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Today's Fastest Retail LCD
An anonymous reader writes "ViewSonic has recently released a very exciting product, a nineteen inch LCD display with a 3ms response time. This is the fastest LCD panel currently available to consumers, and it is clearly aimed at gamers and movie watchers. Dubbed the VX924, the display is part of ViewSonic's X series which tries to comnbine performance with style. The word on the street is that Samsung will have a 4ms display available this year, but this may be the only 3ms."
This is not an article.
Most of the super fast LCD's are 6-bit, which kind of sucks.
"Hey, check out this exciting new product!!!"
I seem to recall some controversy about how response is measured. Some numbers are reported as the time it takes to go from black to white and back to black. Some are reporting just from black to white or white to black. And some are reporting the time it takes to go from one gradient of gray to another gradient.
Buyer beware.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
However, besides that, it's a top-notch monitor that I haven't had any problems with.
- A
I have a 19" LCD that I use everyday. Is it THAT noticeable if I have 7-10 ms instead of 3?
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
...when will manufacturers manage to produce LCD screens with more accurate colour renditioning?
If you're into digital photography in any kind of non-serious way and actually want to preview pictures the way they'll look when they print, then I believe that a CRT is still the best method of doing this.
A shame really, as I'd save a load of deskspace with an LCD screen...
.Saw another article on this display. They drive the pixel hard, causing it to "ring," it really doesn't settle until ~8ms, iirc. The 3 ms is also gray to gray, the new standard that gives faster response times than the older black to white to black measurement.
Nothing to see here, not even an A to FR!
Could we at least get a coupon?
I learned from this old Slashdot comment that LCD timings are highly misleading. The '3ms' number means something quite different from what you think it means. In short, see this article, or this forum topic. I've reposted the contents of the latter below. .....because it measures the time it takes for full white to black or full black to white pixel transitions. So unless you have your monitor set to maximum brightness & contrast (so that the picture is so bright it burns your eyeballs out) and only use your monitor for flipping blank screens from white to black, and back again, whether the monitor has a 8ms response time or 100ms response time, it doesn't mean an awful lot.
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"Quoted response times by manufacturers are largely meaningless and misleading.
It's the same reason why monitors based on the 20ms Hydis panel outperform the 12ms Samsung panel, the 16ms AU Optronics panel, the 16ms LG/Phillips panel.......
In real world use, the vast majority of monitors (over 95% of them) don't perform anywhere near the quoted response times. That's why you see streaking on the 12ms Samsung panel - its performing at 25-30ms.
Let me try and explain further.
Look at the response times for the so called 'fast' Samsung 172X which is based on a '12ms' panel:-
http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/other/samsung-2/gr2 -2.gif
Since most people have their monitors set to medium brightness (about 80-180 on the grey level scale on the graph) and many applications - particularly games use grey to grey pixel transitions (or one colour to another colour) - the typical response time is somewhere between 25-30ms. Not quite 12ms is it?
Now look at the same response time graph for the Acer AL1721 - a mid level TFT with claimed 16ms response time:-
http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/other/response-6/a2 1-grey.gif
The graph is much flatter, so across brightness and contrast levels, you're going to get consistent response times. At most common user settings, the "slower" 16ms is actually faster than the "quicker" 12ms panel.
Not quite as straightforward as the manufacturers would like you to think. The problem is, by that time, most people have parted with their money. When I was first looking to buy a TFT monitor, I thought that Kustom PCs were a bit mad to stock the Acer monitors in preference to others. However, it's only on further examination that you discover they perform very very well in games - for example, the AL1731M is based on the Hydis panel - and will in fact, outperform the so called 'faster' TFT panels.
From Toms Hardware Guide:-
"For games, the Hydis 20ms panel is still the one to beat. It's not yet perfect, but we know of no other that is faster (based on our tests, of course, and not manufacturers' specifications). Once again, we must insist strongly that the manufacturers' specifications are not to be trusted. "
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/display/20040326/ lcd-08.html
"The response times suppliers associate with their panels vary, anywhere from 16 ms to 25 ms. The only problem is that these figures mean nothing. Or at least, not a lot. An article published in 2001 that can be viewed at Xtremtech explains the situation pretty well, and we have summarized it for you in the section entitled "RT between colors". But this isn't the only problem..."
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/display/20031105
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
19" LCD have only 1280x1024 resolution like the 17" why not a 1920 x 1200 ?
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
From LCD monitors I've looked at, the color of the 6-bit LCDs is not as good as the 8-bit LCDs. Some LCD monitor makers recently switched to 6-bit in order to get lower response times. There was nothing in the review about this. Shabby work.
This monitor only supports 6 bpp, unlike your CRT and other LCDs that use the full 8. This means that the monitor cannot display 16.7m colors at one time. If you open up Photoshop or some other app that can display color gradients, you'll notice banding of the colors.
I bought it more than two months ago. This just isn't news at all.
Especially when the same company announced a 2ms-display just a couple of days ago.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
All the best product announcements come out on /. Man, if I want to know about a nerdly phone or an LCD monitor that /matters,/ I'm going to be sure to click through to the cool product announcements.
