need advice on making the LCD jump

T

THRESHIN

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 29, 2002
Messages
3,932
i'm thinking of ditching my old samsung 17" CRT for a widescreen LCD probably after x-mas when prices drop a bit (if they do). i'm a little stuck on what brands/models to look at. everything seems like a compromise somehow.

in truth, i've held onto my CRT for several reasons. mainly, colour reproduction and contrast ratios. i don't think that refresh rates are a problem much anymore...the problem is that i do just about everything from time to time with my computer. gaming is primary, but i will watch movies the odd time, the odd photo editing, even CAD software. plus i tend to be a bit of a prefectionist when shopping now...

so here's where i sit - i'm looking for a good enough contrast ratio so that its very very hard for me to tell the difference, i don't think i could put up with any ghosting effect from the refresh rate in gaming/movies, and i'm looking for a good colour reproduction that is very close to what i have. i understand that i will loose some contrast and colour by switching, but how much loss are we talking about?

i'm looking for probably a 20" widescreen give or take. i've also looked at the samsung 931c (19") for the supposed better colour reproduction, but i've also heard that in some ways it isn't as good as they say.

wondering if i should try a good lcd from future shop and just return it if i don't like it....or maybe wait another year with my 17"? wouldnt mind some better resolutions for games though. 1024x768 sucks.
 
I just bought an Acer 19inch wide from worstbuy. I made them drop the price by 10% because I brought in the add from tigerdirect. I'm very happy with my purchase the switch to DVI also makes a huge difference as well as WS looks a whole lot better. My monitor is only 1440x900 but it looks great. 800:1 colors look awesome, its 5ms and I can't see any ghosting. Honestly it was well worth the 250$ to switch to LCD I'm very happy with it.

Also, one good part to buying it locally at a bestbuy or futureshop if you get them to match a price, they drop it 10%, and unlike newegg with they're 7 or less dead pixels they don't take back, BB or FS take it back if there is 1 bad pixel, and with the 5 year extended warenty i can take it back if anything remotly goes wrong with it, and no shipping charge. :D
 
thanks for the advice, any more would be great. also, one thing i forgot - how well do these monitors handle outside of the native resolution? how bad is the image degredation? i still play a few old classics. some even require dosbox emulation...so resolutions down as far as 640x480 are necessary at times.
 
I played diablo 2 and starcraft on this monitor, don't know what res they run at probly 640x480, and they looked alright, not as good as CRT but it was still playable, stretch isn't that bad either.
 
In the model i have no. There are some monitors that have a function built in to switch to non-ws mode, leaving the black bars on the sides. I'm sure that option ups the price though. to be honest the stetch isn't bad at all. for the amount of time i play non ws games it doesn't matter, newer games like BF2142 that don't support it, i can't even notice it.
 
Cool, yeah, EA/Dice should have put it in the options. Either way I don't notice the difference, but for sure LCD WS all the way.

4:3 is soooo last year. :p
 
I made the switch from 2 19" CRT's to 2 19" wide LG LCD's less than a month ago. I am very pleased with the new screens and I love the widescreen look.
I am using DVI on the Primary screen and VGA on the secondary and they both are nice and sharp.
 
I can't really help you with specific models in the range you are interested in, but I can say that making the jump is worth it. I had a 22" pro CRT, designed for good colour and went with a BenQ 24" widescreen. All in all I'm really pleased. The colour on the LCD is much better than I thought it would be. Is it as good as the CRT? Probably not but not so much that I really care. The only thing I really notice is low level colour differences. The CRT really did dark colours well, the LCD isn't quite as good. However it's still fine and the brighter colours are rich and vibrant.

I really can't tell you how nice it is to have a stable, sharp image. I mean that was why I bought it in the first place, but actually having it is just great. The extra screen space is great too. I was worried that I wouldn't like it and it'd be a waste of money but I'm extremely happy.

I also really like my LCD because it's really bright. At first it kinda seemed like a negative, I wasn't used to it. My CRT was calibrated rather dim (about 80-90cd/m^2) and I used it in a dark room. The LCD was overly bright. However I quickly adjusted and just leave my lights on. I much prefer it, it's nice being able to actually see in my room. However it is something to be aware of, many LCDs need to be fairly bright to fully show their colour range.

My guess is that coming from what is probably not all that high quality a monitor you'll find the LCD really good. Good LCD panels have pretty amazing colour these days. My experience was mostly with old, cheap TN panels at work. They are ok for office work and all, but certainly not something I'd want at home. However if you get a quality panel, it's something else entirely.

What I'd look at is a good S-PVA, P-MVA or S-IPS panel. Now maybe new TN panels are as good, but they few I've encountered fail to impress me. However the P-MVA panel I got, well I'm really happy with it. It's not perfect, and the CRT is better in a couple ways, but over all the LCD is far superior.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top