**Baddass' Guide to the 19" TFT Market!**
- Thread starter Baddass
- Start date
Good stuff, here's some info more general info about TFT's that I've copy/pasted from Wikipedia, dunno if you can incorporate it into your guide in any way:
TFT LCDs are a variant of liquid crystal display which use thin-film transistor technology to improve their image quality. TFT LCDs are one type of active matrix LCD, though this term is usually synonymous with them. They are used in both flat panel displays and projectors.
In computing, TFT monitors rapidly displaced competing CRT technology, and are commonly available in sizes from 15 to 23 inches. As of 2004, they are also rapidly displacing CRTs from the television market, although there they have other competitors, such as from plasma and rear projection displays.
Types
Basic consumer displays are of the type TN+Film, which is the lowest cost kind, yet it offers fast enough (8 to 16ms) framerates to allow playing games or watch DVD movies without shadow-trail artefacts. The TN displays suffer from limited field of view, especially in the vertical direction and most of them are unable to display the full 16.7 million colors available from modern VGA graphics cards. They can display up to 16.7 million colors using a dither method which quickly cycles pixels through a 6-bit pattern out of the available 256 colors each to simulate a given shade. The pattern generating algorithms are proprietary goods and good ones are quite hard to compile. About 10 to 15% of all people are able to see the dither cycling on TN screens and many of them are disturbed by the resulting checkered artifacts, making them unable to use such displays regularly.
A slightly more expensive type is known as MVA (Multi Vertical Alignment), which was originally developed by Fujitsu. They offer wider viewing angles and the problems caused by dither are less pronounced, with some able to display the full 16.7 million colors without dither. The trade off is a moderate loss in screen brightness, due to a more complex orientation of liquid crystal particles. MVA panels may not be fast enough for gaming and are less than ideal for showing multimedia content on LCD, because their response time is very large when switching between slightly different colours. MVA technology is only available to consumers in larger sized screens, and analysts consider MVA a technology without a bright future.
PVA (Patterned Vertical Alignment) type panels are of a more advanced version of MVA technology offered by Samsung. They are still less then ideal for gamers and photographic uses. Again, they are only available in larger sized screens.
The most expensive technology is "IPS" (In-Plane Switching), which produces high quality displays with true 16.7 million color depth and wide viewing angles to match CRT displays. Consequently IPS displays are well-suited for office work and presentation purposes, where up to three sitting and three standing persons can confortably watch a single screen. Their brightness is good, their contrast and color fidelity is excellent and most IPS screens are compatible with the advanced s-RGB colour management standard. Only the hardness of TFT color shades and grades prohibits their use at high-end computer graphics studios. The main drawback of IPS screens is their relatively slow response time of 25 to 40 ms, making them unsuitable for action gaming and fast-paced video. IPS technology only appears in larger displays aimed at professionals. They are sensitive to abuse, and the surface should never be touched.
Better still is S-IPS (Super-IPS), which has all the benefits of IPS technology but improved pixel refresh timing, enough for multimedia purposes and sometimes even action-packed gaming.
Display Industry
Due to the immense cost of building TFT producing factories, the number of OEM panel vendors probably does not exceed four or five major players. The raw LCD TFT panels are usually factory-sorted into three categories, with regards to the number of dead pixels, backlight even-ness and general product quality. Additionally, there may be up to +/- 2ms maximum refresh rate differences between individual panel that came off the same assembly line the same day! The poorest performing screens are then sold to no-name vendors or used in "value" TFT monitors (often marked with letter V behind the type number), the medium performers are incorporated in gamer-oriented or home office bound TFT displays (sometimes marked with the capital letter S) and the best screens are usually reserved for use in "professional" grade TFT monitors (usually marked with letter P or S after their type number).
Value edition TFT screens (the Vs) and most 15" sized LCDs usually fail to include a digital signal compatible DVI socket, thus their future-proofing may be limited. The upper end of 17" or 19" gamer and office TFT screens have dual analog-VGA and DVI sockets and almost all "P" professional screens have DVI and pivot mode for a 100% sized, full, vertical A4/Letter page display. However, the use of DVI video signal does not automatically guarantee better image quality. A video card with good RAMDAC, properly shielded analogoue VGA cable may offer the same on-screen experience. Indeed, sometimes vendors offer better panels in their non-DVI panels, due to overlapping model generation changes.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT_LCD"
TFT LCDs are a variant of liquid crystal display which use thin-film transistor technology to improve their image quality. TFT LCDs are one type of active matrix LCD, though this term is usually synonymous with them. They are used in both flat panel displays and projectors.
