Viewing Angles
Viewing angles are one of the specifications where manufacturers' claims bear scrutiny. The basic requirement is that a display has to maintain a 10:1 contrast ratio in order to qualify as "viewable". The reality is that most LCDs are unfit for viewing beyond a 45° angle. The good news is we doubt that most people will view a display from anything more than a 45° angle, and typically a lot less. For that reason, we used our camera to take shots from head-on as well as from the left and right sides at ~30° angles, showing how brightness and contrast ratios change in off-angle viewing. We also took pictures from above and below at ~30° angles. Links to the viewing angle images of previously reviewed LCDs are available for comparison below:
Acer AL2216W
Dell 2405FPW
Dell 2407WFP
Dell 2707WFP
Dell 3007WFP
Gateway FPD2485W
HP LP3065
HP w2207
HP w2408
 |
All it takes is a quick look through the above images to see why we prefer S-IPS and S-PVA over TN panels. Note that we did adjust our camera settings at one point, so some of the earlier pictures may look better than they actually are. The main thing is to look at the drastic difference between TN panels and the other panels. Viewing angles can also become more important with larger display sizes, which is one of the reasons why we see the highest quality panels (S-IPS) used in 30" displays.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
60 Comments
View All Comments
nubie - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
In most proper drivers you can select a mode that has 1:1. In the nVidia classic panel (I only use the classic panel, google sedonadisable if you can't find yours.)Use DVI or HDMI, and go to device adjustments, there is a setting called "centered output", use this to send black pixels to fill the digital signal until the pixel ratio is 1:1.
I ran into a problem that wouldn't allow me to run custom resolutions, this is the fix:
http://wikitechia.org/wiki/The_custom_resolution_c...">http://wikitechia.org/wiki/The_custom_resolution_c...
I agree that scaling technology needs serious work, 16:10 is not 16:9, and 1388x768 is not 720p. Add to that the fact that even if you can get the native res of some panels to be sent by the PC, the display still stretches and overscans it, that is bad.
Doesn't the Xbox360 have support for native panel resolutions such as 1280x1024 as part of the VGA output? Doesn't this extend to the HDMI output? I would really like to know what support there is for native panel resolutions on consoles.
Every PS3 and Xbox360 I have ever seen has had mediocre picture quality, and I sincerely hope that it is a problem on the display side (in-store displays only).
JarredWalton - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
I don't think consoles support PC resolutions. They are usually HDTV/TV resolutions, so you get 640x480 on the old stuff, and 720p or 1080i (or maybe 1080p?) on new stuff. Of course, some titles use a lower resolution like 1024x576 or something and stretch that to 720p/1080p for performance reasons.The 245T will accept other resolutions; the problem is that your only options are "fill the whole screen (and aspect ratio be damned)" or "fill a 4:3 area (again, forget about the actual AR)". With PC connections, you're fine if you use the driver to adjust the stretch options.
Unless I'm severely mistaken, you don't get that functionality with consoles. Or DVD/Blu-ray/HD-DVD players.
nubie - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
WRONG!!! Information available as of 2005:http://hardware.teamxbox.com/reviews/xbox-360/40/X...">http://hardware.teamxbox.com/reviews/xbox-360/40/X...
1024x768
1280x720
1280x768
1280x1024
1360x768
I was simply curious as to whether recent updates to the Xbox360 firmware had made it MORE compatible.
JarredWalton - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
Interesting - didn't know consoles supported other output resolutions... though it seems like it would be game dependent, right? (I'm pretty much a PC-only gamer, so I haven't owned a console since the N64.)If you can output 1360x768, you should be able to get a 16:10 AR that will fit with this display properly. That's what I would go for, anyway.
JarredWalton - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
Playing DVDs, you can usually control this with your player software, and in fact you can control this with NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards (though I'd give the edge to NVIDIA here) under Windows. The problem is what happens when you hook up something like a game console, or some other device that doesn't do internal scaling. Then you're stuck with what the LCD firmware provides, and in this case it falls short.I'd think Samsung could release updated firmware to address this issue. Will they, and if so can you apply it to the initial models? Probably not, but they may prove me wrong.
SilthDraeth - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
Click on about above the Forums link, then on the next page, click on intellitext and then choose the option to turn it off.Problem solved.
Welshtrog - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
I have tried about 10 times and the B***** thing will NOT turn offGTMan - Friday, February 8, 2008 - link
You probably have to enable cookies.Or get a good hosts (google "hosts") file to block lots of ads. There is also a little program called Homer which will replace the blanked ads with a color gradation.
Welshtrog - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
I have tried about 10 times ant the B***** thing will NOT turn offAmishElvis - Thursday, February 7, 2008 - link
Those drop down ads are a deal breaker for me. Get rid of them or I will find another tech review site.