Kostas writes:
Greetings all!
Here comes the dreaded moment for me....Moving from the goodness of the CRT
to a flat monitor. I have pushed the event as further as I could but now my
LCD is showing signs of dying.
So...I need your help on selecting features and maybe brands/models so here
is what I wish of it.
Size:
I need the monitor for browsing, MS Word and photography only. No gaming
etc.
Am I right to stick with the 4:3 format? A web search gave me this.
* 19″ : 1280*1024 on 4:3 and 1440*900 on 16:10
* 20″ : 1600*1200 on 4:3 and 1680*1050 on 16:10
* 22″ : 1680*1050 on 16:10
Do I really need the 16:10 ratio?
Coming from a 21” CRT how would a 19” TFT would seem? I think small and
short (not all enough).
What are the physical dimensions of the 19” 4:3 and 16:10 screen?
Adjustments:
I chose my CRT on the basis of being able to calibrate the RGB channels
separately (at that era it was not a standard feature). How goes today?
(Initially I will be calibrating with Adobe Gamma and latter I may borrow a
spider)
General specs:
IS high contrast and response time that useful for my purposes?
What about color depth?
Viewing Angle:
Am I that scr***d with this? My experience with TFT monitors is that it is a
matter of placing your screen right and then NOT moving your head.
Bying Options:
So far my good options are Philips, Samsung and Dell. I hate LG and Eizo is
out of budget.
The rest in the Greek market are Viewsonics and other lower end brands.
Thanks for your time....Kostas
The ratio is a preference thing, any of them perform well as long as the
ratio is set correctly for the video card properties.. although
unfortunately some cards have to be 'tweaked' to get them to behave. I
currently have an LG Flatron Wide as my main monitor and am happy with it.
A 19" monitor will probably give you more screen area than you're used to
with a 21" CRT .. Most if not all of the modern LCD's offer internal colour
adjustments accessed through an on-screen menu that can be tweaked to
compliment the computers software adjustments. High contrast in LCD's is
achieved through trickery and measured using whatever standard the
manufacturer chooses to make their specifications look good.. and really
aside from a few really bad examples, people get used to whatever they're
using pretty quickly. Response times are irrelevant to you, unless you're
playing games or watching high bitrate CPU/GPU intensive rendered videos -
By that I mean 3D created stuff like video game type video and not just high
bitrate compressed video. Often the streaking that occurs there is as much
a product of the video decompression algorithms as anything the monitor may
do - in short, don't worry about it :) Colour depth is kind of tricky and
you'll get colours that may look a little flat initially due to the
difference between switching from a CRT to an LCD but this is an inherant
trait of LCD contrast. All the colour depths you're used to are present on
all new LCD's, but if you're moving from a matrox 2D video card and a CRT to
LCD, you'll not get the 10bit colour CRT's can achieve, LCD's just can't do
it - it'll only be noticable though coming from a matrox card..
Alternatively you may find even though the colours may look flatter, they
may at the same time also look unrealistically colourful - again it's to do
with the tricks they pull off with the contrast (usually achieved by
'flickering' the LCD to make the blacks blacker) Viewing angle issues
are still there but nowhere near as bad as they once were! Some LCDs though
are awful.. Do some reading about any specific monitor you may be thinking
of buying, maybe googling LCD + <model name> + viewing angle + problem and
see what that turns up. Some of the Viewsonics I've used have been quite
good! Myself, I'd never consider buying a screen until I'd seen one in a
shop and been able to compare it with others
Have a read through these posts Kostas, I know some of them are old but not
a lot has changed regarding the information aside from the prices!
http://www.dansdata.com/pv720.htm
http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00043.htm
http://www.dansdata.com/graphics.htm
http://www.dansdata.com/gz029.htm
http://www.dansdata.com/gz044.htm
http://www.dansdata.com/gz021.htm
http://www.dansdata.com/gz014.htm
hope this helps!
karl
