Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Starman01 on January 02, 2011, 11:41:30 am
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Hey there,
since there is so much stuff out, I need some help from technical interested people. Sofar, I'm still using a CRT Monitor, and that for a certain reason :
For years I'm using the CRT Monitors from ViewSonic, because of 1 Feature only : The UltraBrite Function.
When I enable this feature via a button press on the monitor, the entire screen brightens up, and the colours are more clearer. This is supposed to be created for gaming purpose. Normal is for office (quite calm for the eyes to watch), 3x for games, and 5x for videos (a little brighter than 3x, but I never used it).
Here is a screen that shows the difference, and should show what's important to me :
http://wcsaga.hard-light.net/team/Starman/pics/screen01.jpg
Well, I'm sure this "feature" is now already outdated by all monitor technologies, and CRT's are dead anyway. Also I fear, this CRT won't last forever, and I don't want to end with a bad colour screen when I buy a new one. Also I have a little colour weakness with my eyes mostly red/green, but I don't think that this matter here (the weaknees is noticable otherwise).
So, here is what I want :
A good TFT monitor, as big as possible, but for max 250,- € (not USD !)
It should have excellent bright gaming colours
It should have a 10 ms reaction time (I heard that's good for fast moving games like Egoshooters)
Good gurantee options.
I doesn't need speakers, or any other fancy stuff, just a good view for games and should be running easy 16 hours a day, 24/7
I would appreciate if you could give me some advice :)
Thanks :)
Starman
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Maybe you could google for the Samsung PX2370 ?
~250€
1920 * 1080 23"
VGA-DVI-HDMI (more possibilities)
2 ms reaction time (10 ms is a little bit too much IMO)
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Man, I'd love to have a simple button like that on my CRT. I have the brightness set at 10% by default to go easy on my eyes, but I always have to crank it up when I'm playing certain games.
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Yeah, that Ultrabright feature is really something special. I once bought another CRT which had none (CRT were already on the verge of extincton) and the colours just sucked. Then I found luckily this monitor here. But now I'm quite a little unsure what to buy, because I do not want to waste money again for bad colour experience. Technically, I only want a bigger monitor, I would even buy another CRT if there would be any.
I'm not sure about the Samsung PX2370. I only read a few comments on major seller sites so far. While 70% praise that thing very high, the other 30% complain about bad colour field and bright fields, escpecially in black area's :(
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It looks to me like the ultra-light feature is just a hotkey for 1.5x Gamma. NVidia's control panel will allow for the same thing, albeit with a few mouse clicks instead of a single button press.
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i own a samsung PX2570 and it has some of the best color that ive ever seen on an lcd screen.
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I recently went through the same deal looking for a decent monitor. I'd highly recommend the Viewsonic VX2450wm LED monitor. Excellent colors, 5ms typical response, 1000:1 ISO contrast ratio. It's 1080p, to boot. Link. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824116447&Tpk=vx2450)
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i miss CRTs. i wonder if i could even still find a nice big one that i could perma-mount somewhere the size isn't an issue.
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My Samsung Syncmaster 2494 has that sort of thing too. Although it is an 24 inch 1080P behemoth, it does cost under the 250 euro's.
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I recently went through the same deal looking for a decent monitor. I'd highly recommend the Viewsonic VX2450wm LED monitor. Excellent colors, 5ms typical response, 1000:1 ISO contrast ratio. It's 1080p, to boot. Link. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824116447&Tpk=vx2450)
Hey Tyrian,
this looks interesting. Since I'm using a viewsonic product for so many years, I'm quite a fan of that company. The referense also reads really good for this monitor.
Please tell me something : As I have learned, Plasma and LCD Television have problems with pure black. While I can more or less live with that, how is this with TFT's, especially this one ? I play lots of space games, and I don't want to play in only grey.
Is the colour due to the background LED technics worth to be called black ?
Anything else you could tell me about this monitor ?
Is the missing HDMI a problem ? And do I have to fear dead pixels ? How many do you have to accept before you get a replacement ?
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For years I'm using the CRT Monitors from ViewSonic, because of 1 Feature only : The UltraBrite Function.
I haven't seen any LCD monitor that wouldn't have something equivalent to this. If you can wait, I'd keep an eye out for 120Hz LED monitors. Better yet, 120Hz LED monitors with S-IPS panel.
