24" for 360, PC, and PS3

B

brumby05

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 26, 2007
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Ok, so I am looking for a new monitor and will probably make the purchase as the summer starts, so in a month or so. I am willing to spend around $500. Less would be great but I may consider going a little over if it is justified. I will be hooking up my PC, 360 and PS3 and I will use the Z-2300 speakers for all three.
I will use DVI for PC, probably VGA/HDMI for 360 and HDMI for PS3. So I need a monitor that has DVI, HDMI and VGA. I may just get a HDMI switch for 360 and PS3 so VGA is not required but it would be nice.
I have been looking at 24” monitors that are 1920 x 1200, some Samsung and some Westinghouse but I am not committed to either. I will be running my 360 and PS3 in 1080p so I also need 1:1 pixel mapping as I rather have the little black bars on top and bottom than a stretched image.
Any suggestions? A question I have is, how would get I sound using HDMI on PS3 and 360? From what I understand HDMI carries sound so the sound will be going to the monitor. So will I need a monitor that outputs sound so I can plug in my Z-2300 speakers? I have seen a couple of monitors with headphone jacks, would these work?
I know there are other threads out there similar to mine, but I think I am looking for a specific type of monitor. I will be using this for gaming on all three systems along with Blu-ray via PS3.
Thanks in advance for the help.
 
I would not consider Samsung for this purpose, as their monitors seem to have issues performing 1:1 pixel mapping on 1080p source devices, where they tend to stretch to 1920x1200.

I would recommend any of the following:

1) BenQ FP241W/VW - One DVI, One HDMI, One VGA, and One Component (plus s-video and composite, but they don't matter). Its input lag is pretty good, and all the connectors can perform 1:1 pixel mapping or aspect ratio handling (as the PS3 tends to do 720P for games). Excellent A-MVA panel. Headphone Jack.

2) Westinghouse L2410NM with an HDMI switch - One HDMI, one VGA and one component connector, and while it doesn't do TRUE 1:1 it will do proper aspect ratio and not stretch 1080p or 720p images. Input lag is around 50ms. Good M-VA panel. Built in speakers.

3) BenQ G2400W - One DVI, One HDMI and One VGA. You may need a switch for this. The VGA does not do proper 1920x1080 (there is a bug in the monitor) but the monitor has very little input lag and a good quality TN panel. Weirdly enough the VGA port will do 1280x720 or 1366x768 with 1:1 or aspect ratio correctly with the 360. Headphone Jack.

I have tried all three of the above monitors and settled on the FP241W and L2410NM, as my needs are similar to your's, and I'm quite happy now with both. The G2400W was close, but the VGA problem made it slightly less attractive than the other two, and it's availability in my area has been a little strained.

Hope that helps,

10e
 
10e would you recommend the westinghouse over the benq? if i plan to use it for my ps3 and maybe for a comp ?

and sorry i dont understand what you mean it wont display TRUE ? 1:1 pixel mapping

-thanks
 
balance101 said:
10e would you recommend the westinghouse over the benq? if i plan to use it for my ps3 and maybe for a comp ?

and sorry i dont understand what you mean it wont display TRUE ? 1:1 pixel mapping

-thanks
Click to expand...

I believe he means that it only does aspect ratio mapping; that is, it'll display 16:9 with black bars on the top and bottom of the screen, but it won't display the true input. For instance, it would scale 720p up to 1080p rather than displaying the 720p picture centered in the monitor.
 
Hey,

Verylostindeed, you are using the proper terminology, and I meant to say it differently.

True 1:1 is exactly as you explained it: An image on a screen that is exactly one monitor pixel representing one image pixel. So a 720p image would be a 1280x720 image located at the centre of the 24" with huge black bars around it.

Proper ratio scaling would be blowing up a 16:9 image to the full width of the screen, black bars top and bottom.

The Samsungs don't even do that as far as I know. They just stretch the whole image to full screen and make everything look tall.

The BenQ's do 1:1 and ratio scaling perfectly on DVI and HDMI. The only problematic BenQ is the G2400W which does not scale 1920x1080 on VGA properly (it stretches it to 16:10), but it does all the other resolutions just perfectly. The FP241 monitor pretty much do everything 100% correctly.

Regards,

10e
 
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