I'd say, the bigger the better!
It's a Philips 32" LCD flat screen, connected through HDMI-DVI on a Radeon X600xt card. I use it as a single screen, everything is very readable (mostly because of the HDMI) and it is VERY fun to play games on it, LFS or a shooter, it's all great.
I know pictures will never show a monitor properly but is there a reason why the sky is bright white and blacks aren't as black as on the small CRT (or TFT I'm not sure?) monitor sitting next to it?
That's mostly because the LCD gives off WAY more light than the CRT. And the pics are taken with my cell, it can't handle the light.
I'll take a screenshot ...
When you compare the two screens IRL you'll see the flat screen is much more vivid in colors, while the CRT looks very gray-ish and dull.
What kinda CRT is it, a Trinitron would likely make things the opposite. Oh, and nice ajp. I don't plan on buying a monitor till around Christmas time, so I'll just try and wait and see what kind of decently priced technology's out around then. Maybe LCD's will have a major breakthrough, lol. If not I'll prolly go F900 or some kinda 21"ish sized Trinitron like you're persuing.
It's a Dell monitor I got with my computer. So I don't know what kind it is really. But we have a LCD screen on another comp, and I must say it looks terrible. I can't get the colors to look right.
well first of all you should be aware that triniton is just the marketing name for sonys aperture grille (horrible english word for it imho ... the german word slit mask is much more appropriate)
anyway imho there is nothing that compares to the look of those masks especially when it comes to daily desktop usage ... fonts look much better than on any other type of monitor ... for everything else it more or less like any other crt
that said from my experience bigger sony monitors (hp are usually just rebranded sony ones) do have some issues with convergence but for that price id absolutely go for it
yes there is
first of all most lcds ive seen are adjusted way too bright causing the white sky ... additionally the principle of a lcd makes it impossible to display blacks especially with a very high overall brightness essentially all youre doing is making the blacks gray
crts on the other hand are very brighness limited so while i refuse to go anywhere near a lcd i do think they are much better suited for daily usage during summer (not that youll encounter any problems living in england but in countries where the sun does shine it can be an issue)
they make up for that by providing very good blacks so ideally youll want to use a crt in a pitch black room
I had an FW900 and loved it. I swore I'd never buy an LCD as long as I could get something like that. Then it suddenly died last Friday, a couple months shy of 2 years since I got it. They're so old now, they just don't last. I'd be willing to bet that every single one that's currently on the market is on its last legs. Hell the first one I got lasted all of a month.
BTW, I picked up my 20WMGX2 from Newegg for $550 shipped, minus $100 when I send in the mail-in rebate.
My story.. I used my 17" Sony Trinitron monitor for a solid uhh, 7 years. (was on most of that time) It was absolutely the best monitor I've ever had a chance to look at for its size & price, and was well worth the $280 tag back in '99. One day it just up and died and I've been on this POS Gateway LCD since.
Where the Sony Trinitron's the ones with the horizontal line in the middle or just about of the screen? I remember colleagues who had them, almost had me use one, until I noticed that line. After that it was all I could see on those screens... the Line. So I just stuck to EIZOs.
yes those are the ones
however that line is just barely visible and at least i dont even see it anymore after ~10 years of using trinitons
i greatly prefer the sharpness in the horizontal direction to the grainyness of a shadow (dot) mask
Hah - trinitron users are the same all over the world! The highlighted stuff is exactly what I was told some years back when I commented on that line. Ofcourse back then for the price they had paid they jumped to the defensive instantly.
Before I got this LCD I was using Iiyama aperture grille CRTs. They were nice actually*, but there were two horizontal lines that were really irritating against white.
* But not very reliable - I killed three in a year. Iiyama routinely send a man round with a replacement and take the broken one away usually next day so it's not so bad, but the fact that they do a service like that suggests their monitors aren't very well (if at all) tested before they ship. Still, I kept buying Iiyamas just because I knew if I had any problems they'd replace them no questions asked.
