Dealing with LCD limitations
Posted by: Dignan
Dealing with LCD limitations - 19/02/2004 16:50
So, my dad's company just bought a few new Dell laptops. I have not seen them but they sound nice. But there's a problem.
The laptops have 15" "widescreen" LCDs. Their resolution is 1920x1200. I wasn't aware that LCDs that small had resolutions that high. That seems pretty ridiculous to me. I don't know any business people who have good enough vision for a resolution like that. My dad certainly doesn't.
So, I plan on seeing what I can do to adjust the Windows environment to get around this problem. Any tips/pointers on what I can do? I don't really want to turn on the "accessibility" options, since those make things a bit too large, but I want to adjust things so that they are suitably visible. This is in WinXP Pro.
And why would they make the resolution like this? Why not use a lower resolution with the same aspect ratio? It doesn't make any sense to me. The 23" LCD monitor they were looking at for their desktop publishing station has the same native resolution. That seems a bit absurd.
Posted by: Daria
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 19/02/2004 16:53
People like me want a 1600x1200 laptop minimum. I'm disappointed the Powerbook's resolution is so low. They make them that way for people like me, who want 9 80x24 xterms.
Posted by: Ezekiel
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 19/02/2004 17:26
Yeah, if they're having problems you can have them trade those 15" 1920x1200's with my 14" 1280x1024 Dell D600's even steven.
There is no great way around it. Non-native resolutions look like crap on LCD's. Set the font sizes & icon sizes up and deal with it or deal with fuzzy a somewhat fuzzy / jaggy looking 1280x1024 (or something thereabout).
-Zeke
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 19/02/2004 17:37
When I bought my D600 recently I opted for the 1024x768 14 inch screen. I can't cope with higher that that res on a 14 inch screen, even on an LCD. I reckon you need perfect vision to manage more than 1024x768 at 14 inches.
I have other issues with my Dell screen. It has a strange interlace effect when I blink or chew, which I have never seen on an LCD TFT screen before. Anyone else seen that ?
Posted by: matthew_k
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 19/02/2004 19:22
Learn how to change font sizes, it's really not that dificult. There's a windows setting to tell XP what dpi your monitor is, which is helpfull. Occasionally useless websites will somehow hard code their font size, but a quick trip to the IE/Mozilla view menu can change the font size for that window.
Once you get used to a high res LCD you'll never go back. I laugh at the widescreen 17" emachines laptops every time I go into best buy or circuit city.
Matthew
Posted by: robricc
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 19/02/2004 19:48
I laugh at the widescreen 17" emachines laptops every time I go into best buy or circuit city.
Why? At first glance, they seem pretty nice (for the price). I didn't really play with it though. Is it the resolution?
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 19/02/2004 21:05
Once you get used to a high res LCD you'll never go back.
Not if you're a businessman in his 50's with glasses. If a typical computer user like the people in my dad's office usually use their computers at resolutions of no more than 1000xwhatever (on 17 and 19 inch monitors), there's no way they'll be doing 1920x1600 on a 15".
Frankly I'm amazed that nobody is suprised about this. I find it incredible that this is what Dell would sell to a business. These laptops have less desktop surface area than a regular 15" screen, yet the resolution is the same as the Samsung 21" LCDs. This makes no sense to me.
Posted by: msaeger
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 19/02/2004 21:13
What model is it ? I find it hard to believe since they can't sell a 19" desktop lcd that does 1600X1200
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 19/02/2004 21:25
The Inspiron 8600 has:
15.4 inch Wide-Aspect UltraSharpTM TFT Active Matrix displays in a choice of WXGA (1280x800), WSXGA+ (1680x1050), or WUXGA (1920x1200)
I'm not sure what the complaint was. I'm sure that your father's business (yes, I know I'm responding to two different people) specifically ordered the more expensive option. It's not like Dell gave it to them for free. There's a $150 premium on the highest resolution display from the lowest (assuming that model; I'm sure that other models with the same options have similar price discrepancies). If they made an uninformed decision, I'm sorry, but that's hardly Dell's fault. They don't have the optometry records of your father's business colleagues to suggest that that might not be the option they want. Personally, I'd be offended if I ordered something and was told that that's not what I wanted. Perhaps in the future you could advise them on their purchases.
Posted by: Ezekiel
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 19/02/2004 22:11
Listen, get them docking stations, set their lovely built in screens down to the lowest supported resolution and get them 19" 1280x1024 flat screens (~$700, I got one for my 88 year old grandma - yeah she uses a PC regularly - she's too cool) and a copy of Pivot Pro so they can put them in portrait mode for reading the WSJ or NYT. That way they only need to look at the built in screens when on the road.
If they're not too old, or still brand new(the machines that is, not the businessmen) Dell might help you out by installing the lower res screens instead, so long as you asked nicely and didn't ask for any money back.
