New Monitor

[drogulus]

     About a year and a half ago I bought a new 22" LCD monitor for my PC, which I also use for games and videos, movies etc. Yesterday I finally overcame my dread at changing over and installed the new unit. Now I have to figure out how to adjust it for proper use with movies (it's excellent out of the box for general use).

     

     Dell 2209WA

     I've turned down brightness and upped contrast. Now what do I do?

     
     

     

[DavidW]

Make sure the color temp is at D65!

Nah just kidding, just make sure you're running at native resolution and enjoy.  Is it led?  My Sammy monitor is.

[drogulus]

     Yup, 65k and native rez. It's a regular backlight. If you Google the model you'll see it's kind of special, though. You couldn't get these through the Dell consumer channel even when they were available. I found it in Australia (internet-ly, that is). I read the reviews and said "holy shit! I got to get me one!" to no one in particular. Then I found out you could special order it from Dell Small Business. They were not trying to sell them, that's for sure.

[drogulus]

     I love 16:10!!  It allows for more screen real estate vertically, which is good for reading web pages and watching old 4:3 video. Sure, widescreen movies have black bars but many have them anyway, and I don't notice them being bigger. 16:9 was a mistake, too far from the old standard. HD should have been 1920x1200/1280x800. That would bring PC/laptop and video closer to each other. Aesthetically, it works, too, like a Golden Rectangle.

[DavidW]

I thought I was alone! 4:3 is not wide enough, and 16:9 is too short, 16:10 is perfect.  I hate this trend to make all monitors 16:9 now.  Many people use their pcs for web browsing and work more than they do watching movies jerk faces!!

[drogulus]

     It's really nice having all the extra room. When I'm transcoding/tagging audio or doing video conversions I'll have 3 or 4 windows open at once.

     I haven't made up my mind about movies/video, yet. Some things look spectacular, but lower resolution material can look truly horrible, worse than on my old CRT. I might not be able to watch some things on this.

     There is a race of HD monitors in 16:10. Many monitors with HDMI inputs in the 22-30" range are either 1680x1050 (22") or 1920x1200. Some are monitors with video capabilities, others are hybrids with ATSC tuners. I'm interested in these because unlike regular TVs they will actually function well as monitors (games, text, graphics) and unlike ordinary monitors they often have the kind of IPS or PVA panel I'm looking for.

[DavidW]

     I haven't made up my mind about movies/video, yet. Some things look spectacular, but lower resolution material can look truly horrible, worse than on my old CRT. I might not be able to watch some things on this.

One thing I've noticed about pc monitors is that unlike tvs they don't have dnr filters, and dvds are rife with mpeg compression artifacts.  And usual viewing distance for pc setup is way too close for dvds to look sharp anyway.  Viewing distance to screen size (in diameter) should be at least 3:1 for dvds.