New LCD monitor

[Quadophile]

While cleaning my present monitor a (Samsung 700IFT), I found some patches on the screen and on closer inspection it turned out to be the anti-glare coating on the surface which was coming off. This is the first time for me to see a monitor becoming practically unusable. I am finding it hard to read the text where there are small patches.

This happened two days back and since I discovered I might have to go for another monitor sooner than expected I did a bit of research into what is avaliable for me to pick up. Going for another CRT was in my opinion not a good idea since the LCD monitors now available are multi-purpose. The system is no longer being used by my son for gaming purpose also, so any half decent LCD should do, right? Well, I tried my best to come up with the best compromise in terms of budget as well as my needs and finally decided on the following unit which hopfully will be delivered tomorrow at the doorsteps.

Philips 170S5FB LCD Monitor

There was a major concern when it came to types of input, ideally I would have loved a panel with both DVI as well as Analog inputs but the availability was a problem. The 15 inch one (Philips 150B5BS), having both inputs was out since it would not give me the proper desktop area I wanted. I prefer 1280x1024 which I am using with my current monitor. The other 17 inch model was the Samsung 172B but it had Response time of 25ms which for all practical purposes is sloooooow! Besides it also had speakers built-in which rendered the unit priced much higher and something which I certianly do not need. Tinny sounding speakers built within the frame are not my cup of tea. The Samsung was dearer by almost 33% compared to Philips. A response time of 16 ms was what I was aiming for and that this what the Philips specification says.

My IBM T41 laptop cannot resolve the shade of red properly, its more like reddish brown than what it is suppose to be showing. I did this comparision on two televsions at home one being the Pixel Plus from Philips and my present monitor, all show the same shade of red. I am basically refering to the video of Cranberries on thier DVD Stars - The best of videos 1991-2002 and the song is "Just my imagination" where the star is shown wearing the red leather jacket.

Given the choices, I am pretty sure I made the right decision going for the 17 inch Philips. I might be writing a review depending on how thrilled I am with the new toy, but I will know how good (or bad) this monitor is, when I actually set it up in my system. Just keeping my fingers crossed and the DVD ready!

 

[Ian]

I'd be interested in what you think of the 16ms LCD I'm very, very tempted to get one, but there are too expensive for me at the moment for the size I am after.

Nice buy

 

[muckshifter]

Ian ... you wanna "cut-n-past Quads comments into the new "Mini Review Section"

What you mean you haven't done one yet ...
We still need a "thumbs-up" smillie.

 

[Quadophile]

I Installed the monitor last night after getting back and had only half an hour to polay with it since had to attend a reception. The first thing one must check is for Dead Pixels, which I did and found none!

Anyway, I popped The DVD into the drive and checked the color of the jacket which was really the color it was, 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 text as usual on LCD's, 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 17" desttop at 1280x1024 I thought I was looking through a wide angle lens

I will 'Play' with the monitor during the weekend and post my views on it. Especially how it performs regarding its spec of 16 ms response time.

To be continued........

 

[Quadophile]

Image Quality

I spent good 90 minutes preparing all my gear and taking pictures of the DVD image which I mentioned earlier on three different screens. Before I post the pictures let me give you some insight into how I took the pictures in order to do full justice to all the screens in question.

I used the digital camera of course, but, the results were way off when I tried to take the shots in either the manual mode or in auto mode in terms of luminance since each screen had different light output. The only possibility for me to correctly expose each screen was to manually measure the 'White Balance'. This way the luminance of the screen was taken into consideration by the meter and I found the results to be very good representative of the images from each screen. The three screens in question were:


IBM T41 Laptop
Philips Pixel Plus Television
Philips 170S5FB LCD Monitor

First screen shot is of the IBM T41 Laptop, followed by the Philips Pixel Plus Television and finally the Philips LCD 170S5FB.

To be continued........in the next post

 

[Quadophile]

Image Quality

The three screenshots in the post above clearly shows what the brightness level of each picture is. Looking through my naked eyes and I feel the images are just about right when it comes to brightness level of each screen. Television in this case is obviously a lot more brighter. The ambient light in each case was kept at same level more or less and in all cases tungsten light was used, not that it matters when you measure light straight from the screen, but, for the purpose of record.

The colors however appear to be washed out when it comes to the laptop screen and is not comparable to either of the two others. The television and the Philips LCD are very close to each other in reproducing colors, albeit the Television has a slight edge in my opinion. The flowers on the left, the green grass on the right side, the color of the jacket, the color of the clothes of the children in the background are good examples for comparision purpose when viewing the three shots.

I went through my photo collection as well and I am very pleased with the monitor so far.

The new feature I found in the monitor is the addition of sRGB in additon to the other three which are standard on other monitors as well, namely, Original Panel Color, 9300K for CAD/CAM and 6500K for Image Management. The manual of the monitor states

sRGB is a standard for ensuring correct exchange of colors between different devices (e.g. digitalcameras, monitors, printers, scanners, etc.)
​

Using a standard unified color space, sRGB will help represent pictures taken by an sRGB compatible device correctly on your sRGB enabled Philips monitors. In that way, the colors are calibrated and you can rely on the correctness of the colors shown on your screen.
​

Important with the use of sRGB is that the brightness and contrast of your monitor is fixed to a predefined setting as well as the color gamut. Therefore it is important to select the sRGB setting in the monitor's OSD.
​

I use the sRGB for all practical purposes after having checked each profile. The screenshot was also taken with this setting. I also installed the FPAdjust program which was bundled with the monitor, which essentially confirms the setting of the monitor and visibility of the entire Pluge Pattern.

Next I will be testing the monitor for its performance with regard to 16 ms response time so come back to check my opinion on that if interested.

To be continued......

 

[Quadophile]

Attached is the image of my previous monitor the Samsung 700IFT. See how the coating is coming off from various places on the screen, if there is text underneath it is very difficult to read, hence, the justification of the new monitor. It was so easy to convince me wife that I need a new monitor

 

[muckshifter]

I "see" your enjoying this new toy.

... keep the comments going Quad, I'm listening.

 

[Ian]

Attached is the image of my previous monitor the Samsung 700IFT. See how the coating is coming off from various places on the screen, if there is text underneath it is very difficult to read, hence, the justification of the new monitor. It was so easy to convince me wife that I need a new monitor

Wow, I can see the problem now! How did that happen, just from cleaning and the anti-glare coming off?