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LCD Round-up
TheKillerBee writes "The TechReport has posted a nice comparison of several different LCDs. A plethora of benches are present to help you decide how to spend that Christmas bonus check!" The screen update times still aren't fast enough for gamers, but they still are ever so delicious.
You obviously don't work in the IT industry, I can see. Perhaps you're a superhero from another dimension who's crimefighting organization still gives bonuses?
Why are the Macintosh LCD monitors not represented? They work quite well not just with Macintosh computers but with PCs as well, as my desktop can easily demonstrate. Additionally, Apple's patented display has none of the viewing angle problems the author complains of. Hardly representative.
Dr. Joseph Hairston
Superintendent, CCBC
And I'm about 2 weeks from getting a 17" monitor. I've looked at Sony, NEC and Viewsonic in person and so far the NEC 1700+ series look great, but still $650 is enough to give pause. There are cheaper, but you get what you pay for, and a 17" for $550 may be one sorry investment.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
From the article:-
"The good will have to really outweigh the bad and the ugly if you want to justify an opulent LCD purchase to your boss, to yourself, or worse, to your significant other."
Obviously LCD still hasn't bettered CRT so keep you old monitor and spend the dosh on something else instead.
The pixel response time of LCDs has improved dramatically over the years, but CRTs still have the edge. What's most worrying about pixel response times, however, is that LCDs with similar pixel response time specs don't always show the same performance in the real world. It's really something you have to check for yourself. Slow pixel response time = ghosting and streaking.
Despite the years that lcd's have been around I still don't get why people buy them over crt. Yes they take up less space and if you poke them you can make cool designs, but past that they suck. I just hate it when I'm scrolling and the page gets all blurry, it's like a bad cam version of a movie.
thanks!
help fill in hidden movie endings @ End of the Credits
Don't you mean that Christmas Severence Check? Or even more likely that Christmas Unemployment Check?
The first manufacturer to go to an all-LCD lineup doesn't get it's products reviewed?
Besides pushing the technology, they've actually got LCDs that are decently bright and easy to profile and calibrate. I wish they'd reviewed some of Apple's displays - I'd like to see if the dollar premium is really worth it. (The easel adjustment on the 17", 22" and 23" is pretty killer though!)
I believe the author was talking about ghosting caused by slow LCD updates, which is still an issue. Sure, you may not be able to see the flicker you get with CRTs, but you can see after-images when you've got a lot of motion going on.
Do these retailers take Ralphs(California Grocery Chain) Gift certificates.
Thats what I get for a Chistmas bonus!
moo.
Just to set the record straight, many people, myself included, have found that update times less than 30 ms are plenty good for even the fastest games (UT2003 springs to mind). My 15" KDS is excellent for gaming -- I can't imagine ever going back to a CRT.
I'm a real estate whore... I'm currently running 2 19" monitors at 1600x1200 (3200x1200) and I'm seriously considering getting a third. I've looked at LCD's every once in a while and I've never been pleased with what I've found, I can get a very decent 19" for under $200, Viewsonic PF790's are what I'm using now. Lower cost, higher res, I could even get three of these and be right in the middle of the pack pricewise. Apart from the Apple Cinema HD (which I wouldn't mind getting four of) I can't think of an LCD that cuts it.
sig.
No, but facts do. What, do you live in a cave? Apple makes LCDs that aren't attached to powerbooks and iMacs.
The display control panel may say 60 Hz, but that's not how fast the LCD updates. LCD updates are dependent on how fast the diode can turn on and off, usually called response time. It's generally in the range of 30 or 40 ms (about 25-30 Hz), though they are getting faster - I think I've seen some as fast as 20 ms (50 Hz) recently.
If you look a the ones they're comparing, they are all 15" and 17" displays. Apple has one 17".
They are comparing these displays for the "PC" market - in order to use an Apple display on a non-Apple computer you have to get an expensive adaptor in addition to the already over-priced display. The ones reviewed are relatively inexpensive displays.
Cut them some slack, journalists have the right to review whatever the hell they damn well please - if you want a review comparing the Apple displays to other people's displays, do it yourself.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I forget the exact tech, but the basic idea was using a set of 'high-tensile' coupled LCDs instead of the regular LCD cells. Usually their nature means that they can only be cast to minute sizes, far too small for useful work (a 15" screen would require a minimum of 4096*4096 cells, and even then the display would be grainy due to the cell-pitch.
Philips tried to work around this by using flared-end fibre optics, but it'll come as no surprise that this produced an exceptionally blurry and dull image. Sony, however, have found a set of lab conditions under which HT-coupled LCD can be crystallised at sensible sizes.
