh rate up to about 75Hz and no more headaches
4. LCD's use less power. It ads up in the long run.
Can't comment. I'm not terribly concerned about saving five bucks on my power bill if i payed and extra 200$ for the LCD though
5. LCS's are brighter, at least in my experience.
Most monitors do come with a controls that let you adjust that
Re: Those aren't LCDs people buy (Score:3, Informative)
The Dell 1702FP is manufactured by Samsung. So is the 1900fp which I've been lusting for. Go figure.
[2000fp is by Acer.]
LCDs still aren't quite there yet. (Score:4, Informative)
LCDs do not refresh at a certain rate per second like CRTs. In fact, once a pixel is set on an LCD, that pixel remains set to that color until it is changed.
THERE ARE NO UPDATES ON AN LCD. Each pixel is wired, and stays the same color until it's signal changes.
This is why there is noticable blur on an LCD. On a CRT, we would just see the whole screen getting updated at an incredibly low rate and call it insane flicker. But LCDs simply have a certain delay between when you change the pixel's color signal, and when the pixel gets updated. It looks blurry because it's not uniform rederawing of the screen like a CRT refresh.
There are three problems presently with LCDs that manufacturers will have to address before they overthrow CRTs:
*Even highend LCDs do not have the response time to even deliver 60fps video without blurring, and by far games are the worst thing to view on an LCD with a slow response time. As you look around and maneuver, the whole scene is blurred. The best LCDs on the market right now have around 25-30ms response rate, which is barely above 30fps. I believe we had this debate years ago ( 60 vs 30 ), and if the horsepower in today's video cards is anything to judge by, I'd say 60fps minimum won. I know personally I can't live with anything less. Sure, not everyone needs this kind of response time, but making it avaliable for the performance player is still a necessity.
*Most lowend mass-market LCDs have even worse response times (~45ms), and end up looking terrible when you view a video, or even when you're just scrolling through Explorer. People have come to expect a certain responsiveness and capability after paying for a multigigahertz toaster.
*Very few LCD screens have addressed the fact that their contrast ratios are terrible, even compared to cheap CRTs. I know a lot of you are proponents of LCDs because of their lack of flicker, but the truth is low contrast can cause just as much strain on the eyes, especially when reading.
Apple LCDs are Samsung under the hood (Score:3, Informative)
Eizo monitors kick ass, too... (Score:2, Informative)
Excellent brightness and contrast. Black is excellent. Eizo also has image smoothing built-in, but I never use it.
Great for gaming. Unreal Tournament and Castle Wolfenstein are totally smooth. No ghosts. No slowness.
If you're in the market for an LCD panel, make sure you audition an Eizo, as well. Fantastic monitors (CRT and LCD panel both).
Re:Don't bitch about lack of Apple LCDs (Score:1, Informative)
If you haven't yet, I suggest you make a trip to your nearest Apple retailer to see the difference in real life. I'd be willing to buy one right now for my PC if I knew it would work... but I highly doubt there is a VGA to ADC adapter.
LCDs have 'Burn in' issues too. (Score:2, Informative)
The Worldcom NOC is still in the process of replacing over 100 20" SUN screens because of the real ghosting issue. To wit, screen will show ghosts of previous screens that can take over ten minutes to fade (and if that monitoring view is used often, the view can become permanent). It's not the same physical condition as CRT burn in, but the effect is the same.
In summary: Don't plonk a large sum down on a LCD monitor until either a reviewer addresses whether that model is ghost free, or you've seen that model in a production deployment behaving itself.
Re:LCD vs CRT (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Those aren't LCDs people buy (Score:1, Informative)
loss of brightness issue (Score:3, Informative)
unfortunately, these tubes are not end-user replaceable.
so, you spend multiple times what you'd spend on a CRT, only to have the thing lose half of it's brightness a few years later. the simple solution would be to replace the tubes, but you can't because the LCD unit is designed to be disposable.
until it is possible to easily replace the fluorescent tubes in an LCD panel, i won't be investing in this technology.
SyncMaster 570S (Score:2, Informative)
The best thing about this monitor is that you can rotate it and use it in a portrait orientation...
This really doesn't seem to have caught on, and I confess to being surprised... after using a display like this for a while, you'll wonder why you could *ever* want it the other way around for documents, programming, web browsing, etc, etc... about the only thing a landscape display is good for is games.
Plasma Screens. (Score:3, Informative)
With that said, the DVD watching and console gaming experience is pretty much second to none. I prefer the screen over LCD projectors.
Re:ViewSonic's the way to go if gaming (Score:2, Informative)
I have an 18" Eizo L66 LCD at work and I liked the normal font smoothing much better than ClearType until I used the tuner. Also, play with your color scheme in Windows and try to set the background color to a slightly off-white. I did this and the sub-pixel rendering in ClearType now looks much better.