The Samsung 243t Widescreen, after a week or two of getting some real world use...Now that I've had a couple of weeks to get used to the Samsung Widescreen, I have noticed some real world differences between LCD's and CRT's. Some things that I used to take for granted are no longer an issue or are vastly improved over CRT monitors; such as...
* My fears about switching to a widescreen for my computer monitor were totally unfounded...
- MC and all other software expands nicely to fit the new format with a LOT more room for everything.
- My concerns about TV on a widescreen monitor was a non-issue; the black borders I was concerned about on the sides of a standard 4:3 TV image are very clean with no artifacts.
- The black borders on the sides of a standard 4:3 TV image can be totally removed with MC TV's Aspect - 'Crop' command (not the Crop edges option). It does not stretch the image as ATI's Aspect controls do (causing distortion of the image), but rather it 'zooms' the image so the side borders go off the screen. This does make some of the top and bottom of the image go off the screen but is a very good compromise until real widescreen comes to all households in a year or two.
- One thing that did came as a surprise to me was that letterbox images do not automatically fill the screen but have black borders all around... top, bottom, left and right. I had just assumed that letterbox TV images would automatically fill the screen; but after seeing a letterbox image on my widescreen monitor I saw what was happening. The TV station was sending out a standard 4:3 aspect ratio TV signal which included a letterbox movie within it so it was on the screen as a 4;3 image. MC's TV's Aspect - 'Crop' command did the trick and expanded it to full screen thereby filling the whole screen with a non-distorted widescreen image.
- Even with MC's TV's Aspect - 'Crop' command, some real widescreen images that TV stations transmit will still leave a very thin black border along the top and bottom of the screen; that is because most letterbox images are 16:9 aspect but for some reason all widescreen computer monitors are 16:10 aspect ratio hence the thin black borders left over. This is something that MC needs to address.
* Much faster turn on after a Win XP standby start up.
* The screen does not come on faint at boot up (like CRT's) but seems to come on at normal color; in other words there is no 'warm up' time required.
* The image does not shift in size as the screen warms up like a CRT does.
* There is no need for 'tweaking' the screen size and position settings as it is done automatically by use of the 'Auto' button which works extremely well indeed.
* A full screen image with a thin line running all the way around it (a border) will be precisely positioned and well centered on the screen with the thin border just inside the screen bezel; it will be straight and precise. No matter how hard I tried, I could never achieve that for very long on any CRT monitor. On a CRT, even when I could precisely position such an image on the screen some of the thin border would always bow out of the image and hide behind the bezel as the line was not really true and straight due to the CRT gun scanning in an arc and the different thickness of the glass tube surface.
* As there is no more screen behind the bezel (like CRT's) the screen size is precise and very well known so the video card only has to provide the exact number of pixels that the screen needs. So, when you set up the screen size in Windows to 1200x1920 the video card produces that exact amount of pixels and the LCD reads that exact size (1200x1920). This is why the 'Auto' feature works so well.
* There is absolutely no pincushion, barrel, trapezoid, non-linearity, or any other kind of distortion that needs to be adjusted. This is because there is no 'gun' (as in a CRT) scanning in an arc that needs to be controlled and adjusted. Furthermore, these controls are not needed and are not present which greatly simplifies the setting up of a LCD monitor.
* Brightness... I was very pleasantly surprised in this area as I had always thought that LCD's were dimmer then a bright CRT. A lot of things have been improved in LCD design in the last year or so. This LCD is actually much brighter, and with better contrast then any CRT that I have used.
* The screen does not 'wash out' as brightness and/or contrast are turned up as most CRT's do. There seems to be much better control over the contrast then on a CRT.
* Contrast ration is very good (500:1).
* Due to the high contrast ratio, blacks are really black; in fact when the screen is turned off it appears to be almost totally black and not the dark grey of most CRT's. I think this may be because there is no shadow mask screen or thick glass for the light to travel through and become weakened. There is only a thin black plastic screen between the LCD's and you.
* Much thinner bezel surrounding the screen as there is no screen area behind the bezel as there is in all CRT's monitors.
* The only negative side to LCD's has to do with the backlighting...
- CRT's are notorious for having 'spotty' brightness especially on a full screen of a bright color such as white; this is due to many reasons including the gun scanning in an arc, the electron beam striking the shadow mask at more of an angle near the edges, and the different thickness of the surface of the glass CRT tube all leading to light fall off near the corners and edges.
- I thought that would be a thing of the past with a LCD as there is no electron gun, no shadow mask, and no scanning in an arc; but there are
back lights and no matter how hard the manufacturers have tried there will always be some slightly lighter and darker areas of the screen as current back light technology simply is not as uniform as one would hope for. What you see on an LCD monitor is a slight 'shimmering' of light as you move your heard at different angles to the screen. Some of this is due to backlighting fall off over the screen surface.
- There is hope for the future in a new type of backlighting using not fluorescent as the light source, but an array of LED's (Light Emitting Diodes). LED backlighting on an LCD monitor may be about a year away but the test that I have seen looks very promising so far. Such a monitor is brighter, has better contrast, and much more saturated colors, the overall effect is very positive. The nice thing about LED backlighting is that current assemble lines can use it on new LCD monitors at very little additional manufacturing assembly cost (the actual LED backlighting may be more expensive).
* All in all, most of my fears about LCD's have been put to rest; needless to say, I'm one happy camper.
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Topic: OT: Widescreen or Standard monitor? (Read 6988 times)