LCD Progress

blog
21

“I used to believe the DVI is better myth, but I have one anecdotal example sitting on my desk that says otherwise.“
Further to what Jeff said - if you’re running any sort of high resolution monitors (say, 20” or larger?) - you will notice issues. If you’re using 17” or smaller LCDs, and you don’t have a whole lot of other power cables running around near your VGA cables, you should be fine for most applications.

I’ve got a Dell 24" LCD Panel and it is very obvious if I try to run this over a VGA link.

Oh, and on the viewing angle thing: Only the cheap/older panels out now will have anything resembling a viewing angle issue.

We’ve got a “moderately” priced 32" LCD TV at home (and I tried out a whole bunch more in store) - the viewing angle is well over 120 degrees side-to-side (not sure about how the up-down angle goes, but it’s well and truely enough that I can lay on the floor ~3 foot from the TV (it’s on a side-table, about the same height as a regular desk), or stand up, and still watch just fine.

22

How did you decide on the 204B? IMHO, it has quite a few drawbacks for a programmer’s monitor.

We bought ~10 LCDs at work recently and we went with the HP LP2065, at a slightly better price. We considered the 204B and while an excellent monitor for gaming, we found it unacceptable in our tests for development work at our firm.

The main reason is the panel type: 204B is a TN, while the LP2065 is a S-IPS.

TN panels like the 204B have awful angles (especially vertical) which is really obvious when two developers are working together on something on a single screen. Additionally, inaccurate color reproduction means unpredictable results in any GUI / web type of work.

Most of the glowing reviews of the 204B you’ll find online come from gamers, for which the fast response time is very important. That is unfortunately close to worthless in programming-type work.

Look for reviews from photographers, artists and web designers, they shun the 204B. Some choose other VERY expensive panels, but others choose the HP - same price, much better image.

The LCD peculiarities you list would’ve been much reduced if you’d have chosen a S-IPS panel.

And if “always use DVI”, how about your previous choice of Matrox’s TripleHead2Go? I’ve been always astonished by people using TripleHead, considering it doesn’t work with DVI! Who wastes 3 LCD panels on analog connections?!

23

For the love of god, don’t “calibrate” your monitors “by eye”. Buy a hardware calibration device for $100, make a profile once and sell it on ebay. LCDs have no phosphors, they don’t burn out, you’re unlikely to even need to re-profile. I’m looking at SyncMaster 204T right now and the difference between calibrated and uncalibrated monitor is noticeable with even untrained eye. As a rule, on laptops the difference is DRASTIC. The only way to bring a laptop screen to life is by calibrating it. Choose Gamma 2.2 and native white point for LCDs. With rare exceptions, you can’t change their whitepoint anyway, and most panels come close to gamma 2.2 from the factory with minor (but, again, noticeable) deviations.

24

“If the human eye is capable of distinguishing about one million* colors, what’s the point of worrying about whether a monitor can display 16.7 million different hues? Isn’t that just an excuse to sell bigger disks and scanners that can’t be differentiated on actual, you know, features?”

I suspect that the 1,000,000 colors claim is somehow flawed, similarly to the widely claimed “fact” that 300dpi is the highest resolution the eye can distinguish.

The “16.7 million color” LCD monitor spec is based on 24 bits-per-pixel (bpp), or 8-bits each or red-green-blue. (IIRC, the extra byte for 32-bit color mode doesn’t give any extra color depth; it’s essentially just padding for speed). So 16.7M colors = 256 red * 256 green * 256 blue. Adds up top a lot of colors, but think about this: you only get a range of 256 colors from the purest brightest red to complete black, and similarly for green, and blue, and grayscale.

Take grayscale: 256 colors from pure white to pure black is a good range, but banding is still quite visible, to me at least, on the CRTs I was using back when I was doing some ray tracing graphics programming.

Per wikipedia, the human eye can (adjusting over time) distinguish about 20 f-stops of brightness (note brightness, not color) (Also note that’s the 1:1000000 contrast that Ants Aasma mentions). That would require 20 bits of grayscale to cover that full range, or in other words, 20 bits each of red, green, and blue, or 60bpp.

By that measure, the 18bpp dithered up to fake 24bpp that the TN LCD panels produce seems a bit shabby. FYI: I’ve noted a trend that the LCD monitors that support true 24 bit color are specced as “16.7M colors”, while the dithered 18bpp ones are specced as “16M colors”. I don’t know if that’s always true, though.

All that said, I have a Samsung 214T myself, and think it looks great, but if I had any kind of choice in reasonably priced 21" CRTs, I probably would have stuck with a CRT.

25

We considered the 204B and while an excellent monitor for gaming, we found it unacceptable in our tests for development work at our firm.

You’re right, and these monitors are at my home, so they need to be good at gaming too.

TN panels like the 204B have awful angles (especially vertical) which is really obvious when two developers are working together on something on a single screen

This is true. The 204B has restrictive vertical view angles. You have to look at the monitor dead on to avoid any subtle vertical color casting. I noticed this with my console window, which has a background of dark green; it appears darker at the top or bottom depending on the vertical angle.

26

You forgot to mention native resolution. It’s important to set your PC to output the native resolution of the LCD display. (And to make sure your video card is capable of driving all your displays simultaneously at those resolutions; this information is often surprisingly hard to come by. Video card manufacturers typically list the resolutions they support but omit limitations such as being able to drive one monitor at 1600x1200 but another at only 1280x1024.)

Also, if you use your display with non-PC consumer electronics devices, be aware that some displays limit which input/resolution combinations work, and sometimes even fail to handshake properly (usually caused by failing to correctly implement standards such as EDID). Like the recent bruhaha with some Sony LCDs failing to provide 1080p as an option over component or at all (until the CE device it’s being used with gets a firmware update to special-case the monitor’s crappy handshake). There’s basically no way to find out this information unless you’ve implemented video at the hardware level.

27

Jeff,

I’ve been using 3 20" LCDs for a couple of months now, and I won’t look back. My setup is 2 20" Samsung 204T and 1 Samsung 204B (the primary monitor). One thing I would advise is to get something like the Ergotron LX Triple Display (http://www.ergotron.com/ConsumerProducts/DeskMounts/tabid/55/ctl/Product/mid/386/PRDID/128/Default.aspx). I just got this for Christmas, and couldn’t believe the desk space it cleared up! It really does make a difference having all 3 monitors on 1 stand.

28

Another thing that’s great about LCD’s is they dont burn your eye balls out since you’re looking at a bunch of crystels instead of a tube with a electron gun shooting beams at a screen.

I’ve spent hours and hours in front of computers since I was 13 and that’s probably why I have limited field of view (even though my eye doctor never tells me this or helps).

Plus electricity savings and less space and better resolution. I’m never buying a CRT ever again since I ussually buy my monitors in small sizes due to lack of space and I think using a 17" monitor is obscene even though I’ve used one for quite awhile, though I still think it’s crazy to be looking at a CRT that big so close to your eyes. MM radiation. I was told not to sit too close to the TV when I was little, yet I was glued to something almost like a TV. Does it fuck up your vision? I think so. That’s why I am glad LCD’S are so cheap now!

30

Samsung has really nice monitors. I actually have Four of the same LCD model you have on a quad stand. I got it at: http://Multi-Monitors.com in 2006. Of course I had to buy a SUPER PC multi-monitor computer as well, to support all of the monitors. Anyway, great website you have here. I’ve already found some very helpful code sniplets!

31

me to I used to believe the DVI is better myth, but I have one anecdotal example sitting on my desk that says otherwise.
Further to what Jeff said - if you’re running any sort of high resolution monitors (say, 20 or larger?) - you will notice issues. If you’re using 17 or smaller LCDs, and you don’t have a whole lot of other power cables running around near your VGA cables, you should be fine for most applications.

32

Also, if your office temperature is set a 65 during the winter, a CRT also increase ambient temperature by a few degrees, which in my opinion is a plus.

Although it hard to tote around a pair of 21" CRT monitors unless your Hanz or Franz, LCD monitors are much easier to relocate.

33

How do you orient your 3 20" LCDs? All in landscape mode?

I’ve been using dual Samsung 204T (20") for about a year now, and now my PC has 3 DVI ports so I’m thinking of adding another LCD. Either another 20" standard ration monitor, or a 20" widescreen. Still deciding.

34

I’m not sure the size/resolution of a NEC 70GX2, but with 20" LCD I do notice a difference between DVI and VGA, I just can’t get the VGA to look good.

When I had 17" LCDs, there was no visible difference.

35

I did spend a day with one 20" LCD in portrait mode and tried coding. 1) The font quality wasn’t as good which turned off off pretty quickly (this is under Linux). 2) I just couldn’t get used to it. Even with 2 monitors, I like to have 2 code windows side by side on the same screen which just can be done when in portrait mode (at least not confortably).

My wife isn’t too happy with your post here, as now I’m shopping for a 3rd large LCD :slight_smile: