Widescreen Gaming Forum

I'm a regular member of another gaming forum and I asked there between TN, PVA, and IPS panel technologies which would be best for my uses. I plan to do a good amount of gaming on it and this is it's main use but I will watch movies and I want them to look good when I do (Surround is on my PC so it makes a great movie watching rig). I have pretty much eliminated TN from the consideration due to color shift and many other inaccuracies based on how you view it. I lean back in my chair when watching movies regularly so it would be likely that the lighting and colors would shift on a TN panel and look poorly and inaccurate.

I am coming from a graphic design 19" Viewsonic CRT which I mainly have due to the fact it was free, it has a flat tube, and it displays everything beautifully. I have looked at many LCDs in store and been terribly unsatisfied with them - most are very blocky and have bad ghosting and artifacting. I believe the places I look do not carry any PVA or IPS models so I am seeing nothing but TN panels. None stand out as having a great picture, more or less a picture that is less bad than the other ones which I am not willing to settle for.

Most of the members of my gaming forum were against the idea of spending more on a different technology and tried to say TN is excellent and the others just cost more for no good reason. This I do not believe to be true and given how selective I am in all things (Most especially displays!! I didn't look through dozens of TVs to just "settle" on my 26" Panasonic) that is not me. They believe it's okay to give up some viewing angle, color accuracy and whatnot to save some money. I made note of the phrase "Good monitor for the money" used frequently with TN panels. I want a quality monitor without money needing to be a primary concern.

While I am trying to do this on a budget of $500 or less, I am not simply a bargain monitor hunter. If so, I found a decent (If you can call a TN that) 22" Viewsonic for $200. I believe the most reasonable technology given my price range would be a PVA display. So far I have been recommended to a Doublesight DS-245W monitor for $470 after rebates and shipping but that's about the extent of it.

Given that I plan to play many games on this display, view photos, browse the internet, and watch movies I would like suggestions on a reasonable PVA panel. Of course IPS needn't be ruled out, I would buy one as well if in my price range. The only thing, I want at least a 22" but no larger than a 24". I don't care about the frills and connections - as long as it has DVI and has a superb picture I don't care if the casing looks cheap or it has a lousy stand (I have noticed though the stands on the PVAs are very nice and almost all have height and swivel adjustments). Image quality is my number one concern, not stupid USB ports on the side, built-in cheapo speakers, or any other gadgetry.

Glad to be here and I hope you all can provide me with a less biased suggestion other than "Stop overanalyzing" which is what I was told by a member of my forums when doing quite a bit of background research into the type of panel technology I wanted. So please, do be helpful and not against my decision of a PVA or IPS panel over a TN. I believe my reasoning to be sound and no evidence has thusfar proved me wrong. I do not want to simply settle for an okay display, I want one I will be very satisfied with as I do not purchase displays often. Since I have owned a PC I have only had three displays (and that's through several PCs). All of which with exception of the first have been graphic display CRT monitors.

I look forward to suggestions. One other note, if providing online retailers I will not buy a display from Newegg (due to their shoddy LCD return policy of 7 or more dead pixels or whatever nonsense). Amazon and TigerDirect are both preferred but other trustable retailers are suitable. Thanks for any and all advice and help!

I'd recommend the dell 2408 as a suggestion to take a look at. its over budget BUT with coupons and who knows what you will probably be able to get a deal of it.

its PVA.

I use an AS-IPS screen so I know what you mean. honestly if your willing to take a look the NEC 20WMGX2 would be a perfect fit. Thats what I use and I love it. Its smaller but nice.

Does anyone else have any displays to recommend? I haven't had the best luck locating Dell displays and after seeing a few bad ones I'm afraid to buy one without seeing it beforehand. Someone recommended a DoubleSight DS-245W to me (Here is the link, it's around $450 after shipping and rebate). It seems to have gotten positive reviews but I don't know much about it and this would be a totally sight unseen purchase. I have no idea where I could find one of these in a store, I've never even seen a DoubleSight monitor for sale anywhere.

I do plan to do a ton of gaming on whatever my display is so it must be able to keep up as far as referesh rate goes (just making sure that is known). I have a 26" Panasonic HDTV and a 40" Samsung HDTV and both of them when gaming will occasionally get a nasty refresh line in the upper portion of the screen that looks awful and I don't want another monitor that does that.

Can anyone tell me a nationwide retailer who regularly has PVA and IPS monitors out on display (Apple excluded, I know some places have them and they're IPS but I don't want an Apple display due to the high cost and small size ratio as well as limited OSD options due to the lack of external monitor controls. Plus I'm not a fan of Apple in general, but that's besides the point here!)? I know CompUSA used to have a decent selection of monitors in general but they went out of business and all I have left are Circuit City and Best Buy. The only places I know of off hand anyways.

