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Displays

Today's Fastest Retail LCD 251

Posted by CmdrTaco from the ghosting-is-for-suckers dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ViewSonic has recently released a very exciting product, a nineteen inch LCD display with a 3ms response time. This is the fastest LCD panel currently available to consumers, and it is clearly aimed at gamers and movie watchers. Dubbed the VX924, the display is part of ViewSonic's X series which tries to comnbine performance with style. The word on the street is that Samsung will have a 4ms display available this year, but this may be the only 3ms."
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Today's Fastest Retail LCD More

Today's Fastest Retail LCD

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  • What? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 )
    This is not an article.

  • Is it 6 bit, or full 8 bit color? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:29PM (#13881705)
    Most of the super fast LCD's are 6-bit, which kind of sucks.
    • Most of the super fast LCD's are 6-bit, which kind of sucks.

      Hey, don't knock 6-bit! Man, I *so* want one! I can't wait to play Leisure Suit Larry in all its 64-color glory!

      In the immortal words of Bill Gates, 6 bits ought to be enough for anybody.

      (note to the humor impaired: yes, I know what '6-bit' refers to. Please don't post a correction unless you enjoy being mocked. :o)
    • I was thinking the same thing. Viewsonic's site conspicuously doesn't say. I'm guessing it's 6 bit, which is not such a bad thing, seeing as it's aimed at gamers. Still a shame, though.
      • Yeah, because we all know nobody would want to both play games and use photoshop.
      • It depends. As I understand it, LCDs with 6-bits-per-channel (18-bit color) simulate 24-bit colour by alternating pixels between values so the user sees the intended colour. (Think of it as dithering across time rather than space) It would be interesting to see some sort of quantitative measurement of how good a job this does of simulating a 24-bit panel.

        Another interesting question is if a 3ms LCD (Or 5ms, or whatever this is) that has an 18-bit panel is any better at this simulation than the first 18-bit
        • As I understand it, LCDs with 6-bits-per-channel (18-bit color) simulate 24-bit colour by alternating pixels between values so the user sees the intended colour.
          Wait a minute there: as I see it, one of the main advantages of LCDs is they do not flicker like CRTs.
          • Good point. Anyone have any idea what sorts of frequencies this time-dithering technique uses? I know I would be extremely annoyed if I picked up a nice LCD and suddenly started noticing the flicker or experiencing headaches because of it.

  • An anonymous reader writes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:29PM (#13881710) Journal
    "Hey, check out this exciting new product!!!"

  • Response Measurment (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bios_Hakr ( 68586 ) <xptical@g3.14mail.com minus pi> on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:29PM (#13881712)
    I seem to recall some controversy about how response is measured. Some numbers are reported as the time it takes to go from black to white and back to black. Some are reporting just from black to white or white to black. And some are reporting the time it takes to go from one gradient of gray to another gradient.

    Buyer beware.

    • Re:Response Measurment (Score:3, Informative)

      by interiot ( 50685 )
      Most of the measurements are fudged. Sometimes there are different end-user monitors that use the same LCD part from another company, but the two LCD's quote different specs. (eg. the Dell and Apple 20" widescreen [engadget.com]). That's why a lot of people try to figure out who made the LCD panel itself, so they can find the published specs for that, as it's potentially less fudged.

      • Re:Response Measurment (Score:5, Informative)

        by ploss ( 860589 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @01:01PM (#13882058)
        FTFA, the specs for this monitor are:

        LCD Panel: 19" color TFT Active Matrix SXGA LCD
        Contrast Ratio: 550:1 (typical)
        Viewing Angle: 160 horizontal, 160 vertical
        Response Time: 3ms gray-to-gray (avg.); 5ms white-black-white (typical)
        Brightness: 270 cd/m2 (typical)
        Native Resolution: 1280x1024
        Inputs: RGB analog, DVI-D
        Dimensions: 17.0" x 18.4" x 7.9" (with stand)
        Weight: 14.8lbs (6.7kg) (with stand)
        Warranty: Three-year limited warranty on LCD, parts and labor
        VESA: 100mm compliant
      • While you are 100% correct on this point, it is worth noting that monitor manufacturers are getting a lot better at specifiying the method of measurement they use to give their spec, as is pointed out in a reply to your post above. This still won't help in determining accurately how the monitor will behave in all conditions nor will it tell you if you are likely to notice streaking or ghosting since this is (obviously) subjective.

