monitors

[fireax29]

Any one know a good article on selecting flat screen monitors? So I can learn to pick out the good deals from the ones that make you think your getting one?

[PilotinCommand]

Yes interesting question. I'm looking for a good montor to, 19' will do . I heard that Samsung has good monitors and Samsung to. Personally I'm considering a Philips monitor, they include a special feature caled "lightframe" which adjusts the contrast so it'll look just like TV. I don't know if this gimmick is worth buying the monitor cause the refresh rates aren't as high I was hoping for.

Still I could use a good article about monitors. Someone knows a good one?

Thanks,

PiC

[PilotinCommand]

Sorry first line should be; I heard that Samsung has good monitors and Ilyama too.

[RJ]

Well, I don't know about an article, but I can give you some tips.

1. Stick with brand names. Samsung and Philips that PilotinCommand mentioned are good brands. Good brand means good quality. El cheapo brands mean low quality.
2. You need to know about the specs. Get a monitor with good specs for you. This may differ from person to person, depends on your needs.

specs:

Size

The size of course is a personal choice. But unlike CRTs a TFT uses the full area to display. That means that a 15" TFT has approximately the same size as a 17" CRT (which displayes 15,8"). A 17" TFT equals approx. a 19" CRT, a 18" TFT is slightly larger than a 19" CRT, and a 19" TFT equals approx. a 21" CRT.

Resolution

A TFT can display the sharpest image only at its native resolution. Except some laptop screens the native res. is:
14"/15"/16": 1024x768
17"/18"/19": 1280x1024
20": 1600x1200

Brightness

All TFTs have a brightness of 200cd/qm to 250cd/qm. So that's not a spec where you can determine a TFT as good or bad, as all are similar. Just for comparison: A CRT has a brightness of max. 120 cd/qm.

Contrast ratio

This is an important spec. A TFT has a background lamp that is constantly running. To display a black pixel the transistor has to lock the LC. But it is not possible to block the light completely, some amount of light will pass anyway, and thus making the black pixel brighter, so it's not 100% black.
Now how many light will pass a LC depends on the flat panel itself. The less light comes through, the better the flat panel is, and the "blacker" the black looks.
The contrast ratio now tells you how much brighter white is compared to black. 250:1 would mean that the white is 250x brighter than black. In your other post you mentioned a TFT with 450:1. That's of course much better. White is 450x brighter than the black. Since the white is always the same the contrast ratio can only be higher the darker the black is.
Good CRTs can do 700:1.

Response Time

This time is measured in milliseconds and tells how long a pixel needs to respond and change from black to white and vice versa. The faster a pixel reacts the better animation looks. So for games and video, keep the response time as low as possible.
50ms is ok for normal gamers. You won't see noticeable ghosting. Friends of mine who are CRT users have all played on my TFT and no-one said anything about ghosting.
50ms should be the upper limit. Most TFTs are faster now. You can also get 25ms models.
That means that TFTs are good for gaming. Unfortunately there are still people who don't know about it. They claim that TFTs aren't good for gaming because of the ghosting, but the truth is that ghosting is a thing of the past, at least on most TFTs (therefore, if you're a gamer: Avoid Viewsonic, they produce ghosting even with 25ms response time, and I still don't know why).

Viewing angle

A TFT does not have a 180° horizontal / 180° vertical viewing angle like a CRT. It is limited. Most today's TFTs have a good viewing angle of 150° horizonally and more. The best I've seen, from EIZO, has 170° horizonally and 170° vertically (I've looked at an EIZO, it's really amazing how viewing angle has been improved). Over 150° horizontally should be fine, but now it depends on you, what viewing angle you need. EIZO's TFTs have a viewing angle comparable to a CRT.

Colors

Colors ares till a weakness of a TFT. TFT monitors can't produce 100% accurate colors like a CRT can. The reason is that the background light does not contain the primary colors in its full intensions and the color filters are not 100% accurate.
Anyway, 16.7 colors is common for today's TFTs. Don't take one with less.

Dead pixels

Due to the current manufacturing process some pixels are broken and do not work. Either the pixel is permanently on or permanently off. It depends on the panel itself, so you need to look for them on your own panel. Make sure that you can return it as some dead pixel policies are unacceptable. At newegg I can read about 7 or 8 defective pixels to be normal. But good TFTs have never more than one single defective subpixel (subpixel means that either the red, blue or green pixel is broken, the other two still work).

Connection type

For many years CRTs have been connected to the VGA port. Well, that's the best coz a CRT needs analog signals to display the image. So the graphics card produces a digital image, the RAMDAC converts it to analog and outputs the analog signals through VGA for the CRT.
Now a TFT is different. TFTs display the image digitally and thus need digital signals. Many cheap models have only a VGA and another RAMDAC to convert the analog signal back to digital. Of course, with these two conversions, you'll lose quality.
Therefore digital standards have been developed. While DFP and P&D failed, DVI succeed. All newer graphics card come with a DVI port or have it at least as an option. With DVI there is no digital to analog conversion and you'll get the best image.
I don't know if there are still monitors mit DFP or P&D around. If yes, avoid it. DVI is the way to go.
Except one TFT all TFTs that come with DVI also have the VGA port, so they're hybrid. The advantage is that if you don't have a graphics card with DVI you can connect the TFT to VGA, and when you exchange the graphics card you can take advantage of DVI without the need to buy a new monitor. Personally I would buy no TFT without DVI.

So in your other thread:
http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...threadid=39485
the response time is excellent, but I dunno about the other specs. They're important as well.

I hope this helped you a little despite it's alot to read and maybe you have now a better idea what to look for.

@PilotinCommand

On the lower right of a post there is a button called "EDIT". So if you make mistakes you can just edit them out

RJ

[PilotinCommand]

Thanks for the tip and thanks for your effort in this very helpfull, how shall I call it.... tutorial, which it's almost.

Still I wasn't sure what dot pitch means. Is it the distence between the pixels??

Danke vielmals,

PiC

[Nuclear Krusader]

You should post that in the Tips & Tricks forum, RJ. Your post is really helpful and doesn't deserve to be buried here.

Unless you wanna post it over and over again.

[RJ]

Still I wasn't sure what dot pitch means. Is it the distence between the pixels??

The dot pitch inditaces the distance from one pixel to another. Anctually this isn't important when choosing a TFT, but it is when choosing a CRT. The smaller the dot pitch is the higher the resolution can be. I don't know much about CRTs, but I've read that the dot pitch is different on shadow mask, aperture grill and another type of mask, so for example you can't compare the dot pitch of a CRT with curved surface with the dot pitch of an aperture grill CRT as they are slightly different.
If you consider buying a CRT then there are other specs to look for, as there you won't have dead pixels, native resolution or response time, but type of mask, dot pitch, max. refresh rate, etc.

RJ

[PilotinCommand]

Okay, thanks again.

[DragonNOA1]

Try Tom's Hardware w/ a comparison of 12 19" monitors.

http://www.tomshardware.com/display/...319/index.html

[fireax29]

ty to all for your useful advice!

[wilsontc]

thanks RJ, that was extremly helpful!