:welcome

If you are sensitive to viewing angles and image consistancy, then IPS is the only way to go. If you get the DoubleSight 26" (25.5") with the NEC polarizer, you have one of the best displays for gaming and image consistancy. Less then 1 frame input lag, even display of colors and black stays black at angle also (PVA's are generally better with black at angle, but the NEC polarizer changed that giving you a much better optical black though the measured luminance low is still better on PVA screens). This one is a cheaper alternative, but still good:
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/hp_lp2475w.htm

PVA panels gives you a left side brighter then right, some have black crush fudging colors, others have no black crush, but are more vulnerable to color/gamma shifts.
http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1031371458&postcount=58
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZnaMex2FUo
They are also the panels with highest input lag.

TN panels also have shifts, but newer panel have good filters not giving much shift on horizontal view. Vertical they are always more vulnerable to shift. You can get better panels on TN then this, but here is an example of TN vs. IPS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG7XNwbUYEM&feature=related
TN's also only features 6-bit colors with dithering up to 8-bit.

MVA panels like the Benq 24" has a little of all. Decent black, though it is vulnerable to angle shifts. Not so extreme input lag as many PVA's (Lolair 24" had 0). They also have 8-bit colors. Worthy to research as an alternative.

You should also research wide gamut vs. sRGB. I prefer to game in wide gamut, but not everyone does (I have a working choice of sRGB preset on my screen, so I have alternative if I wish). You are coming from a sRGB screen, so it takes some getting used to.

Getting an LCD is kinda like choosing your poison. Same goes with CRT's really. It was a big difference between CRT's in those days as well. :)

If you get the DoubleSight 26" (25.5") with the NEC polarizer, you have one of the best displays for gaming and image consistancy.

According to DoubleSight when I talked to them recently, their 26" display isn't supposed to come with the polarizer filter. They pretty much implied people saying that were mistaken. This tends to indicate if there were in fact some polarized screens that got through their factory, it was a fluke, and something you can't count on.

I didn't know HP had a 24" IPS. You can get it as low as $562 from my searching. Too bad it has such poor color accuracy out of the box though. Not many people have access to a calibrator and they aren't cheap.

I still feel the DoubleSight DS-265W is the best all around monitor if you can afford $700 on a display. You get a very basic pixel warranty and no frills OSD, but the guts of it are pretty impressive at that price.

Well, I'd hate to pay extra for a 26" display being as that's too large. A 24" is the largest I could go. If I bump the size down to 22" can I find any lower priced displays? The $500+ is killing me here. I've heard great things about the BenQ FP241W but it is $600+ and well over my budget.

At this point, I want anything but a TN panel. I hear so much bad about them that I'm totally disinterested in them.

In regards to a calibrator, I obviously do not have this and so being would be unable to do any color calibrating that way unless I just guessed at it manually.

I have seen a few TN panels that say they have a true 8 bit display - is this possible? Would they be worth anything as opposed to other TNs given that advantage or would it be useless given their color inaccuracies when shifting position?

I don't see why it has to be like choosing your poision, I am using a Viewsonic G90f graphics series CRT 19" and I can cite no flaws other than it's not widescreen and it's not any bigger than it is. Image quality is flawless, colors don't look inaccurate, blacks are phenomenal (Something I've yet to see an LCD do), viewing angles are perfect, essentially if I didn't care about getting a bigger widescreen display I could keep this one forever. I got this for free and replaced a Sony GPF400 with BNC connectors that also had a great picture. Again, the Sony was great but this was free and had a flat screen.

I'm all for upgrading though, but when it came to CRTs I don't really see where the flaws were. The cheap ones might have been bad but these graphic displays were always good to me. I don't need to shop for refresh time, contrast level, brightness level, display technology, panel type or any of that nonsense when looking for CRTs.

I find it rather absurd that I should need to be looking at professional grade equipment just to do quality images in gaming with accurate colors and for realistic colors in movies. Admittedly I did that with CRTs but it wasn't so high priced then. I paid $120 for the Sony CRT in 2001 and this Viewsonic was free. No dead pixels, no stuck pixels nada! But when I look at LCDs, oh no - a few dead pixels are totally common and like, acceptable. Sorry, that's unacceptable to me when I'm paying that sort of money.

So are there no displays I can get for any reasonable price? I don't see how $350 or $400 aren't fine prices as they're well within the higher end of my price range. I'm tempted to just keep my old 19" CRT if I can find no monitors of quality for less than $500...

