BP said:
I am split over two choices: a 19 to 21 inch CRT for <$, or a 19" LCD for
more. I do a lot of CADD work, much office application stuff, and a few
games. A larger screen is the driving factor. But I don't like the poor text
rendering of some of the cheaper LCDs I've seen.
Anyone using a 19" LCD that they really like and would recommend that is not
over $1G? More like <$700?
How about a large CRT - recomondations.
I'm using a 19" Samsung 192N for Autocad and Office applications and it
beats my Hitachi 19" SuperScan 753 hands down. The main reason is the
high ambient lighting in the office forced me to raise the brightness on
the CRT which in turn increased the blooming effect, especially on the
light colored lines displayed on a black background typical of Cad. Add
to this the glare that a CRT experiences but the LCD does not and it
quickly becomes no contest. The Samsung also excels at fine text, better
than any CRT in my opinion. I tested many LCDs and found the Samsung to
be the sharpest.
Two thing to keep in mind for sharpness. First, you have to use native
resolution or else the pixels are interpolated, which can give you that
fuzzy look. For many people this means having to increase the size of
their default fonts and icons but it's well worth it. When using
non-native resolution in Autocad a line would jump from 2 pixels to one
pixel width depending on location. The end result was a fuzzy look. In
native resolution Autocad would display a sharp single pixel line. When
displaying fine text in native resolution the text appears sharp and
solid in color, typically this would be solid black on a white
background. In non- native resolution the text appears gray and fuzzy.
The second thing to keep in mind concerns monitors that are using analog
output. I'm sure you have read how much better digital output is better
than analog. When I compared LCDs I was evaluating the displayed images
based solely on sharpness and focus. I was not concerned about viewing
games or videos, since this is frowned upon at work. The results were
that I could not see any advantage of digital over analog in this area.
The key to using the analog output is to be sure to perform either a
automatic or manual signal syncronization. Samsung call theirs Image
Lock, Sony call theirs Phase/Pitch. In any case, the automatic settings
don't always work as well as they should. For some reason I found the
Samsung 17" LCD always needed manual fine tuning but the 19" Samsungs
automatically set almost all of the settings perfectly. The best way to
sycn them or test them for that matter is to display a fine text across
the entire screen, naturally in native resolution. The Nokia screen
tester works great for this purpose.
ftp://ftp.fluidlight.com/pub/nospin_files/Nokia.zip
Start by scrolling up and down using the coarse Image lock adjustment
until you see the series of wavy lines appear, change number, and then
direction. Stop in the middle when the wavy lines completely disappear.
Then use the fine adjustment.
The funny thing was, of all the stores I went to to test LCDs, none of
them were using native resolution or had the sycn set properly. On the
plus side all of the stores except BestBuy allowed me to run the Nokia
tester from a CDR I burned and then allowed me to set the desired
resolution and fine tune the image lock. CompUSA and CircuitCity had
several monitors connected to one source which made comparison much
easier. BestBuy just plain sucks when it comes to evaluating monitor
image quality, and their sales people are not very cooperative.
The 192N is probably old now, but can usually be found for $650 to $600
after rebate. I was lucky enough to snag one for $500 AR at Comp during
Black Friday but I think it will be a long time before you see a price
like that again.
