AR film removed - Matte vs Glossy LCD coating/film direct comparison (same panel), po

Vega

Supreme [H]ardness
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The guinea pig, http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=FPD1830-1B:

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Wet shop towels. Use distilled water with a spray bottle. Towels should be greater than damp, but not dripping wet. Test for matte film removal was for 2, 4 and 6 hour intervals. At 2 hours, the film was still too stiff for proper removal. At 4 hours, it was much more pliable but not where I would want it for a quality removal. Previous users have noted around six hours for film removal. I would concur, 5-6 hours will work well. Although the film took some pressure to remove at 4 hours, there was no trace of adhesive left behind. Roller was used to make sure shop towels have great surface contact and to remove any trapped air under the towels.

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Matte film scored and removed from the majority of the panel for comparison.

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In the below image, the monitor is on with a black background. The quality of the blacks and area with and without the film are apparent. The far corners have the polarizer removed. The polarizer is adhered to the LCD glass with very strong adhesive! Even using a 400 F heat gun it was extremely hard to remove and usually came up in slivers. Any damage to the polarizer will ruin the monitor. Without both intact layers of the polarizer, you will get no image (hence the white area of the corners).

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Polarized versus non. I wish we could get the great whites of the non-polarized area. But that would render LCD technology inert. :D

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Color image:

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The film that has ruined many a great display ;),

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Surprisingly, this particular model doesn't even have that strong of a matte film. Surely not as bad as those found on a lot of LG's IPS displays. You can actually see through this film fairly well. Others I have seen are more difficult to see through.

Now I have heard a lot of reports of users in the past damaging this polarization layer by "touching it" or cleaning it in some way. I was unable to reproduce this as can be shown in this video:

http://youtu.be/jgfX08MePn8

I put a great amount of pressure while going over the edge of the matte and onto the polarizer. I could not get any damage to either surface working it very hard. This polarizer layer is like a sheet of plastic, has a gloss feel to it and is very durable. Not sure if those in the past that have so-called damaged their polarizer was of a different material/design, or the damage in fact was not the polarizer but another layer or aspect of the display.

Below is a video showing the dramatic image quality difference with and without the matte film. I think it speaks for itself why I prefer glossy displays. Perceived blacks, color, and contrast are all improved. The colors "pop" and are more vibrant with gloss and the display no longer has a washed-out, dull appearance. You also remove the annoying "sparkle" of whites you get with matte film. At the end of the clip you can see the corner of the polarizer layer and it's rotation to block light.

http://youtu.be/YQm1v5UJ1y4

Next up on the chopping block is the 144 Hz 1ms Asus VG248QE! World's fastest LCD (along with sister BenQ XL2411T) combined with a dramatic image quality improvement inbound...
 
It is a good example of why lighter coatings or full glossy is better overall than matte coatings. And this example wasn't even a heavy AG IPS coating. You would have thought that during the last decade they would have figured out a better antiglare method than to stick a blurry film over the entire panel.

Anyway, like others, I would love to do this, but there is no way I'd ever risk it. I am 99% certain I'd destroy my monitor in the process.
 
It is a good example of why lighter coatings or full glossy is better overall than matte coatings. And this example wasn't even a heavy AG IPS coating. And you would have thought that during the last decade they would have figured out a better antiglare method than to stick a blurry film over the entire panel.

Anyway, like others, I would love to do this, but there is no way I'd ever risk it. I am 99% certain I'd destroy my monitor in the process.

If I had a low cost monitor to practice on , I would be much more willing to attempt it. But since I do not and I don't feel like flushing hundreds of dollars down the drain I'm just not willing to attempt it.

Much respect Vega but you obviously have better cash flow than this guy :D
 
They should make some with coating and without.

LCD monitor manufacturers are probably some of the shadiest businesses around. They are constantly being sued and hit with fines for price fixing (almost every year it seems) and for support you really don't have a "great" option in dealing with them.

I'm sure that while it would be cool if they did offer one without the coating , it's probably some lucrative contract that keeps in check as it stands now.