    • Re:Response Measurment (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dsginter ( 104154 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:34PM (#13881769)
      I seem to recall some controversy about how response is measured.

      There's really no need for the controversy when the stinking refresh rate is well above the pixel response time. Everyone is babbling about how they have great pixel response but then they go and run the monitor at 75Hz (=13ms). When I can run a 3ms monitor at 300Hz, then I will be impressed.
      • I thought the Refresh Rate (Hertz) didn't apply to LCDs because the pixel on a CRT has to be constantly refreshed, where as with a LCD its only refreshes when it needs to, needs to change that is.

        But I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.

        • Re:Response Measurment (Score:5, Informative)

          by dsginter ( 104154 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @01:00PM (#13882043)
          The refresh rate still applies to LCDs and any other display. Basically, instead of "refresh rate", think "frame rate". The best LCDs of today will only refresh at 60 to 75 times per second. For a monitor that runs at 75Hz, this means that the monitor can only display "75 frames per second".

          It is all marketing and people are eating it up.
        • While this is true, I think just about any technology to get the image data to the monitor relies on some sort of "frame rate". You aren't going to notice any difference between a 16ms LCD and a 3ms LCD if you are playing some FPS and getting only 30 frames per second out of your graphics card because the pixels won't need to change more than once every 33ms.
          • even though the pixels don't need to change but once every 33ms, that doesn't change the fact that a slow panel takes 20ms for the pixel to change. Your eyes can tell the difference when a pixel goes from white to black in 3ms vs 20ms, you perceive it as ghosting, tracers, motion blur, etc.

        • Re:Response Measurment (Score:4, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @01:03PM (#13882077)
          Yes, they will. :)

          The refresh rate also dictates how quickly the graphics card is outputting pixels to the monitor. If you have your card set to a 75 Hz vertical refresh rate, it'll transmit the contents of the framebuffer every 1/75 of a second. Of course, video games can render at higher than 75 fps, but that's just to the framebuffer. You don't actually get more frames than that going down the wires to the monitor. You can only drive up to a certain point because there's only so much bandwidth there, and all current monitor connection standards require sending the full frame every time.

          What LCDs eliminate is flicker. Since LCDs don't use phosphors that fade between refreshes, the image is rock solid. CRTs used higher and higher refresh rates to minimize perceptible flicker.

        • Re:Response Measurment (Score:5, Informative)

          by pla ( 258480 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @01:28PM (#13882308) Journal
          I thought the Refresh Rate (Hertz) didn't apply to LCDs because the pixel on a CRT has to be constantly refreshed, where as with a LCD its only refreshes when it needs to, needs to change that is.

          You have two different concepts here called the same thing.

          With a CRT, the "refresh rate" means, literally, the rate at which the electron beam can scan and "refresh" all the pixels in one full screen.

          The signal going into the display has its own rate, perhaps best described as the "pixel clock". If you divide the pixel clock by the resolution (plus the padding around it to allow the electron beam to move to the next line or do a vertical retrace), you get a different sort of refresh rate, also in terms of full screens per second.

          With a CRT, those two different "refresh rates" almost always match or have a 2:1 ratio (in the case of an interlaced signal). You can't really avoid that tight lock, since the video signal actually acts to directly tell the electron beam what to do "now".

          With an LCD, though, each pixel has a distinct value, which can update almost arbitrarily often (much faster than any video card can tell it to change, anyway). The response time of the pixel measures how long it takes to change the visiblestate of the pixel itself (think of that like a fluorescent light bulb... You can flip the light switch far faster than the light can turn on and off).


          So, what does this mean in relation to the GP post?

          What your video card thinks of as the "refresh rate" matters in that no individual pixel will update faster than that, whether or not they can. So, while a 3ms response time means you could change the state of a pixel 333 times per second, it will only actually change at the video card's refresh rate (rarely over 85Hz).



          But I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.

          Not so much wrong, as just (understandably) confusing a "rose" for a "rose".
      • here's really no need for the controversy when the stinking refresh rate is well above the pixel response time.

