What kind of panel is this?

crackerbear

crackerbear

crackerbear

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I own a 20" iMac G5 from 2004 and I've tried Googling, but cannot find out what type of panel it uses.

So I've instead just done basic viewing angle tests:


Black image straight on (ignore the white pixels in the bottom right, that's the mouse cursor).



Black image, top down view.



Black image, bottom(ish) up view.



Random image straight on.



Same image top down view.


Same image again, side on.

To my basic knowledge, the black images look like IPS glow and the viewing angles of the regular image are also very good, certainly no significant colour shift of even colour inversion seen in TN panels.

Does any one else think they know what panel type it is? Do TN panels have that kind of rainbow tinting on a completely black image?
 
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datalol-jack said:
I would hazard a guess that it is an early S-IPS panel from LG-Philips, which have been a long standing Apple supplier for a while now.

Edit:

Actually, it is such, I just found a decent enough review for it: http://www.behardware.com/articles/583-1/test-apple-cinema-display-20.html

The exact panel designation is: LG.Philips LM201W01-SLA3, S-IPS, 8-bit

I hope this helps.
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I have an iMac G5 which is an all-in-one computer, that review is of the stand-alone Apple Cinema Display monitor. However saying that, it's quite likely they use the same panel and I'm pretty convinced that it's an IPS from the viewing angles alone, but there does seem to be some colour banding on this image, what I see:

 
Is that from Lagom? IPS monitors quite often show some degree of banding on the greyscale gradient, actually. It's more to do with how the image is handled in software than a fault with the monitor. You'll notice that if you view the image on Firefox it will look a bit different to the same image on Internet Explorer. Likewise if you save the image and use different programs to view it - different results. It's the termporal dithering you really want to look out for - do bits of the gradient appear to 'crawl'?

The NEC PA241W even shows some degree of banding on the greyscale gradient image and that is an £800 monitor.
 
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The 20" iMac G5 was certified for soft proofing like its 20'' ACD stand alone option, was it not? I am pretty sure they have an identical IPS panel under the hood. Banding could just be a calibration issue, and nothing more. :)
 
PCM2 said:
Is that from Lagom? IPS monitors quite often show some degree of banding on the greyscale gradient, actually. It's more to do with how the image is handled in software than a fault with the monitor. You'll notice that if you view the image on Firefox it will look a bit different to the same image on Internet Explorer. Likewise if you save the image and use different programs to view it - different results.
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The original greyscale gradient image was from here, which I found via Google Image search and didn't link to directly before as I didn't want to steal that site's bandwidth. The photo with a thumbnail was taken by me.

I don't have Internet Explorer on the Mac as, to put it lightly, it's ****, but I do have Firefox and Safari - both of which show the same extent of banding on that gradient image, as does Photoshop CS5.

I've never really researched it as such, but I was under the impression IPS usually = 8bit = no banding, but clearly that's not the case, or at least not for early IPS panels.

PCM2 said:
It's the termporal dithering you really want to look out for - do bits of the gradient appear to 'crawl'?
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There's no part of that greyscale that crawls, but the moire test (test 8) on the Eizo test, does crawl however I don't know if that's just down to the clock/phase.

datalol-jack said:
The 20" iMac G5 was certified for soft proofing like its 20'' ACD stand alone option, was it not? I am pretty sure they have an identical IPS panel under the hood. Banding could just be a calibration issue, and nothing more. :)
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Ah, I didn't know they used the same panels for sure, but as I stated previously, it wouldn't surprise me and did seem likely.
 
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I've never really researched it as such, but I was under the impression IPS usually = 8bit = no banding, but clearly that's not the case, or at least not for early IPS panels.
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In theory, yes; but in practice your results may vary. Calibration may alleviate the visual impact of the problem to an extent, but it is not unheard of even some 8bit panels to employ colour dithering. Extreme cases make the effect more obvious than normal use scenarios, however.
 
The Samsung F2380 and EW2420 have shown the best greyscale gradient results of the monitors I've tested for my website. The Dell UltraSharp IPS monitors and the NEC PA241W come a not too distant second and are well above most TN panels I've used. Having said that the XL2370 performed rather well on this test but it did exhibit temporal dithering and is therefore disqualified :p. In practice the results of this test have meant very little.
 
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Thanks lads, I think it's pretty safe to say it's an IPS panel :)

I was only curious because I'm looking to get a new monitor for my PC and I wanted it to be at least as good as the one on my iMac. However, given the prices for IPS screens, I'm not quite sure I'll be able to get one.
 
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