Can we please create a Product Announcements Section and let me turn it off?
That would be the nerdliest way to deal with this stuff: organize it right out of my existance.
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What's the color depth? 6 or 8 bit? I don't care how fast an LCD is... If it shows even a HINT of color banding then it's worthless to me, worse than the crappy used packard bell 15" monitor I have hanging off of my server.
Unfortunately, not many manufacturers are listing color depth in the specs, focusing instead on non-standard claims of response time. There ought to be at least 4 standard measurements - overall brightness, color depth, resolution, and black-white-black response time. Instead, we get resolution, *maybe* a claim of supporting x million colors which could mean anything since they all interpolate to improve image quality anyhow, and a bogus response time number.
The worst part is that so-called enthusiast and gamer hardware review sites let them get away with this. If the color depth isn't printed on the box, the review sites don't even bother to get and report the number. So they're comparing 6 and 8 bit LCDs against each other and not reporting an important difference between the two, or giving great review ratings on monitors without bothering to mention that the monitor only supports a 6 bit color depth so you're guaranteed to get color banding in many situations.
Ok, we admit it... They're ALL fast now. So how about some info on actual image quality?
1600x1200 is 4:3, but 1280x1024 is 5:4. Seems like an odd choice for an aspect ratio.
Why does my post history abruptly stop? I want to laugh at the stupid things I posted as a kid.
According to the product info on Newegg, the 3ms response time is grey to grey. It has a 6ms response time for white to black to white.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." - H.L. Mencken
http://www.behardware.com/articles/588-1/lcd-19-be linea-10-19-20-and-benq-fp91v.html
I like the new LCD tests they use - and with screenshots illustrating the pixel responses! Very nice.
It's a matter of seeing them at all. The problem with lower colour depths is that you miss midtones. You still have to go from the darkest to the brightest, there's just less steps to do it in, so you get less precise colour.
I mean sure, in theory, you need only 786k colours to have a different colour for every pixel on a 1024x768 display. That means that 20-bit would be more than enough. However what you'd have to do is have that as a palette, a lookup table, that continously changed as the old 8-bit VGA stuff did. In reality, it's terribly impractical.
For monitors it doesn't work at all, when you are talking about the bit size it's the number of levels per colour channel it can display and it's fixed. So with 6 bits per channel that 64 different levels which produces some nasty banding.
In fact, 24-bit (8-bits per channel) really isn't enough actually. 16 million colours sounds like a lot and is, but you discover that humans and percieve more than 256 shades of gray. If you draw a gray gradient in 24-bit mode on a good monitor, you will be able to see some banding. You need more like 30-bit, that's 10 per channel or 1024 grays, before it becomes totally seemless.
"Today's Fastest Retail LCD"
I tried to buy one last night, but I couldn't catch it!
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Viewsonic has an entire range of products, from their budget line to the professional line. The professional line CRTs are great, and I'd stack them up against just about anybody elses. The budget line are... budget equipment, just as you'd expect. If all your experience with Viewsonic is what you are seeing at CompUSA, etc, you are probably just looking at thier budget line products.
Actually, they've measured black to black as fast as 0ms in the lab, but convinced that marketing folks that nobody would believe that they could achive those numbers. Next year, they're going to release the same panels at 2ms, with 1ms in 2Q2007, then again with a 250ns spec in 2H2008. By quoting a higher-than-actual response they hope to reduce user complaints of spec-fixing, as well as provide a path to better the specs each year without any additional research expenditures.
Rumor has it they have also tested the panel at 0ms white to white, but they're not releasing any data on "lit" pixel response until the 3Q2006 panels are ready to go into the distribution chain.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
the 3ms is for gray to gray
<rant>
Honestly, I would never buy an lcd (or just about anything else) without first reading a Tom's Hardware review since they actually review the item.
For me personally, it'd be cheaper to get another fat crt and get a deeper desk than to replace my existing crt with a smaller, thinner lcd that has usable. resolution and color reproduction. If I was looking for something comperable, I'd have to buy one that was 21", 8bpp color (not 6bpp), non-existent The only advantage I can see is the fact that an lcd base takes 4" on the desk, while a crt takes 14"+. As long as I'm not stuck in a cubicle (an all too harrowing memory) I will most likely never switch to lcd because of their price versus performance. At work it's easier to ask for a new desk than to ask for an expensive lcd. At home it's easier to swallow the price for a desk than an expensive lcd.
</rant>
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If you have dead pixels on your display. There is nothing more annoying than playing a game or watching a video, with (at least) one bright green pixel right in the middle of your screen that just won't go away. In such a case you'll be too distracted to even notice any ghosting your display may have.
Until someone manages to figure out a way to mass produce LCD displays with a smaller percentage of defects, LCD's still don't compare to CRT's. Unless of course they are for office use, where size is a driving factor.
I own this monitor and it's actually very nice. I needed more desk space and my old ViewSonic 17" CRT was killing that. For gaming reasons, I opted for this monitor. I've played a bit of Counter Strike: Source, but mostly Battlefield 2 and it's performance is quite exceptional. I really do not notice any "ghosting." My only complaint w/ the monitor is that you cannot adjust its height. You can tilt it back and forth, minimally at that. This is pretty annoying as it sits relatively high on its bevel. I'm used to it now, but the first few weeks really cramped my neck.
