Monitor

[ssahl]

Just the other day I was surfing around and then my monitor turned black and started screatching, then shut off. The CRT or cap went out on it, wasnt very old either, anyway I want a flat panel (LCD) this time, no CRT or cap to worry about going out, plus most importently it is much better on the eyes. Since I have never owned one I had a few questions

Is there a danger of setting the resolution, or refresh rate to high like with a normal monitor?
anything I should look out for or avoid when I buy a new LCD flat panel display?
What's the deal with the ratio specs on these (like 250:1 or 300:1) what does this actually mean? Also to info about brand names to look for and or avoid would be very helpfull.

[glc]

You should run a LCD at its "native" resolution, which on 15" is 1024x768. Running lower than native will cause heavy font aliasing and general jagginess and blurring. Refresh rates over 60hz are a waste because there are no electron guns like in a CRT, therefore no flicker.

[RJ]

If you set the resolution or refresh rate too high, the TFT will just give you an information that the video mode is unsupported and you need to switch it back. That's what my TFT does. No damage here.

anything I should look out for or avoid when I buy a new LCD flat panel display?

Yes. Many things

First, the size. TFTs use the full area, CRTs not. Therefore a 15" TFT does not equal a 15" CRT, it equals a 17" CRT (approximately). A 17" TFT equals approx. a 19" CRT, a 18" TFT is slightly larger than a 19" CRT, and a 19" TFT equal approx. a 21" CRT.

The contrast ratio informs you about the relations of white to black. 250:1 means that a white light is 250x brighter than a black light.
The thing is that current TFTs have a backlight that is constantly running, and even if a pixel gets locked so that no light should pass it (to display black), a certain amount of light will pass it anyway. So it's no 'true' black, it's a bit brighter than black.
That's what the contrast ratio tells. The higher the left number the better the contrast (and the blacker the black looks. .lol)
Good CRTs can do 700:1.
Absolute minimum should be 250:1. The best ones I've seen can do 500:1.

The brightness is for TFTs usually 200cd/qm to 250cd/qm. Comparison: A CRT is limited to 120cd/qm. They'd need too much power to display a brighter picture.

The viewing angle of a TFT is not like the one of a CRT, 180° horizonally and vertically, it is smaller. Good TFTs can do 170° horizonally and 150° vertically I believe. Just pay attention here so that the TFT you get won't have a viewing angle that is too limited for you.

A very important factor is the response time: This time tell you how fast a pixel can switch on/off (react to a given signal).
Older TFTs were slow, and produced "ghosting", means when you moved something on the screen, it blurred alot. As you can see, nothing for games or video.
Today's TFT should all be fast enough to handle video and games. Even my TFT, over 2 years old, with 50ms response time impressed my friends who are CRT user. They could see no motion difference to a CRT, only a little if you pay attention. Well, a hardcore gamer certainly would notice a small difference, but today's TFT are even faster, 30ms, 25ms, the lower the better.

Color accurancy is still a weakness of a TFT. Although with 16.7 Million colors very nice, the CRTs are better. If you do photo editing or something else where you need 100% color accurancy, then you will have problems with a TFT. For any other work the TFT will be good enough. Color saturation is also not as good as the CRT. It's because the color filters are not 100% color accurate and the background light does not contain the colors in its full intensity.

Dead pixels is the result of current TFT manufacturing. It is not very reliable therefore many panels are broken and sorted out. But even the good panels are not 100% perfect either. They contain dead pixels. Means that a transistor is broken, so the pixel does not react to signals, so it will be either constantly on or constantly off.
That's one thing to pay attention, because the manufacturers define a certain amount of dead pixels (it can be 5 subpixels for a 15" TFT) as ok, but good TFTs have never more than only 1 defective subpixel (neither mine nor the ones of my friends).
Subpixel means that it's not a whole pixel, only either the red, blue or green subpixel. So the pixel can display some color, others not. Position of the dead pixel is random, so look closely at your new TFT so find them and return the TFT if there are too many.

