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Monitors

KBD

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Nothing beats a good CRT for picture quality. People will find the same thing said on home theater forums. I bought literally a car load of 21" Sony Trinitrons (and one Diamondtron :)) awhile ago. Sold some, used some. Sure is hard to kill one. My friend got back into gaming recently and grabbed a Trinitron from me since he HATED every LCD he saw.

Having said that, I wouldn't say even a cheap TN panel LCD is bad to look at, as long as it's straight-on. Sit at any kind of angle at all and they tend to suck real quick, though.

Havoc, one thing of note is many people don't like running an LCD at anything but it's native resolution. Such a thing may create a problem with a high-res 22" or a typical 24" at 1920x1200 and thus needing a video card that can handle that in games. On the other hand, the 1680x1050 ones can't quite do full HD resolution, so this kind of depends on what you specifically intend to use it for as well as if you care about possibly running a non-native res.

I totally agree with what you are saying thats why i suggested that he gets a bigger CRT, a Diamondtron, which is the CRT cream of the crop or a Trinitron. The LCD native res is another thing that pisses me off. Hopefully one day they'll start making LCDs with CRT picture quality and get rid of the native res BS.
 

Havoc

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I don't actually think that the LCDs are as bad as most people seem to make out. They were appaling at one stage, no doubt.

Non Native Res doesn't bother me, I always run my monitor at its highest res, even a CRT. I'd rather play a game on low setting/high res than medium setting/lowish res.
 

Deusxmachina

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I totally agree with what you are saying thats why i suggested that he gets a bigger CRT, a Diamondtron, which is the CRT cream of the crop or a Trinitron. The LCD native res is another thing that pisses me off. Hopefully one day they'll start making LCDs with CRT picture quality and get rid of the native res BS.

A nice thing now is some people literally give the good, big CRT monitors away. Those Diamondtrons and Trinitrons were top stuff and expensive. And I'd say they also have longevity going for them. They're like old TVs that just won't die. Compared to newer "disposable" electronics.

The only problem with them is when you want to use dual monitors, you might have to reinforce your desk. :)

You may have perused it already, but the HardOCP forum has an interesting thread on, I forget the exact model number, a big, widescreen CRT people there started buying for gaming and then saying how impressive it is. Supposedly the same monitor used for Sin City and other movies since non-CRT couldn't handle the color editing properly. The thread is 100+ pages long.

Anyway, just to restate, I don't mind even a cheap LCD most of the time unless I'm not directly in front of it. But I'm not too picky, either.

Another LCD consideration is 20" vs. 22". If they both have the same resolution, the 20" should have a sharper picture, and it's cheaper, and then you just sit a little closer to it to make up the size difference. Then again, the buying theory of "get what's on sale at the time" can trump that theory.
 

roger_alics

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Monitor

According to my view a monitor, no matter the type, connects to either a VGA or DVI port on a video card. Before investing in a new monitor, make sure that both devices VGA and DVI support the same type of connection.

-----------------------------------------------------------
roger
www.astro4all.com
 

Wile E

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5ms response time isn't very good

Never heard of Belinea, don't know.

The response time means nothing. There is no standard test for measuring it, so manufacturers make up their own tests. Meaning that the response times you see listed are basically made up numbers.

@OP - As for picture quality, if you want to approach CRT quality, the biggest thing to look for is the viewing angle. It's a dead giveaway to a good panel. 170 and below is a TN-Film panel. They're quick, but their contrast sucks, and their color reproduction is kinda crappy.

178 viewing angles signify a good panel. They typically don't respond quite as fast as a Tn-Film panel, but most modern ones do not have a ghosting problem unless you are really sensitive to it, and color reproduction and contrast makes a Tn Film panel look like a toy. Their biggest con is cost tho.

But trust me when I say, make sure the monitor you buy is capable of 16.7M colors. The 16.2M panels look terrible, especially coming from a CRT, you'll hate it.

Honestly, your last consideration should be the housing color. If you had a pick between a white monitor with a Tn Film panel, and a black monitor with an S-PVA, M-PVA, or S-IPS panel, all else being equal, you would be extremely stupid to take the white monitor.

In case you didn't know, that 2ms is just marketing, 2ms is grey to grey response, 5ms is common to all good 22" or larger monitors for colour to colour response. My samsung 2253bw 24" rocks for gaming! If it says 8ms, then it's cr*p....

8ms doesn't mean it's crap either. See my above statement. All response ratings are fabricated numbers, as the manufacturers are free to choose the testing colors that make their monitor perform the best, except in the rare occasion they're listed as b-w-b instead of g2g. Most modern 8ms panels don't ghost either. I know, I have one. ;)
 
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Deusxmachina

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According to my view a monitor, no matter the type, connects to either a VGA or DVI port on a video card. Before investing in a new monitor, make sure that both devices VGA and DVI support the same type of connection.

