21.3" LCD Monitor Reviewed

SLDave wrote in to plug his review of the 21" NEC MultiSync LCD 2110, the monster LCD that lists for a scant $3800. The largest Apple screen is cheaper, and I'm not sure how I would feel about being forced into 1600x1200 all the time. And at the price of a decent used car? Update: 05/01 18:31 GMT by T : ARP has another idea, writing: "Here is a review of Samsung's 210T which is another 21.3" LCD. Not only is this cheaper than the NEC, but it also has DVI as well as RCA and S-video inputs that turn into a high-definition multimedia display."

Comments

what??

[Anonymous Coward]

And at the price of a decent used car?

come on taco, "decent" and "used" are mutually exclusive!!! and even if they weren't , 3800?? va must really be sucking it up!!

Give us your worst, /.

[Cutriss]

We thought in advance to disable the news generator on the front page, so it won't go down in 30 seconds like last time.

Now it'll just take 3 minutes. :D

Your gettin' a Dell, dude

[Latent Heat]

Like Dell's got a 20" 1600 by 1200 for about $1600. No, I don't work for Dell, and yes, I would prefer a glass monitor because LCD's blow chunks when it comes to motion, although an LCD would be nice to stare at my source listings all day long.

Re:Your gettin' a Dell, dude

[the_2nd_coming]

suck for motion?!!

dude perhpas on a 5 year old POS laptop, but my 15in LCD on my HP laptop is so good, I can watch DVD movies and there is no blurr.

Re:Your gettin' a Dell, dude

[moonbender]

While I'm of course happy for you that you like your LCD, I'd recommend to wait before buying one for motion intensive applications, such as movies or games. Two recent reviews of 15" LCD on Tom's Hardware Guide were still quite negative on that issue. http://www4.tomshardware.com/display/02q1/020114/i ndex.html http://www4.tomshardware.com/display/02q1/020322/i ndex.html

Re:Your gettin' a Dell, dude

[qurob]

Dude, dell's rippin' ya off too!

TigerDirect.com has 19" and 20" LCD's for $999 and $1199

Re:Your gettin' a Dell, dude

[Waffle Iron]

I would prefer a glass monitor because LCD's blow chunks when it comes to motion, although an LCD would be nice to stare at my source listings all day long.

That reminds me of the storage display teminals I would sometimes use in the early 80's. Some of these were huge, like a 25-inch TV. The CRT had a special layer that would permanently turn on any time the electron beam hit it. You could only add to the "on" pixels; the only way to turn off pixels was to clear the whole screen. The TTY output would add to the screen until you filled it up, but you couldn't scroll.

I remember being able to view 400 lines of code at once on one of these. At the time, it blew away any other display technology at viewing code. The downside was, it really blew chunks at motion, since it was static. You could actually get some work done with a real line-based editor like TECO, though.

Re:Your gettin' a Dell, dude

[Eccles]

I would prefer a glass monitor because LCD's blow chunks when it comes to motion, although an LCD would be nice to stare at my source listings all day long.

Seems to me that if you can afford one of these, you can also afford a CRT and a monitor switch, and then have the best of both worlds, albeit with a more crowded desk.

As long as we're on the topic of displays, does anyone have any experience using big HDTVs as "monitors" for playing computer games? The concept of playing a flight simulator on a big screen sounds appealing, but it seems like there are real questions about the effective resolution you get. Do any TV-out solutions put out HDTV component video?

Re:Your gettin' a Dell, dude

[dhogaza]

Hey, I grew up on Tektronix storage display terminals. Sure beat the hell out of a teletype or (later) DEC VT100 with their crappy 24 line display.

And I was one of the people responsible for the old DEC OS/8 Teco. "make love" ... "not war?" OK, I wasn't responsible for that part ...

Of course you were probably one of those lucky people running TECO on a real computer ...

Re:Your gettin' a Dell, dude

[JMMurphy]

While I'm of course happy for you that you like your LCD, I'd recommend to wait before buying one for motion intensive applications, such as movies or games. Two recent reviews of 15" LCD on Tom's Hardware Guide were still quite negative on that issue.

Why not try them out for yourself? I watch movies and play graphic-intensive games all the time on my laptop, and it looks fantastic. Much sharper and even brighter than a good CRT, and so much easier on the eyes. Unless some advancement in CRTs comes along quite soon, I'll never go back.

random

Re:Your gettin' a Dell, dude

[Anonymous Coward]

Glass? Waddaya think an LCD panel is made of?

Re:Your gettin' a Dell, dude

[Big Jason]

I have one and it's great. It has more features than the NEC one mentioned here, namely 4 inputs (HD15, DVI, Composite, S-Video). I don't have a problem running 1600x1200 with large fonts enabled (on Win2k). FPS games look good on it due to the 25ms total average response time. The main reason I got it was due to the stray EMI a nearby power distribution closet was spewing out causing conventional monitors to have an annoying "jiggle".

Samsung 240T

[4of12]

I'm getting a Samsung 240T. It's more expensive, but HDTV wide (I think 24" diagonal).

The TMDS hardware on the latest video cards seems to be honestly able to drive 1920x1200 digitally insetad of only 1600x1200 or 1280x1024, I'm ready for a flat panel.

Re:Samsung 240T

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got one of these -- it kicks ass.

eh

[2names]

Still too expensive for me. Although, I could use the extra desk space for a small slot car track...

Changing res

[groman]

Does anybody know if LCDs are capable of changing resolution in theory? My laptop is capable of 800x600(it's a 1024x768 screen) but it look... really really fugly.. I guess that answers my question, but can they do it and still maintain quality?

Re:Changing res

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, they change resolution by srinking the the stimulation area of the crystals.

Re:Changing res

[Anonymous Coward]

there is only one crystal, douchebag.

Re:Changing res

[ergo98]

LCDs have a fixed number of "pixels", and the only way to change resolution is for the pixel driver to interpolate or some other trick : It can do this perfectly for for direct divisors of its resolution (for instance a 1600x1200 display could do 800x600 perfectly, simply using 4 display pixels for every 1 incoming pixel).

Re:Changing res

[ottffssent]

Depends what you mean. There are physically 1600 pixels by 1200 pixels, so if you want 1280x1024, some of the logical pixels will be mapped to 1 physical pixel, some to 2. Now, there's various blurring algorithms to consider, but it still looks bad. You could do 800x600 perfectly (each logical pixel = 4 physical pixels), but why would you want to?

Re:Changing res

[Geeky]

I used to have a really stupid laptop with an 800x600 screen. It also offered 640x480, but it did it by only showing the smaller number of pixels in the middle of the screen.

In other words, images were exactly the same size, but there was a 160x120 black border around the display. What on earth was the point of that?

Re:Changing res

[biglig2]

Well, this older machine probably didn't have ana lgorithm to do stretch a 640x480 image to 800x600. Or, you may not have turned it on - on various Dells you had ot use a function key to enable this.

Re:Changing res

[Skater]

They're getting better. My previous LCD was a 15" running at 1024x768, and it looked great only at that resolution.

My new one is bigger (haven't measured it, probably 17") and its native resolution is 1280x1024, but I run it in 1024x768. Occasionally I'll see little text blur, but most of the time it's very good.

--RJ

Re:Changing res

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, CRT's also have a fixed number of pixels, it's just described in a different way, ie dot pitch. The number of phosphors on the screen is fixed, the density of the shadow mask/aperture grille is fixed, it's just that the thing operates in the analog domain and all the subpixel rendering and superpixel rendering is inherent.

Re:Changing res

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the shadow mask doesn't define "pixels" in any sense. The shadow mask itself does not prevent a phosphor cell that is half-energized (ie top lit, bottom dark).

That said, I think it's unlikely that the electron beam itself is narrow enough to take advantage of this on a tradtitional shadow mask monitor, but Trinitron "wire-grill" tubes wouldn't work at all if a phosphor cell couldn't be partially illuminated (or they'd have REALLY lousy vertical resolution).

Re:Changing res

[Anonymous Coward]

Mais non.

http://www.sgi.com/peripherals/displays/whitepap er . df

I don't know why, but the p in pdf doesn't show up in the preview. It's there in my comment...

So much for CmdrTaco's fortune...

[Anonymous Coward]

The largest Apple screen is cheaper, and I'm not sure how I would feel about being forced into 1600x1200 all the time. And at the price of a decent used car?

So much for that tech boom fortune... Taco's been reduced to buying used cars.

1600x1200

[Anonymous Coward]

That moron just doesn't know anything about LCD screens.

Re:1600x1200

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, no shit! How can an LCD monitor have 1600x1200 AND 1280x1024 native resolutions that fill the screen? Let me give you a hint. It can't. LCDs have a fixed hard resolution (the so-called natural resolution). Anything else is interpolated, or it doesn't fill the screen. Period.

Oooh!

[Omnifarious]

I've been waiting forever for a 1600x1200 LCD monitor. I do all of my work currently on 19" CRTs running at 1600x1200. And, for games, where you want a lower res, the LCD pixel averaging thing doesn't work badly at all. I've tested.

No, when they get down to $2k, I'll start thinking seriously of getting one. :-)

Re:Oooh!

[Omnifarious]

Actually, what I really want is a 6400x4800 screen. Then I can have small fonts that are scaled fonts, not bitmaps, so I can get antialiasing too. :-)

On a 21.3" inch viewable area, I should be able to get a good 220 characters across, which is 29 pixels at 6400x4800. That's plenty enough pixels for a high quality scaled anti-aliased font. I think monitors and CPUs will be up to it in 3-5 years. I can't wait.

1600x1200 is just barely enough for what I want on a 21" screen. You have to do 7 or 8 pixel wide characters, which have to be painstakingly done as bitmaps in order to look right.

And, yes, I like very tiny letters. :-)

Re:Oooh!

[daviddennis]

I had the identical experience - I couldn't believe someone was dumb enough to blow them off that cheap, when I could have made a $400 no-risk profit on eBay selling the thing if I'd wanted to.

But the shipping delays were agonizing - same experience as you.

That being said, I still want the new Apple Cinema HD Display. Once a resolution junkie, always a resolution junkie :-).

D

http://www.amazing.com/applestore/cinema.html has my pictures of the HD Display.

Re:Oooh!

[roca]

Sounds like you want an IBM T221. For only $8000 you get a 22" monitor with --- most importantly --- 200dpi resolution (overall 3840x2400 pixels). I've seen it running GNOME and there's nothing like it. The main problem is that the mouse cursor is a wee bit small, and so are the fonts in a lot of poorly written applications.

Re:Oooh!

[nehril]

... 6400x4800 ... 1600x1200 is just barely enough
I guess the nosegrease smeared across your monitor as you press your face against it to read gives you free anti-aliasing? Or perhaps the radiation will cook your eyeballs enough to give you free "anti-aliasing" ALL THE TIME??

no offense, but I do like to keep my 19" monitor at a respectable distance, and 1600x1200 is just on the edge of overkill. Get a second monitor, or learn to use alt-tab!