It'll be expensive to start with, but this may well spell the end of the power hungry CRT.
Sexy LCD 17" Monitors - Part I
Comparison of 17" LCDs: The Heavyweights Enter The Ring - Part II
Cheers
One thing I have been wondering for a while, why are there no 17" 1600x1200 lcd monitors? There are laptops that support that resolution with smaller screens, but no monitors, as far as I know.
One question:
Do you actually know what you're talking about?
Full duplex? Half duplex? Why does my LCD need to transmit to my video card, instead of the other way around?
I'm an electrical engineer and have no idea what you mean by "full duplex" as related to displays. I can see a few sync signals being helpful, maybe, but still: what does the LCD have to say to my computer?
...
The screen update times still aren't fast enough for gamers, but they still are ever so delicious.
The only games where this could possibly matter are the fastest paced shooter games, and even then it is a marginal problem. Certainly isn't a big enough problem for me to want to take up 300 square miles of desktop space with a glorified vaccuum tube.
Besides there are games besides Quake out there you know. Some of us even play them.
I think the biggest downside with CRT computer monitors is the fact that monitor manufacturers still haven't addressed the biggest downside of these monitors, namely the large depth of the monitor due to the way CRT's are manufactured.
:-(
I remember a few years ago Viewsonic addressed this with the A75s model, a 17" CRT monitor that had a physical depth substantially less than other 17" CRT monitors. I'm very disappointed that Viewsonic (let alone the CRT monitor industry) has not adapted the short-depth CRT concept to all their 17", 19" and 21" monitors.
CRT's fast response makes them excellent for viewing fast motion graphics (e.g., high-end games and DVD playback), but monitor manufacturers should be working on shortening the depth of the tube so the monitor can fit onto desks easier.
I've been using an LCD panel for everything, including gaming, for a little over a year now. At first, the "ghosting" from the slow diodes is a bit annoying when playing certain games, particularly FPS games and the like.
However, it's nothing you can't get used to, and in some games it is hardly noticeable at all. It's certainly no disadvantage to the player -- at our most recent LAN party I was kickin' a** in Unreal Tournament on my LCD panel. Everyone else had CRTs.
There are lots of pluses that you get with an LCD panel, such as: virtually non-existent refresh flicker, clarity and crispness, light weight (a huge plus if you need to tote your monitor to your LAN parties), small footprint, no glare, and less eyestrain.
I'd never give up all those benefits just because of the small amount of ghosting that I get.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
> 60Hz is ample for 3d gaming, especially when on an lcd you can't actually see 60Hz flicker...
:) is for coding. Text is crystal clear !
I concur. I have a 17" AOC LM-700 (1280x1024). First thing I did when I bought it was:
- Play Diablo 2 at 640x480 & 800x600.
- Play Quake 3.
- Watched some DVDs with high action. (Jackie Chan & James Bond.)
I was concerned about potential ghosting and other artifacts (namely aliasing at fractional multiplicative resolutions: 800 does not evenly divide into 1280), but everything looked good. (The LCD applied bi-linear filtering to 800x600 resolutions)
Where LCD's *really* shine (pardon the pun
Sure a pure green gradient (white to pure green) on my LCD has banding (I figure the LCD only has ~ 7 bits for green), but pictures look great on it whethere they are still or moving ones.
I just wish this review, and Tom's would do a *comprehensive* LCD review.
Cheers
Personally, I would only consider the Dell 1702FP (a beaufiful 17" DVI panel) or the Dell 2000FP (a huge 20" panel that can be had for $1300 if you apply some Dell discounts). Samsungs are OK but I don't like their panels' piss poor black reproduction. If you want your computer to look hip go get a Samsung, but if you want a screen that delivers beautiful images then Dell is the better vendor even if their case styling isn't as nice.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Moderators: Check this guy's history for yourself, a known troll. He throws as many buzzwords together as possible. Look into it yourself, there is no USBII.v bus in development. And "full-duplex" communication has nothing to do with LCD screens.
This is not informative, this is pure BS.
...
... doesn't flicker at 60Hz, it flickers at 120Hz. Your electricity is a 60Hz sine wave, so current flows one way, stops, flows the other way, and stops again 60 times per second. The light goes off momentarily at both of the stops.
