Double Your Fun with DoubleSight

Lothar writes "If you are looking for another reason to throw out that old CRT and upgrade to LCDs here it is. The DoubleSight DS-1900 packs two 19" LCD panels in a neat package and will take up less total space than that cathode ray tube whic has created the permanent bow in your desk. You will end up with 2560x1024 pixels of screen real estate, enough to increase productivity substantially, but you won't have to sacrifice too much space due to the reasonable size of the display's footprint. Just another reason to go LCD..."

No, it isn't.

[sglider]

Just another reason to go LCD...

I'm afraid not. LCDs are very expensive, and with the current level of technology (dead pixels, et. al.), the cost doesn't justify the product. So what if the Resolution is higher? How many people use a dual display? The average joe -- or even average geek -- could build 2 systems for the cost of this one monitor.

Unless you are into digital editing, or watching TV on your PC, this dual monitor bit is nothing more than a rich man's folly.

Re:mirror

[v3rgEz]

http://mirrordot.org/stories/a859968e8a446de3b6334 ac86a888d47/index.html

Just check mirrordot.org next time. They automatically do it.

Just get two of the same LCD

[DaRat]

Geez, just get two identical LCD monitors. You can get two good 19" Samsung LCDs for $500 each. Then put the two next to each other with one just slightly behind the other (to minimize the bezel). Then, you have the same setup for less with the advantage that you can split up the monitors down the road if you want. This is the setup that I have, and it works just fine.

Re:No, it isn't.

[Klar]

Unless you are into digital editing, or watching TV on your PC, this dual monitor bit is nothing more than a rich man's folly.
Having a second monitor isn't all that expensive -- what like $150 for a 17" crt? Also, many people I know who program, including myself, find having two monitors much more productive. There is so much more desktop real estate. eg, if you are working in java, you can have the api open on a monitor as you are working on code. Or, have some code on one monitor, and test it on the other. etc etc. All the people I know who have had two monitors never go back.

Re:LCD's

[modecx]

Indeed, they've got LCDs around that claim ~10ms response time. I have a 19" touting 16ms response time, and I'm proud to say that it plays movies well, plays fast paced games well--Enemy Territory, HL2 both look beautiful, even with lots of fast movement.

Of course, there's people that will poo-poo LCDs until they render every itty-bitty thing perfectly at 100hz... As if their "super high quality" CRTs have phosphors that react fast enough to make a difference, and their eyes are from the planet Krypton....

Truthfully, I don't notice that much of a difference between this and my old CRT, except text is sharper, and I swear that colors in the magenta range seem more vibrant. The price was more than reasonable too--$360. You can find the 12 ms screens for around that now, but I needed mine in a hurry and couldn't find a place that carried them locally.

Re:LCD's

[modecx]

That's called interpolation. Not blurring, or ghosting. The monitor has to scale the image up to it's native resolution. Sometimes, a resolution that's a factor of an LCD's native resolution will look okay. This isn't an issue for most people.

What he's talking about is response time, which is the amount of time it takes an individual pixel to fully change from one color to another.. It's usually measured as the time between going from white to black, or from one grey to another grey... There is a definite, measurable response time on both LCDs and CRTs, but they have different implications.

Re:No, it isn't.

[steeef]

I recently replaced my old 19" CRT monitor with a Samsung 19" CRT, but not before I looked at comparable LCDs.

I knew I wanted at least a 19" that was capable of displaying 1600x1200. I scoured NewEgg, but all I got were 19" LCDs with a native resolution of 1280x1024. I could put up with a lower resolution, but the fact that they all run at a non-4:3 resolution kills the deal for me. It just looks wrong.

In order to get 1600x1200, I would have had to buy at least a 20". And judging from the current prices at NewEgg, that's at least $600. So I went with the Samsung 997DF-T/T [newegg.com] CRT monitor for $210. That's nearly a third of the cost for a flatscreen CRT with great colors and dotpitch.

LCDs are great, and had I $600+ to spend, I would have jumped at the chance. But for now, the cost difference is enough to make me stick with CRTs for now.

Re:2560x1024 fractal wallpapers

[Ianoo]

Your CRTs should be set at 1280x960, not 1280x1024. All computer CRT screens are 4:3 aspect ratio, which corresponds with 800x600, 1024x768 and 1600x1200, but not 1280x1024, which is actually 5:4.

This means that the pixels on your CRT won't be square, leading to the screen appearing stretched horizontally.

With an LCD, the resolution is factory set, so a 1280x1024 screen will actually be physically 5:4, and so the pixels will still be square.

Re:LCD's

[jbarket]

The real problem with these monitors is that for $1,000, you could pick up a couple of nicer 19" LCDs yourself.

As far as your space problem, my personal recommendation (having a similarly small desk) is to wall mount your LCDs.

I picked up a mount for about $40 not too long ago, and I can extent the monitor out from the wall, tilt and pivot it, et cetera. Combined with a wireless mouse and an easily stored keyboard, I can regain use of my entire desk fairly quickly.

Can't recommend it highly enough.

Re:LCD's

[NeoThermic]

Dead pixels will relate to the ISO rating class that the pannel has combined with its native resolution.

ISO 13406-2 (Class II) states that you can roughtly have 2 dead pixels per million pixels. So for a native resolution of 2560*1024, you will get nothing more than 4 dead pixels.

You can get better, of course, if the pannels are rated to Class I, they must be perfect, i.e. no dead pixels.

NeoThermic

Re:Just get two of the same LCD

[Nexx]

I have a friend with a 20" Dell and another with 20" Apple Cinema (both purchased within weeks of each other), and I will say that given nearly identical viewing conditions, the Apple Cinema is consistently brighter and offers a punchier picture. They're both phenomenal screens, but the picture of the Apple Cinema screen is more pleasing to view.

Re:No, it isn't.

[Tetrad69]

but the fact that they all run at a non-4:3 resolution kills the deal for me. It just looks wrong.

The reason they run at 5:4 resolution is because, get this, the monitor itself is 5:4.

Re:Text too small

[pomo monster]

Can't you just adjust your systemwide DPI setting or use larger fonts?

Re:CRT can do this too

[Lord of Ironhand]

One reason I'm sticking to CRT's is that the affordable LCD's I've seen suffer from the problem that the colours are only right as long as I'm exactly in front of the monitor. If I move my head to the right too far, I notice the left edge of the screen slowly changing colours. Not even that bad in itself since I don't usually have much reason to move to the sides so far, but I've noticed that when I'm doing graphical work on an LCD, I get paranoid about "odd" colours and have to move my head around a bit to make sure it's not caused by the LCD.

Another problem I have is that most affordable LCD's have a 1280x1024 (aspect 5:4) resolution. In a world where widescreen TV is promoted as being more "natural" for the human brain (something I actually tend to agree with), why go from 4:3 to a narrower 5:4 resolution?

For now, I'm staying with CRT's, and I'm re-evaluating once 1600x1200 LCD's with a wide viewable angle are affordable.

Re:LCD's

[molnarcs]

Short answer: yes, absolutely!

Long answer:
There are 3 lcd panel technologies: TN, *VA (MVA, PVA) and IPS. TN panels have achieved a very fast response time last year. My viewsonic vx912 has a response time of ~12ms, which is fine not only for movies, but for fast paced fps as well. The downside of TN panels is the smaller viewable angles, especially the vertical ones, and 6 bit panels (that achieve 16.2 million colors with a 'trick'). Contrast ratio is average.

*VA panels had an average of 25ms - that was fine for movies, and not so fine with games. Especially since 25ms was usually the black-to-white-to-black response time, and for some colors, switching could took as much as 60ms. However, *VA panels have excellent color reproduction capabilities (truly 8 bit panels) and excellent viewing angles, and high contrast ratio. S-IPS panels has also 25ms response time, but that's more or less even for every color transition. So a 25ms S-IPS panel is much faster than a *VA, has great viewing angles, good color reproduction, and sucky contrast. Newer S-IPS panels have improved on contrasts however a lot. APPLE displays have S-IPS panels (from LG.Philips).

Recently, various panel vendors (AUO, Samsung, Fujitsu) have experimented with increasing the response time of *VA panels. You'll see those panels described as P-MVA (premium mva) or S-MVA (super MVA), that boast a grey-to-gray response time of 8ms, while having still 25ms average response for non grey to grey transitions. Still, they proved to be excellent gaming monitors even for fps, without sacrificing viewing angles and contrast like in the case of IPS and TN panels, and they are out on the market and affordable. There is little or no reason to buy CRT-s now, because LCD Monitors are actually cheaper if you don't consider the initial price only! My 19'' LCD's average power consumption is 35W. A CRT with similar size (that would be a 20'' CRT) will consume 110+ Watts. Depending on your usage pattern, the additional cost of an LCD monitor can be saved up on energy usage in one to three years. Moreover, LCD monitors have perfect geometry (important for cad related works).

I put a site, a community effort to create a table of what's what in LCD land. The site is here [tftpanel.hu]. direct link to monitor table [tftpanel.hu], and a direct link to LCD-TV [tftpanel.hu] table. If you are looking for characteristics of various panels (not end products), you'll find them here. [tftpanel.hu]

Viewsonic has had this for at least a year

[Alowishus]

Big deal, Viewsonic has offered stands that mount any of their Pro series LCDs (15" to 21") in not only dual horizontal [viewsonic.com] but also dual vertical [viewsonic.com], triple wide [viewsonic.com] and quad (2x2) [viewsonic.com] layouts. You buy the standard LCDs, remove the included bases, and mount them to the special stands. If you ever decide to split them up, you still have the original bases to reattach and use standalone elsewhere.

I priced out the same 2-wide setup at CDW with 19" ViewSonics and it came out cheaper, for better quality monitors IMHO.

Re:No, it isn't.

[canon006]

Dell coupons kick ass, I just picked up a 2005FPW, 20 inch widescreen(1680x1050) for around $450. Google "Dell coupons" and you'll find plenty of sites that list them.