        Except that the response time shown is the best response time. For other gradient of colors, the response time is worse, a lot worse (like 20ms or more).
        That's also why this "reponse time" indicator is pure marketing shit.

      • Re:Response Measurment (Score:5, Informative)

        by earnest murderer ( 888716 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @01:26PM (#13882292)
        You missunderstand the relationship.

        With this new display the spec is intended to convey* that even under demanding circumstances a display driven at 75Hz the pixel will be the correct color at least 76 percent of the time. This would be a huge improvement over what is the current situation, which has the same flaws in your example...

        at 300Hz with an ideal black to white time of 3ms by the time your pixel arives at the correct value, the value of that pixel has changed (similar to modern panels in the 10-13ms range at 75Hz. That is, your theoretical display never displays the correct color before the color changes (assuming black to white). At 300Hz you would only see a medium gray color, and it's likely that at that fast a refresh rate on a perfect panel the flickering between the two would be fast enough to appear to be a medium gray anyway. If you could comprehend changes at that rate, you would see the same problems with colors "smearing" and "ghosting" that we have on modern panels.

        *It's all marketing lies. The truth is this is an improvement, but nowhere near as good as they are trying to convince you it is. I'm sure one of our favorite tech sites will have the real facts soon enough.
      • I'd say it's probably still significant because if the screen takes half a scan to completely settle in the new frame color then there's still room for improvement, the image of an object in motion can still get sharper.
      • I have 3 vx924's I run them all at 91.7KHz Horizontal, 86.1Hz Vertical (pixel clock 154.79MHz)

        The standard windows driver would only allow 75 or 80, but I used powerstrip to squeeze it up to 86

  • A little old (Score:5, Informative)

    by Raynach ( 713366 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:30PM (#13881713) Homepage
    This monitor has been out for at least a month. I know because I bought it about a month ago.

    However, besides that, it's a top-notch monitor that I haven't had any problems with.

  • Seriously (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HolyCrapSCOsux ( 700114 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:30PM (#13881715)
    I have a 19" LCD that I use everyday. Is it THAT noticeable if I have 7-10 ms instead of 3?

    • Re:Seriously (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you're gaming on it, yea. Try playing a FPS and whipping your view around 180. LCDs with poor response time will make it seem like the world is constantly a split second behind where your head is. It makes lots of people sick, actually.

    • Re:Seriously (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pla ( 258480 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:55PM (#13881989) Journal
      I have a 19" LCD that I use everyday. Is it THAT noticeable if I have 7-10 ms instead of 3?

      No, with the condition that the stated time actually measures the real response time (ie, the worst case from any state to any other state). Humans cannot resolve different colors or brightnesses that change faster than roughly 15ms (most people don't even notice changes under 25-30ms, but for some reason, geeks as a group tend to notice flicker far more than the general population).

      As my main display, I currently use a 19in DVI panel with a "mere" 12ms response time (note that the "DVI" part of that makes a HUGE difference - Most of the artifacts people blame on poor response time actually come from doing an unnecessary D2A2D conversion). And it looks simply beautiful, even for action movies... No muddiness or ghosting whatsoever.

      That said, I don't think any manufacturers measure their response time as a worst-case. So currently, the only real test of how well it will look playing movies or games - Try one out. Go into Best Buy or CC or even Wallyworld, pick out a few models you like based on appearance, then go home and buy your favorite for half the price online.
      • This monitor can handle 3-4 ms, but the resolution settings or whatever are maxing at like 8-10 ms? Making this pointless, right? Not to mention, we can't even see the difference, because we can't detect that quick of a change? Does this strike anyone as driving a Porsche in rush-hour traffic? I mean, if you have a Porsche or a Toyota Camry in bumper-to-bumper traffic, it'll still take just as long to get home.
        • You're missing the point. The 3ms is best case scanario. Not all pixel transitions will occur at this speed. Even on a "3ms" panel, you will more than likely have some color/brightness changes that take longer than 10ms. It's akin to saying my Porsche is really fast on roadways, but very slow traveling on a muddy path.

