Topic: LCD Monitors

[Pugnate]

Personally I have no plans on switching to HDTV until way waaay later. I'll probably just buy a PC monitor/HDTV; those usually come at good prices coz they're fairly small. I found a 19" one for ~$450, so hopefully by the time I switch the prices will have dropped.

By the way what's SDTV?

Man I have been looking for a decent one for a while, without luck. They are either good at one thing or another... not both.

I still think people have jumped on to the LCD monitor tech. too early. I still find CRTs quite superior.

[scottws]

Yeah, me too.  I can't wait for the OLED technology to mature though.  I mean it's better than LCD in virtually every way imaginable.

[Xessive]

I don't what it is about LCD monitors, but CRT the image looks crisp and sharp. On LCD's the two things I find kind of irritating is sometimes the screen can be blurry, but more irritatingly I can see a constant pixel grid! I can't focus on anything when I can clearly see every single pixel. It kinda feels like looking out a window through a wire mesh. The technology is not great yet. I'd love to see the OLEDs!

Though they are technically healthier for you than an electron gun pointed at your face.

[Quemaqua]

Don't know what you're talking about.  My 19" LCD is absolutely perfect.  Blows every CRT I've ever had out of the fucking water in all regards.  The only reason an LCD is going to be a little blurry is if you're running something at a res other than the native res.  I run everything at the native res, so it doesn't matter at all.  Plus, even when I don't I still think it's clearer than it was on my last CRT.

[gpw11]

Are you trying to convince us or yourself Mr. Early Adopter.


Anyways, I like my CRT a lot.  It's very clear and it gives the best hot oil massages.  I'd get a LCD, but fuck, they don't even give massages, let alone hot oil ones.

[Xessive]

Anyways, I like my CRT a lot.  It's very clear and it gives the best hot oil massages.  I'd get a LCD, but fuck, they don't even give massages, let alone hot oil ones.

We're still talking about monitors, right? Unless CRT and LCD stand for something complete different

Crazy Randy Trollope?
Lazy Crabby Dyke?

[Cobra951]

Yep. CRT = Cathode-Ray Tube.  LCD = Liquid-Crystal Display.  Very different technologies.  A CRT draws its image with an electron beam focused by a magnetic lens.  As a result, you can display many resolutions natively.  An LCD, on the other hand, has a discrete number of components which make up the screen.  As a result, it only has one native resolution.  All others displayed are generated by software (stretching and filtering to the one-and-only real res), and must be lower than the native res.

[Xessive]

Yep. CRT = Cathode-Ray Tube.  LCD = Liquid-Crystal Display.  Very different technologies.  A CRT draws its image with an electron beam focused by a magnetic lens.  As a result, you can display many resolutions natively.  An LCD, on the other hand, has a discrete number of components which make up the screen.  As a result, it only has one native resolution.  All others displayed are generated by software (stretching and filtering to the one-and-only real res), and must be lower than the native res.

Haha yeah I know, I was just messin' with GPW

By the way are all LCD monitors TFT (Thin-film Transistor) LCD? TFT LCD is a variant of LCD technology, but I remember (when they were first released) for a while they were all called TFT monitors, then all of sudden everybody started calling them LCD monitors.

[iPPi]

I love my 21" widescreen LCD. 

[Xessive]

Wait! I totally forgot about my original plan of saving up for a HD projector! Oh yeah, then Movie nights will be at my place! Ha! Well they always were, except for the summer when one of our friends had a 60" TV.. She left, so we had to revert back to my 29" TV.. But soon I'll have a projector and I can have a 90" (or more) high definition screen!

[scottws]

That would indeed be nice.  Projectors are underrated.

[iPPi]

Yea projectors are great, but from what I hear, they suck for one thing: text.  I've heard it's pretty hard to read in-game text on a projector. 

[scottws]

I feel like you've heard wrong.  One of my friends had a projector (SD).  We used it mostly for movies, but I've also plays games on it.  I don't remember the text being hard to read.  Plus, I think like every single one of my college classes uses a projector, and I can read whatever they put up there just fine.

[Pugnate]

I don't know, every LCD I've seen yet has been lacking in one area or another. Either it is good for gaming with a fast response time, but sucks badly for movies. Or if it shows great colors in movies, it isn't very good for gaming. Some are good at a couple of things but horrible for working on. Also many suffer from that annoying backlight bleeding. And then the whole viewing angle thing is just complete crap.

