Philips 170S5FB LCD Monitor

Author: Quadophile
Published on: 06-08-2004
Views: 89953


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Installation

Installing the Philips 170S5FB

Installation was a breeze, simply connect the monitor’s video signal cable to the back of the computer (the output of your VGA card) and plug in the power cable to the receptacle. Once switched on the operating system picks up the monitor and requests the driver, you just need to pop the CD into your drive and follow the instructions on the screen. Upon installation of the driver and after the "Auto Adjustment" button has been pressed, the monitor is available for immediate use. It is a good idea to go through the manual at least once so that you know what features your monitor has and what its limitations are. This way you will always be using the product correctly. The glossary of terms associated with this type of monitor is included in the manual, which should prove very helpful for first time LCD buyers/users.

Image Quality

Image quality of the Philips 170S5FB

According to the manual, the screen has been coated with an anti-glare polarizer that I found to be extremely effective in eliminating the reflections. My computer setup is such that I have a light source just above the monitor and one just across. I always used the one above the monitor when working, as my previous monitor had an anti-glare coating but was not as effective in elimination of the reflection from the 2nd light and I always had to turn it off while working/watching a video on the monitor. This monitor is excellent in this respect as I was able to watch the video even with the light on across the room. I moved sideways and aligned myself in a way, to get the reflection of the light source on the centre of the screen, but, was pleasantly surprised that colours on the screen were not being affected at all. I could see the image very clearly without the colours being washed out in the process.

My IBM T41 laptop cannot resolve the shade of red properly, it's more like reddish brown than what it is suppose to be showing. I did this comparison on two televisions at home one being the ‘Pixel Plus’ from Philips and another one a ‘Matchline’ model also from Philips, the third was my existing monitor Samsung 700IFT. All had showed the same shade of red. I am basically referring to the video of Cranberries on their DVD : "Stars - The best of videos 1991-2002" and the song was "Just my imagination" where the star is shown wearing the red leather jacket.

Anyway, I popped The DVD into the drive and checked the colour of the jacket, which was really the colour it was supposed to be, just to reconfirm, I was not going colour blind, I reconfirmed it from my son who nodded the colour was as it should be. The colours however appear to be washed out when it comes to the laptop screen and it is not comparable to either of the two others. The Pixel Plus television and the Philips LCD are very close to each other in reproducing colours, albeit the Television has an edge in my opinion as far as overall picture quality is concerned. The images from all three screens can be seen:

Philips 170S5FB

Philips Pixel Plus

IBM T41

As usual, the text on this LCD was crisp and much better than the CRT, the screen actually looked slightly bigger due to the fact that the viewable area was not 16" but full 17" on the LCD. With a 17" desktop at 1280x1024, I thought I was looking through a wide-angle lens. The LCD really benefits from the “Clear Type” text facility provided in Windows XP. “Clear Type” should always be invoked from the Windows XP’s display settings as it is especially meant for LCD screens to improve the legibility of the fonts.

I use the Philips 150P3 in the office, which is a pro model and has a pivot facility (can be set vertically for better viewing of the word documents). The monitor’s native resolution is 1024 x 768, which really benefits from this feature; however, the Philips 170S5FB does not have a pivot feature. I personally feel that with the higher resolution and larger size of the screen, this feature was not missed by me; I can still read the entire A4 size document on the screen without squinting my eyes (although I do need my reading glasses whenever working on any monitor).