    • Re:Seriously (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tom8658 ( 899280 )

      Not unless you either:

      • Have really good eyes
      • Play alot of graphic intensive games with alot of frames per second (the 180 degree spin trick mentioned above is the easiest way to see if this is a problem)
      • Watch alot of high quality video

      I'm sure theres an application I'm leaving out, but in general, for office use, 25ms is fine as long as the contrast and colors are good. I game occasionally on a 12ms display, and I honestly don't notice the difference between it and a CRT. Except for the bad colors. Gho

  • Great but.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by graemecoates ( 592009 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:30PM (#13881717) Homepage

    ...when will manufacturers manage to produce LCD screens with more accurate colour renditioning?

    If you're into digital photography in any kind of non-serious way and actually want to preview pictures the way they'll look when they print, then I believe that a CRT is still the best method of doing this.

    A shame really, as I'd save a load of deskspace with an LCD screen...

    .

    • Re:Great but.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Surt ( 22457 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:36PM (#13881784) Homepage Journal
      Unfortunately for you and me, that will be long after they finish fixing the response time issue, because there are a lot more gamers out there than digital photography buffs. Gaming should be fixed at 2ms response times, so they are getting close now. When every LCD maker is pumping out 2ms panels, then we can expect to see them start competing mainly on brightness, then color depth and finally color rendition.
      • As usual, "gamers" force the industry to misprioritize.
        • Everyone knows it's not gamers [wired.com] that set the priorities.

          Eric
          See your HTTP headers [ericgiguere.com]
        • In who's eyes? I like fast response time LCD's. And the color accuracy on my HP L2335 is really great.

          At lease the game players actually buy the stuff, unlike some demographics that just sit and whine about how it's not perfect.
        • I don't think it's fair to call a legitimate desire from the largest subgroup of your customers a misprioritization. They are focusing on satisfying the greatest number of customers first. When they are fully satisfied, then attention will naturally turn to the smaller fringes.
      • ... when they have 200 to 300dpi displays. I want my vector desktop looking nice.

        (Do we have a vector desktop yet? I know the newest GTK uses Cairo...)
      • Am I the only gamer who likes slow response times? If I am playing a game with a 30-60fps frame rate, I don't mind a 16-33ms "fade" between frames. It makes the image seem smoother without actually losing a frame. I wonder if it is better on the eyes too. Most things in the physical world don't pop around at any frame rate - they move.

    • Re:Great but.... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Ark42 ( 522144 )
      Honestly, I have a ViewSonic P95f+ 19" CRT and a Samsung 912T 19" LCD cloned right now, and I was really surprised by how much whiter white is on the LCD and how much blacker black is on the LCD. I didn't think it was possible (this being my first LCD purchase ever) but the color reproduction, contrast, brightness, and sharpness are truely much better on this particular LCD. The *only* downside I can tell is that the LCD is only rated at 25ms, and I do notice slight blurring in games such as Dungeon Siege

    • Re:Great but.... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Threni ( 635302 )
      > If you're into digital photography in any kind of non-serious way and actually
      > want to preview pictures the way they'll look when they print, then I believe that
      > a CRT is still the best method of doing this.

      ("non-serious" I'm thinking you mean "serious"...)

      Sadly, LCD displays are `good enough for most people`, just like MP3 format files, digital cameras themselves and indeed all hardware! Get used to new, inferior versions of perfectly good old stuff.

      Besides, manufacturers long ago realised tha
    • LaCie and NEC will be happy to hook you up... For a price. The LaCie 319 and 321 are both LCDs with amazing colour (for an LCD) http://www.lacie.com/products/range.htm?id=10016 [lacie.com] if you are interested. They are damn expensive though, and it's their still image that's good, not their moving one. You can also look at NEC as LaCie doesn't actually make them, NEC just makes them to LaCie's specs so you can get the same screens from NEC in a different package.

      So if you want good LCD colour, you can get it, but it
    • What about the LCDs that Apple sells? They must think that they are at least really close otherwise they wouldn't be moving to all LCDs. Has anyone compared it side by side with a CRT, LCD and printed photo?

  • Not a true 3ms display... (Score:5, Informative)

    by zoobaby ( 583075 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:30PM (#13881721)
    Saw another article on this display. They drive the pixel hard, causing it to "ring," it really doesn't settle until ~8ms, iirc. The 3 ms is also gray to gray, the new standard that gives faster response times than the older black to white to black measurement.
    • Actually, gray-to-gray times are typically much longer than black-to-white times. The reason is that a sharp black-to-white (or white-to-black) transition involves a relatively large voltage change, which causes a quick change in the LCD. Changing from one gray to another involves a proportionally lesser voltage change, which causes a slower transition.