Re:Oooh!

[Anonymous Coward]

no offense, but I do like to keep my 19" monitor at a respectable distance, and
1600x1200 is just on the edge of overkill.

Gee, that's nice. Thanks for sharing.

Re:Oooh!

[rtaylor]

If you were using a well designed interface then the increase in number of pixels would simply make the image sharper but WILL NOT decrease the physical viewing size.

That said, I've yet to see anything out side of publishing that does this. OSX is probably capable, but I've yet to try it out.

Gnome does ok, but you have to manually change the font, bar, etc. sizes. Still based on pixels, not a physical distance. Perhaps Gnome 2 will do this better?

Re:Oooh!

[uradu]

> I do like to keep my 19" monitor at a respectable distance, and 1600x1200 is just on
> the edge of overkill

That says more about your eyesight than his common sense. At work I run a 22" NEC at 1600x1200, but at home I have a 19" using the same resolution, and I can comfortably see it from 2 feet away for extended periods. And no, there's no sebum coating my monitors--anybody who deposits skin secretions on my monitors dies.

Re:Oooh!

[Omnifarious]

That sounds like exactly what I'd want. Sadly, I'd probably have to have a salary of $200k/yr to afford it. That's not likely anytime in the next year or two, by which time that price will be obsolete. :-)

It'd be fun to buy those for the major members of the GNOME development team so they'd feel compelled to make things look right on such monitors. *grin*

Re:Oooh!

[nextfiend]

wll if you can handle 1600x1024 on a 22" LCD, Apple is already offering it for $2500

Re:Oooh!

[nehril]

two feet away is alot closer than I like to operate, my monitor is usually twice that distance. Even when I work on my laptop, I work further away than that (the screen is about arms-distance away on the laptop, about 3 feet). My 19" desktop monitor is probably excessively far, but I love that nice roomy desk.
I also need to keep the keyboard at length, if it was that close to me my wrists would bend too much and it would be uncomfortable.

I have reasonably decent eyesight, I just prefer to keep some distance so I dont have to spend hours focussing 2 feet away from my face. Try it sometime. It was a bit weird at first, and you may have to switch to "large fonts", but the eye relief is substantial. Just give yourself a day before deciding if you like it.

In any case, 6400x4800 on a 19" (or even a 25"!!!) is insane. :)

Re:Oooh!

[rif42]

> --- most importantly --- 200dpi resolution (overall 3840x2400 pixels)

Yes, this screen is awesome. I saw at Cebit in Hannover, DE this spring. Even small font stood crystal clear.

While the world+dog just talk about more and more inches when they talk about monitors, IBM has made a breakthrough in the right direction - increasing pixel density from lacklustre appx. 100 to astonishing 200 ppi (pixel per inch). I have been waiting for years for something like to happen in the monitor business.

Great stuff, a pity that the 8400 USD price tag put it slighty outside reach. ;-)

Re:Oooh!

[Omnifarious]

In any case, 6400x4800 on a 19" (or even a 25"!!!) is insane. :)

No it's not. I wouldn't continue having 8 pixel fonts, or even 'large fonts' (though I don't use Windows, and so don't have a specific 'large fonts' option). I would go for fonts where every character was 30 pixels wide. You'd get an amazing crispness and detail, especially if you also had anti-aliasing for those fonts. I might even try my hand at adding a '/' to the zeros in the nice Unicode fonts so I could use those for development.

Re:Oooh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell has a 20" (not 21") 1600x1200 LCD that runs about $1,350 with current discounts (follow the "small business" link on www.dell.com). It's a VERY nice monitor.

Re:Oooh!

[Tycho]

I don't know, I did 1600x1200 on a 15" monitor once. It was unpleasant to say the least. Thats not as bad as it could be though. You could get a 10"(9" viewable) Trinitron CRT from a Mac Color Classic and plug it into the electronics of a 21" or larger Sony Trinitron monitor and run the abomination at 1600x1200 or higher. Hmm, I have an extra one of those 10" CRTs. Maybe I should try that.

Re:Oooh!

[nehril]

that would be great. however the place where that falls down is icons and other system decorations, which are usually bitmaps. they'd either have to be scaled (and potentially uglified in the process), or unusably small. think scrollbar arrows, "close" boxes, application icons, etc.

Mac OS X with it's quartz/pdf system is a step in the right direction, but I think Aqua is still pretty dependent on bitmaps in certain places. However if any system could be hacked to handle 300+ dpi screens, it would be os x.

Re:Oooh!

[jonr]

Well, professonal photographers aren't afraid of throwing USD8000 at a new Canon 1D, so why are we? (Obviously, we are not in the right business :))

A review of... a monitor?

[FortKnox]

Honestly, DPI and refresh rates should tell you everything about a monitor. Honesly, a review?

Seems a waste of /. frontpage to me...

Re:A review of... a monitor?

[selectspec]

LCD monitors don't have refresh rates.

Re:A review of... a monitor?

[the_2nd_coming]

LCD used static electric curent over a matrix of wires to make the picture, there is no refresh rate on them.

CRTs use an Electron gun so the streem of electrons must constantly be painted on the screen. since it draws each pixle and moves one line at a time, you have a refresh rate, i.e. the number of times it draws the entire picture in a second.

Re:A review of... a monitor?

[scott1853]

Well technically, the review says 60Hz.

Re:A review of... a monitor?

[the_2nd_coming]

I should clear up what I said. by static, I do not mean static electricity, I mean the current is held constant while the picture remains on the screen.

Re:A review of... a monitor?

[Anonymous Coward]

that would be the rate that the picture redraws while there is movment on the screen. it is slightly diffrent than a CRT which needs to redraw all the time.

Re:A review of... a monitor?

[ottffssent]

Same with LCDs. LCD pixels don't die off like CRT pixels do - they stay at full brightness until it's time to change. However, the screen *is* refreshed at a certain rate. LCDs are poorer at fast motion than CRTs because the minimum rise/fall time on an LCD pixel is slower than the die-off time on CRTs so a pixel can't go from white to black quickly as something moves across the screen. This is important to the refresh rate question because a refresh rate that exceeds the ability of the LCD to register the changes is wasted. Most LCDs quote in the 60-80Hz range for refresh, but the pixels can only respond to ~40 refreshes per second.

So, to recap: High refresh rates aren't necessary on an LCD to maintain a stable picture, but LCDs *DO* refresh and this needs to be taken into account.

Re:A review of... a monitor?

[fyonn]

that just means the refresh rate that it samples the analogue input at. lcd's don't have a refresh rate in the same sense as crt's as they odn't have an electron beam scanning along them, the pixels are either on or off really.

dave

1600x1200

[PastaAnta]

I'm not sure how I would feel about being forced into 1600x1200 all the time.

I would feel good! Finally an LCD screen with a usable resolution. The resolution should preferrably be as high as possible. If you can't read the text then choose a larger font.

If you are into fast action games you should probably buy a CRT anyway.

I'd like to be the first

[prizzznecious]

to state unequivocally that if you spent $3800 on any one piece of computer hardware, you got ripped off, you need a life, and you deserve to have it break after two days.

Being forced into 1600x1200??

[Indras]

My friend has a SGI 20" CRT monitor he bought on ebay real cheap. The lowest res it supports is 1280x1024, which is a pity, because he can't play Diablo II anymore except in a window, and when he's booting up his machine, he can't see anything but a blur.

His solution? He bought a two-port monitor selector, and hooked up his old 15" CRT as well, and just keeps it on the floor next to his desk for when he needs it for command-line stuff.

However, the specs of this LCD show it goes down to 640x480 in portrait mode, which is cool by me.

And if anyone feels like balking at the sub-80hz refresh rates, try finding something higher in an LCD screen. Mine is a 17" IBM LCD, and only goes to 1280x1024 at 70Hz.

Re:Being forced into 1600x1200??

[qurob]

He wouldn't have this problem if he had it hooked up to an SGI...

I bought a couple nice 19" monitors from a dot com that went belly up for $40 each. Beats what you'd pay in just SHIPPING on eBay

Granted, my monitors say SONY, HITACHI and GSAT on them, instead of having the SGI logo...

Re:Being forced into 1600x1200??

[alta]

Umm, refresh rates don't apply to LCD's. They don't refresh at all, they are always on or off. There is no scanning to be done.

Re:Being forced into 1600x1200??

[Anonymous Coward]

"I bought a couple nice 19" monitors from a dot com that went belly up for $40 each. Beats what you'd pay in just SHIPPING on eBay"

You are a God, no doubt. Now please tell the rest of the human race where to land such a deal in say, Montreal?

Re:Cool!

[Grape Smuggler]

It sure does! All you have to do is search for 1-2 days looking for the driver and/or instructions on how the hack the kernel.

Your best bet would be to use a special* driver.

*Special is defined as any driver created by a retarded 30+ year old male, living in his parents basement that spends 50% of his waking hours masterbating to pictures of his neighbor's dog that he secretly took with his new Argus digital camera, and 50% writing 1337 modem drivers for Linux and bragging to his friends about it on Slashdot.

A Decent Used Car???

[hansendc]

That is the nearly half the price for a modern luxury car!!! What more could you ask for?

Re:A Decent Used Car???

[Anonymous Coward]

Luxury car. Riight.

Re:A Decent Used Car???

[hendridm]

I am amused by your choice of a luxury car, but I agree, too damn expensive.

There are alternatives...

[Prometheus_NG]

I don't understand how NEC can charge so much for their monitors. The Samsung 21" LCD display is cheaper (More than $1000 cheaper!) and better.

What's wrong with 1600x1200?

[Malc]

"I'm not sure how I would feel about being forced into 1600x1200 all the time"

What's wrong with that? My 19in CRT is set to 1280x1024... I would love to have a higher resolution just for MS Visual Studio and all it's useful debugging windows. I could up the resolution on my current monitor, but my eyes don't like that. These big LCDs sound perfect though.

Re:What's wrong with 1600x1200?

[Anonymous Coward]

MSVC? You're busted!!

Re:What's wrong with 1600x1200?

[dollargonzo]

OR...you could use gdb and be fine in 400x300 console :P

QED

Re:What's wrong with 1600x1200?

[Anonymous Coward]

a cheap alternative is to buy a 2nd gfx card and a 17" monitor, you could still get a car with the change.

Re:What's wrong with 1600x1200?

[AssFace]

I hear that, I have both here at work and at home a 21" sony trinitron running at 1600X1200 and would never run anything less.
I want as much real estate on screen as possible.
and I actually see things better small too, so I got that going for me.

I just recently bought a refurbished laptop off of ubid for myself and I made it a point to only look at ones that had 15" screens with the SXGA+ so that they can do 1400Xsomething - there is no way I'd be able to tolerate programming on the lower res ones - even the 1400xsomething will be a bit annoying - but it will be made up by the fact that I have a wireless net set up and can therefore program while taking a dump and while watching TV - neither of which require getting up from the couch. ;)

Re:What's wrong with 1600x1200?

[Anonymous Coward]

oh so you can do edit-and-continue debugging too, right?

so yes, i could be fine in a terminal, but i'd rather be productive, thanks.

Decent used car?

[tgd]

That seems to depend a lot on what you call descent. If it was a track car, yeah, that might be a good starter used car, but a nice used 911 isn't going to be $3800.

I couldn't even get a decent set of wheels for my car for that...

Re:Decent used car?

[Anonymous Coward]

may be in the 80's it bought one...

Re:Decent used car?

[timothy]

That's roughly what I paid for my car 2 1/4 years ago, and it's held up well .... (95 Ford Escort Wagon). Not sexy, but I rather like it.

timothy

Poor specs?

[JoshMKiV]

300:1 contrast ratio, and no digital (DVI) inputs? Boggle...

I'd rather two 17" Planars for just over $1000.

Anyone else use a ThinkPad with 15" screen with native 1600x1200 resolution? My eyes hurt...

Re:Poor specs?

[Anonymous Coward]

i've got an inspiron with 15" screen at native 1600x1200 and it's awesome, because i'm using large fonts and cleartype. so while i can't display as much as i would on my 21" trinitron at 1600x1200, my laptop is *much* clearer. it's like reading a sheet of paper, and i no longer have to deal with eyestrain after all day in front of the computer.

Re:Poor specs?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but I've used the latest Toshiba with a 15" 1600x1200 screen. It is crystal clear, love all the dots packed into a small space. Even makes TrueType look like advanced technology.

Refresh rate question

[iiii]

Just reading the specs on this baby, and I notice that it doesn't support its highest refresh rate at its highest resolution. I've noticed this on lots of monitors. Can anyone explain why this is so?

swap?

[thanjee]

Anyone want to swap an NEC MultiSync LCD 2110 for my car? It's a pretty decent '74 Mazda.
Anyone?

Sun Microsystems

[adamjaskie]

Sun Microsystems has a nice LCD monitor. It is 24.1 inches, 1920x1200, and can take input from many connectors (DVI-D, 13W3, HD-15 [with 13W3 adaptor] svideo, etc) it also has a built in 4 port USB hub. Havent checked prices anywhere, but it looks expensive.

Re:Sun Microsystems

[adamjaskie]

Oh forgot the link. Here it is: http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hw/periphe rals/monitors.html#24.1inch

Re:Sun Microsystems

[borgboy]

Sun lists the 24" at $4500.

Re:Sun Microsystems

[Anonymous Coward]

....it's a Sun. How could it possibly be cheap?!

A solution to res switching

[OccSub]

Perhaps it would be more feasable to scale the GUI of applications to a more desireable or readable size? If changing resolutions is not practical for LCDs, perhaps we will see practical app zooming technology in new versions of all our favorire OSes (Or WMs). The one drawback is that everything would either be displayed as a vector, which would be a major step for anything besides TrueType fonts, and the bitmapped portions would need precious processor power to anti-alias...

umm, wtf?

[crayz]

Apple's monitor is larger, nicer-looking, high-resolution, and cheaper. Why is this POS worth a news story?

Re:umm, wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that faggot CmdrTaco says so, and it's his WWW site.

1600 x 1200 LCDs! Finally!

[newbob]

People who program for a living appreciate the extra pixels!

The limited resolution of most flat-screens has kept me away from them, though I know a number of people who simply run two of them on their XP boxes.

When you write software, you need a lot of space for the source code, the debugger, the application, the documentation, etc. 1280x768 just doesn't cut it.

Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for the price to drop--or wait for my NEC 23 inch CRT to fail, whichever comes first.

The resolution isn't forced upon you . . .

[Visoblast]

The resolution isn't forced upon you; you can divide each dimension's resolution by 2 and have 800x600 with the display doing any scaling and while using the entire display. I do this with my SGI 1600SW, although its reduced resolution is 800x512. Stil works fine.

3800 for good used car?

[Brandeissansoo]

Sorry /., but an 89 ford tempo is not considered a good used car by most people :P

Re:3800 for good used car?

[WetCat]

??? Buick Le Sabre Limited.94 has exactly that price.
It's a DECENT car...
Where do you live?

Holy shit..

[I.T.R.A.R.K.]

"...we hope to see the price of the 2110 come down even more as even the 22" Apple Studio Displays are priced around $2,500, and the 23" at $3,500.

I hope this thing is gold plated. A thousand dollars for an extra inch of screen real estate? Give me a break.

Just get a plasma TV!

[irritating environme]

Don't they do 1600x1200 or whatever appropriate scale? Its a lot bigger and about the same cost, give or take 600 bucks.

Re:Just get a plasma TV!

[fyonn]

have you ever looked at plasma's close up? they're awful, massively hot, pull loads of power from the wall and very heavy.

unless they have imporved them massively recently then the resolution on them isn't very good at all and the image quality sucks. I think that the future of flatscreen tv's will be lcd panels. they can be thinner, use less power, get less hot, are much higher resolution and are made in much higher quantities (not in big tv sizes yet, but they will be)

dave

Re:Just get a plasma TV!

[Anonymous Coward]

most (or all) plasma tv's dont even do the full hdtv resolution, they cap out somewhere around 800 lines.

Re:Just get a plasma TV!

[Anonymous Coward]

No the future is either organic light emitting diode displays or plasma TV's based on carbon nanotubes-NEC is readying one of these for sometime next year i believe

This Monitor Sucks....

[codeguy007]

Man if I wanted a 21.3" monitor I would hope that it could do 16x12 at higher than 60Hz. At that size I would definely want to run 16x12 but 60Hz is just too low. I really don't want my monitor matching the flicker rate of the florescent lights.

Re:This Monitor Sucks....

[Anonymous Coward]

LCD@60 isn't nearly as bad as CRT@60. THe phospors in CRT monitors fade much quicker than LCDs do.

Re:This Monitor Sucks....

[codeguy007]

I know that the refresh rate is not as important but remember that it has more to do with the fact that LCDs don't really use scan lines like CRTs not the fleeting power of the the phosphors.

Re:This Monitor Sucks....

[gerfalcon]

AS mentioned above, LCDs/flatpanels don't have a refresh rate - they are always on, unlike a CRT. The refresh rate is completely unrelated to how well the images on an LCD look, and a 60Hz LCD doesn't flicker from flourescent lighting. At all.

The reason that LCDs have anything other than 60 HZ escapes me. I suspect that this actually has to do with how fast they can input data from the PC, as an LCD running, for example, 60Hz and 72Hz (at the same resolution), looks the same. Even in flourescent lighting.

Re:This Monitor Sucks....

[codeguy007]

I think you are confusing Refresh Rate with Scan Lines. The Refresh Rate is how often the picture is updated.

The flicker on CRTs comes from the Scan Lines not the refresh rate. The refresh rate on CRTs determines how fast the image is rescaned. On LCDs it determines how often it is redisplayed. LCDs display the whole picture at once.

awesome

[tps12]

I can't wait until these things are affordable enough, and high res enough, to replace CRTs. And when I am old I can talk about the "bad old days" when we had these huge power-hungry things we had to lug around. It will be analogous to people talking about punch cards today.

Also, CDs will no longer exist: pervasive networking will have replaced removeable media.

And no keyboards, replaced by voice/thought recognition.

And "paper" will only be used by some backward governments and lone survivalist types.

We will all wear white pants.

Re:awesome

[Entropy_ah]

almost correct, but as everybody knows, in the future we will all be wearing silver jump-suits :^)

Re:awesome

[Eamon C]

We will all wear white pants. Even after labor day?

1600x1200 all day??

[qurob]

(From the specs)

Resolutions Supported:

Landscape:
720 x 400 @ 70 Hz
640 x 480 @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
800 x 600* @ 56 Hz to 76 Hz
832 x 624* @ 75 Hz
1024 x 768* @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
1280 x 960 @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
1280 x 1024 @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
1600 x 1200 @ 60 Hz

Portrait:
480 x 640 @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
600 x 800* @ 56 Hz to 76 Hz
624 x 832* @ 75 Hz
768 x 1024* @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
960 x 1280 @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
1024 x 1280 @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
1200 x 1600 @ 60 Hz

Re:1600x1200 all day??

[Diamon]

(From the review)

The last issue we had was that the display looked perfect at 1600x1200, but if you scale down to any other resolution everything started to look pretty bad.

Re:1600x1200 all day??

[iceT]

Which is the case for ANY LCD panel. Even my 15" dell laptop looks like CRAP at any resolution other than 1400x1050.

Re:1600x1200 all day??

[Yottabyte84]

My Armada V300 looks great at 800x600, and 640x480 besides it's native 1024x768. It has a hardware that does some interpolation to clean things up. Looks great....

Howzabout 24" for $4500

[Anonymous Coward]

From Sun:

http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hw/perip he rals/monitors.html

24.1-Inch LCD Flat Panel Monitor

* 24.1-inch LCD (equivalent to 27.5" CRT)
* 0.27mm pixel pitch
* 24-bit color, 256 gray scale levels, 16.7M colors
* Up to 1920x1200 @ 60Hz (16:10 aspect ratio mode)
* DVI-D, 13W3, S-Video and C-Video Input connectors
* Detachable Cables included:
o 3-meter detachable DVI-D
o 2-meter detachable 13W3 video
o 1.8-Meter detachable 13W3 to HD-15
o S-Video, C-Video and USB (upstream) cables
* 4-port USB hub
* 588mm(W)x518/468mm(H)x277mm(D) w/stand
* Weight: ~29.5lbs., Power ~95W

Analog Interface?

[ansible]

Analog interface? Feh. Maybe they have improved in the last 3 years, but after my first analog-interfaced LCD monitor, I said 'never again'.

All digital, all the time, baby. I purchased two SGI 1600SW's in 1999 and 2000, and have never looked back.

Re:Analog Interface?

[Anonymous Coward]

They've improved.

When I shopped for an LCD display, I saw the fuzzyness/jumpiness on the display at bestbuy... so last summer I spent the extra money for a geForce3 w/ DVI and a 15" viewsonic LCD w/ DVI. It turns out that I prefered the geforce driving my 21" CRT, and my on-board graphics driving the LCD... no jitter, looks great! Calibration is key -- the X background works great - if it's sharp, then all pixels are sharp. I was woried that the calibration would drift, but in almost a year, it hasn't. Also, I found that DVI could lose sync, and had to be adjusted for x-y location! I thought the digital interface would convey the extra unambigous information to make it not do this (as in THIS_IS_A_VALID_PIXEL signal), but that wasn't the case.

decent used car?