A good flourescent system using an electronic ballast, however, increases the frequency to the kHz range and produces no visible flicker.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
I have to say that my viewsonic va800 (17.4") is quite the awesome peice of eq. I'm a software eng by day and a gamer by night... As for the programming side of the coin, any monitor will do, bug screen space is king... that paired with crisp fonts makes the code flow. As for the game side, the lcd I have is very good for games. I have owned 2 other LCD flat panels that were just plain too slow (disposal of pixels) to play games on, but the va800 has it down. Scrolling, full motion, no bluring in the least. Don't get me wrong, not all viewsonics are great for games.. their 15 inch one was just terrible, and a friend of mine claims his 19 inch black viewsonic was too slow for him. Something about the va800 made me keep it for gaming where the others went back to the store. Just my 2 cents for the gamers.
;)
Oh and some of the other PRO's of LCD that make it totally worth it if you have the extra cash and have found one with a quick pixel disposal rate that you are comfortable playing games on:
1) one touch auto sync / setup. Match the res and contrast with a click of a button. No black boxes around your viewing area. BTW 17.4 means 17.4 VIEWABLE.. unlike in the CRT world.
2) no more areas of the screen that you just have to deal with distortion on... Cant count how many monitors are just slighly curved or crooked in the corners or discolored in a fashion that even a degaus coil won't fix.
3) LIGHT and small. This one is under rated. I had a 21 inch monitor at work that was soo big, I couldn't get it all the way in the corner section of the cube where the computer should go and still have a keyboard on the desk. What a joke.. I don't need a big set top TV thank you. LCD's pivot, twist.. all that... turn the screen show a friend. Move the screen to a new location, don't break your back.
4) low power consumtion... quit dimming the lights when you power on your RAY GUN.
5) multiple input and or tuners built in. Some of the lcds have multiple inputs (svideo, multiple analogs..), some even have tv and radio turners with PIP built in (I had a samsung that did that.. TITS!). I can have my ultra 60 and my game PC plugged into mine and hit the 'switch input' button and boom.. there's the other machine. And with all that space i saved for having an LCD, I can have 2 keyboard and mice! JOY!
Thats's about it. I like mine overall... it was 1600 bucks back in the day, now it's like 700 retail. I'm very happy with it... the moral is 'try em all' cause loads of them just do plain suck for disposal rates. I made the guy at the computer store play a DVD on all of them before I considered purchasing one
All the lcd panel reviews seem to focus on the same thing, cost. When people review crts they don't go out and find the cheapest monitor they can consider that the standard (That's why you have 'budget' reviews).
I've been using an AG Neovo 17.4" monitor for about eight months and it is absolutely fantastic (IMHO better than the mac 17's). The text is crisp and the color reproduction is oustanding. Yes, it's expensive (~$899US), but if I have to look at something for 10+ hours a day I'm going to spend the extra cash. Besides, how many slashdotters are there that don't seem to have a problem buying $400+ video cards twice a year to make sure they get the extra 200fps out of quake3?
As for gaming, I play UT2003 on it all the time without a single bit of ghosting. One thing from the article that the author should have made manditory was the use of DVI. Why anyone would buy a DVI-only lcd is beyond me. Having both inputs is great for using my laptop (analog output only), but the picture is noticebly better through the DVI connector.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I use a sound spectrogram (voice print) display that I scroll in the same way. Synched to the vertical retrace using DirectX and viewed on a glass monitor at over 80 Hz, the scroll is rock solid and blur free. Try this scroll on ANY LCD (even the 20 ms response kind) and it looks like a blurred mess.
I got the same blurred mess when I bumped the glass monitor refresh to 120 Hz but only updated the scroll every other frame (60 Hz). I pointedly don't get a blurred mess when refreshing and updating at 60 Hz.
What this tells me is that a glass monitor gives a stroboscobic image (it flashes the image and goes dim in between refreshes), and for certain kinds of motion (i.e. a scroll or pan of the entire field), you can do amazing things with glass and get garbage with LCD. It also tells me that LCD will never be any good for motion, no matter how fast the response time, because it is not strobing the image.
In your typical game (or even a movie), only part of the scene is changing over a pretty much static background. On the other hand, if you want a game with a scrolling 2-D display, like a moving "treasure map", you are going to notice this difference. With the right image, the effect is quite striking -- you don't need a "Golden Ear" to hear the difference between a tube and transistor amp.
I suppose LCD will eventually take over, and there will be us few glass monitor holdouts, but the LCD will NEVER do motion well, but the masses of people will resign themselves to LCD's being good enough.
Kind of funny that two of the most highly regarded makes of LCD monitors are ignored.
Look, let me clear up some common misconceptions.
LCDs do not refresh at a certain rate per second like CRTs. In fact, once a pixel is set on an LCD, that pixel remains set to that color until it is changed.