Connection type. Over all the years we connect CRTs to VGA. That's the optimal because CRTs need analog signals for their electron guns. But a TFT displays the picture the digital way.
Connecting a TFT via VGA would mean that the graphics card creates the picture digital, then convert it to analog, send it via the VGA cable analog, the TFT converts it back to digital and displays it. Of course, the both conversions make no sense for a TFT, and you will lose picture quality.
Therefore a new interface was developed, DVI. DVI is a true digital interface, means the graphics card generates the picture digital, it will be transferred digitally via DVI and the TFT displays this. No quality loss.
Now you probably don't have a graphics card with DVI output. But don't worry, all TFTs that I've seen with DVI are hybrid. They have both VGA and DVI. So you can connect it to VGA now, and if you change your graphics card, get one with DVI and connect the TFT to DVI. Avoid the TFTs that have only the analog input (that would be the cheaptest ones, though).

Okay, I think that's all

Brand names to look for: Samsung, EIZO, Philips (although philips tfts have not a really low response time -> 45ms, 40ms. . just to let you know).

Brand names to avoid: Viewsonic
A friend of mine bought a Viewsonic, and it claims to have 25ms response time. In games it blurs alot. Not sure if other viewsonics are the same, but this one is definitely something to avoid, at least if you play games or want to watch videos.

OK, hope this wasn't too much for you and hope it helps

RJ

[ssahl]

Great, not to much, this is what I wanted.
I think I can get a video card with DVI, at least I think thats what it is. It's a GeForce2 ti and on the back it has the usual VGA connection but also a little bigger square type connection with a few more pins, is this what your talking about? If it is I'll see maybe if the guy that has it wants to make a trade for my GeForce2 MX/MX400. I think I will go for a Samsung I seen that looked pretty good, cant remember the model but looked really good and only costs $450 (I say only, this price still hurts) anyway thanks guys

[RJ]

Here is a picture

http://www.ati.com/support/connector...vidfiregl.html

and here how the pins are connected:

http://www.ati.com/support/connector...sfordvi-d.html

That is the DVI.

If you want to know why there's said DVI-D:

There are 2 types of DVI: DVI-D (digital) and DVI-I (integrated).
The only difference is that DVI-I has a few pins more, to handle analog data. The DVI-D is digital only. That way it is possible to use an adapter to connect a classic CRT to a DVI. So theoretically no graphics card would need VGA anymore. But well, I haven't seen a CRT to a DVI yet, maybe something doesn't work well, who knows.

Usually the graphic cards have DVI-I and the flat panels DVI-D. But since the digital pins are the same, it doesn't matter if the one has additional analog pins or not. You just need to use the digital ones.

RJ

[ssahl]

Ok, I did get another look at this card and in the manual it said it was a 24pin dvi digital connection, (for LCD) now I just hope he will make the trade. May have to throw in some blank CD-R disks or something.

[RJ]

Trade GeForce 2 Ti with GeForce 2 MX ??

Good luck

[ssahl]

I know huh, he is using an ATI video card right now anyway, even though it's PCI and only 32MB he likes it because of the TV hook up it has, so it's not like I'm pulling it out of his machine. I set up his home network (3 computers) and have fixed computers for him quite a few times so I dont think he will mind to much.

[ssahl]

OK, I went ahead and bought one, I went for the cheapest LCD I could find though, since I'm short on cash and waiting any longer would just make it to where I would be even shorter on cash. It's only 14" but most everything else about it is the same as other monitors.
250:1 contrast ratio
1024 x 768 xga
30ms response time
45 degree viewing angle
16M colors

$259 plus tax

I have 2 dead pixels, one I cant really ever see unless I lower my head and look real close, the other is noticeable in the upper right, it always appears as white or red. Since I bought the cheapy model I probably shouldnt exchange it for just one bad pixel, you think? Not a bad deal though huh.

[RJ]

What is the brand and model number ?

RJ