-Zeke
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 19/02/2004 23:52
Thanks for doing the research, Bitt. Looks like someone doesn't listen to me (my dad). I had explained how LCD screens worked to him before, and the first thing he said when we started talking about the laptops on the phone was "well, you're right about LCD monitors." Um...yeah
I'll see if they can replace the laptops. That seems like the best course of action right now. I won't blame Dell, now that I have that information. Some people want resolutions like that, so I give them credit for having the option. I was under the impression that my father's company had a a representative at Dell, but I'm not sure.
Bitt, when you looked it up, did you see any other differences between the models, or was the screen type an independant selection? Either way, I can definitely see my dad going for the more expensive model
Posted by: msaeger
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 19/02/2004 23:57
I see that at companies all the time especially in executive areas. They will buy whatever the top of the line model is and not worry about if it fits their needs or not. I also see the inverse where they buy the cheapest and it doesn't fulfill their needs.
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 00:15
To be fair, my dad isn't clueless about these things. He's up on technology and is the reason I'm such a gadget freak. Much of the time he simply lets his love of new [expensive] toys get in the way of the best research
This is why when I worked there as a lowly office temp, I was the one who researched and recommended their new scanner, photo scanner, plasma television (as a giveaway prize), and previous desktop publishing monitor.
Well, I'll be working there briefly this summer, when they order new computers for the office
I'll see what input I get then
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 05:12
Learn how to change font sizes, it's really not that dificult.
It is not just font sizes that are the problem for people with non-perfect vision at high res on 14/15 inch screens. It is also things like toolbar buttons and other graphical elements, which will not magically get bigger by tweaking DPI settings.
Being a programmer who likes to have a double row of task bar buttons I would love my laptop to have more vertical screen resolution. It would be nice not to be programming through a letter box view on my code, but I my eyes can't cope with hi-res on a 14/15 inch screen.
I think it might be time for me to invest in a nice 21 inch CRT monitor, I've been living in the dark ages at 1024x768 for far too long. I would live to get a 19 inch LCD instead, but that probably won't happen because of the issues with colour reproduction, as I'll be retouching photos on it as well. The idea of a dual 21 inch CRT and 19 inch LCD appeals though...
Posted by: Roger
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 05:16
I think it might be time for me to invest in a nice 21 inch CRT monitor, I've been living in the dark ages at 1024x768 for far too long.
I sometimes wander what I'll do when my eyes start to go. I'm currently running at 1600x1200 on a 19" CRT monitor. My secondary monitor is 1280x1024 on a 17" CRT monitor. I don't think I could cope with less screen real estate, and 21" CRTs are still a little too expensive.
Posted by: peter
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 05:33
21" CRTs are still a little too expensive.
You can get a
reasonably tidy Iiyama trinitron one for about 400 quid -- it wouldn't surprise me if your 17in and 19in were both more than that when you bought them...
Peter
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 05:37
I suspect when our generation reaches our sixties we'll need to be sitting in front of 50 inch screens just to get 1024x768...
...unless they have found some way to tap into our optic nerves by then !
Posted by: Roger
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 05:58
Oops. I meant that 21" LCDs (to get the resolution I want) are too expensive.
Posted by: peter
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 09:09
Oops. I meant that 21" LCDs (to get the resolution I want) are too expensive.
Mmm, no argument there. Even once you've decided you can't justify those 3840x2400 ones for five grand, the 2048x1536 ones are still about three grand.
Peter
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 09:21
Bitt, when you looked it up, did you see any other differences between the models, or was the screen type an independant selection?
I just found the first 15" (15.4", really) widescreen laptop in the small business section, so I don't know that that's the exact model your dad has. But, on that one, the screen selection was a top-level option. That is, you had to choose that, CPU and something else (maybe office suite?) before doing the real customization. I doubt that there were further differences, but I don't know. Just go over to dell.com and see. It should be easy to find.
If your Dad does have a Dell rep, then maybe you ought to blame him.
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 09:24
Even once you've decided you can't justify those 3840x2400 ones for five grand, the 2048x1536 ones are still about three grand.
Ah, but conversely, once you have justified the 2048x1536 ones the 3840x2400 are an easy next step up...
With 3840x2400 I could actually view my landscape photos fullscreen at 100%, I'd still need a bigger screen to view the portrait ones though
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 09:37
Maybe you could find one that rotates.
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 09:48
It isn't keeping me awake a night, given that I can't afford it anway...
Posted by: tman
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 09:56
I've got a 1600x1200 15" LCD in my Dell and I think it's great. Everything is extremely sharp and it's excellent for programming as you can fit way more onto the screen. When I get a new laptop I'll be getting a minimum of 1600x1200 at least.
You do need to bump up the screen DPI value in Windows though so the fonts will look right. Only problem is that applications don't usually resize properly because of the increased font sizes but you learn to live with that.
Posted by: DWallach
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 10:07
I sometimes wander what I'll do when my eyes start to go.