      These faster displays deliberately overshoot the mark, at least in terms of the voltages they supply. The point is to get the fastest possible transition

  • Pure Commercialism (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xaosflux ( 917784 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:31PM (#13881727) Homepage
    Nothing to see here, not even an A to FR!

    Could we at least get a coupon?

  • LCD ms numbers are a lie (Score:5, Informative)

    by AEton ( 654737 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:31PM (#13881728)
    I learned from this old Slashdot comment [slashdot.org] that LCD timings are highly misleading. The '3ms' number means something quite different from what you think it means. In short, see this article [tomshardware.com], or this forum topic [hexus.net]. I've reposted the contents of the latter below.
    -------
    "Quoted response times by manufacturers are largely meaningless and misleading. .....because it measures the time it takes for full white to black or full black to white pixel transitions. So unless you have your monitor set to maximum brightness & contrast (so that the picture is so bright it burns your eyeballs out) and only use your monitor for flipping blank screens from white to black, and back again, whether the monitor has a 8ms response time or 100ms response time, it doesn't mean an awful lot.

    It's the same reason why monitors based on the 20ms Hydis panel outperform the 12ms Samsung panel, the 16ms AU Optronics panel, the 16ms LG/Phillips panel.......

    In real world use, the vast majority of monitors (over 95% of them) don't perform anywhere near the quoted response times. That's why you see streaking on the 12ms Samsung panel - its performing at 25-30ms.

    Let me try and explain further.

    Look at the response times for the so called 'fast' Samsung 172X which is based on a '12ms' panel:-

    http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/other/samsung-2/gr2 -2.gif [xbitlabs.com]

    Since most people have their monitors set to medium brightness (about 80-180 on the grey level scale on the graph) and many applications - particularly games use grey to grey pixel transitions (or one colour to another colour) - the typical response time is somewhere between 25-30ms. Not quite 12ms is it?

    Now look at the same response time graph for the Acer AL1721 - a mid level TFT with claimed 16ms response time:-

    http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/other/response-6/a2 1-grey.gif [xbitlabs.com]

    The graph is much flatter, so across brightness and contrast levels, you're going to get consistent response times. At most common user settings, the "slower" 16ms is actually faster than the "quicker" 12ms panel.

    Not quite as straightforward as the manufacturers would like you to think. The problem is, by that time, most people have parted with their money. When I was first looking to buy a TFT monitor, I thought that Kustom PCs were a bit mad to stock the Acer monitors in preference to others. However, it's only on further examination that you discover they perform very very well in games - for example, the AL1731M is based on the Hydis panel - and will in fact, outperform the so called 'faster' TFT panels.

    From Toms Hardware Guide:-

    "For games, the Hydis 20ms panel is still the one to beat. It's not yet perfect, but we know of no other that is faster (based on our tests, of course, and not manufacturers' specifications). Once again, we must insist strongly that the manufacturers' specifications are not to be trusted. "
    http://graphics.tomshardware.com/display/20040326/ lcd-08.html [tomshardware.com]

    "The response times suppliers associate with their panels vary, anywhere from 16 ms to 25 ms. The only problem is that these figures mean nothing. Or at least, not a lot. An article published in 2001 that can be viewed at Xtremtech explains the situation pretty well, and we have summarized it for you in the section entitled "RT between colors". But this isn't the only problem..."
    http://graphics.tomshardware.com/display/20031105 [tomshardware.com]

  • WHy (Score:2, Interesting)

    by denisbergeron ( 197036 )
    19" LCD have only 1280x1024 resolution like the 17" why not a 1920 x 1200 ?

  • If anyone cares... (Score:2, Informative)

    by nmb3000 ( 741169 )
    The cheapest I found it was on PCNation [pcnation.com] for $355 with free FedEx shipping. More here [pricegrabber.com].

