New Monitor

Kudos to wls_xenolith (my cousin Kurt) for blogging about (and therefore calling my attention to) this monitor, which I turned around and bought for $279 from Amazon.

I’ve only had it for a couple of days, and it’s working out really well. I checked Amazon, though, and it’s no longer available. They have the “gamer” version” of the monitor, which costs $100 more, and which I decided wasn’t worth the extra $100 to me. Interestingly, when I unpacked my cheaper monitor there was a sticker on it that said “fast 8ms response time,” which I couldn’t figure out. I didn’t PAY for that kind of response time. Maybe the sticker was just there to make me feel good.

Sandra has been watching episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” on my PC some evenings, and this new monitor ghosts LESS than my old tube did — a true technical accomplishment, especially when you consider that the scenes shot in the dark come out looking clear, too.

The monitor I replaced was an NEC Accusync 19″ monitor whose brightness was starting to go, and which was getting blurry down towards the bottom of the screen. Since I sit in front of a computer every day, that would just never do. So now I have a monstrous-footprint monitor on the floor in the corner of my office, heavy enough (but not dense enough) to be a boat anchor. If I could figure out how to turn it into $50, I’d buy some more books to teach me how to draw.

So… Kudos to Kurt. He may wonder whether anybody pays attention to his blog — I certainly do, if only to see what kind of weird image he’ll dig up next.

11 thoughts on “New Monitor”

  1. I consider it unfortunate that LCD monitors still top out at 1280×1024 (a resolution which doesn’t even offer square pixels; I fervently wish that particular resolution had been standardized at 1280×960 instead) all the way up to 19″. If you want 1600×1200 resolution (and I won’t accept less), you have to go up to 20″, and it’s a big price jump. This is why I’m still using tube monitors.

    That said, I hope to be able to replace this workstation’s current monitor (a Sun 90D10 24″ 8:5-aspect monitor, an OEM-labelled version of the Sony GDM-W900) with an LCD when it finally dies. For the work this machine does, the display advantages of an LCD (no flicker, no color registration issues, no need to ever adjust screen geometry, permanently-pin-sharp focus etc) would be a boon, and the disadvantages would never come into play because I only ever use this display at its highest resolution (1920×1200). I’ll certainly never miss its power consumption, its heat load, its almost-two-foot depth or its 120lb weight. (Frankly, if I could afford to, I’d replace it right now — there’s some very nice widescreen LCD displays out there now, with 1920×1200 resolutions and even higher — but they’re $1700 or more, and I can’t afford a quarter of that to replace the horribly-unstable LeadTek video card in my gamebox that locks up on average twice a day now, let alone to replace an aging monitor that’s still perfectly usable once it warms up.)

    However, the tube monitor on my gaming machine is likely to stay there for the foreseeable future, because … well, it’s a gaming machine. And not all games support (or are usable at) 1600×1200, and, well … I alluded to disadvantages of LCDs above? Speed is one of them, but they’re working on that — and making good progrss, as you observe. But one thing they haven’t yet beaten is that LCD displays look like ass (and not in a good way) except at their full native resolution or exact power-of-2 fractions thereof. A 1600×1200 LCD gets stair-steps, jaggies and banding at any resolution other than 1600×1200 or 800×600.

    I’m pretty sure they’ll come up with a thin-screen monitor technology sometime that doesn’t have this drawback. But until then, my game machine will be keeping its Sony GDM-5410.

    Anyway, discussion of monitor technologies adn their relative merits aside, I hope the Spectre works out for you. 🙂 Unfortunately, I have no good suggestions on getting rid of the Accusync other than to donate it to a local Salvation Army store or some other such charity that will sell it and put the proceeds to use.

    1. Eh, I found that some lcd monitors actually have pretty good scaling technologies now. At least when I was playing FFXI I could hardly tell the difference between 1024×768 and 1280×1024 because of how good the scaling was on this cheapo-walmart Balance lcd. I still run it in its native resolution most of the time though.

      (I also have a 1024×768 CRT monitor that I scale up my PS2 NTSC signals to, and I don’t notice the scaling distortions there either. I guess TVTime’s deinterlacer and video mangling filters are really good to accomplish that.)

      1. Heh.

        We’ve had _discussions_ with Boss at my workplace about one of my users needing to run the screen (which we have the stations congiured to run at 1280*1024 native) at 1024*768.

        For that reason, we are giving her a tube monitor, which will likely cause her to complain to no end…

        My personal monitor at home is a Gateway VX1100 (trinitron tube based) 21″ Monster which wieghs down almost half of my desk. It’s oh so pretty, but if I had the cash, I replace it with a 19″ LCD in a heartbeat, just to reclaim the desk space…

    2. Actually, I just checked, and my Nec MultiSync 1810 *will* do 1600×1200. It took a minute for it to figure out what was going on when I tried it though.

      I got lucky and picked up a pair of used ones from someone who was upgrading his Lan Party room.

      Also picked up a pair of old Nec Multisych monitors that were 19″ CRTs at $50 each. One went to a friend who’d been living with a 14″ monitort. The other wenty to a legally blind friend. On good days she can actually read text on it. 🙂

  2. Random note: I’ve been very satisfied with my Sony Trinitron monitors. Sharp, fast refresh rates, and neither of them have ever given me trouble in the six years I’ve owned them.

  3. Yeah, I’ve had a Sceptre for several years now – pretty much everything they offer is a very good value for the money. And while Amazon may not have your version of it any more, I’m willing to bet that I know of a place or two that could locate it, if need be…

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