By then, hopefully, user interfaces will be programmed in terms of points, milimeters, or other real-world units rather than pixels. Apple will probably have an easier time of this with the whole PDF architecture and all that. Microsoft and the X Window System will have a harder time, but it's going to have to happen.
Meanwhile, Mozilla turns out to be able to deal with configurable screen resolutions. I've configured it properly on my laptop and desktop, and now I find myself constantly needing to manually resize the screen fonts (control-+) as they always show up on screen too small (i.e., web sites have been assuming a lower pixel density than my screen). This is probably a harbinger of problems to come.
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 11:48
I've got a 1600x1200 15" LCD in my Dell and I think it's great
Well, that's definitely smaller than most people can stand, so I'm impressed with that!
But I will point out that a 15" "widescreen" is nearly an inch shorter vertically. So imagine putting 1200 pixels in an inch less space. That's why it's not suitable for my dad. Of course, he's got a 19" CRT at home and keeps it somewhere between 1024 and 1280.
Personally, I have a 19" CRT that I keep at 1600x1200. I could go slightly larger, but my monitor doesn't support it. I will hopefully be getting the hand-me-down monitor from my dad's work, the widescreen Sony I found for them 3 years ago. I think that can do slightly better. At least I'll be able to do 1900x1600 at higher than 70Hz (my limit right now on 1600x1200).
Does anyone here still prefer CRTs to LCDs, like I do? It's just that I find myself changing resolutions pretty often, and I like the flexibility. That and the other issues just don't make them as attractive to me. I'm still holding out for that beautiful Sony. Mmmm.
Posted by: mlord
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 11:50
>So imagine putting 1200 pixels in an inch less space.
Stop it.. you're making me drool in antici...
Posted by: tman
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 12:03
Nope. The higher the DPI the better! Have you actually tried the laptop? The screens are beautiful in my opinion. I've not had too much trouble with games wanting lower resolution as 800x600 is half 1600x1200 so there aren't any artifacts from the scaling.
I prefer LCDs to CRTs and it's all I've got now. The only CRT I use on any semi regular basis is the one at my parents house but I'm hardly ever there and I usually have my laptop with me anyway.
Razor sharp images, no flickering at all, low power consumption i.e. won't be a space heater and light weight. What else do you want?
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 12:04
Does anyone here still prefer CRTs to LCDs, like I do?
I couldn't move entirely to LCDs because of the single problem of colour reproduction when you are sitting off centre. You only have to be slumped in your chair slightly before the colour/contrast goes too far off. So I have to have a CRT to use if I want to retouch photos and prepare them for printing.
When I get round to it my desktop machine is going to have both, I need to find a LCD and CRT with similar physical screen sizes.
Posted by: tman
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 12:06
Hmm. Okay, you've hit one of the major flaws in LCDs. Most consumer level LCDs don't actually do 24 bit colour. The IBM 1600x1200 one I've got in this Dell actually only does 6 bits per channel. You have to go for more expensive ones before they'll do a full 8 bits per channel.
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 12:11
Even the ones that do full 24bit colour still suffer from the off centre problem anyway.
Posted by: DWallach
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 12:21
My Apple Cinema HD doesn't seem to suffer any off-axis problems. And, unlike my previous CRT, it hasn't gotten dimmer as it's aged. Even without using one of those Spyder calibration tools, I find that what I see on screen and what I get out of my printer are virtually identical. Let's hear it for the
sRGB colorspace standard!
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 12:25
My Apple Cinema HD doesn't seem to suffer any off-axis problems
£1599 in the UK, ouch! I could buy 4 22" CRT screens for that price...
Posted by: RobotCaleb
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 12:42
Does anyone here still prefer CRTs to LCDs
i do
im an avid gamer, and i cant stand to see high-motion games go blurry. ive yet to see an lcd screen that does not have this problem.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 13:06
Speaking of games and monitors, do game developers all sit in totally blackened rooms when developing games on top of their preternaturally enhanced eyesight? It seems most games these days are so dim as to require me to turn the brightness on my monitor up so far that it blooms when viewing anything other than those games. What's wrong with making the game an appropriate brightness?
Posted by: RobotCaleb
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 13:10
for mood enhancement, i think
ive spent some time trying to get through the painkiller demo that just came out. that game is so dark that its horrible. i turned gamma, brightness etc up, but i shouldnt have to. my settings are fine for the rest of the games i play
Posted by: DWallach
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 13:16
£1599 in the UK, ouch! I could buy 4 22" CRT screens for that price...
That's what I kept saying, but every time I walked into the local computer shop, there it was, calling out to me, taunting me. I tried to resist its charms, but eventually I just couldn't stand it any more. I gave in and it's been sitting smugly on my desk for maybe a year now. I'll never go back.
Posted by: TigerJimmy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 13:27
Why??? I am definitely someone who prefers CRTs on their "desktop" machine. What is so great about the LCDs? I've still got a tube. How I see it is that:
1. Tubes work better at different resolutions, while LCD needs to interpolate for non-native resolutions, sacrificing sharpness.