[avandesande]

Can you hook your decent used car to your computer as a display?

$3800? used car?

[Jonny Balls]

Thats nothing! i bought my 79 Buick Regal for $200! and my muffler only fell off once!

Refresh rates?

[mindstrm]

Perhaps that's because LCD's don't have refresh rates? The are not driven by an electron beam scanning back and forth?

IF your LCD has a 'refresh rate' of 70hz that just means that the conversion circuitry that takes your analog VGA signal works at 70hz. There is absolutely no reason to make it work any faster, because the effect does not propagate to the visible screen...

Re:Refresh rates?

[GnomeKing]

There is a reason to get a faster refresh rate...

70hz means that I can only get 70 refreshes per second?

Whats the point of me buying the geforce 4 if I cant play quake at 150 fps - when the graphics card isnt the bottle neck the monitor decides to give me a crappy fps!

Re:Refresh rates?

[Peyna]

What's the point in playing at 150 fps when your eyes only work at around 60 anyway? Some people might notice a difference up to 70, but beyond that doesn't make much sense to me. Use those cycles for something else, like prettier pictures.

Re:Refresh rates?

[glwtta]

Doesn't make much sense to play games on an LCD anyway - it's the response time, not the refresh rate that kills it.

Re:Refresh rates?

[WhaDaYaKnow]

Perhaps that's because LCD's don't have refresh rates? The are not driven by an electron beam scanning back and forth?

IF your LCD has a 'refresh rate' of 70hz that just means that the conversion circuitry that takes your analog VGA signal works at 70hz. There is absolutely no reason to make it work any faster, because the effect does not propagate to the visible screen...

Well, it's not uncommon that total bullshit is moderated up to +5 informative here.

Next time back up your stuff with some links that supports what you are saying?

LCDs DO have a refresh (or update) rate, and the pattern actually is similar to an electron beam in non-interlaced mode. The difference is that it's not as noticable (see link as for why). It's driven by a dot-clock which drives the speed at which the individual pixels on the LCD are updated.

Your magic 'conversion circuitry' is what actually drives the dot-clock (at least in a properly designed LCD)

The biggest issue with LCDs is lag of the pixels (especially when going from 'turned on' - black, to 'turned off' - white). It doesn't make sense the update an LCD much faster than the response time of the Liquid Crystal, but that all depends on the specific LCD.

Re:Refresh rates?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they have refresh rates. What is this theory I keep reading here that there's no refresh rate and these comments get modded up to +5?
Who's in charge here?

OMG, someone needs a whap with the CLUE STICK

[alexburke]

This monitor is over THREE THOUSAND US DOLLARS and it doesn't even have a DVI INPUT?!

What the hell was NEC thinking?!?!

Re:OMG, someone needs a whap with the CLUE STICK

[Alzheimers]

Maybe a DVI connector would have driven the price up too high...

Re:OMG, someone needs a whap with the CLUE STICK

[alexburke]

The price is already stratospheric! In actual fact, DVI input requires less processing than VGA input, but it's still regarded as a premium item. Case in point: Samsung's 171T is 1/3 the price of this monstrosity and has both DVI and VGA inputs...

"I'm not sure how I would feel about being forced

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm not sure how I would feel about being forced into 1600x1200 all the time"
Luckily Taco, (as you'd know if you'd read the article), you don't have to decide how to feel!
Resolutions supported:
Landscape:
720 x 400 @ 70 Hz
640 x 480 @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
800 x 600* @ 56 Hz to 76 Hz
832 x 624* @ 75 Hz
1024 x 768* @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
1280 x 960 @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
1280 x 1024 @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
1600 x 1200 @ 60 Hz

Portrait:
480 x 640 @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
600 x 800* @ 56 Hz to 76 Hz
624 x 832* @ 75 Hz
768 x 1024* @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
960 x 1280 @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
1024 x 1280 @ 60 Hz to 76 Hz
1200 x 1600 @ 60 Hz

One feature Apple Montiors don't have

[Microsift]

This monitor can be used in Portrait or Landscape Mode, so if you need that feature, the higher price might be justified.

Explanation.

[mindstrm]

There is no such thing as plain 'refresh rate'.

There will be a maximum specified horizontal (measured in Khz) and vertical (measured in Hz) frequencies.

Vertical is what you normally call refresh rate.

Now, if you start putting, say, 1600x1200, that's 1200 scanlines per screen. Take your horizontal frequency, muliply it by those 1200 horizontal lines that have to be drawn before each vertical refresh, and you'll find where the limiting factor is.

The monitor can't scan horizontally fast enough to keep up with it's maximum vertical rate at high resolutions.

I'm poor.

[El Jynx]

With 3800 bucks, I could... erm... well... do really cool things. Can somebody loan it to me? Santa'll pay you back. Honest. On the side, maybe someone can finally explain why so many people watch soap operas but can't stand their friends.

Where are the 15" LCD 1600x1200 monitors?

[DOsinga]

What I would want is a smaller (ie cheaper) lcd monitor at 1600x1200. Lots of laptops seem to have 15.4" screens at 1600x1200 or even higher nowadays, but monitors at 15" always seem to be 1024x768 and at 17" only at 1280x1024. Why aren't there any small, hi-res monitors in LCD land?

Re:Where are the 15" LCD 1600x1200 monitors?

[qurob]

Honestly, I don't think many people would buy 1600x1200 15" monitors.

Only those with super human vision!

You could chop a dell laptop if you wanted...

Re:Where are the 15" LCD 1600x1200 monitors?

[codeguy007]

I would before I would buy a 15" LCD that ran 1024x768. The only reason I don't run 16x12 on my current 17" CRT is that it doesn't support it. (17" CRT ~ same viewable area as a 15" LCD.) You know you can always make the fonts bigger and Icons bigger at high resolutions.

$3800 complete with...

[roblight]

...dead pixels!

When they've fixed the dead pixel thing, sign me up.

Re:$3800 complete with...

[fyonn]

I've never seen an lcd panel with dead pixel's. I've got a brand new 18.1" iiyama and it's perfect, my friend has a 15" nec, it's perfect. every laptop I've used has had perfect lcd's. perhaps I've been lucky.

one of the reason I bought an iiyama screen was because they have a 30 day no quibble returns policy so I told the shop that if it had any dead pixels at all it would be coming straight back but I never had to carry that threat out.

dave

1600x1200 would blow when lame webmasturbators..

[fanatic]

...use the font tag with absolute size values that break resizing by some browsers. (Netscape 4.x has this problem. Galeon, based on Mozilla, doesn't.)

Don't settle for dead pixels

[Anonymous Coward]

A bought a Dell laptop a few years ago that came with two dead pixels. Dell told me that the "industry standard" was 3 - 5 dead pixels. I told them I'd like a refund so they sent me a new laptop with no dead pixels. Don't take this dead pixel crap off of anybody, especially when we're talking thousands of dollars.

This guy..

[iramkumar]

Wrote a whole article so that he could get
tech support on his modem :)

Samsung 210T is better

[Anonymous Coward]

With this puppy sitting on my desk now, this guy beats out the NEC flatscreen with various items. First, is the price tag. I was able to find the Samsung 210T for about $2500 (right around the price of the Apple Cinematic Display). It has both an analog and a DVI-D input, so multisync would work just fine. It also has ports for video and s-video.

One of the best features of this guy (besides being a huge LCD monitor) is that it comes with a remote. You can zoom in multiple times, do Picture-in-Picture (Analog/Digital + S-Video/Video), Picture-by-Picture, etc. It's something nice to have when you want to impress folks.

In my opinion, this monitor is one of the best because you could hook up a DVD player to the S-Video or Video input, and use PIP (or PBP) to watch movies while you code or do whatever.

interference from electricical devices

[Unknown Poltroon]

DO lcds get the wavy interference from overhead floursecnce and stuff that regular crts get? I've never seen it, but im not sure. Thats th only reaon ive ever changed the refresh rates on my monitors.

Re:interference from electricical devices

[br0ken by design]

Nope, cause LCDs don't work like CRTs do.
With an LCD, an illuminated pixel is illuminated until the controller changes it, unlike
CRT pixels, which start fading as soon as the electron beam has passed.

A refresh rate of 60hz on a LCD is fine, because it just means the display is getting
updated 60 times per second, with the pixels staying lit between refreshes.
60hz on a CRT would be unacceptable for most people, because the screen is going dark between
refreshes, which is perceptable as flicker.

:wq

Re:interference from electricical devices

[Quixadhal]

Yes, but that's part of why motion sucks on LCD displays.

If I send out an analog signal with a refresh of 120Hz, my glass monitor will catch both frames and attempt to display them. If my new LCD panel only does conversion at 60Hz, I "lose" one of the frames of motion, meaning the transitions are less smooth.

It won't flick, but it will jerk. Sure, for most people 70Hz is fine... but it's also a matter of random chance as to which duplicate data your brain notices.

Of course, that can all be done away with IF the manufacturers of video cards AND LCD panels both agree to start using digital signals... in which case your pixels could (potentially) update in real-time.

Re:interference from electricical devices

[br0ken by design]

Yup, that's right.

Another significant motion-related problem is that the response time on an LCD is usually anywhere
from 25-85ms, whereas CRT response time is virtually instantaneous.
(I couldn't find docs on the exact response time of a typical CRT, but I'd guess
that it's less than 5ms.)
Since the response time is relatively slow on a LCD, the last image displayed will
remain on the screen for a few fractions of a second, leading to the blurring or ghosting
effect that is commonly seen.

:wq

Repeating myself and others....

[blankmange]

$3800.00 for a monitor (that has limitations pointed out by the rest of /.) is ridiculous! No DVI, fixed resolution, plus it is an LCD (cannot match CRT/Trinitron for crisp text, motion, etc). I would love to see their sales projections on something like this. Granted, there will be that handful of geewhizzers who jump on this, but the rest of us can make a complete system with $3800.00... easily!

Re:Repeating myself and others....

[mozkill]

i totally agree. i bought a hitachi cm823 monitor for $550 from Dell, during a sale, and for that price I am in heaven. .18-.22 dot pitch, flat screen, two monitor inputs, etc... nothing can even touch it.

i admit, having a monitor without screen refresh would be nice... but ill hold out a little longer.

Re:Repeating myself and others....

