Own a flat panel? Don't go to this link.

They make noise, too.

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aristide1
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Own a flat panel? Don't go to this link.

Post by aristide1 » Sat Apr 17, 2010 9:10 am

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

But it's a great place for CRTs.

psyopper
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Post by psyopper » Sat Apr 17, 2010 9:17 am

It's a perfectly legitimate testing platform to calibrate LCD's correctly. I use many of these calibrations tools daily in setting up large venue projection systems.

Redzo
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Re: Own a flat panel? Don't go to this link.

Post by Redzo » Sat Apr 17, 2010 11:25 am

aristide1 wrote:http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

But it's a great place for CRTs.
And the reason for not going to that site if you have a flat panel would be :?: :?:

danimal
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Post by danimal » Sat Apr 17, 2010 11:58 am

you wouldn't want to go to that site with a flat-panel lcd because it proves how inferior the gamma range of your monitor is, compared to even the cheapest crt monitor.

kind of a moot point tho, because there are very few crts left in this world.

aristide1
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Post by aristide1 » Sat Apr 17, 2010 12:52 pm

I should just save my Sony E400 just for photo processing.

The more I read about flat panels the more they remind me of opening Pandora's box.

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Post by swivelguy2 » Sat Apr 17, 2010 2:54 pm

I can only speak for myself, but I use both my flat panel(s) and my desk space to do work. I get more work done when both of the above are available.

The Lagom site has been very useful to me in adjusting mismatched LCDs to look fairly similar, which is handy.

Redzo
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Post by Redzo » Sat Apr 17, 2010 4:32 pm

danimal wrote:you wouldn't want to go to that site with a flat-panel lcd because it proves how inferior the gamma range of your monitor is, compared to even the cheapest crt monitor.

kind of a moot point tho, because there are very few crts left in this world.
Thanks for that info. Gamma range is totally not important to me but i see your point.

CRT are....past. And they should stay there. Have no desire to have a 20kg lump on my desk. Ever, ever again even if it could do my dishes and clean the house too. They are just to big, use way to much power and are so 90s ;-)

ck8-04
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Post by ck8-04 » Sat Apr 17, 2010 5:49 pm

What about us IPS panel owners?

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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Sat Apr 17, 2010 8:46 pm

planar PX2611w

for the win?

that's what I have. quite correct in many ways. shrugs?

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Post by qviri » Mon Apr 19, 2010 7:30 pm

ck8-04 wrote:What about us IPS panel owners?
IPS panels get in the way of anti-LCD hyperbole too much, so they don't count.

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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Mon Apr 19, 2010 7:55 pm

I enjoy not being irradiated by my computer device.

that's about it for me and lcd's


also, text is clearer. thats kinda important!

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Post by silentplummet » Tue Apr 20, 2010 9:50 am

CRTs are still good if you want hardware accurate emulation of software that was originally designed with the NTSC refresh rate in mind (which isn't quite 60 Hz). Most of the TMDS transmitters I've seen on consumer PC hardware will only output 50.00 or 60.00 Hz vblank, not the 59.94 or so that these old programs depend upon.

For instance, try playing motion video from a Playstation game (1/4 NTSC framerate) while your video output is locked to the vblank of an LCD monitor... you will have a glitch every few seconds as the frames of the video inevitably get ahead of the soundtrack. Play it on a CRT monitor locked to NTSC vertical refresh rate, however...

Another major benefit of CRTs is that they look much better in a wide range of display resolution. That will remain the case until LCD's (or competing technology) improve physical display resolution to >~200dpi or the point individual pixels can no longer be discerned by the eye at typical viewing distances, whichever comes first. Then there will no longer need be any visible quality degradation between native and 'scaled' resolutions on LCD panels.

I doubt LCD technology will ever overcome CRT in terms of input lag, black level, or viewing angle. I saw an OLED screen in Japan that was very impressive, but only 13".

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Post by doveman » Fri Apr 23, 2010 1:20 am

The native display resolution thing is a major downside to LCDs.

It means when looking to buy one, I have to try and work out how big a screen I need, to be able to read it from the distance I'll be from it, at it's native resolution.

With a CRT, if it's too hard to read you can just drop the resolution without any degradation!

lm
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Post by lm » Fri Apr 23, 2010 4:01 am

Umm, I'd rather take my 2560x1600 resolution and large fonts, than a small resolution with lego fonts. Why can't you just scale the fonts on what ever you are reading?

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Post by andymcca » Fri Apr 23, 2010 4:59 am

lm wrote:Umm, I'd rather take my 2560x1600 resolution and large fonts, than a small resolution with lego fonts. Why can't you just scale the fonts on what ever you are reading?
Windows.

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Post by sea2stars » Sat Apr 24, 2010 6:39 pm

Yeah. I do graphics work for a living, animation, etc, and do much of my 3D work in linear space (2.2 gamma); sometimes I do miss my old 21" Sony Trinitron.

Although I don't miss moving it around and paying for its electricity, I just can't see shelling out $1400+ for a NEC WUXI2 or $2000+ an Eizo, which is probably close to a CRT.

