Man-wai Chang ToDie said:
What kind(s) of text are you trying to read? You were not talking about
the DOS way of displaying text, were you?
I own a samsung 955df 19" crt monitor and by text I mean mainly the text you
get in most web pages when browsing online. The text can get pretty tiny and
blury; and after several
hours reading your eyes get very sore. I've had the resolution set on
1280x1024 with maximum refresh rate and the text was too tiny and blury.
I've tried several other resolutions and I've settled for 1152x864 with a
refresh rate of 85Hertz. The monitor is okay for games and movies (though I
don't watch much video on my monitor - I rather watch it on a 32" sony tv)
but on small text it's horrible. So that's the main reason for wanting an
lcd; as well as the space saving allowed by an lcd, the reduction in weight,
and the lower heat generated.
I've read that there are different types of lcd panels. Namely, three main
types: tn, ips, and va. My understanding is that tn panels have a better
pixel response time (which helps avoid shadow-trails and ghosting
artifacts), but suffers from limited viewing angles and have poor color
reproduction. Ips panels improve on the viewing angle and color reproduction
of tn panels but at a loss of response time and the contrast ratio is weak.
As-ips improves on contrast ratio of traditional s-ips panels. A-tw-ips
panels make white look more natural and
increase the color range. Hps-ips have much less backlight bleed, no purple
hue visible at an angle, backlight bleed improves looking at an angle, less
noise or glitter seen on the panel
surface (smoother surface), but the drawbacks are there's still some
backlight bleed in areas that are green and the viewing angles may have to
be sacrificed in order to improve pros.
Mva is a compromise between tn and ips. It achieves fast pixel response,
wide viewing angles, and high contrast at the cost of brightness and color
reproduction. Pva is similar to mva.
As opposed to crt's, lcd's only produce crisp images in their single native
resolution. Crt's have deeper blacks, lcd's can have "backlight bleed" where
light (usually seen around corners of the screen) leaks out and turns black
into gray. Lcd's typically have longer response times than crt's creating
visible ghosting when images rapidly change. Some lcd's have significant
input lag, which can affect fast and time-precise mouse operations, as
compared to crt's. Lcd panels tend to have a limited viewing angle compared
to crt (reducing the number of people able to conveniently view the same
image.)
I personally I'm willing to sacrifice viewing angle and pixel response time
to get a better text and color images.
Marc