2. CRTs are much brighter and have much better off-axis color, brightness, etc., as has been discussed.
3. CRTs are "faster", which is important for gaming, though I realize that newer LCD technologies are addressing this.
4. CRTs are *way* cheaper.
The things I think LCD has going for them are weight and desk space. Since I don't move my desktop monitor, weight is not an issue for me. I don't know if the desk space is an issue or not. Would I really move the screen farther back on my desk? Probably a bit. It isn't worth those 4 disadvantages for me, however.
22" CRT flat screen monitors capable of 2048x1536 are under $600 now.
I don't get it.
Jim
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 13:54
Desk space is also no importance to me. I have a corner desk so there's already several square feet of space I'm losing already, and this is with the keyboard on the desk, not the tray
I still think that regardless of DPI, 1200 pixels in eight inches of space is not very good for people like my father.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 13:57
I'd argue that your comment about brightness is not true. LCDs are also much sharper for certain things, like text. Looking at a bunch of xterms on an LCD is bliss.
Posted by: Ezekiel
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 14:18
I'm also torn on the subject, in addition to the fine points raised so far:
Add'l cons of CRT's - uneven pixel conversion at the edges
Add'l pros of LCD's - Portrait mode
I've got two side by side CRT's at the office and a 17" LCD at home.
-Zeke
Posted by: JeffS
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 14:35
Add'l pros of LCD's - Portrait mode
Yeah. We just got LCD's here and I'm loving portrait mode. I've got 62 lines of visible code now!
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 14:40
I can easily fit over 90 lines of code on my 1600x1200 monitor, landscape, in an xterm, even counting toolbars and window borders. What kind of big-ass font are you using?
Posted by: TigerJimmy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 14:47
OK, I can see that.
Posted by: Roger
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 14:49
What kind of big-ass font are you using?
I've got 56 lines of code visible in my Visual Studio.NET window right now, on a 1600x1200 landscape screen. Given that VS.NET isn't renowned for being parsimonious with screen real estate, I've got to second Bitt's question.
Posted by: lectric
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 14:49
I hate when games do that. I personally don't like to play in the dark. My keyboard skills aren't that sharp. The LCD I have at work is horrible at games. Not that I ever, oh nevermind, who am I kidding. There's too much of a mouse trails effect for me to see properly.
Posted by: JeffS
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 14:54
heh, well I'm only running 1280x1024, so that's part of the problem. That's the max this LCD monitor can do. If it had a higher resolution then I'd really be in business. Still, if I were running the same monitor in landscape mode I'd have fewer lines available.
My old tube monitor gave me higher resolutions, and therefore more llines of code. Actually I believe the number was the same as I'm getting now with the screen rotated. The text is more readable however, so I ended up with as much text but in a bigger font (the editor I'm using only has one font, I don't know the size). Still a plus over my old monitor.
edit: oh, and if get rid of the tool bar at the top I get 70 lines. That's not bad at 1240X1028.
Posted by: mlord
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 14:59
I find my 20" desktop LCD better in *every* respect than the very high-end Eizo 21" CRT that it displaced. Both were in use at 1600x1200, and the LCD (driven digitally) is much much sharper and brighter than the CRT ever was.
I can use smaller fonts on the LCD (for more lines of code in a window) than on the CRT because everything about the LCD is just *so* crisp!. DVD playback also looks Great! in a window or fullscreen.
And having an extra 24" of work surface back doesn't hurt either!
Face it folks -- the only real downside to LCDs is the price. That's a biggie, but if the prices were the same, would *any* of YOU (not your theoretical imaginary graphic artist friend) actually choose a new CRT over a new LCD of the same size these days?
Not me. Not a chance.
Cheers
Posted by: Folsom
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 15:19
I would hate to play some of my games at 1600x1200 because my system wouldn't handle it. Halo barely runs OK at 1024x768.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 15:34
The drawing lag still remains a problem for gaming, as I understand it. Otherwise, I totally agree.
Posted by: RobotCaleb
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 15:41
if they were the same price, i would buy one
but it would be run as a secondary to my crt
only when they fix the above mentioned problems can i use an lcd as my primary
Posted by: mlord
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 15:58
25ms response (very typical now, faster ones are available too) means refresh equivalent to around 40 frames/sec. Games generally do 30 or less.
Cheers
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 16:16
I think you underestimate games these days. The first benchmark I stumbled on at Tom's Hardware shows framerates of often well over 100. But, like I said, it's from what I hear. It may just be prejudice, though.
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro at 1600x1200, 32 bit color:
UT2k3: 84.2 fps
Aquanox 2: 56.8 fps
Q3 Team Arena: 137.0 fps
Serious Sam 2: 62.9 fps
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 16:29
Hmm. This article about
response times being invalid is interesting.
