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Budget 27" IPS Displays From Korea Are For Real
crookedvulture writes "Giant, high-resolution LCD monitors have been around for years, but they've always been prohibitively expensive. Good displays based on IPS panel technology command upwards of $700 for 27" models and closer to $1200 for 30-inchers. However, Korean vendors have started selling similar screens on eBay for roughly half the price. These off-brand models purportedly use the same panels as pricier alternatives, and in practice, they appear to be nearly as good. There are some caveats, of course. The number of inputs may small, HDCP support isn't guaranteed, and user controls can be limited. Those may be deal-breakers for some, but getting a 27", 2560x1440 IPS display for well under $400 will be a deal-maker for others."
Yeah, you'll be happy until they break after a few months and have no one to get a refund or RMA from.
I assume these are screens that where rejected for minor defects by their intended brand and resold. This happens a lot, even with name brand products such as CISCO network gear.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I have, more than once, ordered something cheap that turned out to be good, then ordered a 2nd or 3rd copy, only to have the later ones (branded the same) be.... different.
Latest case in point: $90 7" tablets - first one: 4.5 hour battery life, second one: 2.0 hour battery life.
For "real" 27" displays that have 2560 x 1440, and not just full-HD, the experience is really good. I first regretted shelling out for a Dell UltraSharp U2711, but after connecting it and seeing the amount of screen real estate I eventually bought another one for my second computer. 2560x1440 eliminates my need for an extra monitor completely, and by using the Windows+(left arrow|right arrow) function in Windows, or Divvy on Mac, I can easily fill the browser on one side and the application I work with on the other.
Dvorak on Doomtech
Until you want to use it as an output on something that requires a protected path.
Which will be never.
What about the time when everything requires it?
Then I'll spend my time agitating instead of consuming entertainment. I think TPTB know better than to withhold circuses.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Should the day come that you can't view a web page without HDCP protection (or when a significant number of people can't do it), then I, as the copyright holder for all my comments, will revoke the authorization that I have given up to now, for people to descramble the HDCP which effectively limits access to my Slashdot comments.
According to DMCA, viewing my comment will become illegal. Making HDCP-compatible monitors will be illegal. Selling HDCP-compatible monitors will be illegal.
Chaos ensues. Make my fucking day, Hollywood. I'll kill you with your own law.
Never, ever apply your DRM to someone else's content, without getting a contract from them that secures descrambling authorization in perpetuity. Otherwise, you make it possible for someone else to cause your DRM scheme to become illegal for anything to be interoperative with. HDCP is a ticking time bomb, waiting for anyone who feels like destroying it, to press the red button.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
ok. can i suggest that you actually get three 1280x1024 4:3 aspect ratio monitors instead? if you don't like 3, get 4 instead. the reason is very simple: after working constantly at my usual 10-12 hours per day in front of an apple 22in 1920x1200 LCD for 18 months, i now have severe "prism" on my eyes. that means that in the dark if i look at a point of light more than 2 metres away i *cannot* bring it into focus: i see 2 dots about 4 inches apart (at 2 metres).
my eyes have always "adjusted" to the LCDs/CRTs that i use (25 years so far), and so i was quite pissed off to learn 10 years ago - a long while before computer usage was as common as it is now - that opticians go "oh we hear that people with short-sighted glasses tend to be used to having clear vision, so we always add -0.25 diopters on just to be cautious" and fuck me if the fucking morons didn't make my eyes *worse* by 0.25 diopters every time i got new glasses.
why is that? well it's quite simple: looking at the screens, my eyes adjust to look at the screens. then the moronic opticians slap another -0.25 diopters on the prescription and my eyes... adjust accordingly. by age 36 i had -4.0 in both eyes, put on the new glasses and drove at night to where i was staying, and they were so bad that i had an instant headache that lasted for something like a day and a half. that was money well spent: i had to use the older glasses.
so the same thing has happened here, with this 22in mac (which is of course running debian gnu/linux, what else would it be running, duh??) - because i have been sitting in front of it for 18 months at a distance of only about 15in. my eyes can perfectly well flick to the left corner or the right, and get the correct focus instantaneously.
but if i put my glasses on and look out the window into the distance, and roll my head one way and then the other, still looking straight out the window, you can literally see my eyes "jump" as one of them moves faster than the other, and i cannot pull them together into focus. the reason is because my eyes were *expecting* to be focussing (at 45 degrees or so) on something at only about 16-18 in away, but i asked them to look instead (at 45 degrees or so) at something 20 metres away: they can't do it. it also turns out that it's not just the muscles / reflexes that have adjusted, it's the actual shape of my eye lenses. they literally point sideways (inwards - aka "prism") now, not straight ahead.
the bottom line is that you really REALLY have to watch out for these kinds of effects which _are_ reversible... you just have to quit your job as a highly-paid computer professional and go do something like work behind a cash register, or go be a farmer or a common labourer or god forbid a politician - *anything* but stare at screens from a distance of under 2 metres, and you'll get your eyesight back to normal after a couple of years.