Display problem, please help!!!

T

the_cheeky_badger

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 15, 2006
Messages
75
I've just got my new monitor, before i write the review for you guys i need your help in curing a problem.

Its a SUN 365-1411 24" CRT monitor, i have set the resolution to 1920 x 1600....

However I cannot see this full resolution, basically i have to scroll the display to see the whole screen!

Does anyone know how to cure this???

I'm desperate to use my new monitor to its full potential!
 
Wow, that's a crt monitor that I've never heard off. Is that the same as the Sony GDM-FW900?

I'm not totally sure what you mean but if you can get up a capture image it would help. Maybe try going into your setup and use a proper refresh rate for that resolution for that monitor. Or go into your monitor menu and change the H and V setting or other setting to stretch the image to proper screen size. Make sure to enlarge the image/webpage to full size first.
 
http://www.sunshack.org/data/sh/2.1.../Monitor/MONITOR_Color_24_FD_Premium_CRT.html

^^ for specs

it does list that resolution for the screen. Check your refresh rate though, because it only lists one supported refresh at that resolution. Also, are you reasonably sure that your video card can display that resolution at that refresh rate? Also, please check that the physical link between the video card and the screen (cables and adpaters) are directly compatible. With a screen like this, I would not recommend going from DVI to VGA to the monitor. you'd be better off keeping the display connection type to whatever the connection type is that is supported by the monitor, no adapters. If you cannot get the maximum res on a standard VGA connection without panning, you may have to lower the resolution. On some of the proprietary displays like these, and SGI, etc that are older, they will not do native res without that 13w3 connection being used. Some older screens have BNC connections, (RBG&Sync&Ground) that doe not run max res and refresh on a converted signal (BNC to VGA).
 
Hi guys, really sorry that i haven’t posted earlier.

I've managed to fix the problem, was all in the graphics config. Turns out that your video card tried to automatically work out what the highest res that your monitor can support. My old monitor (22" 4:3) could only go to 1600 x 1200 (or so it thought).

Because there are no specific drivers for this monitor, and the ones that do exist are poor at best, it would not work out the max res.

For my graphics card (ATI) i had to specify the maximum and minimum horizontal and vertical res in the catalyst control centre. As soon as i had done this, all was working! Took me hours to work out though...:mad:

Anyway, i've been testing the monitor and want to add some points for anyone who was in the dilemma that i was (LCD or CRT???)

And i can now say that i am very pleased with this monitor. And here are my points for anyone else considering CRT over LCD

size

Let me make it clear, this monitor is massive. and will take two people to lift it to where its going. Once i get home tonight i plan to take some pictures and measurments for you all. But the main point is this, make sure you have room!

Clarity

Ok, now this is a 6 year old monitor, and let me tell you. Its perfect. The image quality is nothing sort of superb. You cannot, i mean, cannot beat a CRT for image quality. LCD's are not even close. the colours are perfect, as is the contrast and brightness. You dont have to worry about banding, dead pixels or input lag. My main complain with LCD's is that no matter which one you buy, you cannot get one that excels in every department. With good colours comes poor blacks, and vica versa. With good size, comes poor input lag. CRT has been around for over 50 years now (in its various forms) and they are perfect. If your a quality freak like me, and will notice backlight bleed etc, then a CRT is for you

Electricity

This beast likes the juice, if your energy consumption is a cause for concern, you might want to think about this one. Not sure what the consumption is...but my UPS tells me that its not energy friendly!

Connections

This monitor is basically a Sony GDM-FW900 tube in a SUN case. even the model numbers displays sony! However, because its a SUN model (and i must say i do prefer the SUN case) it only comes with the connections for their blade systems. So you'll need to buy a PC VGA cable (15 pin i think) approx £10

Warm up

Ok, this is the worst point of CRT....Warm up. this beauty takes approx 45 minutes to warm up. Try to adjust the colours before this and a warning comes up saying ' try again after warm up'

During the warm up period, the colours, brightness and clarity are slighty down. blacks do look green and small text is slightly blurry. After approx 20 minutes, its starts to look spot on. After 45 minutes, its perfect. For anyone who only jumps on their PC for small periods at a time, this could be a problem. But i must say, i trade this gladly to not have to put up with dead pixels, input lag, crap colours all the time, backlight bleed etc...

Like i said, when I get home, i'll take some more photos and measurements to show you all what the deal is, and hopefully for many of you in the same decision i was, this will make your decision easier...

Let me also state that this 'review' is my opinion. Im not opening the floodgates for an argument about which is better LCD or CRT, so dont even bother posting saying 'i have an LCD and its perfect too' etc. I'm simply not interested, this is a post for CRT lovers who are not sure whether to bite the bullet and go to LCD as i was.

Thanks
 
Holy Moly,

Is that how much they are in America?

I got mine for £210 plus £60 for delivery, total of £270!!!

Where are you buying from?
 