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 16:30
I need to see a properly tuned LCD display (preferably a 21") to make that decision. At the moment, though, I'm not sure I would. I've seen a few in action, but what I really wish I could do is be able to see the screens at Best Buy properly. They've got all their screens on the same feed, so I'm amazed they would sell any at all! Half of them wouldn't be displaying at their native resolution. Maybe none of them are!
So, no, I like CRTs. The price of LCDs just eliminates the choice entirely. Without the price difference the choice would be harder, but I'd make the same one.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 16:39
Also, dead pixels are apparently much more common on LCDs than on CRTs, and the warranties don't seem to be very good on that front.
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 17:56
if the prices were the same, would *any* of YOU (not your theoretical imaginary graphic artist friend) actually choose a new CRT over a new LCD of the same size these days?
Perhaps I haven't seen the right LCD screen yet then Mark. All of the ones that I have used (which have admittedly almost all been laptop screens) have had a significant problem with colour and contrast changes off issue. Doing development, surfing and writing documents this is merely a minor distraction, but whenever I have tried to do colour correction of my photos using an LCD screen I have ended up getting wound up, because even a small movement off axis changes the colour balence and contrast that I see.
Are desktop LCDs that much better that this is a non-issue ? If so I'll have to take a look at one when I come to buy a new display.
P.S. "taking" a look at LCD screens is a problem as well. All the computer shops I have seen with a decent range of screens feed them by a single split, poor quality, VGA signal, which doesn't exactly show them at their best
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 18:03
I've got 56 lines of code visible in my Visual Studio.NET window right now, on a 1600x1200 landscape screen
I can only manage 36 lines on my 1024x768 screens and that involves resorting to 8 point fonts for the text editor.
Posted by: mlord
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 20/02/2004 18:30
Desktop displays -- 20" LCD (same size as a "21" inch CRT) and larger -- with 1600x1200 DVI digital feed. Absolutely no contest side by side with a good quality 21" CRT.
When I got my 20" LCD, I had the same "problem" -- expensive (CAD$1600), impossible to see one properly before purchasing, and the phantom menace of stuck pixels. Euewww! Yuck!
But then, how bad could something like that really be, compared to the CRT I was using (CAD$3000 new). The R-G-B convergence is *never* perfect on a CRT, not even on my super-adjustable very high-end Eizo -- so most of the pixels are fuzzy, though they don't look it until one parks a nice LCD alongside it. And the darned CRT takes a good 20-30 minutes to "warm up" to the correct calibrated colours, takes up half the friggin table, and shoots goodness knows what kinds of nasty radiation out at me and my cat.
So just broke down and ordered an LCD from my supplier -- read some reviews first to ensure that others hadn't already labeled that particular model as a dud, and just went for it.
Zero. Nadda. None. No.. NO regrets!
Cheers
Posted by: peter
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 21/02/2004 05:47
Face it folks -- the only real downside to LCDs is the price. That's a biggie, but if the prices were the same, would *any* of YOU (not your theoretical imaginary graphic artist friend) actually choose a new CRT over a new LCD of the same size these days?
Same size
and resolution, you're right, I wouldn't. I've got 104 lines of code in very nearly four xemacs frames side-by-side at 1920x1440 which you can prise out of my cold dead etc.; not so long ago, LCDs that could do that simply didn't exist, but nowadays they're merely ridiculously expensive, even compared to what I paid for this monitor five years ago.
Peter
Posted by: DWallach
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 21/02/2004 09:59
P.S. "taking" a look at LCD screens is a problem as well. All the computer shops I have seen with a decent range of screens feed them by a single split, poor quality, VGA signal, which doesn't exactly show them at their best
Go to an Apple store, even if you have no intent of purchasing an Apple. Since Apple LCDs have exclusively digital input, you're guaranteed that you're seeing the bits that are output by a computer over DVI without any sort of splitting. That's what sold me on LCD panels: the sharpness and clarity of the Apple displays I saw at computer stores.
In practice, I've seen similar clarity out of our much cheaper Dell 20" LCD monitors. I think the Apple has deeper blacks, but it's the same level of sharpness and color saturation.
Are desktop LCDs that much better that this is a non-issue ? If so I'll have to take a look at one when I come to buy a new display.
Yes, desktop LCDs (at least the good ones) really are that much better. I'll occasionally do Photoshop on my laptop to color-correct and e-mail out photos while I'm travelling, but the brightness changes radically as you tilt the screen. That just isn't the case at all for my desktop LCD. I can stand up and walk around the room, and it always looks the same.
Posted by: DWallach
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 21/02/2004 10:09
The drawing lag still remains a problem for gaming, as I understand it. Otherwise, I totally agree.
I don't play computer games, but I have watched DVD movies. I saw some early generation DLP and plasma screens that had noticable pixel lag, making videos painful to watch, but there are no such issues on my LCD.
FYI, Apple has a great
22-page PDF that explains the benefits of LCD over CRT.
