LCD – For the Novice and the Expert
by Kristopher Kubicki on September 4, 2003 12:13 AM EST- Posted in
- Displays
How to adjust your monitor correctly
We get countless questions asking us how to correctly adjust an LCD. We recommend running the LCD in its native resolution as much as possible. For some games, it is impossible to run non-native resolutions. Text looks inaccurate, images look distorted and colors show up often way off. Microsoft’s ClearType can help you correct the text distortion problems, but of course, we don’t use monitors exclusively for text.Almost every LCD that we have ever seen has an “Auto Adjustment” button. For most LCDs, this works very well if you have a plain white background or a window that is completely maximized. Other poorer firmwares simply look for colors along the edge of the screen; so if you have a black background, the “Auto” feature will crop your display until all of the corners of something light in color touch the sides. Repeat your Auto Adjustment once or twice to assure the monitor is correct. Typically, this is disabled for DVI connections.
However, for those of you who absolutely need perfect color calibration and luminance, hardware calibration is the way to go. Before we do any monitor reviews at AnandTech, we use a ColorVision Spyder to assure what we are seeing on the screen is what was intended to be seen. These devices are expensive, but if your job depends on accurately producing the right values, there is no other option.
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Anonymous User - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
A good article.I my self use CML174.Made a lot of difference to my eyes compared to CRT.
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
Outstanding reading, thanks.mechBgon - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
Nice work, Kristopher. : )KristopherKubicki - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
#5 fixed it - sorry.#7 fixed that one too. Yeah rubbing pixels really doesnt do much good. I think NewEgg is going to be pissed when they find out I messed up their monitor pretty good.
#6 Say it aint so!! We want to be the only ones ;)
Kristopher
Shalmanese - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
Finally! It took long enough for you to get this out :). Great article, finally an article about LCD's which isn't full of opinion and hearsay.dvinnen - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
ok, maybie you did mean that. Hard to tell, you say you scuffed the monitor, then go on to tell other people how to do it...I problay just need some sleep...
dvinnen - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
Rubbing the pixils does more good then harm then?<<<Personally, it seems that rubbing the pixels does more good than harm so continue at your own risk.>>>
Might want to fix that one
dvinnen - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
good to hear it. Seems like alot of the hardware sites are getting there act together.Anonymous User - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
On page 6, where you talk about the cables in the picture (the sentence right below the picture), shouldn't the good cable be the *upper* one or am I missing something?KristopherKubicki - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
Yeah, new editors and kind of a revamped AT staff. We went through a lull period after we lost Matthew, but now we have some really good writers and a lot of great content to write about.Just wait till Computex and COMDEX - 3 and 4 reviews per day sounds about right.
Kristopher