At least there is a way to remove it if you have big brass ones.

What they should bring back is A-TW Polarizer. If they brought that back on lower end models I would gladly ..nay... HAPPILY pay extra cash for that on a quality IPS panel.
 
Thanks for doing this mod.

Maybe you could take some pics of the display in a dark room at night and a bright room in daylight etc...
 
What they should bring back is A-TW Polarizer. If they brought that back on lower end models I would gladly ..nay... HAPPILY pay extra cash for that on a quality IPS panel.

A-TW polarizer does not come without a cost to image quality; it isn't made any more because the big-business color-critical customers did not like the A-TW's green/magenta glow at each corner of the display.

Monitors and TVs are mostly matte because most users have no control over the lighting of the room they work in. Glossy monitors that look great in your darkened gaming room/home office do not look so great in a very brightly lit corporate office space. It's not so much a question of "why do so many monitors have matte finish" as it is "why do they make any monitors at all with glossy finish?" I am not anti-glossy; I type this on my glossy NEC 20WMGX2. I simply know its place.
 
Thanks for doing this mod.

Maybe you could take some pics of the display in a dark room at night and a bright room in daylight etc...

A-TW polarizer does not come without a cost to image quality; it isn't made any more because the big-business color-critical customers did not like the A-TW's green/magenta glow at each corner of the display.

Monitors and TVs are mostly matte because most users have no control over the lighting of the room they work in. Glossy monitors that look great in your darkened gaming room/home office do not look so great in a very brightly lit corporate office space. It's not so much a question of "why do so many monitors have matte finish" as it is "why do they make any monitors at all with glossy finish?" I am not anti-glossy; I type this on my glossy NEC 20WMGX2. I simply know its place.


In my case, I keep a corner desk facing out from the corner. When a desk is up against a wall like a bookshelf, it acts as a catcher's mitt for light pollution whether glossy or AG, (though the effects are more obvious on glossy). For lights I prefer keeping lighting behind my monitors, and since my desk is a considerably long "stealth bomber"/chamfered boomerang shape, I can keep a lamp in line at each end of my monitor array like bookends without them showing up in my glossy display's surfaces. Btw, balanced lighting right/left also helps avoid eyestrain/headaches. One sided is bad.
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Any settings you store on your monitors will be altered perception wise at different room lighting levels, so unless you are going to keep several sets of settings hotkeyed for different lighting environments, you are better off trying to maintain similar lighting levels in the room all the time imo. I keep 3 sets of settings on my living room tv for this reason since the perceived settings are hugely different from daytime to lights out/blinds drawn, etc. In my computer room I just try to keep the room behind the monitors lit well with floor lamps at night to maintain the light level from a daytime window.
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My LED monitors are quite bright, so keeping the room at least moderately lit and a lamp on each end of the monitor array helps prevent the monitors from looking too harshly bright by contrast too.

Direct lighting on any monitor surface is going to pollute the screen. Varying lighting conditions in any room is going to alter your perception of brightness, contrast, gamma, saturation, etc. as well.
It's not so much a question of "why do so many monitors have matte finish" as it is "why do they make any monitors at all with glossy finish?"
Some questions some might pose is, why would a photographer not control the lighting conditions in his studio? Why do camera men and some high end professional displays utilize shades over the viewports? Why would anyone critical of how their monitor looks be any different? Office fluorescent banks are horrible for anything even outside of monitors in my opinion. Let alone a "visual arts and photography studio" of a monitor. I don't know why they would even come into consideration in a real quality design studio environment. Why would anyone with a choice of panel types and command of their own workspace environment choose a sparkly muffled glaze of fogged-frost view-port when they could have a "wiped-down with a clear antifreeze windshield" that is completely clear -- and just design their workspace/studio appropriately? (position and direction of lighting sources in relation to the monitor's surfaces in particular)
 
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Godspeed, Vega. I can't stand blur or AG. If you can pull this off I might finally be able to play a PC game again!
 
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