Posted by: drakino
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 21/02/2004 12:02
25ms response (very typical now, faster ones are available too) means refresh equivalent to around 40 frames/sec. Games generally do 30 or less.
The other thing to keep in mind is that 25ms is a worst case scenario of how long it takes to go from black to white then back to black. The number is actually two numbers togther, the rise time, ie how hong it takes to go from black to white, then the fall time, or how long it takes to go from white to black. My personal LCD has a rise time of 15ms and a fall time of 10ms.
In games, how often is the screen actually making such drastic changes? Not that often. So, a 25ms panel actually is pretty decent for gaming, with new panels hovering around 15ms being pretty much perfect.
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 21/02/2004 19:51
That all sounds promising, I'll have a proper look at LCDs when I come to buy a new monitor later this year.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 22/02/2004 00:46
In games, how often is the screen actually making such drastic changes?
Constantly. In first-person-shooter games, such drastic changes are happening over very large areas of the screen practically every frame. And with frame rates being 30-60 FPS minimum, and with a clear and unobstructed view of your target and your surroundings meaning the difference between life and death, an LCD that leaves ghost trails behind every change in the screen picture is not suitable for gaming.
I don't care about things like rise and falloff numbers. I need to whip my mouse for a 180 degree snap-turn and get a clear, crisp picture of my pursuer on
that frame, not however many frames it takes for the LCD to catch up to the picture. Any LCD which can actually do that is suitable for gaming, any LCD which cannot do that is not suitable for gaming.
Posted by: drakino
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 22/02/2004 02:15
In games, how often is the screen actually making such drastic changes?
Constantly.
Not really actually. Sure, the content is changing, but the game is not sitting there flashing back and forth between black and white as quickly as it can. Take Quake 3 for example, on an indoor map. Your running down a typical hallway, and do that 180 degree flip. The walls are mostly the same colors, so the LCD doesn't have to change the color that much Probably the most drastic change will be any actual players, and still it's not going to be a light show every other frame. Thus, the 25ms rating of my monitor means squat in this situation, beyond giving me the absolute worst time I will ever see. As long as VSync is enabled, limiting the game to 60 fps, there shouldn't be any issues, since the lower response time panels out now can easially come very close to 60fps of black and white flashing.
I highly doubt any gamer here would have a problem gaming on the more modern 16ms panels. Anyone who says they do, I liken to the people that say they have to have FLAC over 320kbit MP3, while listening in a normal car.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 22/02/2004 12:22
Sure, the content is changing, but the game is not sitting there flashing back and forth between black and white as quickly as it can.
No, only the most critical parts of the image are doing that: The moving edges that define the objects I want to shoot at and need to see the most clearly.
I agree that it all comes down to whether your particular game looks good on the particular screen or not. I'm just saying if there's even the slightest hint of visible ghosting, I wouldn't use the panel for fragging.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 22/02/2004 13:28
The other thing to keep in mind is that 25ms is a worst case scenario of how long it takes to go from black to white then back to black.
Yeah, but the
article I linked to above points out that black-to-white or white-to-black is often a best-scenario case. White-to-gray, as just one example of non-extreme changing, can take longer. They say that if you go from 0% voltage to 100% voltage, then there's a lot of impetus for the LCD to change. But if you're going from 100% to 50%, then there's not nearly as much impetus and it actually ends up taking longer. (In the included example, this worst-case scenario of white-to-gray took 54 ms, whereas white-to-black took about 7 ms. White-to-black-to-white seems to be about 25 ms whereas white-to-gray-to-white seems to be about 90 ms.) And this isn't just idle speculation; they have graphs to back it up showing a good array of voltage-to-voltage times. I suppose they could have mocked it all up, but that seems unlikely.
Posted by: DWallach
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 14:50
One other benefit of using an LCD that nobody's mentioned here yet: subpixel antialiasing. Here's a macro-closeup taken from my display when reading a PDF, rendered with Adobe Acrobat 5.0 using Adobe's CoolType. Apple and Microsoft have similar technologies. If you spend a lot of time reading PDFs or even just web surfing, the difference is night and day.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 14:54
Every time I've ever used CoolType it's made everything look even more rainbow-y than the default way. And, yes, they were on LCDs.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 15:00
One other benefit of using an LCD that nobody's mentioned here yet: subpixel antialiasing.
I know the technology you're talking about, but I never really looked at it as "subpixel antialiasing", I just looked at it as a work-around to the fact that regular anti-aliasing looks odd on LCD screens. Is it really provably superior to anti-aliasing on a same-rez CRT?
Posted by: DWallach
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 16:07
Is it really provably superior to anti-aliasing on a same-rez CRT?
