Belinea 22" Hurting my eyes

[2StepSteve]

Hi all,

I just got the Belinea 22" today and so far im not very impressed sadly . I have a really bad headache due to text on the screen, black text looks horrible and what I can only describe as looking "dirty" and white text appears to have a very slight ghosting in white to the right of it.

Im thinking refresh rate problem try bumping it up as im only at 60hz.. But I can't seem to change above 60Hz at the native resolution, shouldnt i be able to go up to 75hz at 1680x1050? Also have installed the drivers from Belinea's site, no luck aswell.

Im using a Geforce4 MX440 - I know its an old card but its been fine in another TFT setup and not going to be used for gaming. I thought installing the latest drivers from nvidia would help but no luck aswell.

Any ideas? This is doing my head and eyes in

Thanks a lot

 

[PJHUK]

Hi there. For what its worth, when I received my Belinea 22" last week, I remember the factory defaults for luminance was set at 100% for both brightness and contrast.

A personal choice of course, but I found that setting the brightness at 40 and contrast at 50, with the colour option set to 'User Preset' with RGB all at 100 gave the most pleasing results to my eyes.

 

[hhhhbk]

got the identical problem same gfx card

can force it to run at 75Hz in advanced
still hurts my eyes

luminance and contrast down to 60 looks better

 

[fish99]

Definitely turn the brightness down. 300 cd/m2 at a viewing distance of 2-3 feet can really hurt your eyes, especially for the first few weeks until you get used to it. I use my Dell on brightness 45, contrast 50. Dunno why black text would look dirty and white text would show ghosting though. I could take a guess or two - maybe the MX440 has poor 2D image quality which is showing up badly in such a high resolution. Old nvidia cards back from around that period did have such problems. Other than that it could be a poor quality VGA cable, but really the one that came with the screen should be good enough for the native res.

 

[2StepSteve]

I agree it is very very bright at max way too bright for use. Im using setting of around 30 brightness and 27 contrast. Images and photos look lovely, its just the text is not very clear. I have good eyesight and don't wear glasses... Im bit dissappointed at the moment as this monitor is highly rated here; was main turning point for me to get one... I know its budget but i expect text to be clear def not asking for much! If its giving me a headache then something is wrong somewhere...

Thats interesting hhhhbk that you also have the same card and it hurts your eyes too.. have you tried it on another card? Its too late for me now but tomorrow i'll try it on my main rig with x1800xt card, see if thats any better

 

[Tombo]

One that came with the screen is perfect on my X1900XT, most probably the card.

 

[hhhhbk]

got another geforce 4 on my second tower

could try it on that or the vga out on my dell laptop

i cant read black text on white backround without getting a headache

will persevere
ATM i couldnt use this for everyday use
great for films but impossible for surfing web or typing
im sure a driver update or different gfx card will solve it
im sure it cant be us having sensetive eyes

i regularly stare at a 17" or 19" crt for 7+hours a day and my eyes never hurt
30 minutes with this and they feel worse than the time my tube was on the way out

 

[2StepSteve]

got another geforce 4 on my second tower

could try it on that or the vga out on my dell laptop

i cant read black text on white backround without getting a headache

will persevere
ATM i couldnt use this for everyday use
great for films but impossible for surfing web or typing
im sure a driver update or different gfx card will solve it
im sure it cant be us having sensetive eyes

i regularly stare at a 17" or 19" crt for 7+hours a day and my eyes never hurt
30 minutes with this and they feel worse than the time my tube was on the way out

Exactly how i feel aswell mate... I also stare at 17" tubes for most of the day at work (lol no jokes please!) with no probs.. When I first plugged the Belinea in it was noticable straight away and only took 5mins for headache to kick in... really hope that when 2mo I try my x1800xt things will be nicer and normal.. will let you know

 

[hhhhbk]

let me know how you get on with a better graphics card

im starting to think its the refresh rate
im used to 85 and 100 on crts

the belinea looks better at 75 than 60 but IMHO still nowhere near good enough for me to stare at for hours without hurting my eyes

ocuk forums are fine but cant hack white backgrounds ATM

have you been able to get the updated driver from ftp.maxdata.com to work

 

[squiffy]

I get far more eye strain off CRT monitors even at high refresh @ 100hz. LCD's provide a totally flicker free easy on the eyes image. You also don't get harmful x-rays.