I agree partly with what you're saying. IMO BenQ has a point, monitors should have been based on a 16:9 aspect ratio because there's so many panels being made for TVs in that size it would cut down cost considerably. Especially on PVA panels as most HDTVs use SPVA ones.

I can also see why lots of people just end up going with an LCD HDTV vs LCD monitor because there's often more bang for the buck. I saw a 32" Samsung 1080p (LN32A550) for just $660 well before Black Friday. It has 3 HDMI ports and 6ms response.

My main problem with the TVs are they always have bigger pixel pitch. This means if you're playing a game like GTA IV that doesn't support AA, you're going to have noticeably jagged edges.

Bottom line, if $500 is too much for you, it's going to be a tough decision because that's about the cheapest you can get a fairly good PVA. I would consider trying to set up a sale with a prospective buyer on your monitor and one of your TVs. That way maybe you can afford it.

Well, the 40" Samsung is a no go - it's the family TV. My 26" Panasonic was $720 about two years ago and it's my gaming TV so I really couldn't get rid of it (it would make my stereo system useless as I couldn't use it with my games anymore and that is its current primary use).

I give - what a sad thing that greedy companies refuse to make good technology affordable for people. I'm not going to put myself into debt for a computer monitor I might not even like 100%. That said, I was considering a Viewsonic monitor before I said I didn't want a TN. What I want to know (very quickly, the monitor goes off sale after the 31st), is a Viewsonic VX2262wm monitor any good? I'm looking to buy it from TigerDirect and it's only $200 ($250 - $50 MIR which applies only on sales no later than the 31st). I would have to buy it sight unseen but it does look decent for a TN. It has a 20,000:1 Dynamic Contrast (Yeah, whatever Viewsonic...), 2 ms response time, a 1000:1 standard contrast ratio, 300 nit brightness, and according to Viewsonic is professional color certified (Seems ironic given it's a TN panel, but this seems more creditable than the average TN panel).

Hell, I'll just give the link to Tiger (Here). I figure, if I dislike the monitor enough and I only pay $200 I will hold on to the box and maybe I can resale locally for something like $180 or if I'm lucky, the $200 I paid for it when it goes back to it's regular $250 price (I'll know I don't like it after a short time so it won't be used much). I don't mind being out $20 or so to see if I could live with a TN - maybe they're not so bad as I had thought.

I had wanted a 24" display to get the 1920 x 1200 resolution but I see nothing this cheap on Tiger Direct and the Viewsonic seems to be nice for a TN. The only rush is on this Viewsonic, if it's not any good though I have no rush to buy a display and will wait for the right one. Sorry to ask on such short notice, but can anyone help me relatively quickly?

EDIT: Okay, I still want to know soon but the rebate date has been extended to January 4th so I have a little more time to think it over.

2nd EDIT: Just looked, last ditch effort to keep a VA panel - what can you guys say about the 2407 and 2408 Dell monitors? They're the most reasonable VA panels I could get. I found this on eBay with a $390 buy it now and free shipping - very doable for me if it is of good quality.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Dell-2408-Wide-Flat-Panel-Display_W0QQitemZ270321499996QQcmdZViewItem

Just looked, last ditch effort to keep a VA panel - what can you guys say about the 2407 and 2408 Dell monitors? They're the most reasonable VA panels I could get. I found this on eBay with a $390 buy it now and free shipping - very doable for me if it is of good quality.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Dell-2408-Wide-Flat-Panel-Display_W0QQitemZ270321499996QQcmdZViewItem

I'd say a 2408 for $390 is your best bet so far, however it's refurbished. The guy has only 18 sales under his belt, though with 100% positive feedback. I would ask him if it's factory refurbished and if so, ask Dell if they have any kind of warranty at all. The seller only offers 7 day return at your shipping expense. Also ask if there are any dead pixels.

I bought a refurbished video card off an eBay store which I'm still using. I upgraded from an X800XT with it. It's a Sapphire X1950Pro that looked in new condition when I got it. I emailed Sapphire and found out they warranty their factory refurbed GPUs from manufacture date rather than sale date. Thus it has about a 2yr warranty on it and I've only used it about a yr.

Ebay is good for some things, you just have to be careful.

Well, one thing of concern is the revision. I looked at reviews (User reviews) on Cnet and they are overwhelmingly mediocre. Here is the link. They all say it has too much red and green push and that it requires a calibrator to tune properly. Most of these people are saying that Revision A00 of the monitor (The first) is crap for this and that the A01 has that problem resolved. Again, this is why I've never fully trusted Dell - their LCDs get mixed reviews, never glowingly positive.