I don't know about "provably", but the argument is straightforward. When you treat each sub-pixel separately, you triple the horizontal resolution of your monitor. You can't do it on a CRT because the alignment isn't tight enough, but on an LCD the alignment is perfect. The trick is to take advantage of the extra horizontal resolution without introducing rainbows. For starters, when you've got RGBRGBRGB subpixels, there's no rule that says a pixel needs to start on the R and end on the B. If you take any three adjacent sub-pixels and move them up and down together, you still see grey. I imagine the secret sauce is knowing when you can get away with this, and how much you can push it before the user notices. I'll bet they did extensive user studies. Adobe CoolType, for example, comes with a dialog that gives you very, very different results depending on how you configure it.
Posted by: brendanhoar
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 16:18
Cleartype is provably more clear. However, it needs to be told the proper order of the colored lcd elements across your LCD screen, otherwise it will look worse (hence the rainbow fringe).
The joke around the time it was being patented was that it's essentially the same technology as the first Apple ][ graphics modes, since that used a hack on the standard TV colorburst and the available colors were positionally dependant...to get white, you had to turn TWO adjacent pixels on...
-brendan
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 16:20
I'm not sure many people realise that you can configure Microsoft's ClearType to your liking as well. Oddly it is done via a webpage and and AciveX control:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/1.htm
Posted by: peter
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 16:22
Cleartype is provably more clear.
Turning Cleartype off and on is indeed night and day, but only because, for some reason, Windows doesn't anti-alias small text sizes
at all until you turn Cleartype on.
Peter
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 16:37
I've never understood that idea at all. Small text is where I want more anti-aliasing.
Oh, and before I look like an idiot, I tried all three modes of Apple's CoolType, and I was unable to determine which order my LCD's pixels were in because, again, they all looked worse than the default.
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 17:31
Perhaps I have yet to see it done well, because every example I've seen of anti-aliasing simply looks like "make it more blurry" to me.
Still, I find it interesting that folks here are describing something that creates a different appearance as being provably better than something else.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 18:28
Well, I can't argue with antialiased text being more blurry, but that blurriness improves readability 1000% for me:
There are fonts, bitmap fonts, that appear just fine when aliased, because they were specifically designed to be displayed at those pixel sizes. But most display fonts are not bitmap fonts, and antialiasing improves their readability tremendously, especially at small point sizes. Even at large point sizes, the non-jagginess of the edges of fonts is nice.
If you think that hyper-angularity is better than smoothness, then you can go live in your Windows 3.1 world and leave the rest of us alone.
Here's a page showing a good example of why antialiasing is good. Notice the overlapping circles.
Posted by: brendanhoar
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 18:29
Criminy. That web page loaded, the active x control ran. then told me I had to set up cleartype in win xp before I could go further. Since I'm running win2k, I just closed the page.
BUT...NOW IE6 STARTING USING ANTI-ALIASED FONTS AND DRIVING ME NUTS.
stupid microsoft. how can i turn this off???
-brendan
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 18:37
What is the deal with you anti-antialiasing freaks? Apparently, you'd also like a chair without curves and a mouse shaped like a cube.
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 18:38
Not sure about that, but I have found an exe based config tool:
http://www.ioisland.com/cleartweak/
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 19:00
Hang on a minute, do you mean it is using the normal font smoothing ? If so you turn it off in the normal place (the effect tab of the display properties control panel). Though quite why you'd want font smoothing turned off I don't know.
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 19:34
That example is pretty good, but I'd argue that the trade-off there is that it's more blurry and doesn't jump out at me, making me work harder in other ways to read it.
On the other hand, I just tried turning on the "smooth edges of screen fonts" again, and I'm experiencing the opposite of you. I much prefer the antialiasing on the larger fonts (as that's where it's showing up most for me).
*edit*
Here's a page showing a good example of why antialiasing is good. Notice the overlapping circles.
...
What is the deal with you anti-antialiasing freaks? Apparently, you'd also like a chair without curves and a mouse shaped like a cube
Thanks for the link, but I know what anti-aliasing
is, I just said I didn't like it on
fonts. You're making this into a larger issue. I never said anything about images and such. Reading text is very different.
ps- I just want to add that I rarely get fonts that look like the first example in your picture:
What font is that, anyway?
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 21:37
Whatever gets used under OmniWeb under MacOSX 10.3 (on this web site, obviously). MS actually does a pretty good job with making their fonts render well aliased. I still prefer them antialiased. Apple seems less concerned probably because they assume that everyone will want to use AA fonts.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 21:50
You know, one of the problems is Windows, which seems to happily mix aliased and antialiased fonts willy-nilly, and that does look weird. If it'd just AA all of them then it'd look better. Hell, if it had a configuration option beyond on/off, it'd help.
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 23:08
Hell, if it had a configuration option beyond on/off, it'd help.
That I'll definitely agree on. I'd
at least like to experiment with it and see what I like. A single checkbox that "smooths" text is suprisingly little to offer users. Even for Windows.
Posted by: brendanhoar
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 23/02/2004 23:49
> Though quite why you'd want font smoothing turned off I don't know.