Try reducing contrast on the LCD.

 

[2StepSteve]

The refresh is low compared to CRTs but I don't think it should be lookin like this at all, ive been on quite a number of cheaper lower quality TFTs and have never seen this prob before.. I have though seen where a change in video card can make a world of difference with when i was using CRTs.. im hoping its the same case here

I got the drivers on but still was unable to go higher than 60hz

 

[squiffy]

I think you don't understand the principles of LCD, a 60hz LCD offers a stable image, unlike a CRT at 60hz. They work totally differently.

My guess is you're used to CRT. I felt the same for a week, and I dislike CRT for windows now if I need to look at the monitor for hours.

For text LCD is great, but gaming CRT wins.

 

[2StepSteve]

I know what to expect of TFTs, i was just wondering about the refresh as to why it wont go to its 75hz at native on mine. Compared to a much cheaper 19" TFT i was using a few months back the text on it was solid and sharp.. at the mo this looks much worse than a CRT so much so its giving me a headache do have the brightness and contrast turned right down aswell

Something is def not right about how mine is looking, fingers crossed its my vid card thats to blame will let yous know how i get on

 

[hhhhbk]

iv been on plenty of cheap lcds
iv browsed the internet on 19" dells for a couple of hours at a time with no problems

which i guess only leaves our graphic cards or the driver to shoulder the blame

should be able to get something like a 6600 for £30 secondhand

 

[fish99]

TBH monitor drivers don't really play a significant part in a monitors performance. All they really do is tell windows which resolution the screen supports. It's common for 75 Hz not to be supported in the native res, blame microsoft for that one. Last 7 screens I've used (4 TFTs and 3 CRTS) have all had the highest refresh rate unavailable in the highest res, even though it was listed in the monitor spec.

As said above refresh rates shouldn't matter on an LCD since the backlight is constant so they don't flicker.

Something else you could try is Cleartype. Right click on your desktop, go into properies, into appearance, into effects, and change font smoothing to cleartype. Worth a try.

 

[Tombo]

My Belinea works at 75Hz, did you try advanced.

 

[Jabbs]

got another geforce 4 on my second tower

could try it on that or the vga out on my dell laptop

i cant read black text on white backround without getting a headache

will persevere
ATM i couldnt use this for everyday use
great for films but impossible for surfing web or typing
im sure a driver update or different gfx card will solve it
im sure it cant be us having sensetive eyes

i regularly stare at a 17" or 19" crt for 7+hours a day and my eyes never hurt
30 minutes with this and they feel worse than the time my tube was on the way out

I had this problem with my first tft i had Hyundai image quest 19" jobbie gave me the most terrible headaches/eyestrain no matter what i did, i flogged this and went back to my trust crt 19".

Decided to risk tft's again and almost went to buy the same screen as you have but spoke to a very knowledgeable chap at overs that advised me on the 20" Dell thats £199, and i can only thank him no problems at all my end with eye strain/movies/gaming everything looks fabulous.

Really hope you can sort it out and yeah turn the contrast/brigtness down they will blow your eyes apart and clear type helps massivly with text etc.

 

[hhhhbk]

its hard to explain
im having great difficulty focusing on the screen regardless of distance sat from it

its as if everything is blurred or the light isnt even
something like what you experience on a crt whose tube is dying

perhaps my eyes just arent used to trying to focus on such a large screen
although i did have a 19" crt so wouldnt expect that to be the problem
iv used 21" and 24" crts in the past without any issues

i also use a dell laptop for a couple of hours at a time without a headache so it cant be my eyes must either be the screen itself or the gfx card then

 

[squiffy]

its hard to explain
im having great difficulty focusing on the screen regardless of distance sat from it

its as if everything is blurred or the light isnt even
something like what you experience on a crt whose tube is dying

perhaps my eyes just arent used to trying to focus on such a large screen
although i did have a 19" crt so wouldnt expect that to be the problem
iv used 21" and 24" crts in the past without any issues

i also use a dell laptop for a couple of hours at a time without a headache so it cant be my eyes must either be the screen itself or the gfx card then

I noticed that too, you seem to focus beyond the screen. It takes a while to get used to it. Enable cleartype.

 

[hhhhbk]

enabled cleartype

i noticed a difference in the names of icons on the desktop but i still cant focus on it

will have another go once iv slept the headache off