It is just too difficult to find an LCD that is fantastic for gaming, great for movies, is excellent in displaying text, doesn't suffer from backlight bleeding and has great viewing angles.

edit:

Forgot one other issue you have to worry about, dead pixels. Buying an LCD is currently still too much of a hassle. Most experts recommend you take your PC to the store, run some tests and even then try to get a 1 week no questions asked money back guarentee.

[Quemaqua]

Again, I don't know what you're talking about.  My LCD does all that stuff better than my CRT did.  Though really, why does it matter so much whether or not it plays movies?  I've never quite understood that, I guess because I've always had a ton of TVs everywhere and never cared to watch something at my desk.  When I watch something it's generally with Julia, so generally in the living room (unless it's something we can only watch on the PC, in which case this LCD does a fine job).

So yeah, I really don't know.  All I can say is I love this monitor.  I've never owned another LCD (aside from the one on my laptop), but this doesn't have any of the issues you're describing, at least to my eye.

[Pugnate]

Actually your 940B got excellent reviews all round Que. I haven't checked it out myself, because they don't have it here.

The stuff they have here is mostly from LG, Viewsonic, Acer, JVC, Phillips, Dell, Apple and a couple of others.

[JacksRag(e)]

Just recently bought a Samsung Syncmaster 940 bw.  It's been pretty so far.  I like it.  And movies look great on it, for the most part.

[Pugnate]

For the most part?

[ren]

It is just too difficult to find an LCD that is fantastic for gaming, great for movies, is excellent in displaying text, doesn't suffer from backlight bleeding and has great viewing angles.

My LCD is wonderful for all of those things. Its the Dell 2405 though...so you get what you pay for.

[scottws]

Geez.  How in the world did we go from talking about the Wii to talking about LCD monitors?

Edit:  This topic was split from the Wii discussion on the General Gaming forum.  It was too far off-topic.

[JacksRag(e)]

For the most part?

Occasionally, I'll have some movies show up grainy looking and whatnot, but I suppose that's due to the higher resolution.  DVDs are normally very very good.  Some Xvid movies aren't, sometimes.

[Pugnate]

My LCD is wonderful for all of those things. Its the Dell 2405 though...so you get what you pay for.

I've been looking at the 2407 for a while now, $700 though. Do you find 24'' too much for every day computer use?

[TheOtherBelmont]

I'm using a 19 inch Acer LCD monitor and its so much sharper and better than my previous CRTs.  Games, movies, and everything else looks better on it.

[ren]

Not at all. At first the blank spaces on webpages were annoying, but that seems to get smaller ever day with more and more websites scaling to widescreen and higher resolutions. It'll seem large at first but now I find it hard to function on anything smaller.

[scottws]

I think people who say that a LCD monitor is sharper than a CRT monitor hasn't seen a CRT monitor with the aperature grille (as opposed to the shadow mask).

[iPPi]

I was considering getting the 2405 from Dell, but it was $1000 at the time which was a little too steep for me.

I have a 21" Widescreen LCD from HP, and it works perfectly for gaming, movies, and text.  Though I do have to say text reading was uncomfortable at first.  It's easy to read now.

[Quemaqua]

It's funny, I actually found text much *easier* to read as soon as I got this LCD going.  I was really happy about that given the amount of reading I do here.

[Pugnate]

Not at all. At first the blank spaces on webpages were annoying, but that seems to get smaller ever day with more and more websites scaling to widescreen and higher resolutions. It'll seem large at first but now I find it hard to function on anything smaller.

No I wasn't talking about annoying. My eyes get sore pretty easily, so I am just wondering how you find the eye strain of using something so huge?

I think people who say that a LCD monitor is sharper than a CRT monitor hasn't seen a CRT monitor with the aperature grille (as opposed to the shadow mask).

The aperature grille monitors do look awesome except for those little two lines.

[ren]

Oh. I used to get quite a bit of eyestrain with my old 17" CRT. After I switched my eyes felt kind of weird or so for a week. After switching brightness down to zero, and giving myself some adjusting time eyestrain has completely disappeared.