  • 6-bit or 8-bit? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:34PM (#13881762)
    From LCD monitors I've looked at, the color of the 6-bit LCDs is not as good as the 8-bit LCDs. Some LCD monitor makers recently switched to 6-bit in order to get lower response times. There was nothing in the review about this. Shabby work.
    • I agree. It's a sloppy review. I could get most of the info in that review from viewsonic's site or from just reading the specs on the box. How about some real detail... Pull the case off and look at the display hardware. What other monitors use the same panel and guts? What are the specs advertised by other manufacturers using the same panel? What is the color depth? What kind of digital image manipulation is going on behind the scenes? What is the quality of the interpolated colors?

      They give as a

  • it's a tradeoff (Score:5, Informative)

    by igotmybfg ( 525391 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:34PM (#13881764) Homepage
    This monitor only supports 6 bpp, unlike your CRT and other LCDs that use the full 8. This means that the monitor cannot display 16.7m colors at one time. If you open up Photoshop or some other app that can display color gradients, you'll notice banding of the colors.

    • Re:it's a tradeoff (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:43PM (#13881860) Homepage
      No, I counted them, they're all there.

      -- pause for laughter --

      BTW, the square root of 16,777,217 is 4,096. What does that tell you about screen resolutions needed to see all 16m colors at once?

      Best regards,

      7th grade math.

      • It's not a matter of seeing them all at once (Score:5, Informative)

        by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:58PM (#13882021)
        It's a matter of seeing them at all. The problem with lower colour depths is that you miss midtones. You still have to go from the darkest to the brightest, there's just less steps to do it in, so you get less precise colour.

        I mean sure, in theory, you need only 786k colours to have a different colour for every pixel on a 1024x768 display. That means that 20-bit would be more than enough. However what you'd have to do is have that as a palette, a lookup table, that continously changed as the old 8-bit VGA stuff did. In reality, it's terribly impractical.

        For monitors it doesn't work at all, when you are talking about the bit size it's the number of levels per colour channel it can display and it's fixed. So with 6 bits per channel that 64 different levels which produces some nasty banding.

        In fact, 24-bit (8-bits per channel) really isn't enough actually. 16 million colours sounds like a lot and is, but you discover that humans and percieve more than 256 shades of gray. If you draw a gray gradient in 24-bit mode on a good monitor, you will be able to see some banding. You need more like 30-bit, that's 10 per channel or 1024 grays, before it becomes totally seemless.
        • Actually, you can get a really decent high dynamic range image by extending only the luminance channel. We distinguish between bright and dark a lot more precisely than between colors; do a CMYK separation on a JPEG image and compare the Y and K channels if you don't believe me. The Radiance HDR format uses this trick; the only extended channel is an 8-bit luminance exponent; aside from that, it uses regular 24-bit RGB.

      • Re:it's a tradeoff (Score:4, Insightful)

        by tonywong ( 96839 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @01:11PM (#13882158) Homepage
        Um, screen resolution has nothing to do with it. It's about the display's ability to show what colour the video controller has input to the display.

        Let me change the 6-bit display to a 4-bit example:
        If you have a display that is only capable of 4 bits (per channel) then each pixel can only show one of 2^4 available shades, or 16 shade (or Red, Green and Blue) = 4096 colour display. Even if it was a 4096 x 4096 sized screen, yielding 16.78 million pixels, each pixel could only display one of the 4096 colours. The issue here is that the display cannot choose 16 shades arbitrarily, they are in a fixed gradation from the factory.

        This is why banding or dithering will still occur on images on a 6-bit display, as each colour can only be represented by 2^6=64 shades (262k colours), and (most) human eyes can perceive 256 shades, or 2^8, equivalent to an 8-bit display (combinations of RGB being 24.7 million colours, or 24-bit colour).
    • Not necessarily. 6bpp TFT's quote 16.2 million colours because they employ temporal dithering -- switching pixels between shades rapidly so you perceive the value in between. If it's done well you'd probably be hard pressed to tell the difference.

      • ...unless you were an imaging professional or similar, yes. But on the other hand, TFTs aren't really suitable (yet) for these people anyway.

  • Product Announcements Section (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grondak ( 80002 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:35PM (#13881780) Homepage
    All the best product announcements come out on /. Man, if I want to know about a nerdly phone or an LCD monitor that /matters,/ I'm going to be sure to click through to the cool product announcements.