In computing, TFT monitors rapidly displaced competing CRT technology, and are commonly available in sizes from 15 to 23 inches. As of 2004, they are also rapidly displacing CRTs from the television market, although there they have other competitors, such as from plasma and rear projection displays.
Types
Basic consumer displays are of the type TN+Film, which is the lowest cost kind, yet it offers fast enough (8 to 16ms) framerates to allow playing games or watch DVD movies without shadow-trail artefacts. The TN displays suffer from limited field of view, especially in the vertical direction and most of them are unable to display the full 16.7 million colors available from modern VGA graphics cards. They can display up to 16.7 million colors using a dither method which quickly cycles pixels through a 6-bit pattern out of the available 256 colors each to simulate a given shade. The pattern generating algorithms are proprietary goods and good ones are quite hard to compile. About 10 to 15% of all people are able to see the dither cycling on TN screens and many of them are disturbed by the resulting checkered artifacts, making them unable to use such displays regularly.
A slightly more expensive type is known as MVA (Multi Vertical Alignment), which was originally developed by Fujitsu. They offer wider viewing angles and the problems caused by dither are less pronounced, with some able to display the full 16.7 million colors without dither. The trade off is a moderate loss in screen brightness, due to a more complex orientation of liquid crystal particles. MVA panels may not be fast enough for gaming and are less than ideal for showing multimedia content on LCD, because their response time is very large when switching between slightly different colours. MVA technology is only available to consumers in larger sized screens, and analysts consider MVA a technology without a bright future.
PVA (Patterned Vertical Alignment) type panels are of a more advanced version of MVA technology offered by Samsung. They are still less then ideal for gamers and photographic uses. Again, they are only available in larger sized screens.
The most expensive technology is "IPS" (In-Plane Switching), which produces high quality displays with true 16.7 million color depth and wide viewing angles to match CRT displays. Consequently IPS displays are well-suited for office work and presentation purposes, where up to three sitting and three standing persons can confortably watch a single screen. Their brightness is good, their contrast and color fidelity is excellent and most IPS screens are compatible with the advanced s-RGB colour management standard. Only the hardness of TFT color shades and grades prohibits their use at high-end computer graphics studios. The main drawback of IPS screens is their relatively slow response time of 25 to 40 ms, making them unsuitable for action gaming and fast-paced video. IPS technology only appears in larger displays aimed at professionals. They are sensitive to abuse, and the surface should never be touched.
Better still is S-IPS (Super-IPS), which has all the benefits of IPS technology but improved pixel refresh timing, enough for multimedia purposes and sometimes even action-packed gaming.
Display Industry
Due to the immense cost of building TFT producing factories, the number of OEM panel vendors probably does not exceed four or five major players. The raw LCD TFT panels are usually factory-sorted into three categories, with regards to the number of dead pixels, backlight even-ness and general product quality. Additionally, there may be up to +/- 2ms maximum refresh rate differences between individual panel that came off the same assembly line the same day! The poorest performing screens are then sold to no-name vendors or used in "value" TFT monitors (often marked with letter V behind the type number), the medium performers are incorporated in gamer-oriented or home office bound TFT displays (sometimes marked with the capital letter S) and the best screens are usually reserved for use in "professional" grade TFT monitors (usually marked with letter P or S after their type number).
Value edition TFT screens (the Vs) and most 15" sized LCDs usually fail to include a digital signal compatible DVI socket, thus their future-proofing may be limited. The upper end of 17" or 19" gamer and office TFT screens have dual analog-VGA and DVI sockets and almost all "P" professional screens have DVI and pivot mode for a 100% sized, full, vertical A4/Letter page display. However, the use of DVI video signal does not automatically guarantee better image quality. A video card with good RAMDAC, properly shielded analogoue VGA cable may offer the same on-screen experience. Indeed, sometimes vendors offer better panels in their non-DVI panels, due to overlapping model generation changes.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT_LCD"
there is some info, I'll put it together for you today if i can, but the problem is, as they are so new, no one on ocuk has one, so we will be missing the all important user comments. Still, I'll try and put some info together for you and then add to it at a later dateBaddass said:
Many thanks
TBH I'm pretty sure this monitor will serve my purpose (gaming) just fine, but my main concern is with the stability of it (i.e. dead pixels, build quality) and as I plan to fix it to a wall I wanted to find out whether this has or is likely to cause any problems?
On that note I haven't seen any wall brackets etc on OcUK, know of any sites who sell the brackets at a reasonable price, or whether OcUK might start selling them in the future?