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i have a NEC 1970NX 19" LCD. S-IPS panel, one of the older ones. You know the **** about them being slower? bull. i havent seen a single instance of ghosting of any sort on it.
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One thing that I recently found out is worth mentioning here: DVI and HDMI should be the same, except that they aren't. DVI knows the real resolution of the monitor being used, while HDMI does not, and when connected to HDMI, the monitor will probably use over scan to achieve 1080. The resulting screen is over- or under filled, and getting rid of this means browsing through several menus of your monitor and display driver software. DVI works from the start.
I also have some image sharpness issues with HDMI that are non-existent with DVI and haven't been able to find the causes yet. The monitor I use is Samsung B2430. So for me it seems that DVI is actually better than HDMI, even if DVI doesn't carry sound.
Now I'm irritated that I had to spent 20 € on a HDMI-Mini - HDMI cable that I don't need.
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I haven't seen any LCD monitor that wouldn't have something equivalent to this. If you can wait, I'd keep an eye out for 120Hz LED monitors. Better yet, 120Hz LED monitors with S-IPS panel.
Well, atm there is no hurry, my CRT is working (but now that I said that, I'm sure it will die in a few days :p ) So if it's worth waiting, I could.
You know the **** about them being slower? bull. i havent seen a single instance of ghosting of any sort on it
I've read that a few times, and still don't get the meaning of what you are trying to say. Could you please explain a little to me ?
Sofar, the one from Viewsonic still looks interesting for me. Strange though, that one the biggest online sellers in germany (alternate.de) doesn't offer that one.....
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response time. this one is at 10 or even more ms if i read the reviews correctly. no ghosting noticed. nor input lag.
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Technically, anything at or under 16.67ms shouldn't ghost. And from what I've heard, some of the cheaper 2ms monitors cheat to get that rating, and create noise in the picture. Of course, all hardware makers lie (this is a known fact), so your mileage may vary.
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Ah, now I understand what is meant with ghosting. Yep, all I know sofar from TFT's, is that I should get one with 10 ms or below. I read that in my PC magazine where they made some compares in FPS games. Though I was quite suprised that the one mentioned seems to have 2ms even
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Ah, now I understand what is meant with ghosting. Yep, all I know sofar from TFT's, is that I should get one with 10 ms or below. I read that in my PC magazine where they made some compares in FPS games. Though I was quite suprised that the one mentioned seems to have 2ms even
2ms is not possible even with TN panels.... so whenever you read 2ms it means they are using some kind of "overdrive" technology (i.e. electrical current) to accelerate the panel.
The problem with overdrive is that it causes different ugly artifacts (afterglow in moving scenes) and even worse: Input lag. (i.e. what blood eagle said).
My recommendation would be to forget any idiotic manufacturer claims. As far as TFT panels go there is no substitute to reading in depth reviews.
(prad.de for example is a good place to start - be warned tho... the more you read, the more likely you will end up buying something more expensive. On the other hand... it will then be money well spent ;) )
The main question you should ask yourself.... is how much do i want to pay for image quality? TN Panels are always said to be "best" for gaming because they are cheap and fast.... they are also outright ugly/flat as far as colors go when compared to a panel with IPS technology. IPS however are slower on average... so you will have to shop around to find a good "gaming quality" IPS panel.... which usually costs quite a bit more, if you want that.
A monitor however is one of the few hardware pieces that actually stays with you for several years - usually... so personally i can only recommend not be stingy on that part. I cringe everytime i see a highend multithousand dollar gaming rig (that will be obsolete in 1-2 years) hooked up to a cheap 200 dollar TN panel LOL.
As far as value for money goes, i would recommend HPs ZR24W. Why is it good? I's IPS based, decent speed and is one of the few IPS panels which is not "wide color gamut" but native RGB (which is something you want for gaming - or watching DVDs.... wide color gamut monitors are often prone to display wierd colors when displaying RGB content.)
Nec also has a nice 23"" model although the name escapes me right now. (Make sure to read reviews so you get the right one and don t end up with a slow graphic artists panel).
If money is not an issue then you will be hard pressed to find a better panel than Eizos CG243W. Perfect image quality with perfect gaming speed (5ms without overdrive and insignificant input lag). Doesn't get better than that. Also hardly doesn't get any more expensive,... but oh well ;)
If at all possible... try to compare monitors in a store... best with lighting conditions similar to what you have at home.
