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Which 17 or 19" LCD to watch DVD's? (1 Viewer)

Jonathan Burk

Second Unit
Joined
May 31, 1999
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458
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Castaic, CA
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Jonathan Burk
I watch DVD's on my computer, and I'm thinking about upgrading to an LCD monitor, but I've only heard bad things about ghosting on movies and games.

Are the newer monitors good enough to compete with a CRT yet? If so, does anyone have a recommendation? I'd like to stay in the $300-600 range, either a 17" or 19" (I know that's a big range, but I'm not sure what's out there.)

Thanks for any advice.
 

Max Leung

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2000
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Color accuracy is difficult with most LCD monitors.

With that said, I saw a friend's Samsung 910T (1280x1024 19" LCD, one dead green pixel on the middle left side, $980 CDN or approx. $650 US), and it has a lot of good color controls, including RGB gains/cuts and so forth. So it may be possible to calibrate it with a colorimeter.

I don't find ghosting noticeable when gaming. However, I do notice it on my laptop's LCD, because movie scenes can vary much more. Such as dark scenes with fast motion, then transitioning to bright scenes. I can see a bit of ghosting when high-contrast objects are moving in a dark background.

The ironic thing is that my Samsung 900P 19" CRT has much worse ghosting than any LCD, because of the extremely long phosphor decay times. I swear, the phosphors take 1/10th of a second to decay! I just moved my mouse over my black desktop, and the pointer ghost took half a second to disappear!

Obviously, my monitor was designed for graphic design work, not watching movies (it's weird watching torches streak across my screen in Fellowship of the Ring).
 

Rob Gardiner

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Joined
Feb 15, 2002
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Jonathan,

If I were in your position, I would think long and hard before giong the LCD route. I too watch DVDs on my PC. About 3 years ago, I spent $170 on a used Samsung SyncMaster 700b and it serves me well to this day. When I upgrade, I plan to visit the same 2nd hand computer shop. They now sell 21" CRT monitors starting at $100. Ironically, the drop in price is partly due to people "upgrading" from CRT to LCD, even though the picture quality is nowhere near as good (for movies, anyway).
 

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