Are these Monitors any good?

[gnarlydan]

I was thinking of getting a dedicated console Monitor for Dreamcast, PS3 etc, and was looking at these:

Asus PG221: http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_6058.html

Asus MK241H: http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_6059.html

Does anyone know if they are any good, and would they be a good choice for a dedicated console monitor?

[gray117]

Seem very nice (unlike that ebay one - notice the difference with particularly good response times and contrast ratios). The only options to check will be options whether you could turn off monitors speakers and output to your own (should think you can) and whether you can switch to 4:3 (as opposed to widescreen) for older consoles (unless you have an adapter that can do this already)... its the second one which *may* prove a bit problematic for dc/ps2/older

[moozooh]

Both of those are TN-derived panels, which invariably means they have:

1) atrocious viewing angles (which is especially bad for tate, since the display's height will cause the angles to rise beyond the sane constrast ratio reduction, unless you're buying a big monitor for playing from several meters away);

2) below-average contrast (dynamic contrast is a useless gimmick, it doesn't help in games) even at normal viewing angle;

3) bad color reproduction (i.e., worse than an average CRT).

Other than that, they seem good, if a bit on the expensive side.

Dunno, I guess I would rather buy a monitor with a nicely overdriven *VA panel, but that's your call.

And yes, obviously you can choose not to connect the monitor speakers because they're connected to your sound card's output in the first place, just as any other audio output devices.

[gnarlydan]

What about the Acer G24:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =MO-038-AC

...would that be a better choice than the Asus Monitors?

[moozooh]

Well it's the same panel, so the above applies to it as well.

The best thing is to go and test everything by yourself. Many LCD monitors also have input lag of 1 to 3 frames (at 60 fps), which is almost never written in any reviews. :(

[D]

I've got a Dell lcd monitor, but it upscales very badly. 480p Dreamcast looks like 480i.
So be carefull with this. In my experience tv's upscale pretty good, but these lcd computer monitors, apparantly don't have decent upscaling technology, well at least Dell lcd monitors.
So take this into consideration.

[pcb_revival]

I use this hybrid monitor.

http://www.nec-display-solutions.co.uk/ ... =LifD.html

As long as you view face on its great for PC and PS 3.

Good range of inputs - HDMI - DVI - VGA - Component.

[gnarlydan]

Thanks for the advice guys

I use this hybrid monitor.

http://www.nec-display-solutions.co.uk/ ... =LifD.html

As long as you view face on its great for PC and PS 3.

Good range of inputs - HDMI - DVI - VGA - Component.

How much do they cost mate?

[cools]

Look closer

[gnarlydan]

Look closer

One of those days! haha.

Maybe a can of Relentless will wake me up!

[pcb_revival]

Look closer

One of those days! haha.

Maybe a can of Relentless will wake me up!

Best price I could find at the time was 300 at play.com - now its 363 there

[Gwyrgyn Blood]

To elaborate on what Moozooh said, there are basically three kinds of LCD Panels, and TN are by far the most common. They are also generally the best for games, because they have very little lag in comparison to other LCDs. But unfortunately the viewing angles really kill the potential Tate usage entirely.

The other two types of LCD panels will Tate fine but will have some small degree of lag, which also makes them worse for shooters.

The kind of sad truth is that LCD panels currently are just kind of bad for Tate. They are, as D hinted, doubly bad for anything that runs at a low resolution because they don't look great when run at a resolution that isn't a native resolution.

I'd say if you had to suck it up and use 'the best option', that would be to get a good IPS or MVA panel and run stuff through an upscan converter. Something like the Dell 2408WFP or similar. If you don't care about Tate or just want a good gaming LCD in general, the BenQ G2400 panel is a very nice, virtually lagless panel that isn't too expensive.

If you want to look up what kind of panel is in a monitor, you can check here: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/


As a side note, I've kind of wondered if anyone has ever tried messing with using a small Plasma screen Tated before to compare the results.

[Ed Oscuro]

The first screen looks like a slightly enlarged but lower resolution version of the 16:10 in my laptop (which is a 17", smaller than 4:3 of course) right down to the shitty 1.3 megapixel webcam (aka 640x480 for video that makes everybody magically ugly).

The screen itself will be pretty nice. I have done some FPS gaming on the laptop with a similar glossy screen; doesn't hurt my eyes and there's a lot of detail. No dead pixels either.

[moozooh]

They are also generally the best for games, because they have very little lag in comparison to other LCDs.

To clear any possible confusion, when I said lag, I meant input lag. You mean lag in context of pixel response time (latency).

Having high latency will mean that fast moving objects will leave slight trails behind themselves (higher latency = longer trails) because the pixels change their color way too slow.

However, due to the specific of how an LCD panel works, the trails (not matter how small) will always be there — already because of our own eyes. Try looking at a bright object and quickly look somewhere else: the image will fade, but it will be there for some time. Our eyes are inert.

The reason we don't see these trails with CRTs is that each line is lit up for a very brief period of time. (Actualy, about 95% of a CRT display area is in fact pitch black at any given time, but we don't see it because our eyes are so wonderfully inert.) During the time a line isn't lit up, we see its afterglow, so by the time it lights up on the next frame, the eyes already have the time to adjust. The same thing won't work on an LCD because every line is lit up continuously, so we'll see its afterglow even if the color change will be instantaneous. Which is the reason getting under ~6-8 ms of pixel response time doesn't give any practical benefits: you'll either not notice it at all, or will notice it all the time.

There is a good article on the subject, and with good illustrations, too. Unfortunately it's in Russian, so it will be of little use to you, but I'll cite some particular things:



CRT screen photographed at 1/800 s shutter speed.



A graph of a hypothetical situation depicting a single white square moving from left to right. The bottom row shows how the human eye "sees" it, the top shows what actually happens on a CRT screen at the same time. The rightmost panel is the second frame of movement, when the square changes its position.



Same thing, except with an LCD screen on the top.

There is a technology called black frame insertion designed to avert this effect, either by alternating the color frames with completely black frames, or messing with the backlight to simulate the behavior of the CRT screens (the panel switches the backlight lamps off following a top-down pattern).



This obviously causes flickering which many of us tried to avoid when buying an LCD monitor. :P

Now input lag is a complete different thing to avoid. Average LCD has a lag of ~16ms (~1 frame at 60 fps), meaning it will always display the image 16 ms after the events have happened. One frame usually isn't noticeable because you adapt, rather than react, to any changes within such a small time frame. But, say, 3 frames (47 ms, like on Samsung 215TW), will be enough to throw you off in any highly dynamic game. You will die even though you'll think you had pressed the bomb button in time, or something else like that. As for me, it has a much higher impact on the gameplay than a small trail behind bullets.

[Gwyrgyn Blood]

To clear any possible confusion, when I said lag, I meant input lag. You mean lag in context of pixel response time (latency).

Yeah that's true, but a slim few new LCD screens apparently don't have any lag (pixel response or input) in comparison to CRTs at all. Apparently that BenQ monitor is one of them, but only one specific model of it. I don't own one myself so I haven't been able to check it out myself to confirm.