Actually, you can get a really decent high dynamic range image by extending only the luminance channel. We distinguish between bright and dark a lot more precisely than between colors; do a CMYK separation on a JPEG image and compare the Y and K channels if you don't believe me. The Radiance HDR format uses this trick; the only extended channel is an 8-bit luminance exponent; aside from that, it uses regular 24-bit RGB.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The ASUS PM17TU Monitor will also offer 3ms response time. More specifically this is gray to gray (Just like the Viewsonic). But the I don't think the viewsonic nor the ASUS is anything "revolutionary". Besides the contrast ratio's aren't that good... The Asus is 600:1 and the Viewsonic is 550:1 There are more important things than just response time. I do though like thier zero dead pixel policy, I'm glad to see more manufacturers offering this as a standard.
Start gimp, create a 1024x1024 image.
Select gradient tool, disable dithering/sampling
Draw black->white gradient top to bottom of image
Zoom in a bunch.
You should see a band every 4 "gimp pixels" since 1024 / (2^8) == 4.
If you only have 6-bit color you'll get a band every 1024 / (2^6) == 16 pixels.
Anybody know it that's correct or not? Is it that 6 bits of the color settle in 8ms/3ms/whatever and the other 2 bits settle later, or is it just 6bits per color no matter what?
In the days of CRT monitors the only thing that mattered was the size ... and so manufacturers lied about it, and eventually there were lawsuits, and now we have the crazy "19 inch (17.5 inch viewable)" way to describe how big the screen is on a CRT. Thankfully this didn't infect LCD advertizing copy-writers, so when they say "19 inch", it really is that big.
But they have to fudge something. There's no storage in a monitor, so they can't fall back on the old and trusted "100 GB" which is based on 10^9 bytes in a gigabyte, and is the pre-formatted size. Only a few LCD monitors have built-in speakers, so usually they don't have the option to use TMPO watts @ 1KHz rather than RMS across 20Hz-20Khz. So being creative types, they've found that "contrast ratio", and "response time" aren't specified very well, giving plenty of room to put impressive numbers in big type next to the picture in the ad.
-1 blatant advert
:)
-1 lies on specs
-256 6bit color, that's crap.
Keeping my CRT thanks very much
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
If this is such a gaming LCD, why doesn't it support a higher resolution? Granted, with LCD's, either you get resolution or a nicer "refresh rate," but AFAIK, most game enthusiasts who go out and get the blazing hot, fast LCD's don't want the be bottlenecked by a fixed native resolution of 1280x1024 or the hindrance of ghosting.
Until gamers can get both "3ms" and higher resolutions, I don't see the market for gaming LCD's going too, too far. I've been looking at these things for weeks as a serious purchase (and have been watching them over the years), and I like Dell's 2001FP, but I just don't know about how it will match up to my five year old Sony E400 19" CRT that can do the same resolution at a crisp 75Hz. Plus, if my CRT evar goes bad, I can replace it with a better one at about a tenth of the cost of a "decent" LCD.
I've been reading through the discussion, and I've been thinking of responses, but it's all a muddied mess out there. so, I've decided to lay out the basic discussion points and my thoughts as one post.
First of all, why do we need faster-response LCD screens, when we already have 4ms?
There are a few key reasons for this. For starters, the 4ms number doesn't mean much. It is the time the panel takes to turn a pixel from black to white, then back to black. In a traditional panel, this is usually the fastest transition possible...and all other tranitions (Grey to Grey) are MUCH slower. Sometimes GTG transitions can be as much as 3x slower than the Black-White-Black number.
The industry has concocted a possible solution to this called Overdrive.
Overdrive takes advantage of the fast transition in Black-White-Black. Every time an input pixel changes color, the pixel on-screen is bootsted up to white, and allowd to fall back down to the new color.
This is slightly slower than the Black-White-Black transition time, but it's much faster than going Grey-to-Grey.
Unfortunately, Overdrive has a drawback that is DIRECTLY tied to the response time. Every time a pixel changes, it is overdriven WHITE for a fraction of a second, until it settles down to the target color. In darker scenes, or in cases where where colors are almost uniform, as pixels change these white pixels are painfully obvious. Better response times are the only thing that can remove this annoying artifacting.
Read about these artifacts at Tom's, who did the first review ever on Overdrive panels in May.
This link to Tom's also addresses the other issue discussed in this thread:
What's wrong with 18-bit color?
The dithering algorithms used by panels to simulate 24-bit color are not all that bad, but they have a serious drawback:
Dithering yields poor quality in scenes which require high contrast. Foggy, smoky or dark scenes, which tend to have subtlte color transitions, look like crap on an 18-bit panel. The panel is constantly changing pixels that are VERY close to each other in color, resulting in a muddy image. Unfortunately, the only way to avoid such artifacts it to buy an MVA panel with true 24-bit color (and sacrifice response time).
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000483064834/ [Viewsonic announces 2ms 19" lcd.]