How much you actually "like" what a monitor looks like is often a very personal thing. Even ghosting and overdrive artifacts get perceived differently (or not at all) by different people.
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The 24inches Syncmaster by Samsung is a great deal :yes:
The best monitor I've ever had. And there are many price categories of it.
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One thing that I recently found out is worth mentioning here: DVI and HDMI should be the same, except that they aren't. DVI knows the real resolution of the monitor being used, while HDMI does not, and when connected to HDMI, the monitor will probably use over scan to achieve 1080. The resulting screen is over- or under filled, and getting rid of this means browsing through several menus of your monitor and display driver software. DVI works from the start.
I also have some image sharpness issues with HDMI that are non-existent with DVI and haven't been able to find the causes yet. The monitor I use is Samsung B2430. So for me it seems that DVI is actually better than HDMI, even if DVI doesn't carry sound.
Now I'm irritated that I had to spent 20 € on a HDMI-Mini - HDMI cable that I don't need.
Since HDMI is basically DVI with audio, I assume your monitor/software is at fault, not the standard itself.
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I didn't say anything about the data transfer standard itself, they are the same.
It is how the input is handled by the monitor. DVI is interpreted in a different manner than HDMI, and I find that it is easier to get a good image with DVI. I guess the reason for the differing behaviors is that the HDMI standard is used by high definition televisions, which might or might not, have native 1080 pixel resolutions. For this reason, they usually add some extra (~15 %) around the edges of the image (=over scan) so that the screen estate is surely filled. DVI circuitry does not do this as it knows exactly the pixel resolution. So the point was that it is easier to get the plug & play functionality out of DVI instead of HDMI.
The other thing I would like to mention here is the trend of using clear plastic (black but not matte) around the display. While this might make the monitor look good, it actually adds a lot to the reflections from the edges of the screen, that you might find irritating if you have a lamp behind you.
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While this might make the monitor look good, it actually adds a lot to the reflections from the edges of the screen, that you might find irritating if you have a lamp behind you.
Now, THAT's a good argument, I haven't even thought about that !!! That's is certainly one point that I also need to take into account, because I have light in my back (though not a too strong one)
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I know
I'm thinking of buying black matte tape just to block off the worst reflections. Form over functionality design principle causes good looking displays but apparently not a lot of thought has been given for the environment it might be placed in. If matte display edges are available, I would recommend going with them. Otherwise you need to go for a little bit of DIY...
The issue depends on person though. I find it really irritating, my guess is a lot of people wouldn't even notice. Try it in the shop!
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Well, the problem is, there aren't many shops around in my area. There is certainly a big hardware store (one of the biggest in Germany, Media Markt), but I'm not sure they have something I try. The reason why I'm asking here, is that I'm very unsure and usually have the darn luck in spending money on wrong stuff.
That viewsonic monitor looks really nice, but I doubt I will be find exactly that one in the story so i will have to buy it online. Unlike what I said in the first post, money is not the real big concern, If I would be sure that I buy something very good, I would certainly spent more on it, I just set the 250,- € because I always buy wrong stuff :)
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You can try the effect with any display, televisions seem to have clear black edges too. Or better, try that at your friend's house. The whole thing gets even worse if there is a window behind you.
There's another sort of effect to which my eyes seem to be very sensitive, more on that in a a couple of minutes.
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The other effect I see on current displays but didn't see on the older displays is slightly harder to explain.
It is visible during gaming when there isn't a lot action going on. When there is a big contrast, i.e. illuminated face of a person against a dark background, or fingers against dark background, I start to pick up the edge between that brightly colored object and the dark background. Because the characters are animated, there is always slight movement during those scenes, that edge starts to move slightly. It is rather pronounced effect and for some reason at least my eyes tend to pick that up instead of the rest of the cut scene. The same with textures that have a large amount of almost black and white noise (causes local star like flickering). My gut feeling is that the Moire effects are also more common in current displays.
The weird thing is that none of this was visible on the old display (1280x1024, 19"?). On the new display (1900x1080, 24") it is. Luckily, anti-aliasing takes most of that away (when games support it), but I need to turn it quite high (16x). The same thing with HDTVs, even when viewed from further away and the worst thing is that they don't have anti-aliasing.