[fyonn]

okay, no DVI was bloody silly, there should be at least 2 DVI-I ports but lcd's are fixed resolution, thats just a limitation of the system. A ferrari can costs hundreds of thousands of pounds but can't go off road reliably, why dammit, for that kinda money I expect the thing to fly!

you see my point? they aren't trying to deceive anyone but it's well known that lcd's have a fixed resolution and tend to look ugly in any others.

crisp text? I've yet to see a CRT with text as crisp as an LCD. each pixel is discrete so text is as crisp as can be. old lcd's were crap at motion, thats agreed but new lcd's can be extremely good. the fastest pixel refresh rate I've seen is 25msec. my screen refreshes at 35msec and I've played quake on it with no problems (apart from my gfx card struggling a bit at 1280x1024 :). the display seemed perfectly able to keep up.

yes, it's expensive but it's also bloody big. there is a limited market but I'm sure it's not aimed at the consumer, but at business where they have the need and the money for these things. as time goes on these things will get even better and even cheaper but bleeding edge stuff always costs a packet.

dave

Re:Repeating myself and others....

[sysadmn]

I would love to see their sales projections on something like this. Granted, there will be that handful of geewhizzers who jump on this, but the rest of us can make a complete system with $3800.00... easily!

I suspect they'll do okay if they court the VAR/System Integrator channel. Think airport displays, kiosks, etc. Sure, it's hard to hang a 23 lb display, but it's even harder to secure a 70+ lb monitor. That market won't need DVI, and is somewhat price-insensitive. Then they can treat the rich power user as a secondary market. The trick is to get volume, improve your processes, and maintain profit margins.

Re:Repeating myself and others....

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, the 823f is totally awesome, I just got mine last week. I wish I had known about that sale though, it ran me 685 bucks.

Re:Repeating myself and others....

[NeoSkandranon]

but the rest of us can make a complete system with $3800.00... easily!


And still have enough money left over for a 21" CRT monitor that may well look better

Resolution matters

[Wesley Felter]

1600x1200 != 1280x1024

Re:Resolution matters

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

21" KDS CRT on Pricewatch for $400 after shipping, does 1600x1200. I really like mine, and it is awesome bang for the buck.

Dell 20" LCD is MUCH cheaper...

[gslobber]

I use a Dell 2000fp at work (21.1", native 1600 x 1200 resolution). It's an amazing display and can be had for as little as $1270 (see here for details). Even without the special offers, the list price is $1,599 -- half the price of the NEC.

Re:Dell 20" LCD is MUCH cheaper...

[jawad]

Is it just me, or was anyone else hesitant to click that link? "goatse.cx? no, i guess it's gotapex.com"...

Give us News!

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, this is just lame. Is there nothing out there more interesting than a review of some obscenely expensive picture box? Buy a big ass flatscreen CRT, save a few grand, have a better viewing experience, better performance, and only complain about the heft of the thing when you have to move it. Oh yeah, buy a new computer with the money you saved. I am starting to think that there is no limit to the crap /. will sully the front page with. This site has become the worst possible of all things; boring.

The Dell 2000FP looks good

[Baki]

See this page. Well below $2K, 1600x1200 and other good specs, on usenet (google groups) I found quite some happy users of this one. Of course 1920x1200 would be even nicer but too expensive IMO.

"Useful for debugging Windows"?

[Wakko Warner]

So, you're the guy who does that?

Get back to work!! Stop posting on slashdot!! I hope they hire an assistant for you soon.

- A.P.

Re:"Useful for debugging Windows"?

[Malc]

Eek! Who put that apostrophe in "its" and changed the meaning of my sentance? I swear it wasn't me!

Re:"Useful for debugging Windows"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a grammar NAZI, and didn't notice the apostrophe when skimming. But now that you point it out, you 1) misspell sentence, 2) should be saying "I swear it wasn't I"!

This is the job of the operating system

[dsfox]

Only the operating system has the semantic information required to do a good job of rendering your display into a given grid of pixels.

Re:This is the job of the operating system

[fyonn]

which is interesting as I seem to remember that the DVI spec says that the LCD monitor has to be able to stretch the image on it's own with no help from the OS or gfx card. the card or OS may do it of course, but the monitor has to be able to as last resort.

I've actually just picked up an lcd monitor and it's fantastic. 1280x1024 and it's as sharp as hell. I admit that it cost a big chunk of overtime but right now it was worth it. it's got a 35msec refresh time so I can watch dvd's or play quake and no smearing (I didn't really notice any). the problem being of course that I had to play q3a in 1280x1024 to look right and my geforce 2 gts struggled a bit but then I'm not much of a games player anyways (except angband ;)

one of the cool things about it is that you can literally see every pixel. if you can't read something then just look closer. every pixel is discrete so even small fonts are readable, unlike crt's where small fonts can just disappear into the glass.

I think that modren lcd's are a huge advance over the horribles ones from laptop's of 4 years ago where if you touched the mouse it would disappear.

dave

So what is the pixel reponse time?

[UberFish]

Did they actualy publish pixel response time (white to black to white) or do we just have to wait for Toms Harware to review it.

I for one am never going to spend that much cash relying solely on the lies, half-truths, ommisions and evasions the manufacturers call 'Specs'.

Oh, and thank-you Nikon for 'TTL metering that isnt' on the Coolpix 990.

Those asterisks are there for a reason...

[AxB_teeth]

(also from the specs)

*Due to the interpolation necessary for
operation of LCD panel resolutions at
full screen, it is recommended that LCD
monitors utilize the full resolution
capability of the panel and are operated
at their optimal or maximum resolution
when text or fine lines are being viewed

Recommended Resolution:
Landscape: 1600 x 1200 @ 60 Hz
Portrait: 1200 x 1600 @ 60 Hz

1600x1200?

[br0ken by design]

I'd like to have a 3200x2400+ 19" display. The thought of not needing to antialias
anything because my screen is 150+ dpi makes me want to sp00ge.
My main complaint against LCDs right now is that they aren't very high resolution for the
price. I'm definately not going to drop $3k for a display that only does 1600x1200.

But hey, I'm a rez freak...I run my 19" CRT at some odd resolution like 1920x1200[1]
just to squeeze out a few extra horizontal pixels at a reasonable refresh rate.
Why? Because information wants to be wide.

:wq
[1]Yes, the aspect ratio is screwed up. So I compress the image vertically, much like
letterboxing a widescreen movie...works pretty well if you don't mind text being small.

Dell 2000FP is a great LCD.

[delus10n0]

It only cost me $1150, and it's worked better than I could have imagined. I had my doubts about how games/video would look, but it's only slightly worse than a standard display. UT runs great at 1600x1200. Also, the 2000FP has four different inputs, D-SUB, DVI, SVIDEO, and COMPOSITE.

I would recommend the 2000FP over this piece of junk NEC anyday.

Re:Dell 2000FP is a great LCD.

[The LowTech Swede]

I have one too. Best thing I ever bought (that has a power cord, at least). The different inputs, which you can toggle between with a nice little button on the front, is extremely nice since it lets me switch between the desktop I do nice things with and the laptop I use for work. I don't have a problem with playing games on it and it being flicker free is really good for those long sessions.

Dead pixels

[wowbagger]

In the article, the author complains about dead pixels (though not loudly) and expresses a wish that NEC ship monitors without dead pixels.

It won't happen. Almost all lCD monitors have dead pixels.

An LCD monitor is, in effect, an IC that is several inches square. One flaw == 1 dead transistor == 1 dead pixel. Most LCD manufacturers will quote some number of dead pixels as "acceptable" - if your display has less than that many dead pixels they won't accept it back as bad.

The only way around this is to increase the number of transistors on the display, and design some redundancy - if one transistor dies, the others for that pixel will take up the load. However, since a transistor can die on or off, it gets to be very difficult to design the circuit such that no matter how the transistor dies, the circuit works.

Re:Dead pixels

[jeffehobbs]

As a point of reference, Apple's official pixel tolerance count for the new 15" LCD iMac screen is six -- you need to have six (6) dead pixels before Apple will replace the screen. That's why I always suggest to my friends who are interested in LCD monitors (or new iMacs) that they go to a store and check one out before purchase. LCD monitors are expensive enough that any decent salesperson wouldn't blink an eye if you said you wanted to unpack the merchandise and hook up the screen before plunking down your hard earned cash. If it were me, I'd even bring a burned CD with one of those LCD checking utilities that cycle through the RGB colors (then white and black) to give it the once over. Dead pixels are annoying.

~jeff

Re:Dead pixels

[Overzeetop]

More annoying than dead pixels are "hot" pixels - or those that are always on. Actually, I believe the image in the article shows a hot, rather than dead, pixel. IMHO, a dead pixel in against a field of white is far less noticable than a hot pixel on a field of black.

6 dead is a pretty loose number if hot pixels are counted, and no adjacent/near/location sensitive data is considered. Six hot green pixels near the middle of the screen would be practically unworkable.

Re:Dead pixels

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a poor man, I have never had the luxury to use an LCD monitor for a long time... just out of curiosity, how much more annoying are dead pixels compared to the two lines that are on an aperture grille monitor (or at least the ones on my Viewsonic PF790).

Re:Dead pixels

[ccg]

"Being a poor man, I have never had the luxury to use an LCD monitor for a long time... just out of curiosity, how much more annoying are dead pixels compared to the two lines that are on an aperture grille monitor..."

It really depends. Before I switched to LCDs (my eyes are really sensitive to CRT refresh rates... result of a mis-spent youth, I suppose), I used a Sony trinitron monitor with the two lines in it. I've also used a lot of Silicon Graphics machines, and they use Sony Trinitrons too. At first, I noticed the lines a lot, but pretty soon I forgot about them completely.

Right now, I'm using a Dell 2000FP (I love it... just bought another one last weekend; Dell dropped the price $100 and had a temporary 20% sale). It has two stuck pixels. They are both a soft blue (or green, I can't really tell), and they are both within about 1 centimeter of the right edge of the screen near the bottom. The only time I can see them is when the screen is black or there is something black underneath. I'm picky about graphics, and they don't bother me.

On the other hand, I also have a Silicon Graphics 1600SW flat panel hooked up to my Linux box. It has only one stuck pixel, but it is stuck RED, and it is near the lower-left corner of the screen, about one inch up and two inches over. It drives me nuts. I bought the second Dell 2000FP to replace the SGI 1600SW.

My point is, how annoying a stuck pixel is depends on its color and location. I can't stand red stuck pixels, but blue and green ones bother me less. Also, some stuck pixels appear to get stuck brighter than others. If a pixel is just dead -- this is, always black -- it doesn't bother me at all. YMMV.

Re:Dead pixels

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know of a link to Apple's official dead pixel policy? I could not find it on their site.
I would like to compare it to the Cornerstone f1200's "Zero Dead Pixel" guarantee.
Does Apple's policy include six individual sub-pixels(red, green or blue) or does it include just the whole(white) pixels. Does anyone know of any other LCDs that have a better dead pixel policy than the Cornerstone f1200?