Edz, right I've added some info on the Samsung 913N to the front page of this thread
I am not sure if it is wall mountable or not, Samsung's own site doesnt seem to list it and i havent seen mention of VEA wall mount compatible anywhere either
Performance wise the 913N should be great. It remains to be seen whether early stocks will suffer from the same dead pixel problems like the Hyundai L90D+ did.....guess we'll have to wait for them to be shipped out
I am not sure if it is wall mountable or not, Samsung's own site doesnt seem to list it and i havent seen mention of VEA wall mount compatible anywhere either
Performance wise the 913N should be great. It remains to be seen whether early stocks will suffer from the same dead pixel problems like the Hyundai L90D+ did.....guess we'll have to wait for them to be shipped outBaddass said:it might well be.......im not saying it isn't just that i cant check on Samsung's site for sure. If OcUK say it is, then i woudl def trust that!
I've checked the Samsung site and they say it is
So panic over. Now I just need to order the damm thing and find a supplier who can supply the bracket
Cheers for the info
***WARNING***
Do NOT buy a european Viewsonic VX910 25ms panel for gaming.
I made the mistake of buying 2 of them from my favorite retailer who had them listed as the 16ms ones. They arrived this morning and i set one up next to my existing Hitachi CML175 16ms panel connected both of them via DVI cables to my 6800GT (with twin dvi out) set NView to clone the display so the same image was on both monitors and then fired up CS:Source.
OMG
The ghosting is *terrible*.
I thought it might be bad when i could see an after image of the mouse pointer and windows as i moved them around, but you really notice the ghosting in game, very very bad. Take for example writing on the walls in de_train right near the T spawn point, if you strafe sideways while looking at the writing on the Hitachi monitor you can read it perfectly, on the European VX910 it's just a blurry mess. The problems are mainly the transision time for pixels to go from dark to light, if you come round a dark corner into the light you get an after-image of the dark area you came from.
Fortunately my retailer is great (*cough* url removed *cough*) and they've agreed to give me a full refund and I'm going to spend an extra £50 per monitor and get the VX912's which are the same the world over (at least, they better be!).
Aditionally, compared to the Hitachi monitor the colors on the VX910 are very pale and washed-out, fiddling with the graphics card's gamma setting can correct this a bit but it's still not a patch on the hitachi monitors.
On a positive note the screens are HUUUGE, look totally cool and really immerse you in the game compared to a 17" monitor.
Viewing angles were also very good and the monitor came with both DVI and VGA cables, also the PSU is built-in and the monitor can be wall mounted.
To recap, I would NOT recommend the european Viewsonic VX910 to anyone that plays games or watches movies. I would recommend it for those just needing a basic monitor for every-day work, 1280x1024 on a 19" is really kind to the eys, so i'd recommend this monitor to mums and dads too, and at £250 as of 7/March/2005 it's at a price that can't be sniffed at.
Do NOT buy a european Viewsonic VX910 25ms panel for gaming.
I made the mistake of buying 2 of them from my favorite retailer who had them listed as the 16ms ones. They arrived this morning and i set one up next to my existing Hitachi CML175 16ms panel connected both of them via DVI cables to my 6800GT (with twin dvi out) set NView to clone the display so the same image was on both monitors and then fired up CS:Source.
OMG The ghosting is *terrible*.
I thought it might be bad when i could see an after image of the mouse pointer and windows as i moved them around, but you really notice the ghosting in game, very very bad. Take for example writing on the walls in de_train right near the T spawn point, if you strafe sideways while looking at the writing on the Hitachi monitor you can read it perfectly, on the European VX910 it's just a blurry mess. The problems are mainly the transision time for pixels to go from dark to light, if you come round a dark corner into the light you get an after-image of the dark area you came from.
Fortunately my retailer is great (*cough* url removed *cough*) and they've agreed to give me a full refund and I'm going to spend an extra £50 per monitor and get the VX912's which are the same the world over (at least, they better be!).
Aditionally, compared to the Hitachi monitor the colors on the VX910 are very pale and washed-out, fiddling with the graphics card's gamma setting can correct this a bit but it's still not a patch on the hitachi monitors.
On a positive note the screens are HUUUGE, look totally cool and really immerse you in the game compared to a 17" monitor.
Viewing angles were also very good and the monitor came with both DVI and VGA cables, also the PSU is built-in and the monitor can be wall mounted.
To recap, I would NOT recommend the european Viewsonic VX910 to anyone that plays games or watches movies. I would recommend it for those just needing a basic monitor for every-day work, 1280x1024 on a 19" is really kind to the eys, so i'd recommend this monitor to mums and dads too, and at £250 as of 7/March/2005 it's at a price that can't be sniffed at.