Even though a couple of gentlemen here convinced me that the new stuff is better than the old stuff, I'll mention this because it might be something you might want to check too.
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It is visible during gaming when there isn't a lot action going on. When there is a big contrast, i.e. illuminated face of a person against a dark background, or fingers against dark background, I start to pick up the edge between that brightly colored object and the dark background. Because the characters are animated, there is always slight movement during those scenes, that edge starts to move slightly. It is rather pronounced effect and for some reason at least my eyes tend to pick that up instead of the rest of the cut scene.
Could be an overdrive artifact.... which wouldn t be surprising because every idiot manufacturer wants to make a "2ms omgz!" panel... lol.
(Bright objects moving on a black surface leaving a kind of brightness trail/shadow would be very typical for that)
You can check if you find an "overdrive on/off" option somewhere in the monitor options and see if it makes a difference.... sadly, nowadays "overdrive off" often means its still on and still causes artifacts.... just that the setting is a bit less agressive than "on".
All the cheap 23-26 panels that are flooding the market nowadays haven t suddenly gotten so cheap because the technology got so much better/easier to produce... most of them are simply utter garbage.
A 23-24"gaming TFT" with image quality similar or better than a CRT... fast response time, insignificant input lag AND no ghosting/artifact issues.... still starts at a 1000-1500 bucks upwards.
The 200-300 buck range is outright embarassing and the 400-900 range usually has at least one severe flaw in one of the above criteria.
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I think we are not talking about the same artifact. Those that you mentioned I usually see in HDTVs. There is no overdrive option in my display.
The artifact I mentioned causes that the edge lines start to jump up to your eyes. When there is slow movement, you can see the line jumping between two rows of pixels. Or if there is some bright pixels in the textures, you will see that pixel moving constantly back and forth two positions. It is really irritating, and the only medicine I have found is anti-aliasing (so much for high definition). I know that not all people notice this, it doesn't bother my little brother as it does me. I don't see this effect on older LCD displays or CRTs. I might go and check if I see it on a plasma TV, it could have something to do with how regular is the pixel pattern itself.
Yeah, paying as much money for the display as I paid for the computer doesn't sound too good. So I'll try to manage with the 24".
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Actually, now that you mentioned it, there seems to be some of that overdrive when scrolling down the forum text, I see that the letters do have fading tails. This hasn't bothered me during gaming, though. I might take a look at the display drivers options, for some reason NVIDIA has not allowed anisotropic filtering and triple buffering by default.
There is also a red tint on the left side of each letter. Again, this is only visible on black and white, but doesn't bother me during gaming. Something to do with RBG balance, or then again my eyes are just too sharp.
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Re current discussion AND topic;
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-051-IY
Been using it for a year.
Trust me when I say I am the very first person who would notice ghosting, the VERY first.
There is none in games, there is a little bit on forums if you have the brightness/contrast down majorly, if you use 'gaming' mode, it disappears completely.
No red-lines by text etc.
Then again, Iiyama are legends.
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Re current discussion AND topic;
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-051-IY
Been using it for a year.
Trust me when I say I am the very first person who would notice ghosting, the VERY first.
There is none in games, there is a little bit on forums if you have the brightness/contrast down majorly, if you use 'gaming' mode, it disappears completely.
No red-lines by text etc.
Then again, Iiyama are legends.
Just can say... don't look at an IPS panel monitor (Iiyama or otherwise) ... you might end up instantly not liking your old monitor anymore ... and then it gets expensive lol ;)
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Ah, yeah, a crutial detail by the way. No matter what people might say, even the most basic IPS panel has better viewing angles than the best TN panels. This is also one of the very important factors. Screw color reproduction and ghosting if i cant even see the colors right on the whole screen when i bob my head a bit out of the sweetspot :p
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Hmm, probably helps how close I sit to my monitor, well, most of the time, but to be fair even when I'm led in bed watching a movie from across the room it's not really noticeable, you gotta go quite a ways to the sides to see the difference.
If it does bother you it is something to consider though.
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the vertical viewing area is much more critical than horisontal to be honest.
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the vertical viewing area is much more critical than horisontal to be honest.