    Can we please create a Product Announcements Section and let me turn it off?

    That would be the nerdliest way to deal with this stuff: organize it right out of my existance.
    • Yeah, but while I wouldn't buy a product based on a slashdot headline, I might *not* buy a product based on the comments. You'll notice a lot of people above pointing out why the listed stats are bunk and where the screen falls short. It gives me more I can check with in regards to the product mentioned, and other similar products.

  • Color depth? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eagl ( 86459 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:41PM (#13881839) Journal
    What's the color depth? 6 or 8 bit? I don't care how fast an LCD is... If it shows even a HINT of color banding then it's worthless to me, worse than the crappy used packard bell 15" monitor I have hanging off of my server.

    Unfortunately, not many manufacturers are listing color depth in the specs, focusing instead on non-standard claims of response time. There ought to be at least 4 standard measurements - overall brightness, color depth, resolution, and black-white-black response time. Instead, we get resolution, *maybe* a claim of supporting x million colors which could mean anything since they all interpolate to improve image quality anyhow, and a bogus response time number.

    The worst part is that so-called enthusiast and gamer hardware review sites let them get away with this. If the color depth isn't printed on the box, the review sites don't even bother to get and report the number. So they're comparing 6 and 8 bit LCDs against each other and not reporting an important difference between the two, or giving great review ratings on monitors without bothering to mention that the monitor only supports a 6 bit color depth so you're guaranteed to get color banding in many situations.

    Ok, we admit it... They're ALL fast now. So how about some info on actual image quality?
  • Does the color of what I am watching affect the amount of ghosting?
    Example: on my old iBook, I would get a ton of bluryness while watching Simpsons/Family guy DVDs(esp. Simpsons ones), however even when watching fast motion on anime dvds(they tend to use different tones) I wouldn't really notice it at all. Can someone smarter than me explain this?
    • YES!

      The time it takes to change depends on what the change is. On some monitors, it will take longer to go from white to black than blank to white. The manufacturer will run a gamut of tests and determine which one was fastest and print that as the spec. I don't know what this monitor's specific colour change is. It could be black to white, it could be blue to red, it could be dark grey to light black.

      Response speed is not the predominant factor, but it's one that the manufacturers sell because it's easy to

  • Fudged Response times. (Score:4, Informative)

    by wgaryhas ( 872268 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:50PM (#13881931)
    According to the product info on Newegg [newegg.com], the 3ms response time is grey to grey. It has a 6ms response time for white to black to white.

  • fast LCDs (Score:4, Funny)

    by digidave ( 259925 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @01:00PM (#13882045)
    "Today's Fastest Retail LCD"

    I tried to buy one last night, but I couldn't catch it!
  • Yep, they're real nice, but not all that new.

    I've had 2 of them side-by-side on my desk since the beginning of August!

  • none of this matters... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Paralizer ( 792155 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @01:16PM (#13882224) Homepage
    If you have dead pixels on your display. There is nothing more annoying than playing a game or watching a video, with (at least) one bright green pixel right in the middle of your screen that just won't go away. In such a case you'll be too distracted to even notice any ghosting your display may have.

    Until someone manages to figure out a way to mass produce LCD displays with a smaller percentage of defects, LCD's still don't compare to CRT's. Unless of course they are for office use, where size is a driving factor.

  • Limited Adjustment (Score:4, Informative)

    by ScottAuth ( 809131 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @01:18PM (#13882238)
    I own this monitor and it's actually very nice. I needed more desk space and my old ViewSonic 17" CRT was killing that. For gaming reasons, I opted for this monitor. I've played a bit of Counter Strike: Source, but mostly Battlefield 2 and it's performance is quite exceptional. I really do not notice any "ghosting." My only complaint w/ the monitor is that you cannot adjust its height. You can tilt it back and forth, minimally at that. This is pretty annoying as it sits relatively high on its bevel. I'm used to it now, but the first few weeks really cramped my neck.
  • More monitor news:

    As many people have commented above, LCD monitor response times are like printer page print times. Manufacturers lie, and lie, and lie. Since all online and print magazines (that I know about) are corrupted by taking money for sneaky ads that are presented as reviews, it is difficult to know the truth.

    Samsung is shipping new monitors: SAMSUNG Provides Computer Users With Feature-Rich 21" And 24" Large-Screen LCD Monitors [samsung.com]. Samsung claims "The SyncMaster 214T sports an eight-millisecon
  • ... is this a GTG (grey-to-grey) latency measurement or a true latency measurement from black and white?

    Nothing like a 8ms lcd performing a true b/w switch turning up to be 20ms.

  • Another "3ms" LCD (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MANYplaces84 ( 853635 )
    The ASUS PM17TU [asus.com] Monitor will also offer 3ms response time. More specifically this is gray to gray (Just like the Viewsonic). But the I don't think the viewsonic nor the ASUS is anything "revolutionary". Besides the contrast ratio's aren't that good... The Asus is 600:1 and the Viewsonic is 550:1 There are more important things than just response time. I do though like thier zero dead pixel policy, I'm glad to see more manufacturers offering this as a standard.

  • something new to lie about (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @02:28PM (#13882868)
    In the days of CRT monitors the only thing that mattered was the size ... and so manufacturers lied about it, and eventually there were lawsuits, and now we have the crazy "19 inch (17.5 inch viewable)" way to describe how big the screen is on a CRT. Thankfully this didn't infect LCD advertizing copy-writers, so when they say "19 inch", it really is that big.

    But they have to fudge something. There's no storage in a monitor, so they can't fall back on the old and trusted "100 GB" which is based on 10^9 bytes in a gigabyte, and is the pre-formatted size. Only a few LCD monitors have built-in speakers, so usually they don't have the option to use TMPO watts @ 1KHz rather than RMS across 20Hz-20Khz. So being creative types, they've found that "contrast ratio", and "response time" aren't specified very well, giving plenty of room to put impressive numbers in big type next to the picture in the ad.

  • Hrm... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Duncan3 ( 10537 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @02:32PM (#13882901) Homepage
    -1 blatant advert
    -1 lies on specs
    -256 6bit color, that's crap.

    Keeping my CRT thanks very much :)

  • So many things to comment on (Score:3, Informative)

    by default luser ( 529332 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @04:52PM (#13884066) Journal
    I've been reading through the discussion, and I've been thinking of responses, but it's all a muddied mess out there. so, I've decided to lay out the basic discussion points and my thoughts as one post.

    First of all, why do we need faster-response LCD screens, when we already have 4ms?

    There are a few key reasons for this. For starters, the 4ms number doesn't mean much. It is the time the panel takes to turn a pixel from black to white, then back to black. In a traditional panel, this is usually the fastest transition possible...and all other tranitions (Grey to Grey) are MUCH slower. Sometimes GTG transitions can be as much as 3x slower than the Black-White-Black number.

    The industry has concocted a possible solution to this called Overdrive.

    Overdrive takes advantage of the fast transition in Black-White-Black. Every time an input pixel changes color, the pixel on-screen is bootsted up to white, and allowd to fall back down to the new color.

    This is slightly slower than the Black-White-Black transition time, but it's much faster than going Grey-to-Grey.

    Unfortunately, Overdrive has a drawback that is DIRECTLY tied to the response time. Every time a pixel changes, it is overdriven WHITE for a fraction of a second, until it settles down to the target color. In darker scenes, or in cases where where colors are almost uniform, as pixels change these white pixels are painfully obvious. Better response times are the only thing that can remove this annoying artifacting.

    Read about these artifacts at Tom's, who did the first review ever on Overdrive panels in May [tomshardware.com].

    This link to Tom's also addresses the other issue discussed in this thread:

    What's wrong with 18-bit color?

    The dithering algorithms used by panels to simulate 24-bit color are not all that bad, but they have a serious drawback:

    Dithering yields poor quality in scenes which require high contrast. Foggy, smoky or dark scenes, which tend to have subtlte color transitions, look like crap on an 18-bit panel. The panel is constantly changing pixels that are VERY close to each other in color, resulting in a muddy image. Unfortunately, the only way to avoid such artifacts it to buy an MVA panel with true 24-bit color (and sacrifice response time).

  • So what am I missing? (Score:3, Informative)

    by ikejam ( 821818 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @05:01PM (#13884134)
    http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000483064834/ [engadget.com] [Viewsonic announces 2ms 19" lcd.]

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