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Viewsonic VX912 way better than a Euro VX910
So, while I'm waiting for my refund to arrive from my returned Viewsonic VX910's (see above) I managed to convince work to buy the gfx designer a new Viewsonic VX912 19" tft because his old CRT was really blurry.
Anyway, it arrived today, and GOSH! The difference in response times and color compared to the European VX910's I had on Monday is amazing. I hooked it up to my Nice dell 3ghz laptop and fired up CS:Source on it to see what the ghosting is like and it's non-existant compared to the VX910's. I'm definately going to buy two VX912's for my desk as soon as my refund comes though. Should be well sweet
The colors also were markedly better, not all washed-out like on the Euro VX910.
Depending on the viewing angle I did find the top was slightly darker than the bottom. I can live with that but the gfx designer didn't like that aspect of it but like i said "you can't buy perfection for £300" and pointed out that it was way better than his old CRT in all other aspects.
Also of note, no dead pixels, I hope i'm as lucky with my two when I get them.
So, while I'm waiting for my refund to arrive from my returned Viewsonic VX910's (see above) I managed to convince work to buy the gfx designer a new Viewsonic VX912 19" tft because his old CRT was really blurry.
Anyway, it arrived today, and GOSH! The difference in response times and color compared to the European VX910's I had on Monday is amazing. I hooked it up to my Nice dell 3ghz laptop and fired up CS:Source on it to see what the ghosting is like and it's non-existant compared to the VX910's. I'm definately going to buy two VX912's for my desk as soon as my refund comes though. Should be well sweet
The colors also were markedly better, not all washed-out like on the Euro VX910.
Depending on the viewing angle I did find the top was slightly darker than the bottom. I can live with that but the gfx designer didn't like that aspect of it but like i said "you can't buy perfection for £300" and pointed out that it was way better than his old CRT in all other aspects.
Also of note, no dead pixels, I hope i'm as lucky with my two when I get them.
Soldato
Anyone have any information on the ViewSonic VG910b monitor?
Tried googling it without much success
I'd like to know the panel technology used (TN, MVA, etc) - the main specs of the panel are:
LCD PANEL:
-----------
Type 19.0" color TFT active matrix SXGA LCD
Display Area 14.8" horizontal x 11.9" vertical; 19.0" diagonal
Optimum Resolution 1280x1024
Contrast Ratio 600:1 (typ)
Viewing Angle 170° horizontal, 170° vertical @ CR>10
Response Time 25ms
Brightness 250 nits cd/m2 (typ)
Panel Surface Anti-glare
The colour reproduction on this panel is good - as good as I'd like and the backlighting is nice and uniform
The only issue with it is the 25ms quoted reponse time - I can see it ghosting in games
I'd be looking to replace it (bit miffed having paid £300 for it in December) with another panel - I'd like a fast response time but decent colour reproduction!
I've heard some conflicting reports on the performance of the 8 and 12ms panels - does anyone know what these are like in comparison to my 25ms panel? Do I have to get one of the Sony X-Black monitors for £400 (!!) to get the best of both worlds?
Many thanks! - Great sticky BTW!
Should have looked around before I bought this - had I known that the 25ms response time would have been a problem then I wouldn't have bought it!
Tried googling it without much success
I'd like to know the panel technology used (TN, MVA, etc) - the main specs of the panel are:
LCD PANEL:
-----------
Type 19.0" color TFT active matrix SXGA LCD
Display Area 14.8" horizontal x 11.9" vertical; 19.0" diagonal
Optimum Resolution 1280x1024
Contrast Ratio 600:1 (typ)
Viewing Angle 170° horizontal, 170° vertical @ CR>10
Response Time 25ms
Brightness 250 nits cd/m2 (typ)
Panel Surface Anti-glare
The colour reproduction on this panel is good - as good as I'd like and the backlighting is nice and uniform
The only issue with it is the 25ms quoted reponse time - I can see it ghosting in games
I'd be looking to replace it (bit miffed having paid £300 for it in December) with another panel - I'd like a fast response time but decent colour reproduction!
I've heard some conflicting reports on the performance of the 8 and 12ms panels - does anyone know what these are like in comparison to my 25ms panel? Do I have to get one of the Sony X-Black monitors for £400 (!!) to get the best of both worlds?
Many thanks! - Great sticky BTW!
Should have looked around before I bought this - had I known that the 25ms response time would have been a problem then I wouldn't have bought it!