If you hadn't guessed my bed is much lower than my monitor.
horizontally, you really have to work hard to get that off colour.
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mm.
but still
*loves his S-IPS panel*
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I'm shopping around a bit for a new LCD as well. I'm finding it difficult to go by manufacturers or even reviewers to find out if something is a TN or a S-IPS panel. Nobody seems to talk about that now. It's all about LED backlights and refresh rates.
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OK, I need to out me now :( Pls explain me wtf is an S-IPS panel, I still don't get it :)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-IPS#In-plane_switching_.28IPS.29
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There are several types of panels: TN, IPS, AFFS, MVA, PVA and ASV. The most common of these is the TN which can be found in almost all consumer grade TFT displays.
Color, contrast, viewing angle and response times set there panel types apart from each other. TN is the cheapest of them all, hence it's consumer grade. But it also happens to have the fastest response time of the bunch. MVA and PVA usually have better color, contrast and viewing angles than TN, but fall far behind in response time. IPS beats all of those in all categories, except in response time to TN panels. AFFS is like better IPS, but I haven't seen a single AFFS display within consumer budget, it's probably more expensive than IPS which is already more expensive than TN, MVA and PVA.
Still, there are a few high-end consumer grade TFT displays that use IPS panels. You just need to look for them. For example, following displays are IPS:
- HP ZR22w, HP ZR24w
- LG W2220P
And with LED backlight
- LG IPS231P
No matter what, always read a bunch of reviews before deciding on any display. Still, I'm sure good quality TN display will work out just fine too, particularly for your wallet. You get what you pay for.
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Taken from Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT_LCD )
TN displays suffer from limited viewing angles, especially in the vertical direction. Colors will shift when viewed off-perpendicular. In the vertical direction, colors will shift so much that they will invert past a certain angle.
Also, most TN panels represent colors using only 6 bits per RGB color, or 18 bit in total, and are unable to display the 16.7 million color shades (24-bit truecolor) that are available from graphics cards. Instead, these panels display interpolated 24-bit color using a dithering method that combines adjacent pixels to simulate the desired shade. They can also use a form of temporal dithering called Frame Rate Control (FRC), which cycles between different shades with each new frame to simulate an intermediate shade. Such 18 bit panels with dithering are sometimes advertised as having "16.2 million colors". These color simulation methods are noticeable to many people and highly bothersome to some.[4] FRC tends to be most noticeable in darker tones, while dithering appears to make the individual pixels of the LCD visible. Overall, color reproduction and linearity on TN panels is poor. Shortcomings in display color gamut (often referred to as a percentage of the NTSC 1953 color gamut) are also due to backlighting technology. It is not uncommon for displays with simple LED or CCFL-based lighting to range from 10% to 26% of the NTSC color gamut, whereas other kind of displays, utilizing more complicated CCFL or LED phosphor formulations or RGB LED backlights, may extend past 100% of the NTSC color gamut, a difference quite perceivable by the human eye.
In short: Once you've gone IPS, you never go back ;)
To me it's not really about viewing angles... it's rather that TN panel color reproduction makes me cringe after getting used to IPS.
Still, no matter what display type you get... always gotta keep in mind that there are huge difference between different brands and models depending on the quality of backlighting and the electronics used to control the panel. As said before... no way around reading a lot of reviews... and if possible checking the monitor out in a store too.
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Viewing angle is also irrelevant for my buy descision. I always sit straight in front of , and don't watch TV / DVD on it. I'm still a little unsure what to buy though :nervous:
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Viewing angle is also irrelevant for my buy descision. I always sit straight in front of , and don't watch TV / DVD on it. I'm still a little unsure what to buy though :nervous:
Still... check it out in a store... especially if you get a TN panel...
And don't get tempted by these cheap 26"-30" monitors flooding the market...
Friend of mine got a "bargain" price on a 26" TN panel monitor... and even when sitting right in front of it you can see the color shift noticably on the edges when you just move your head a little.... and when you sit perfectly still you just notice how horribly uneven the backlighting is.
With monitors... much more so than with most other products.... you really do get exactly what you pay for.
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Uh, that's evil :) I'm still quite tempted towards the one from Viewsonic. After all, it's a good company and I'm used that they have good quality. Maybe it's not state of the art, but on the other hand, for 250,- € there isn't much damage done....