Lol, 1. no you can get them really cheap if you know where to look, I've had one before and on my second one (i'll get to why, i just figured this out today, in a moment) and my dad got em for like $50. Oh and I never had that warm up issue either...
However, there is a problem... Badger, you're probably really gonna want to pay attention to this. Yes the display and picture and everything is amazing and wonderful, but I found a big problem that can potentially destroy your monitor. It appears you have to be VERY careful with the resolution/refresh rate. These look to be perhaps made to be paired with workstation graphics cards, as from some searching on the web, those seem to be the only ones that support some of those resolutions it says are supported. I have always been one to use 1600 x 1200 for my resolution, I just like it I guess, good balance between how high it is, being usable in games without horrible frame rates, and being able to find any wallpapers for it (basically the max resolution you seem to be able to find them for too :-/) Anyways, to the point, as you can see on the spec sheet, it supports 1600 x 1000. My card, a X1800 XT (a damn good card btw), apparently is not capable of that resolution in any way. I just noticed this now.
So to what happened to my first one... gradually over time, it would get fuzzy for a second, perhaps even less, more and more often... then it started going longer. Eventually it got so it would be too long to just play through it, and I'd even resort to turning the monitor off and waiting for a bit and turning it back on. I now know what happened to it, the resolution I was using was unsupported, and no one would have had any clue if I hadnt stumbled upon this forum and that spec sheet. ATI's auto detect on the monitor has no clue at all what resolutions it supports, but I had figured it actually had supported all those it showed, since hey, its a damn nice and very big monitor, why wouldnt it support all those, right? Well, it now looks as if that 200 pixel difference destroyed the first monitor, and was starting to do the same to this one. So now I cant use my favorite/preferred resolution, and the ones it supports are rather unusual ones, so I'm going to have to be really careful with in game resolutions as well. Probably going to have to print out the spec sheet and keep it by the computer all the time to make sure i dont mess it up. So I guess what I'm saying is while I LOVE the quality of the picture, it looks like it comes at a price that may not be worth it... Glad I found this post though, hopefully I will have saved you a lot of trouble Badger. Just really makes me sad to know that such an (apparently otherwise) great monitor has such a fatal flaw that makes it almost unusable in many circumstances for the things I do. Sorry for such a long post, but this has really disappointed me, and I know my father (I'm living at home during college to save on living expenses, and my dads kinda nuts about the whole hardware thing, I swear we have like 50 computers in the basement lol) is gonna feel shitty about it too ( and probably blame himself -_-) and I just really wanted to get this out there.
Thanks, Ryan​
 
Hi Barbarossa,

Many thanks for your post, and I can indeed confirm that this monitor does not support the 1600 x 1200 resolution that you specify. However, this is with good reason and is by no way a fault with the monitor but is a fault with you.

It seems you have overlooked a fundamental flaw with your setup: this is a widescreen monitor...

A resolution of 1600 x 1200 is designed for 22" (20” Viewable) 4:3 monitors, such as a Mitsubishi Diamondtron. The monitor in question (SUN 365-1411) is designed for 62.5% aspect ratio. This includes resolutions such as 1600 x 1000 or 1920 x 1200. I cannot imagine how you decided to use a widescreen monitor with a 4:3 aspect ratio, the picture must be stretched horribly.

I must also say that I made a mistake in my setup, I tried to use a resolution of 1920 x 1600 which is also not supported by the monitor and will break it rather quickly. I would recommend that you change to one of the supported widescreen resolutions ASAP to avoid further damage to your monitor, or if you don’t want to move away from your favorite resolution, buy an alternative monitor. I can recommend the Mitsubishi Diamondtron as I used one for 5 years before I bought the SUN.

Once again, thanks for your post
 
Lol, you appear to assume that I'm new to computers. I'm fully aware of that issue, I'm saying that nevertheless I made the same mistake you just admitted yourself. I never said it was truly a problem with the monitor, the issue is for instance that 1600 x 1000 cannot be used with my video card and only seems to be one available with video cards designed for workstations (which I stated in my post). I know its a widescreen monitor, its 16:10, however, the thought that things would be set up such that everything would allow you to set it to a resolution that would subsequently destroy your monitor had NOT occured to me.
However, I'm not stupid, as you seem to imply by suggesting that I have not already changed resolutions. Immediately after posting I changed my desktop resolution to 1920 x 1600 (which thankfully my favorite wallpaper surprisingly stretched to with practically no distortion) and am using 1280 x 800 in games.
Concerning what you said about it being horribly stretched, when you use the monitors geometry control to adjust such that it is out to the edges of the screen, it surprisingly had no apparent stretching, and I can tell you that knowing me, if it had ANY really noticable stretching it would have likely driven me nuts.
Quite frankly when reading your post though, I get the impression you didnt really read most of mine... But oh well, the point is that I wanted to get this out there as it seems like a mistake that can be easily made (which you pointed out quite effectively yourself when admitting you did it yourself despite critisizing me for it in the same post.) Anyways, I'm glad that my post may have helped you notice the flaw in your setup and prevent the distruction of your monitor, though the thanks I got seemed to be as much patronization as true gratitude for me registering to a forum I had never seen before just so I could hopefully prevent the same thing from happening to someone else. While you're welcome for the post, I can't say I'm likely to come back to this forum after that kind of welcome, good day gentlemen.
 
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