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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Sat Apr 24, 2010 10:15 pm

The clarity of text on an IPS or Eizo monitor (eizo doesnt always use ips but they dont count as theirs are awesome) ...


it just is so much better than crt. Super clear.

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Post by doveman » Mon Apr 26, 2010 4:48 am

lm wrote:Umm, I'd rather take my 2560x1600 resolution and large fonts, than a small resolution with lego fonts. Why can't you just scale the fonts on what ever you are reading?
Games

lm
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Post by lm » Mon Apr 26, 2010 8:09 am

Games? Hmm, at least they should run at full resolution with good fps nowadays:
Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Components > Graphics Cards > Best Graphics Cards For The Money: April 2010 wrote:Best PCIe Card For ~$125:
Radeon HD 5770 512MB
Great 1920x1200 performance in most games
I haven't ever felt a need to scale fonts larger in any game, usually they are huge as is and hardly any games even have that much text anyway.

doveman
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Post by doveman » Mon Apr 26, 2010 11:54 am

It's an additional factor though when buying an LCD.

So not only do I have to work out what size screen will be big enough to be easily viewed at native (1920x1080) resolution at the distance I plan to be from it, but I also have to make sure I buy a graphics card that can play my games at that resolution. Not to mention worrying whether the LCD is going to have some stuck/dead pixels but not enough for the retailer to allow me to return it.

The 5770 is probably fine for most games, but as I say it's another thing that people have to be aware of. And what about older games that probably don't support that resolution, like Planescape Torment?

I can't think which games they were right now, but I know I tried to play a few games on my 36" TV and couldn't because the text was too hard to read. Actually, one of them might have been The Experiment. I think quite a few RPG/RTS games have a fair bit of text popping up in the corner that's actually quite useful to read as well.

I can see the benefits of LCD/LED screens and am looking to buy one soon, I just wish it wasn't so complicated!

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Post by psyopper » Mon Apr 26, 2010 12:45 pm

doveman wrote: So not only do I have to work out what size screen will be big enough to be easily viewed at native (1920x1080) resolution at the distance I plan to be from it...
Could you work out the pixel pitch of your currently "satisfactory" monitor and stick to it with the larger screen? Technically you should wind up with something nearly identical - pixel wise - as your current screen.

doveman
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Post by doveman » Tue Apr 27, 2010 2:50 am

Not sure what you mean. Do LCDs have pixel or dot pitch?

I'm currently using a 19" CRT about 40cm from my eyes at 1280x1024. I want to get an LCD that will go at the back of my desk, so about another 40cm back, and run it at 1920x1080.

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Post by andymcca » Tue Apr 27, 2010 4:54 am

doveman wrote:Not sure what you mean. Do LCDs have pixel or dot pitch?

I'm currently using a 19" CRT about 40cm from my eyes at 1280x1024. I want to get an LCD that will go at the back of my desk, so about another 40cm back, and run it at 1920x1080.
This is just a guess, but what the other guy might mean is that you want a:
(19 * sin(atan(1280/1024)) * 2 * (1920/1280)) / sin(atan(1920/1080)) = 51" viewable (assuming your 19" was viewable diagonal). This assumes that LCD pixels == CRT pixels, which is obviously untrue. I can't recall if 1920x1080 is actual resolution or apparent tri-color resolution. If it is the former, than you would need more like a
(19 * sin(atan(1280/1024)) * 2 * (1920/1280)) / sin(atan(1920/1080)) / sqrt(2)= 36" monitor. Neither of these sounds all that attractive.

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Post by doveman » Tue Apr 27, 2010 7:05 am

andymcca wrote:Neither of these sounds all that attractive.
Neither of them make much sense to me either, but then maths never was my strong point :)

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Post by Metaluna » Tue Apr 27, 2010 10:05 am

Redzo wrote:Have no desire to have a 20kg lump on my desk. Ever, ever again even if it could do my dishes and clean the house too. They are just to big, use way to much power and are so 90s ;-)
I remember the first time I saw some LCDs on display in a retail store. Oddly, the thing I remember most vividly was not the image quality or anything like that, but rather the boxes they came in -- little suitcase-sized things with plastic handles that you could carry with one hand. Though I wouldn't be able to actually afford one for another year or two (this was back when a 19" 1280x1024 panels were going for >$1000), at that point I knew there was no going back to CRT.

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Post by mark314 » Tue Apr 27, 2010 11:27 am

I don't know, I'm quite happy with my dual 2209WA dell IPS panels. They passed the tests on that site quite admirably and seeing as I paid $380CA for them shipped to my door, I really don't have much to complain about :p

psyopper
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Post by psyopper » Tue Apr 27, 2010 11:42 am

Yeah, "dot pitch" was a bit of a misnomer. What I meant was something along the lines of matching pixel density, or more specifically, pixel size.

Calculate your actual pixel dimensions, then use those dimensions x 1920x1080 to get your new physical screen size.

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Post by doveman » Tue Apr 27, 2010 1:53 pm

Can't say I've got a clue how to do that calculation either.

Thinking about it a bit more though, if the screen was further back, I'd be able to move about 20cm towards the desk and push the keyboard back, so I'd only be about 60cm from the screen, compared to 40cm at the moment.

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