THERE ARE NO UPDATES ON AN LCD. Each pixel is wired, and stays the same color until it's signal changes.
This is why there is noticable blur on an LCD. On a CRT, we would just see the whole screen getting updated at an incredibly low rate and call it insane flicker. But LCDs simply have a certain delay between when you change the pixel's color signal, and when the pixel gets updated. It looks blurry because it's not uniform rederawing of the screen like a CRT refresh.
There are three problems presently with LCDs that manufacturers will have to address before they overthrow CRTs:
*Even highend LCDs do not have the response time to even deliver 60fps video without blurring, and by far games are the worst thing to view on an LCD with a slow response time. As you look around and maneuver, the whole scene is blurred. The best LCDs on the market right now have around 25-30ms response rate, which is barely above 30fps. I believe we had this debate years ago ( 60 vs 30 ), and if the horsepower in today's video cards is anything to judge by, I'd say 60fps minimum won. I know personally I can't live with anything less. Sure, not everyone needs this kind of response time, but making it avaliable for the performance player is still a necessity.
*Most lowend mass-market LCDs have even worse response times (~45ms), and end up looking terrible when you view a video, or even when you're just scrolling through Explorer. People have come to expect a certain responsiveness and capability after paying for a multigigahertz toaster.
*Very few LCD screens have addressed the fact that their contrast ratios are terrible, even compared to cheap CRTs. I know a lot of you are proponents of LCDs because of their lack of flicker, but the truth is low contrast can cause just as much strain on the eyes, especially when reading.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
I have a Dell Latitude with a 15" LCD screen running natively at 1600x1200, and it looks fantastic. Why the hell can't I get a standalone LCD with that high a resolution? 15" LCDs max out at 1024x768; 17" at 1280x1024. Half the reason that text is so clear on my laptop screen is the high resolution, and that advantage disappears for a standalone.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
In 1999 Apple invested $100 million into Samsung and uses their LCDs for their own displays.
--- What?
Does anyone out there know of the environmental impact of LCDs vs CRTs. I know that with the traditional CRT their is a high toxic metal content - lead, phosphorous,cadmium, barium and mercury. Also I think that they take more energy to produce. I have not seen similar concerns expressed with the production and disposal of LCDs. It could be of course that one can recylce the content of a CRT but not that of LCDs. Any comments welcome.
Semper ubi sub ubi
i have spoken with LCD fluorescent tube manufactures. supposedly, these tubes dim significantly after a few years.
unfortunately, these tubes are not end-user replaceable.
so, you spend multiple times what you'd spend on a CRT, only to have the thing lose half of it's brightness a few years later. the simple solution would be to replace the tubes, but you can't because the LCD unit is designed to be disposable.
until it is possible to easily replace the fluorescent tubes in an LCD panel, i won't be investing in this technology.
Hmm. I have a pair of NEC 1530V monitors connected to a 1.2Ghz PIII with GeForce4 MX440 video card. Playing RTCW I get around 80-90 FPS on interior scenes and maybe 40 on exterior.
I don't notice any blurring, or have any problem playing the game. There may be some, but it's not substantial enough to be an issue.
Contrast is an issue in games. Whenever I start up the game, I have to go in and manually adjust the contrast settings. Once I do that, then I can see in all the dark corners, etc.
I'd have to say your comments are based on the LCD screens that we had available 4-5 years ago, or even on some of the cheaper laptops today. Either that or you are exagerrating the issues.
You might want to hold off a couple of years. I have one of the 2nd gen plasma screens (the current new ones are 3rd/4thish) and using it as a monitor pretty much sucks. If you use it at the native res it looks okay, but nothing to write home about. Definitely better than any of the TV-out including the matrox and much better than any of the consoles but the graphics are not sharp. Also the most glaring problem the screens do get burn in AND they have horrible brightness compared to LCDs and monitors.
With that said, the DVD watching and console gaming experience is pretty much second to none. I prefer the screen over LCD projectors.
--- I do not moderate.
what does the LCD have to say to my computer?
"Hello, I'll be your primary display today. I am a Brand X LCD display and can do 1280x1024@60Hz natively. I can do 32bpp, 24bpp, or even 16bpp if you really want, via my digital interface. My black-to-white response time is 20ms, so you can take advantage of that if you like. I have dead pixels at 334,125; 4,85; and 942,223. Hope you can compensate for this. Incidentally, I am DRM-enabled, and you're not registered, so don't even try sending me any copyrighted content. Have a nice day."
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife