TFT/LCD Contrast: 700:1, good enough for 2D/3Dgames & An

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 8:51 am

I’m thinking about buying this TFT/LCD EIZO S1911SH:
http://www.eizo.com/products/lcd/s1911_01/spec.asp

Brightness / Contrast 300 cd/m2 / 700:1
On/Off Response Time: 6 ms (typical)
Midtone Response Time: 2 ms (typical)

It will be used for 2D/3Dgames (SNES Emulation via ZSNES, Doom3) and for watching Anime. (DVD/DivX/Xvid)

The specs & quality look good, but I’m rather skeptical about the low contrast: 700:1. It seems a bit low, as I’ve seen other monitors with higher contrast, 1000:1 – 2000:1. (LG)

Will Doom3 look too dark on this monitor?

Or should I go for this EIZO S1931 instead:
http://www.eizo.com/products/lcd/s1931_21/spec.asp

It has a higher contrast 1000:1, but lower brightness 280 cd/m2 and worse response times: On/Off Response Time: 16 ms, Midtone Response Time: 8 ms

Any opinions will be highly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:54 am

i would get neither, as it appears that they're lying to you. on/off response time is always faster than midtone/midtone response time.

i don't know what your budget is, but you can get a 19" samsung for under 300(~250) with 2 ms response time. it should be brighter, have a wider viewing angle and be all around better.

blackmyst · Post by **blackmyst** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 11:42 am

The only real advice I can give you is try before you buy. And try it in the actual light conditions you'll be using it.

I wouldn't be so worried about Doom 3 looking too dark, but more about the dark looking all grey/blueish washed out. There's nothing uglier.

If you want opinions: stick to a CRT.

Nightcrawler · Post by **Nightcrawler** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 2:18 pm

blackmyst wrote:If you want opinions: stick to a CRT.

There's always got to somebody to suggest this...

Any advantages CRT's had are quickly disappearing. LCD panel technology has improved 10 fold since people started the percpetion that CRT's were superior.

There are really very few advantages left that a CRT has over a *good* LCD panel made today. You get what you pay for though. Cheaper panels are going to be less impressive.

I've gone LCD for a few years now and will never look back.

blackmyst · Post by **blackmyst** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 4:35 pm

I've seen quite a few LCD screens by now in my hunts for a better screen, including some pretty expensive ones, and all of them have rather bad color definition compared to the CRT I have now. There are several other little undeniable niggles, like the weird aspect ratio for example, but this is the only dealbreaker for me, since I do graphic work.

The day I see an LCD that matches my CRT's colors, and that doesn't have some astronomical pricetag, I'll eat my words and buy one.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 4:41 pm

I'm with you all the way on the CRTs man, they just can preform on a higher resolution with better refresh rate and overall more quality.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 4:51 pm

(You can't compare LCD refresh rates with CRT refresh rates though.)

casualsax3 · Post by **casualsax3** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 5:47 pm

CRT's use tons of power, give of a serious amount of heat, and are awful for staring at all day when compared to an LCD - keep that in mind if you're going to be in front of it for hours at a time.

I do prefer CRT's for a number of things though. When I get an HDTV, it's definitely going to be a CRT so that everything that's non-hd will still look great.

While there are a number of LCD's out there that boast high contrast ratios, 700:1 should be adequate.

Palin · Post by **Palin** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 5:53 pm

Question: for graphics work, don't the CRTs create a sort of color burn? I seem to remember hearing that analogue signals produce warm colors while digital signals produce sharp colors. It's sort of a user preference thing. I mostly do text entry and programming, so a cheap LCD panel works wonders for me. If I was going for visual fidelity I might consider going back to a CRT, but I love how small the footprint of an LCD is on my desk.

Anyone know, those new TVs with direct digital input, do they work very well as computer monitors? I would imagine you would end up with even more screwed up aspect ratios.

funkyass · Post by **funkyass** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 6:22 pm

don't buy a monitor without seeing it in action first.

clessoulis · Post by **clessoulis** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:40 pm

casualsax3 wrote:CRT's use tons of power, give of a serious amount of heat, and are awful for staring at all day when compared to an LCD - keep that in mind if you're going to be in front of it for hours at a time.

I do prefer CRT's for a number of things though. When I get an HDTV, it's definitely going to be a CRT so that everything that's non-hd will still look great.

While there are a number of LCD's out there that boast high contrast ratios, 700:1 should be adequate.

My moniter is 800:1 and I still feel the constrats is crap when compared to my HDTV but the xbrite and ego gloss make up for it as everythings shinny and smoothed. Makes no hd stuff look barable but still no crt.

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:35 pm

CRT hdtv's are limited to 36 inches.

get dlp or something lcos technology if you're that worried.

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:42 pm

After reading the info provided here:

Great info about LCD, panels and technologies behind them:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...readid=1745344

Panels of a LCD:
http://tftcentral.co.uk/

However, since I want a TFT for both playing games & watching Anime (DVD,DivX,Xvid,etc...), none of these two monitors are perfect for my needs!

The EIZO S1931 has a PVA panel, with better color, better viewing angles, better for movies but a little worse for games.
http://www.eizo.com/products/lcd/s1931_21/spec.asp

And the EIZO S1911SH has a TN panel. It means, fast responses, not so good blacks, and lower viewing angles. if you move your head in front of the monitor, color and lightness will vary. this is not good for movies, but 2ms is good for games.
http://www.eizo.com/products/lcd/s1911_01/spec.asp

I should mention that the cost at my local vendor is:
EIZO S1911: 379Euro
EIZO S1931: 499Euro
They have an excellent return policy too.

Hhmm... Now I'm in a delima as both Anime & Games are very important in my book and wouldn't want degraded performance in either of the two fields!

Any suggestions?

Firon · Post by **Firon** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 10:43 pm

http://www.samsung.com/Products/Monitor ... ifications
This one has a PVA panel. Widescreen is awesome.

http://samsung.com/Products/Monitor/LCD ... ifications
Another PVA, widescreen.

http://www.samsung.com/Products/Monitor ... CBQXAA.asp
TN, widescreen. I've got the 22" version of this one (225BW). It looks pretty good. Even the blacks aren't that bad, but there's some backlight bleeding (which varies between units) when it's fully black. Response time is great.

Of course, you can always wait for the new Samsung LCDs which have LED backlights and local dimming, giving a purported contrast ratio of 100000:1.

FitzRoy · Post by **FitzRoy** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:09 am

I've been holding out for a long time to get an LCD. What I want is:

An IPS panel (the top-to-bottom tone shift of TN panels drives me crazy)
LED backlighting (simply eliminates the possibility of flickering or backlight bleed. Can also be locally dimmed to improve contrast ratios and touts slightly better colors.)
DVI or HDMI input (Usually isn't a problem these days)

So mainly, I've just been waiting for LEDs, but nothing has come out for less than a 100% premium. Will this be the year? Who knows.

Suggestion for the OP, though: get it from a place with a good return policy. You can't make a full decision based on spec sheets. There are quite a few differences from CRT, some good and some bad. You won't get the full impression unless it's sitting right in your environment and being used for your tasks.

Firon · Post by **Firon** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:17 am

Haha, that tone shift is kind of annoying, but I have to admit that Samsung's TN panels do a good job of minimizing it, imo.

Perhaps in a year those LED panels will be reasonable in price and good quality.

FitzRoy · Post by **FitzRoy** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:27 am

It probably does vary by manufacturer. To be honest, there are so many discrepancies between panels, it's hard to keep up with the tech. All I know is that IPS doesn't suffer from the same tone shift as PVA and TN do, and you can generally rely on IPS to be free of color dithering as well. Unfortunately, they are the least common panel and command a higher price. I think DELL recently switched their last IPS panel over to PVA without warning anyone, and everyone's up in arms about it.

Firon · Post by **Firon** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 3:05 am

The thing about Dell's LCDs is that sometimes you get one with a PVA panel and sometimes you get one with S-IPS. This wasn't a problem with the previous generation of LCDs.
I wonder if Samsung has any S-IPS panels, all I can see is S-PVA and TN... S-PVA isn't so bad though. It has pretty good contrast ratios, but if you want to game, I guess the response time isn't good enough.

Tthe 205/225BW and 214T display true 24-bit.

If you want an LCD with some type of IPS, Hitachi and LG.Phillips are the best place to look. NEC has some as well, but they use LG.Phillips panels.

I'm pretty sure the horrendously-overpriced Apple cinema displays have S-IPS.

Cyrus · Post by **Cyrus** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 4:30 am

I'm too lazy to read all that but keep in mind the following when buying an LCD monitor:

- Luminance (candela per square meter CD/M^2, the higher it is the better you can (usually) see from different angles)
- Aspect Ratio (standard 4:3, or a widescreen ratio or whatever)
- Response time (In grey-to-grey and white-to-black-to-white, most douchebag companies advertise the grey-to-grey time because it's usually faster)
- Max resolution and native resolution (most have a native res of 1280x1024, who the hell's idea was that?!)
- Power consumption (LCDs take very little power anyway)
- Contrast ratio (The higher the better BUT it's safer to go by brand than by what whatever company advertises as their contrast ratio since there is no 'official' contrast ratio test each company can say whatever the hell they want. I was going to buy an LG that boasted a contrast ratio of 2000:1 but ended up buying this ViewSonic which has a ratio of 650:1 and it looked overall better than the LG.)

Try to buy your monitor from a store which has them on display so you can take a look at them and change their settings yourself to see which ones are really better. Just because because Douchebag Corp. says their monitor has a contrast ratio of 10 hojillion to 1 and enough luminance to cook a burger doesn't mean it's actually a good monitor, companies lie, 'nuff said.

PS: For the record I ended up buying a ViewSonic VX922 (2ms grey and black/white response time, 650:1 contrast ratio, 270CD/M^2 luminance, 35W) and it looks far better than all these monitors I see advertised as having 2000:1 contrast ratios and 350CD/M^2 luminance.

Oh and 24bit colour has more colours than the human eye can see so don't worry about anything like that. Oddly enough some LCDs don't have a 24bit option, only 16bit and 32bit... which is just overkill.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 5:58 am

Cyrus wrote:Oddly enough some LCDs don't have a 24bit option, only 16bit and 32bit... which is just overkill.

I don't think they really display 2^32 colors, but who knows... Any links about that?

sweener2001 · Post by **sweener2001** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 7:07 am

whoever thinks that black/white transitions are slower than gray/gray(cyrus and the eizo company) is retarded.

Cyrus · Post by **Cyrus** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 7:24 am

creaothceann wrote:
Cyrus wrote:Oddly enough some LCDs don't have a 24bit option, only 16bit and 32bit... which is just overkill.
I don't think they really display 2^32 colors, but who knows... Any links about that?

I was told that by a computer science professor (that there are monitors with 2^32 colours) so I have no doubt that there are monitors like that. But I assume most 32bit monitors use 24bit + 8bits for the alpha channel (which is used for transparencies, right?), since 2^32 colours is just pointless.

sweener2001 wrote:whoever thinks that black/white transitions are slower than gray/gray(cyrus and the eizo company) is retarded.

Your arrogance is excessive. There are monitors like that and if you're too idiotic to pull your head out of your ass and realize not all hardware is the same, then well, no words can cure your stupidity. I even pointed out that the response times for grey/grey and white/black on my own monitor are equal. Also, the next time you randomly blurt something out, explain it, dipshit.

Your random attempt at being spiteful not only failed, but it didn't even contribute to this thread in the least. Save it for someone who gives a shit, kid.

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 9:16 am

A friend of mine has an LG L1932P 4ms (GTG) midtone response time; I guess it’s a TN panel.
http://www.ciao.co.uk/LG_L1932P__6479426#productdetail
http://www.dealtime.co.uk/xPF-LG-L1932P

The quality of black is terrible, looks more like grey or blue. Also, when the screen was all black I noticed some very irritating backlight bleeding all around the edges of the screen, as if there were extra spot lights around the frame of the LCD.

If this EIZO S1911 TN panel TFT, has the same problems, then I won’t be very satisfied. But then again, EIZO is known of making better quality products, so the equivalent EIZO S1911 probably won’t be as bad if at all?

Then again, I might go for the EIZO S1931 PVA panel TFT. 8ms GTG isn't that bad for games, but I'm a bit concerned about the 16ms On/Off Response Time?!

funkyass · Post by **funkyass** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 9:23 am

ST Dragon wrote: The quality of black is terrible, looks more like grey or blue. Also, when the screen was all black I noticed some very irritating backlight bleeding all around the edges of the screen, as if there were extra spot lights around the frame of the LCD.

unless you are willing to spend big bucks on a LED backlight, then you have to live with it, all LCD monitors inside your price range suffer from this

get a syncmaster 940, its a good monitor.

Cyrus · Post by **Cyrus** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 9:46 am

funkyass wrote:
ST Dragon wrote: The quality of black is terrible, looks more like grey or blue. Also, when the screen was all black I noticed some very irritating backlight bleeding all around the edges of the screen, as if there were extra spot lights around the frame of the LCD.
unless you are willing to spend big bucks on a LED backlight, then you have to live with it, all LCD monitors inside your price range suffer from this

get a syncmaster 940, its a good monitor.

Yes the Syncmaster 940 is a decent monitor but a BenQ FP93GX seems overall better and it costs the same as the 940 (at least in Canada). I don't know how much it would cost there but perhaps he can find one for about the same price.