That's because two faintly visible horozontal lines, (only really noticeable when staring at a white background for awhile), are hardly an issue with an otherwise awesome monitor. Also, I got mine cheaper than what alot of crapper monitors were going for back in the day. But to each their own I suppose. :twirl:
Ahhh ain't that sweet, you've even given them names.
Completely-ish off topic, but I've been toying with the idea of building this in the spare room.
But i think i'll wait till my PC grows up a bit and is clever enough to run more than one monitor, then i think i'll having a go at making it with three of them
well back when i bought my first triniton (a nokia which is still working flawlessly albeit being a bit dim from all the use over almost 10 years now) i didnt even know what a triniton tube was and found the line bothersome for a few weeks
by now i really dont see it anymore unless i specifically look for it ... plus with all the monitors ive seen its nowhere near the centre where youll do most of your looking at
personally i find the grainy vertical lines on a shadow mask much more annoying especially when reading
I'm planning on bying a Samsung 223BW Wide LCD.. Does any of you guys have one and what's it like?
I've read previous pages and some of you mentioning that 22" LCD's are crap, something about pixels, i didn't quite get it, do you have some screenshot of what you're refering to?
I don't want to get stretched images or something like that, what are the pros and cons please... and what are they like in LFS?
You will get stretched images with all 22" LCD's if you use a resolution that isn't 16:10. Best are IMO still the Dell 20" and 24". The prices are outrageous outside of the US though.
i switched from a 17" crt to a samsung syncmaster 223bw 22" and the difference is huge (huuuuuuuuuuuge!:tilt playing lfs got such a pleasure. so far i can really recommend it, no problems, low cost and it looks good. i wasn't 100% sure if the 5ms response time is enough to play games smooth but i can't tell a difference to my crt unless the hugeness (did i say that already its huge!)
Stretching doesn't seem like it'd be that big an issue anyways, unless you were adamant about running full-screen. Seems like you could window and run whatever aspect/res works for you? Unfortunately I seem to be a "video-elitest" when it comes to other attributes of most LCD's.
Well, i love my 3 year oldLG 1520B LCD, but it's 15", it's really small nowadays, and i recently uprgaded my PC so it really deserves a larger monitor. If i am perfectly hapy with response time (25ms on mine) and other stuff, than i'm thinking that a new LCD generations won't dissapoint me..
So, basically if i'm using it's native resolution everything is fine, desktop wise? What about games, is scaling really bad if i put some 1280 resolution or something. I remember that game's looked fine and the same as on CRT if i put 800x600 instead of 1024x768 native..
Get an LCD with 1920x1200 NATIVE resolution... you won't be dissapointed. Because something of that caliber will definitely be a quality screen. Anything less will be a cheap consumer purchase with no real good value in terms of resolution and features. If you put forth the money for a decent high-resolution screen, that pretty much takes care of a lot of your questions. You don't need to worry about stretching because the screen should take care of that, and/or if you have an Nvidia card, there is an option to let the card to its own scaling, and use the proper aspect ratio (eg When I play BF2, it only supports 1600x1200, so I have it give black bars on the side and get the ratio correct, or else BF2 looks nasty when stretched).
And this narrows down your options too, because there aren't many good top screens that will have that native resolution.
I run a new model 24" Dell (2407-HC) at that res, and other friends I know just love 1920x1200 or higher. I was used to 1600x1200 with my old CRT, and the added width is really nice to browse the web and watch TV at the same time with picture-in-picture . A friend let me try his 2500x1600 screen, and that is massive, but felt like overkill for both size and the idea of an empty wallet.
I cannot stand LCD screens that are 1680x1050 native or less, that resolution is crap if you are into doing graphics or need plenty of workspace. Buy something new with much higher res, those old low-res screens are at the bottom of the market really. The Samsung 223BW is at 1680x1050, and for a 22" screen, that is really low. Not worth it.