It made the CNN headlines page nearly impossible to read, as the headlines looked like they were half faded in. This under IE6 under win2k. Thanks for the pointer to the display/effects tab. Why microsoft's XP-only cleartype activex control actually turned this feature on before warning me that it wasn't compatible with win2k, that's another issue altogether...
-brendan
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 24/02/2004 09:19
Yeah, I've seen that, too. Where it's using a thin-lined serif font and the main strokes end up being much too thin, even in large point sizes. I think you can blame MS's Times New Roman Condensed for that. Still, improperly implemented AA is no reason to malign it altogether.
Posted by: brendanhoar
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 24/02/2004 09:36
Heh. I wasn't maligning it altogether, just maligning MS's implementation, which had been turned on against my wishes.
-brendan
Posted by: foxtrot_xray
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 01/03/2004 20:51
I've got a 1600x1200 15" LCD in my Dell and I think it's great
Well, that's definitely smaller than most people can stand, so I'm impressed with that!
I hate to bump this thread back up, but does that mean I'm evil if I'm running my monitor (CRT, 19-in) at 1920x1440?
Anyways, looking at getting an LCD monitor now, is why I came across this thread.. Hmm..
Me.
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 01/03/2004 21:35
Not at all. That's larger than what I was talking about. While your 19" CRT at 1920x1440 may translate to about the same size text and objects as a 15" LCD at 1600x1200, I think that objects on the screens these laptops have will be smaller. This is 1920x1200 on a 15"
widescreen LCD. That's why my dad shouldn't have them.
I think I did the measurements, actually, and found that a regular 15" screen has about 1" less vertical space than a 15" widescreen. That's 1200 pixels in less space. Hell, 1000 pixels is going to be max for my dad!
Posted by: andy
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 02/03/2004 04:55
does that mean I'm evil if I'm running my monitor (CRT, 19-in) at 1920x1440
What sort of microscope do you use to view the screen with ?
You must have amazing eyesight.
Posted by: foxtrot_xray
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 02/03/2004 14:59
Not at all. That's larger than what I was talking about. While your 19" CRT at 1920x1440 may translate to about the same size text and objects as a 15" LCD at 1600x1200, I think that objects on the screens these laptops have will be smaller. This is 1920x1200 on a 15" widescreen LCD. That's why my dad shouldn't have them.
Aaah, I follow you know. Allright, good.
I've decided to pit up the Samsung 213T LCD. Got great reviews, and it's the same make (Samsung) as my 19 inch CRT now, (and that CRT's been thru a LOT, and STILL looks great.) So, they win.
Me,.
Posted by: Dignan
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 02/03/2004 15:21
The one thing I do know is that if I ever got an LCD, it would be a Samsung. They're just great looking and have the best bezels of any of them (as someone said already).
Posted by: foxtrot_xray
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 03/03/2004 15:53
I get mine today (Tax refund money!).. I'll let everyone know.
Me.
Posted by: msaeger
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 03/03/2004 18:53
I could buy two of them with what I have to pay in.
Posted by: foxtrot_xray
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 04/03/2004 00:40
Ouch. :/
I know it's "bad" money management, but I over pay slightly, to make sure I ALWAYS get something back. Mostly because I couldn't afford to write another check.
Using it right now, in fact, and I'm highly impressed.. Only little ghosting, mostly noticable in windows with text (Telnet windows).. Seems to be worse in a character mode (a-la BIOS). Colors are really bright, screen is friggin' huge.
When I start using it for my video editing, I'm anxious to see how it holds up..
Me.
Posted by: msaeger
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 04/03/2004 04:03
I have a 213t too and I agree it is a great monitor. Now the problem I have is after getting used to this when I have to use someone elses computer with a crt the flickering is painful and the resolution is always too low.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 04/03/2004 08:30
Whenever I find some idiot who's got their refresh rate set way too low, I just go and fix it for them without telling them.
Posted by: frog51
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 04/03/2004 08:41
For some reason the Dell panel I have on my docking station at work doesn't quite work properly with my Dell laptop. Although I set the default to have a 75 Hz refresh rate, every time I dock, it resets to 65 Hz and slightly fuzzy, so I always have to go in to the properties and redo it, at which point there is zero flicker and everything is pin-sharp! Gorgeous.
Probably just a M$ issue which I can't be bothered tracking down.
Posted by: foxtrot_xray
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 04/03/2004 08:51
I had the problem with my 19CRT.
No real estate to see what you're typing! I was worried though, I kept my CRT at 75Hz, the 213T only goes up to 60Hz in the highest setting, so I was worried. Obviously I shoudn't have been.. It seems that the rates seem different to LCD's than CRTs..
Ooooh.. and everything's so crisp!
Me.
Posted by: Ezekiel
Re: Dealing with LCD limitations - 04/03/2004 10:11
I've got a series of inexpensive Dell 17" monitors which all flicker regardless of refresh rate setting (they're all set at 75Hz or above). I notice, but the users seem innured to it, so I don't bother myself with it much.
-Zeke