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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?
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.
Because other than Steve Jobs, nobody gets a Christmas bonus large enough to afford the clear plastic and Apple logo.
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.
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!
It's funny how a 1280x1024 LCD at $799 is considered opulent. It wasn't so long ago that an 800x600 15" CRT cost more than that.
Most places I've worked have sprung for Trinitron tubes back when they cost a premium. Why is it unreasonable to think they'll go LCD? Do you have any idea how much these things save in desk space? and frankly, they make users happy, which also helps the bottom line. The up-front cost is a small price to pay for the continuing dividends.
Kevin Fox
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.
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.
If you want to stare at text all day long, you'll need a CRT with a fast refresh rate to approach LCD's "no refresh" approach, so in that respect LCDs are far superior. But, if you want to play action games, you'll need an LCD with a fast update to approach a CRTs refresh rate. On the other hand, if you have too much desk space and need to put more watts through your UPS, CRTs are superior in that respect also. But, LCDs still don't have the brightness of a CRT.
In short, LCD and CRT tech are different and the value of each will depend on just what the user is looking for in a monitor.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
> 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.
...
Because they believe that:
Ignorance is bliss, some people say.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
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.
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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.
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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.
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