Re:Dead pixels

[bugg]

Maybe my knoweldge of LCD displays is lacking, but wouldn't a pixel that's always displaying white be always off?

It was my understanding that the liquid crystal filtered the white light from the backlight to produce the desired color.

Re:Dead pixels

[FirstOne]

It sure looked like that screen had quite a number of stuck pixels (16 or so). Note: Each stuck white pixel is counted as three(3)(RGB). Not a good sign for $3800 investment. Or it could have been just lint on the screen.

Re:Dead pixels

[Fjord]

Your understanding is right

Re:Dead pixels

[Snover]

How about my NEC MultiSync FE1250+ (CRT) that has a dead pixel? The hell's up with that?!

monitor lust!

[simpl3x]

and, while 1600x1200 is halfway decent, this is truly the monitor to lust after... the ibm t221 (http://commerce.www.ibm.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce/Pro ductDisplay?cntrfnbr=1&prmenbr=1&prnbr=9503DG1&cnt ry=840&lang=en_US). hey where' are the icons? oh, there! 3800x2800!

Um ... hello, Viewsonic?

[styxlord]

has a cheaper and superious line of 1600x1200 LCD displays that have been out since late last year.

20inch beige
20 inch black
23inch black

What more, the 20inch models can be had for under $1700!

Might be worth the price

[billh]

I purchased an NEC MultiSync XP21 years and years ago. It was $2500 or so, way, WAAAAY out of my price range at the time. I thought at the time that not getting headaches and retaining my vision were worth the price.

Well, they were. Although it is a little dimmer than it used to be, I still use the monitor daily, at a high refresh rate, and my vision is still what it used to be. The only time I get eyestrain is when I am forced to work on smaller monitors, or on a system with a low refresh rate.

Sometimes things like this are worth the price.

Re:Might be worth the price

[rabidcow]

NEC monitors seem to last a long time. I'm still using a 15" NEC MultiSync 3FGe that came with a 486 when we bought it new. Convergence at the upper-right and lower-left corners is slightly off, but otherwise it's as good as new.

It'd be nice if it had digital controls and higher resolution and refresh rates, but it still works great.

If their LCD monitors are as good, it's probably worth the extra cost. (or at least some of the extra cost, it's also a top of the line model.)

1600 x 1200 is actually quite nice.

[zerofoo]

My Dell Inspiron 8200 has a 1600 x 1200 LCD panel and it is awsome.

It's nice to have multiple 800 x 600 windows open; code in one window, email in another...etc.

Try it you'll like it.

-ted

Re:1600 x 1200 is actually quite nice.

[glitch_]

I have an Inspiron 8100, and I concur.

I have the 15.1 inch XGA+, I believe, running at 1600x1200 at 32 bit color. It is probably the BEST display I have ever used. I will probably never go back to a standard monitor.

Most people don't see the benifit of a high resolution, but I think that I prefer a high resolution because I use multiple small windows instead of one large one at a time.

Resolution

[CaseyB]

The largest Apple screen is cheaper, and I'm not sure how I would feel about being forced into 1600x1200 all the time

Yeah, I love how the LEDs on Apple displays resize themselves whenever you switch resolutions!

This is sad

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually a very sad monitor. First of all, who would blow $3500 on a flat screen, when it doesn't even have digital inputs. That is SOOOO 2000. Yeah, not even 2001.

The contrast ration is quite average by today's standards.

The brightness is almost laughable.

Buy yourself a dual 21' SYSTEM (not just monitors) instead for less money.

Spend $500 more and get a 1920x1200 24" Samsung

[FreeUser]

NEC MultiSync LCD 2110, the monster LCD that lists for a scant $3800. The largest Apple screen is cheaper, and I'm not sure how I would feel about being forced into 1600x1200 all the time. And at the price of a decent used car?

I just bought a 24" 1920x1200 resolution Samsung SyncMaster 240T for $4200 (literally, I just got it yesterday).

If you are spending $3800 on a big monitor, for goodness sake spend the extra $500 and get an extra 3 inches in size and the ability to support true 1080i HD resolution up front. I work on 1600x1024 monitors during the day, and let me tell you, the added space 1920x1200 gets you is worth the price difference alone. The extra size (21" vs. 24") is also well worth the price difference.
And unlike the Apple monitor, it has standard video interfaces (analog VGA, DVI-D, s-video and RCA video, though the latter two are IMHO unimportant) without a troublesome dongle.

Driving 1920x1200 through a DVI-D port from an NVidia card under XFree 4.2 on a gentoo GNU/Linux makes watching those old Babylon 5 divx's a real treat (even if the increased size makes some of the artifacts visible :).

Re:Spend $500 more and get a 1920x1200 24" Samsung

[Anonymous Coward]

And unlike the Apple monitor, it has standard video interfaces (analog VGA, DVI-D, s-video and RCA video, though the latter two are IMHO unimportant) without a troublesome dongle.

You are very wise. Dongles can indeed be troublesome. There is nothing worse than a troublesome dongle. It is worth the extra expense of a piece-o-shit Samsung to avoid all of the trouble the dongle is sure to cause. Yes sir.

Re:Spend $500 more and get a 1920x1200 24" Samsung

[uradu]

> It is worth the extra expense of a piece-o-shit Samsung

Your sledgehammer sarcasm notwithstanding, Samsung makes very decent monitors, and televisions too.

Re:Spend $500 more and get a 1920x1200 24" Samsung

[FreeUser]

There is nothing worse than a troublesome dongle. It is worth the extra expense of a piece-o-shit Samsung to avoid all of the trouble the dongle is sure to cause. Yes sir.

You are not only a troll, you are an ignorant troll. Clearly you have never worked with frequency-adjusting dongles for modern digital monitors. I invite you to spend a few hours troubleshooting an SGI 1600SW dongle on a multiheaded box, or the troublesom signal interference one sees on a supposedly entirely digital DVI->Apple 22" LCD link that is clearly an artifact of the dongle, the fact that they foolishly send power and video signal over the same bundle of wires, or both. I invite you to manage several tens of computers with such devices, all of which in turn have nice big bricks connected at some point along their power cords. Bricks, and power supplies, that go out from time to time, taking the monitor down as well and requiring you to spend additional time neither you nor your user can really spare isolating the problem to that troublesom dongle's power supply and finding a replacement.

Contrast this to the generally plug-in-and-forget behavior of industry-standard monitors that do not require such hardware kludges.

At the very best these dongles represent Yet Another Source of Failure. More often, they represents an additional, ongoing source of problems and complications that rear their ugly heads all too frequently, problems that are easilly eliminated by purchasing a monitor that adheres to industry standards from the get-go, such as the Samsung you so transparently envy, or any number of other DVI equipped LCD monitors others have suggested here.

Re:Spend $500 more and get a 1920x1200 24" Samsung

[IQ]

'the ability to support true 1080i HD resolution up front.'

Umm Dude!!!! You mean 1080PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP. P as in Pure Progressive digital.

Apple now offers Cheaper Brighter 23" 1900 pixel

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple now offers Cheaper Brighter 23" 1900 pixel ultra bright displays for under 3400 if you know where to shop.

You need 1900 pixels if you want to edit negative from film stock editing systems (apples Cinema tools for 35mm) or if you want to edit digital video at 1080i HD.

1080i HD is pretty sweet but you cant do it on this costlier smaller and lower rez monitor mentioned in the news and its MUCH less bright per sqaure centimeter than apples and has less contrast and MIGHT not offer 160 degree viewing angles VERTICALLY as well as horizontally.

Apples 23 inch is the cheapest ultr size 1900 pixel monitor in the world in 2002 and I know 3 people that have them in their homes.

Some use two montors a cheap 1200 dollar 1600 pixel (like the one mentioned) as a tools pallete side monitor, because apples high end boxes have two graphics acceleterators for two tubes on one agp nvidia card. (double headed video cards).

No one on slashdot knows this stuff because any pro-apple posts like this are never ever modded upwards.

Samsung 240T question

[coats]

I'm getting a Samsung 240T. It's more expensive, but HDTV wide (I think 24" diagonal).

The TMDS hardware on the latest video cards seems to be honestly able to drive 1920x1200 digitally insetad of only 1600x1200 or 1280x1024, I'm ready for a flat panel.

--4of12

I've got one of these -- it kicks ass

--AC

Yes, the Samsung 24T is 24-inch diagonal. Judging from another post below, I strongly suspect Sun re-markets it...

Several current video cards will drive up through 2048x1536, including the nVidia ones.

On the other hand (and here's the lead-in to my question), this is nVidia's hardware support limit, and it would seem that there is an identical (but undocumented) virtual display size limit in the XFree86 nVidia drivers.

With a 240T, I would really like to run virtual on the order of 3072x2048. I've heard rumors that the ATI drivers don't have this virtual limit the way the nVidia drivers do. Is this true? Does anyone here have actual experience running 32-bit virtual screens as large as this on ATI or Matrox cards? It is just a little bit too expensive to buy one just in order to experiment and find out...

Re:Samsung 240T question

[ccg]

"Yes, the Samsung 24T is 24-inch diagonal. Judging from another post below, I strongly suspect Sun re-markets it..."

I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung made the Apple HD display too, even though it's a slightly different size. It seems like there are many brands, but few actual manufacturers. For example, SGI designed the 1600SW flat panel (1600x1024 resolution, 17.3 inches), and Mitsubishi manufactured it. Then, Apple came out with the Cinema display (1600x1024, 22 inches), also made by Mitsubishi. Then, SGI came out with the F220 (1600x1024, 22 inches). I don't know for sure who manufactures it, but I can guess.

"Several current video cards will drive up through 2048x1536, including the nVidia ones."

Yeah, but only in analog mode over a VGA (HD15) connector, right? It seems silly to buy a digital computer with a digital graphics card and a digital flat panel monitor, and connect them together in analog. I have done this (digital-analog-digital conversion) on my SGI flat panel, and the quality is noticeably worse. I bought high-end ATI Radeons for my Dell 2000FP flat panels, because I wanted to be sure they could do 1600x1200 in digital mode (TMDS) over the DVI connector, and, at the time, all the reputable NVIDIA board manufacturers used cheap TMDS transmitters that couldn't go higher than 1280x1024. Are there any mainstram PC graphics cards that can do 1920x1200 in digital (TMDS/DVI) yet? ATI still stops at 1600x1200, but I haven't checked NVIDIA or Matrox lately.

Two gotchas here -- poster and moderator

[A nonymous Coward]

Neither read the review, as the other (so far) responses have shown. It's bad enough posting without reading, we've all come to expect that, but to moderate without reading? Bunch of brain damage floating around the net, that's for sure.

Wow, maybe Rob hasn't sold out . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

CmdrTaco said:
And at the price of a decent used car?

Okay, for all you nay-sayers out there, I'd like you to notice that Rob *hasn't* sold out. Either that or he's just a penny-pinching cheapskate.

Why not have both?

[waytoomuchcoffee]

I'm not sure how I would feel about being forced into 1600x1200 all the time

Getting an LCD doesn't mean you have to give up your old monitor. While 1600x1200 native mode on a DVI output is fantastic, I also like to play games. My Dell fp2000 (just over $1200 shipped during the last special) is running out of my Radeon 8500 DVI out. While I could play games at a lower res, (with only a little screen tearing -- the Dell is a *fast* 25ms pixel refresh) I also have my 19" CRT hooked up to the same card. So for games -- CRT. For everything else - dual screens, but mainly the Dell. Make the CRT your primary and you don't have to do anything - just start the game up and it deactivates the LCD.

Re:Why not have both?

[Aiku1337]

I thought the point of having an LCD monitor (besides Hollywood using them as props in "futuristic" settings, and "cool factor"), was to save space. Why bother with an LCD and keep your CRT around? I guess text is reall sharp and all on an LCD but, its simply not worth the extra money. If I'm going to drop a few G's on a screen, I'd hope it replaces my existing setup.

I guess it all depends on how you use your computer.

scant?

[Wonko42]

How exactly is $3800 "scant"?

scant

adj : less than the correct or legal or full amount often deliberately so; "a light pound"; "a scant cup of sugar"; "regularly gives short weight" [syn: light, scant(p), short] v 1: work hastily or carelessly; deal with inadequately and superficially [syn: skimp] 2: limit in quality or quantity [syn: skimp] 3: supply sparingly, with a meager allowance [syn: stint, skimp]

screen real estate...

[bomb_number_20]

Maybe i'm missing something, but i don't really understand the logic behind purchasing a monitor like this. arguably, it's foot print is probably smaller (in terms of depth) and there may be some power saving issues (i wouldn't know) but, on the whole, it just doesn't make sense to me.

I looked around at larger monitors for a long time- including LCDs, and the conclusion i came to is that it's just not worth it. for a quarter of the price of this monstrosity i can get two 17 inch monitors and a couple of nice video cards and run a dual display that gives me more screenspace. i just think it's a better solution.

That's exactly what I did almost two years ago and i haven't regretted it since. i don't think i could ever go back to a single display at home- it would drive me nuts.

Trinitrons still rock tha house

[ialbert]

For a rabid videophile like myself, LCDs are just nowhere near a good Trinitron. I've got two 24" widescreen Trinitrons and there is simply nothing in existence that beats the quality. I've got 1920x1200 worth of sharp, beautiful desktop real estate per monitor, but I can still dip down to any resolution below that without problems. Colors are beautiful, viewing angles are not an issue, contrast is enormous, fast motion doesn't cause smearing, there are NO "dead pixels", and the screens are bigger and cost less than LCDs. LCDs are great for some people and applications, but for hardcore professional graphics I would never recommend an LCD.

Re:Trinitrons still rock tha house

[Anonymous Coward]

I paid $2800 about 3 years ago for Sony's high-end, flat screen monitor. Sent it back twice to the factory for re-adjustment, due to severe focus problems in the corners. They returned it twice, saying it was within specifications. Usenet was rife with other people having focus problems with the same monitor. I virtually gave it away and will never buy a Sony again. Maybe never buy a CRT again either. The Viewsonic VP201M I've got now is a gorgeous 20" (1600x1200) and inexpensive ($1700). You can carp all you want about the deficiencies of LCD, but for the vast majority of users THEY DON'T MATTER.

My demo 2110 review

[lhand]

What timing. We had NEC send us this very same monitor to demo for a month. Several of us are checking it out. The guy before me had it for a few days and decided he'd better not keep using it or he'll get too used to having it and won't ever be able to give it back. He loved it and now he's back to his 18" LCD monitor. I'm five days into a review of this thing and have mixed feeling about it.

I also have been using an 18" NEC LCD monitor until now and am impressed with the huge size of this thing. While the previous user used it on Windows 2000, I'm using it on XFree86 4. I like the amount of real estate it gives me to work with on the screen, but I noticed that it makes the bad fonts I have look even worse. (I don't have the antialiasing setup yet.)

I also, like the reviewer, noticed the abundance of dead pixels on the screen. A quick count shows fifteen I see without really hunting around. I kept trying to wipe them off until I realised that they wern't dust specks, duh :). I hope that this is not a QC problem, but just a beat-up demo problem. I think the dead pixels are a real negative.

Would I recommend it? Sure, if you've got the money to burn and find one with good pixels. Will I buy one for my personal system? Not anytime soon. Would I prefer to keep this to my current 18" LCD? No. The 18" is just fine for me. Plus, I'm planning to add a second monitor and Xinerama for the extra real estate.

We're ordering some of these for our network guys, though. For them, the extra space on the screen will allow them to better visualize the network status. I don't think the programming staff (me) will be getting any soon.

And that's fine with me.

c.f. sarcasm

[FreeUser]

c.f.

sarcasm ('sär-"ka-z&m)

1 : a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain ["tired of continual sarcasms"]
2 a : a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual b : the use or language of sarcasm ["the monster LCD that lists for a scant $3800"]

synonym see WIT
source: Merriam-Webster

Too much resolution?!

[uradu]

How can anybody complain about too much resolution? That's like complaining about too much money.

IBM T221 LCD blows this away

[Anonymous Coward]

The IBM T221 LCD Monitor blows this POS away.

0.1245 stripe pitch
3840x2400 max resolution

Only $8800 to boot.

"Reviewer" is clueless about monitor

[uradu]

Never mind that it's not much of a review--listing all the features printed on the box and in the manual and making a couple of comments hardly qualifies as a review. But the guy doesn't event know the first thing about LCD monitors. His two main gripes are the dead pixels and the interpolation necessary for lower resolutions.

Dead pixels suck, and a zero-dead-pixels policy is an admirable goal indeed, but not an economic reality. Anyone familiar with the issue would know that and not even bother bringing it up--unless the review sample had 20 dead pixels or something.

Interpolating lower resolutions is a fact of life for discrete pixel devices and will look nasty regardless of how it's done and by whom. Again, not something worth bringing up, unless witnessing a display that can miraculously do it with perfect quality. Using sub-pixel addressing might improve interpolation quality somewhat if done right, and there are better and worse approaches to it, but in the end it's still a hack.

1920x1200 with a 16:10 Sony FWM 900

[Alex Farber]

I've bought a 24" Sony CRT monitor for DEM 4300,- a year ago and still luv it!

http://home.t-online.de/home/Alexander.Farber/foto s/icewm-openbsd.gif

1600x1200 all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

I do 1600x1200 all the time on my 19" CRT.

I do 1280x1024 on 17" and 1152x864 on my Trinitron 15".

Yes, other people complain. But, I am the user.

I would need 2000+ by 1600+ on a 23" LCD.

CmdrTaco...

[Lethyos]

A) Didn't read the article.
B) Completely missed the point.
C) Is the goatse.cx guy.
D) A & B
E) All of the above.

I believe the correct answer is D, although arguably it could be E. Why am I bitching about CmdrTaco this time? Because of quotes like this:

"I'm not sure how I would feel about being forced into 1600x1200 all the time."

Really, how much of an idiot can this guy be? First of all, it's a huge screen. The whole point of a large display is to use really high resolution (ie 1600x1200). Things do not look unusably tiny at that resolution on 19" and higher monitors. Of course, if you have a monitor that size then lower resolutions are a total waste! If that's not his complaint, then he should have noticed that it is a "MultiSync" monitor. That means it can handle different frequencies and hence, different resolutions. So you're not stuck in 1600x1200 as Taco erroneously complains. The article gives the specs, stating that it can go from 640x480 up to 1600x1200.

Please... this is a news site for nerds. At the very least CmdrTaco could not say something so stupid that he sounds like his mommy bought him a 'puter for Christmas. "Why are the icons so small? I don't like that!"

Did they actually try 800x600??????

[John Harrison]

I have an Thinkpad T21. Native resolution at 1400x1050 is great. Scaling down to most resolutions is awful because of pixel interpolation. However, 640x480 looks just fine since the pixels are simply doubled. This leaves a black border around the screen but it is nice for games since the 3d graphics are too hot on this rig.

I would guess that the one resolution that would look great on this monitor is 800x600, since it would only require pixel doubling rather than some ugly interpolation. They don't mention whether they actually tried this resolution, and I am guessing that they didn't, because it would have surprised them. It would look just fine. Of course 800x600 is so small that it would be pretty useless for anything other than gaming with a crappy 3d card.

Don't worry about 1600x1200

[bgog]

I was worried when I got my new laptop which has a 15" 1600x1200 screen. I can't even stand that res on my 21" crt. It is awesome. LCDs are sooo much crisper that I love running at 1600x1200. It would be even easier for you at 21".

Mozilla

[poincaraux]

Kia's main page redirects to www.kia.com/index-netscape6.shtml when I look at it in mozilla.

Not earth shattering, I know, but still kinda cool.

Clearly, if I were in the market for a new car, this would be the deciding factor ;).

ViewSonic 23" better,cheaper

[tkjtkj]

why bother with such a monitor when ViewSonic (www.viewsonic.com) has a great 23.1" unit: the gorgeous VP23mb (http://www.viewsonic.com/products/lcd_vp230mb.htm ) available for $3500 from at least one vendor. its sitting before me in all its wonder.. right next to the ViewSonic VP181 , in a dual-monitor setup driven by Matrox G450.

The Cinema HD supports 1920x1200

[malice]

The Apple Cinema Display (a gorgeous display, btw, I use one at work) is not the largest Apple display. At MacWorld Tokyo, Apple came out with the Apple Cinema Display HD, which supports a resolution of 1920x1200, which is significanly more screen real estate than the already generous 1600x1024 that the old Cinema Display offers.

Both products are still available. The main reason for the Cinema HD display is that it can do full screen HD TV video at native resolution.

I played with one of the Cinema HD displays at MacWorld/Tokyo, and it is a stunningly huge display, with all of the great viewing angle/contrast/brightness and design that made the original Cinema display so wonderful -- but with an extra 665,600 pixels.

::drool::

no DVI!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

the monitor is VGA only. bad, bad, bad. Might as well buy a new 23" Apple Cinema Display (larger screen, more pixels) and a DVI-ADC converter.

A $3800 used car is "decent"?

[KidSock]

Where do you live Taco? For $3800 you'll be driving a bile colored 1998 Oldsmobile Delta that smells like an ashtray.

Re:Dead pixels - AGM line removal

[Anonymous Coward]

You can mitigate the shadows thrown onto the screen by the aperture wires. ViewSonic include instructions as to how to do this in their manuals.

Sorry; I don't have the manual for my ViewSonic to hand and I can't remember the details as I last did it a long while ago - but it's a simple procedure.

Iiyama AU4831D (19inch, DVI, 1600 x 1200)

[MeerCat]

Without wanting to show off, I just pushed by 19" CRT to one side to fit one of these as my primary display in a multi-head setup. And in the UK it cost only £1,100, which means that I can't see you yanks paying more than $1,800 or so for the same (YMMV).

Apart from the pain of trying to find a card that will drive the DVI interface at UXGA (most top out at 1280x1024, a Radeon 8500 should do it) then I've got to say that it's a very nice screen (no dead pixels so far), and I have no problems with 1600x1200 - I've always preferred a higher resolution (that's what adjustable font size if for). A CRT may have truer colours, but the rock solid, flat, matt image is fine for me and emacs...

--
T

1600x1200...

[jtshaw]

I have used Dell laptops with the 15" 1600x1200 screen and even though I find they resolution a little high on your average CRT I love it on the LCD. Probably because the LCD is just that much crisper then a CRT would be.

Where it might limit you is gaming, unless you have one hell of a video card. Eitherway, you can always run at 800x600 and have it look just fine.

'79 El Camino

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a used, rusty, 1979 El Camino for $300.
It included a crummy bed and shell and an Okie's "Gone Fishing" bumper sticker.

Fix and buff the existing 8-track: $30
Four new treads and rally rims: $500
Fix minor dents by welded steele: $50
Fix driver and passenger doors(no windows): $50
Do-it-yourself(camoflauge-vigilante green/brown) paintjob: $145 (iluvit)
V8 Longblock Chevy engine mainentance(total): $150
Interior cab redesign and maintenance(total): $200 (slaughtered my own cow/fresh-cut leather, and gutted the dashboard and sanded oak down to a nice console. Might install a hacked NetPliance IoPener with 802.11b...l33t!)

The engine is *still* awesome, purrs like a kitten. Apparently the owners kept excellent care of everything mechanical-wise, just lost interest in maintaining it. The inerior looked like someone dumped 300 pounds of cow manure through the driver-side window; maybe that's why they lost interest.

16x12 1800

[Steffan]

FYI - I just purchased a Viewsonic 20" LCD, VP201MB (in black) for about $1700. It is *amazing* it's not quite the IBM monitor, but it's about $6000 cheaper. I was looking for 1600 x 1200 resolution and this was the best thing I was able to find for the price.

I haven't seen *any* bad pixels on it - YMMV. It works great under X and has std. & DVI connectors.

Used car?

[nizo]

The largest Apple screen is cheaper, and I'm not sure how I would feel about being forced into 1600x1200 all the time. And at the price of a decent used car?

Ok I went out and bought a used car, now can anyone tell me how to replace my monitor with it?

I had the pleasure of.....

[cmkrnl]

Playing with the upcoming 9 megapixel 22 inch flat panel Iiyama @ CeBit. Made my FW900 here look like a cheap 14 inch alphascan CRT.

Curmudgeon

Spend $700 less for the Cinema HD at the same res

[malice]

Apple offers the Apple Cinema Display HD at the same 1920x1200 resolution for $3,499.00, or about $700 less than that Samsung monitor...

...and the viewing angle, contrast, brightness, and design are all top-notch.

Yawn...

[jo42]

Still happily plugging away with several SGI 1600SW for well over a year now. Someone wake me up when the industry catches up with what SGI did a few years ago...!

Pictures of Cinema Display HD

[daviddennis]

For those who like to look at pretty pictures, I visited the Apple Store and took a few

After I took the picture, I noticed that you could get two full browser windows plus a terminal window all visible at once if you put the dock on the bottom of the screen. Stunning. I plan to buy one in a few months. Enjoy!

D

Re:Pictures of Cinema Display HD

[FreeUser]

After I took the picture, I noticed that you could get two full browser windows plus a terminal window all visible at once if you put the dock on the bottom of the screen. Stunning. I plan to buy one in a few months. Enjoy!

If you've got an Apple laptop or G4, and (in the case of the laptop) don't mind the very real headaches the conversion dongle can cause (probably not an issue with the laptop as (a) it is an Apple product itself and (b) you can use it without the monitor if need be) then by all means the 23" Apple HD monitor will likely be everything you want. They are stunning, and I considered buying one until further research revealed the proprietary interface, the external dongle, the problems people are having with interference and static on the all-digital link, and the fact that there was absolutely no guarantee it would work with an PC's DVI interface (though with the converter it should, assuming you can get the scan frequencies to line up correctly).

I opted for the 24" Samsung instead. For a few hundred extra I get another 1" in size, the ability to plug analog VGA and digital DVI into the thing (as well as composite video and s-video), and the knowledge that others had already managed to get it working with XFree.

You will save some money over the Samsung though (the Apple costs about $600 less), so if you're using it with Apple equipment it is definitely the way to go. If you're using a PC however, you are taking a risk in trying to get the Apple monitor to work (the 22" monitors work, but the 23" monitors are an unknown and I could not get a straight answer out of any of the sales reps or technical support people ... lucky for me as I discovered the Samsung a few days later, after having nearly given up on getting any kind of a big monitor in the near future).

Whichever monitor you end up with, if you're running X you'll want to make use of the very fine modeline generator attached to http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/xpert/2001-Octobe r/012070.html
(save to a local file and use Uudeview, a command-line MIME-ware decoder, to extract the source file, compile, and you've got an easy modeline generator that takes horizontal, vertical, and refresh arguments to create useful and relatively safe modelines for unusual X resolutions like 1920x1200).

Whichever HD ready monitor you get, you are going to find yourself grinning like an idiot as you stare at an unbelievably large, crisp, and fine resolution screen. :-)

Not best of both worlds if LCD uses SVGA

[AHumbleOpinion]

... Seems to me that if you can afford one of these, you can also afford a CRT and a monitor switch, and then have the best of both worlds ...

It's not the best of both worlds if the flat panel is using SVGA rather than DVI so it can go through a switchbox. Perhaps just getting a second video card and putting the tube on it would be better. DVI for the desktop and SVGA for movies and games.

Here's the funny part...

[sjonke]

"Samsung Inside"?

SGI 1600SW is still the champ

[Anonymous Coward]

I love my SGI 1600SW. Or should I say 1600SWs. Last year SGI blew out their stock at around $600 a monitor. I have three. I run them in an a lazy-J shape. One of them is rotated to be 1024x1600 and the other two run at 1600x1024. One big desktop. I use the rotated one for web browsing - you haven't really browsed thew web until you've done it with a browser window 1600 pixels tall, I hardly ever have to scroll anymore. I use the other two windows for normal stuff like mail, word-processing, pr0n, etc.

For less than $2K this three-headed beast can't be beat. Despite being something like a 5 year old design, the pixel response is so quick that motion video and/or games is not a problem and the sharpness of text is an order of magnitude better than anything you'll find on CRTs.

What's wrong with 1600x1280? I will tell you...

[aludal]

...it's very POOR res for a 21" monitor, LCD, CRT, or whatever plasma. I've got my HP P1110 21" .24AG (Sony) refurb for $349, and this 45 kg Flat Display Trinitron 300 MHz bandwidth monster is capable of 2048x1536 (132 dpi at my 19.7 visual screen size). Naturally, a (refurb., cost here in Bay Area @$42-$68) Matrox 32 MB G400 300 MHz video card was needed, plus my modeline must be carefully tweaked... But then you'd see miracles of genuine forms of your serif fonts starting to appear right before your eyes, you'd probably wouldn't ever need all that blurring antialiasing, you'd be capable to read whole online books right off the screen for hours at a time without headache... The only Crapscheisse I have with this res is that there's no CRT 21"-22", 0.20-0.21AG monitor, and no video card both capable of 2800x2100 or so, available at some discount prices. With these, you'd get around 180 dpi which is arguably the reasonable target res for regular angular sizes one used to stare at one's 21" monitor.

There's even a slight gotcha in the Apple world.

[daviddennis]

Interesting that Apple is a price leader in such an absurdly expensive product category. It's probably because they sell a lot of them to their hardcore, screen real estate loving graphic arts users. Oh, how they must grin when Adobe and Macromedia add acres of pallettes to their applications!

But here's a gotcha if you're eyeing the monitor.
If you have a 450 dual processor, as I have, the included graphics card is not compatible with the HD display (presumably because it needs more than 16MB video RAM). So watch out or resign yourself to getting a new computer or graphics card.

(I'm likely to get a new machine because it's time for me to get something faster anyway).

By the way, for some reason the URL for my pictures didn't appear in my post, so if you want to see them, they're at

http://www.amazing.com/applestore/cinema.html

Since I'm a dedicated MacOS X user, there's no question I'm going to get the Apple. It might interest you that I believe Samsung made the flat panel used by the Cinema HD Display.

I have a 1600SW I use under Linux at work, and I still haven't figured out any way to hook it up that works at full resolution with Linux and doesn't involve absurdly overpriced graphics cards. Sigh.

D

Tek

[Anonymous Coward]

I too have used 1 point (or less ?) fonts on these storage displays...I still miss the zapping sound when hitting the erase screen key...

SGI solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Suprised no-one's mentioned the SGI F220. 22-inch widescreen, 1600x1024, video inputs.

Spend $1000 less and get a 23" LCD screen.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Cornerstone f2300 LCD has a 23" screen, 1600x1200 resolution and is priced $1000 less at $2800.

Decent used car?

[F8336]

For 3600 dollars you can get a good used car in the year 1965.

--Joey

Tubes baby, yeah! Not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Compare two images, one of vertical stipes and
the other of horizontal stripes. I mean the
obvious: black and white, one pixel wide, etc.

Make the images decent-sized, so that you can
stand back 10 feet (3 meters) from the display
and see them as gray.

Compare brightness. Your CRT will suck at this.
Any LCD with a digital interface (DVI or ADC)
will look perfect. Somebody try this with a
hybrid display (LCD with VGA input) please.

The older your CRT gets, the worse it handles
this test.

Re:There's even a slight gotcha in the Apple world

[FreeUser]

I have a 1600SW I use under Linux at work, and I still haven't figured out any way to hook it up that works at full resolution with Linux and doesn't involve absurdly overpriced graphics cards. Sigh.

You can use an NVidia or radeon card (make sure you get one with the DVI serial chipset that can handle 1600x1024 resolution), and attach the DVI out to an external dongle SGI sells separately.

This works, and if you've already got the monitor its viable, but the dongle is a little finicky, and you may get some 3/2 scaler artifacts when in text mode, or watching mplayer fullscreen (the artifacts go away in normal graphics mode, and if you move the mplayer display over a few pixels), but it does work FWIW.

Nowhere near as nice as the Samsung, or the Apple 22"/23" displays, but nothing to sneeze at either. :-)