Home News Reviews Forums Shop


question about LCD monitors - text clarity

CPU's? Motherboards? Video cards? Talk about it here.

question about LCD monitors - text clarity

Postby dodecahedron on Mon Jan 01, 2007 1:58 am

OK so i bought an LCD screen, which should go to a computer for my son (2+ years old. i'm gonna keep working on the Sony 19" Trinitron CRT).

i'm not used to LCD monitors. i hooked it up to my computer and worked on it a bit, and the charaters aren't clear as i'm used to on my CRT. they're a bit 'fuzzy around the edges'.
i turned on Clear Type, it helps some, especaially the text of the icons on the desktop and in the FireFox browser. but some (like in Word, or some PDF documents) it's still fuzzy.

is this normal ?

note:
the CRT is 19", which means 18" viewable, resolution 1600x1200.
the LCD is 19", resolution 1280x1024.
maybe it's because of the combo of larger screen + lower resolution that i see these artifacts? but i don't remember this when i worked on the CRT at lower resolutions too.

is this something inherent to LCD ?
or is my screen defective ?

the monitor is a BenQ model:
http://www.benq.com/products/LCD/?product=781

TIA
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie
-- JRRT
M.C. Escher - Reptilien
User avatar
dodecahedron
DVD Polygon
 
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sat Mar 09, 2002 12:04 am
Location: Israel

Postby redk9258 on Mon Jan 01, 2007 4:18 am

Try setting your desktop resolution to match the native resolution of the LCD.
Right click on desktop --> Properties --> Settings tab.
Set to 1280 x 1024.
Attachments
displaysetting.jpg
displaysetting.jpg (58.87 KiB) Viewed 2316 times
User avatar
redk9258
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 376
Joined: Sun Oct 12, 2003 12:44 pm
Location: Troy, Illinois

Postby LoneWolf on Mon Jan 01, 2007 2:01 pm

As RedK basically said, LCD monitors are designed primarily to be run at their native resolution, unlike CRTs which are meant to support multiple resolutions. Many LCD's don't scale well (unless your LCD has 1:1 pixel mapping like my Dell, which is primarily meant for running games that don't support widescreen resolutions).

Run your LCD at its native res of 1280x1024. If text looks too small, go to large fonts. If that doesn't do it for you, turn ClearType on, which will make it more readable, but loses a little sharpness in the process.

I like ClearType for some laptop displays (i.e., 15.4" LCD with a native res of 1600x1200), but at 1920x1200 on my Dell, I have a custom font size to make it larger (115dpi) and I have all font-smoothing turned off, since text looks far sharper this way.
Intel Q9450 @3.2GHz, Gigabyte GA EP45-UD3P, 4 x 2GB G.Skill @4-4-4-12
Antec P160SW case (modded), Xigmatek 750w PSU
3x 500GB (RAID-5), , OptiArc 7200S, ASUS E818A3T
Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer, Hauppauge HVR-1800, Radeon 4890
Dell 2407WFP
User avatar
LoneWolf
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 937
Joined: Thu Feb 06, 2003 4:41 pm
Location: Meecheegan

Postby dodecahedron on Tue Jan 02, 2007 4:49 am

thanks redk, LoneWolf.
the monitor is at the native (also max) resolution of 1280x1024.

the text looks, if anything, too big.
i'm used to 1600x1200 on a 19" CRT (= viewable 18"), and now 1280x1024 on a 19" LCD (= viewable 19").
i'm thinking maybe that's why.

i wish i could find a 1600x1200 LCD but from what i see (at least here in Israel) they'd all be 20" or 21" and thus prohibitively expensive.
i'm really pissed off that none of the 19" ones are 1600x1200. :evil:

you say you got a 15.4" LCD with a native resolution of 1600x1200 ? WOW!
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie
-- JRRT
M.C. Escher - Reptilien
User avatar
dodecahedron
DVD Polygon
 
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sat Mar 09, 2002 12:04 am
Location: Israel

Postby MediumRare on Tue Jan 02, 2007 5:02 am

I picked up a Samsung 204Ts (now discontinued) for 500 Euros about 6 months ago and I love it. It's 1200x1600 and has a good panel. There's still a jump between 19" and 20" LCDs, but the prices are dropping all round, even for MVA or IPS panels.

With my aging eyes, the bigger text would have been an advantage (I have a 19" 1280x1024 at work), but everything is so crisp that I have no problems reading things.

One point you might check: if the monitor is hooked up to an analog video output, make sure that the synchronization is OK- that sometimes causes fuzziness.

G
User avatar
MediumRare
CD-RW Translator
 
Posts: 1768
Joined: Sun Jan 19, 2003 3:08 pm
Location: ffm

Postby socheat on Tue Jan 02, 2007 1:01 pm

dodecahedron wrote:i wish i could find a 1600x1200 LCD but from what i see (at least here in Israel) they'd all be 20" or 21" and thus prohibitively expensive.
i'm really pissed off that none of the 19" ones are 1600x1200. :evil:


Nope, it's not just Israel. I don't understand it either:
15" - 1024x768
17" - 1280x1024
19" - 1280x1024?!

AND, to top it off, a lot of the 20" and 21" monitors are going wide now, so you only get 1680x1050 :evil: :evil:

dodecahedron wrote:you say you got a 15.4" LCD with a native resolution of 1600x1200 ? WOW!


Most likely a laptop. :)
User avatar
socheat
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 442
Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2001 8:00 pm
Location: Ann Arbor, MI

Postby LoneWolf on Tue Jan 02, 2007 1:33 pm

dodecahedron wrote:you say you got a 15.4" LCD with a native resolution of 1600x1200 ? WOW!
As Socheat said (and my previous post), yes, this is on a laptop. Laptops tend to have higher max-resolutions on their LCD panels.

Here in the States at least, 20" LCD prices are coming down. I usually tell people to hunt for a Dell coupon so they can get a 2007FP -the discount (depending on what's available, you may find a 10 or 20% off coupon, or a $50 coupon just do an Ebay search for "dell coupon").

I did find that a 20" widescreen didn't quite do it for me, coming from a 19" CRT. I went to a 24" widescreen; the extra cost was covered by Christmas money. I would have gone with a standard-aspect 20" screen at the time, but I couldn't find one with HDCP support (seems like most vendors are adding that to widescreens only).
Intel Q9450 @3.2GHz, Gigabyte GA EP45-UD3P, 4 x 2GB G.Skill @4-4-4-12
Antec P160SW case (modded), Xigmatek 750w PSU
3x 500GB (RAID-5), , OptiArc 7200S, ASUS E818A3T
Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer, Hauppauge HVR-1800, Radeon 4890
Dell 2407WFP
User avatar
LoneWolf
CD-RW Player
 
Posts: 937
Joined: Thu Feb 06, 2003 4:41 pm
Location: Meecheegan


Return to General Hardware Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest

cron
All Content is Copyright (c) 2001-2024 CDRLabs Inc.