Speaking of connections, I hooked an LCD up recently via VGA, and the ghosting/shadows (mainly noticeable on text) was horrible. Sort of like when a rear-projection CRT TV has misaligned guns and you see one color left or right of where it's supposed to be. Messing with the phase didn't help much. Then connected it via DVI and it looked waaayyy better.
 

Havoc

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Wile E: So you are saying the only real way of telling if a monitor is decent or not is the viewing angle, coupled with the 'type' of monitor, perhaps you should go into what these types are, ie TN Film, S-PVA etc, as I have no idea what they mean.

I can certainly see what you are saying about the housing colour, but as of current my entire setup is white. The case, keyboard, mouse, speakers, everything... Apart from this damned CRT monitor!
 
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Honestly the best way is to go into a store and try it out which I did not.
I have a Samsung Syncmaster 931BW with a 2ms response time, it has no ghosting but has another issue.
RTA (response time accelerator) is not callibrated properly and gets haloing.
Only way to get rid of it is by turning off the RTA which automatically switches back on if you turn the monitor off.
There is other people noticing this issue with these now discontinued monitors.
 

Wile E

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Wile E: So you are saying the only real way of telling if a monitor is decent or not is the viewing angle, coupled with the 'type' of monitor, perhaps you should go into what these types are, ie TN Film, S-PVA etc, as I have no idea what they mean.

I can certainly see what you are saying about the housing colour, but as of current my entire setup is white. The case, keyboard, mouse, speakers, everything... Apart from this damned CRT monitor!

Here's a good article that gives an idea of the differences.

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/panel_technologies.htm
 

kysg

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Okay with this I see nothing but Samsung here, I mean cmon guys there are other monitors out that at the 21.6-20-22 inch range, Heck I'm packing a viewsonic that can get the same res as a 22 inch monitor, I don't have the same amount of real estate but hey you get what you pay for at 19 inches.

Still there are other vendors like Acer, Asus, Viewsonic, BenQ, NEC, LG, Dell (rebranded LG's)
so whats up with the samsung one sidedness??
 

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I'm not adverse to the idea of widescreen as they are cheaper, If I'm honest I'd prefer the regular shape, that Samsung does look good. Don't suppose you know of anywhere that does it in white?

NO, GOD NO........widescreen is the bomb.
4:3 only has value for work specific stuff, otherwise everything else is superb on WS, especially games, DVD's, HD trailers.......text will look a bit weird for a while but you'll quickly forget about it.

Also, your 16:9 images will be much bigger on a WS monitor because of the aspect ratio.
 

Kwod

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The response time means nothing. There is no standard test for measuring it, so manufacturers make up their own tests. Meaning that the response times you see listed are basically made up numbers.

@OP - As for picture quality, if you want to approach CRT quality, the biggest thing to look for is the viewing angle. It's a dead giveaway to a good panel. 170 and below is a TN-Film panel. They're quick, but their contrast sucks, and their color reproduction is kinda crappy.


I want to re-inforce what Wile just said, a 8 bit 178 degree LCD has very good IQ, especially with anything HD/hi-res.
Only the very best Sony CRT's can possibly compete with the viewing experience of a 24in 8 bit LCD, but no PC crt can compete with 26-27in 8 bit LCD.....game over:nutkick:

Black levels aren't everything, and if you're the sole user of the panel, then horizontal shift won't matter......that said, my 8 bit has ZERO vertical contrast shift at all times, and almost no horizontal with HD/hi-res sources as the pixels look totally packed with information.
 
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Watchout for LCD monitors which are not true 8-bit.
There are monitors out there which state 8 bit but are actually 8 bit through dithering which are 6 bit with tweaked to emulate 8 bit which still has colour banding at times, just not as much as ordinary 6 bit.
 

Jmatt110

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I want to re-inforce what Wile just said, a 8 bit 178 degree LCD has very good IQ, especially with anything HD/hi-res.
Only the very best Sony CRT's can possibly compete with the viewing experience of a 24in 8 bit LCD, but no PC crt can compete with 26-27in 8 bit LCD.....game over:nutkick:

Black levels aren't everything, and if you're the sole user of the panel, then horizontal shift won't matter......that said, my 8 bit has ZERO vertical contrast shift at all times, and almost no horizontal with HD/hi-res sources as the pixels look totally packed with information.

I have an 8-bit, 178 degree, 24" 1920x1200 monitor, absolutely stunning :)
 
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