Stupid monitors…
So I have 2LG 1932TQ LCDs. One on my wife’s computer (which she barely uses) and one on mine. The one on mine was purchased brand new a few years ago, hers was the floor display at Best Buy. The one I’ve been using has decided to not show any picture intermittently. I have to turn it off and back on, reboot, or play with the input selector thing. Well this morning it decided it was tired of working and just stopped. It will only display a picture for about 2 seconds then goes to a blank screen. At first I thought it was my computer, so I’ve been fooling with the Catalyst Control Center for my ATI 2600XT, but when it went dead this morning I swapped my wife’s monitor for mine. Hers is working fine on my computer, so guess she’s going to be without one for a week or so 
This is what I usually have for my computer:
The two on either side are crappy 17″ MAG LCDs. They’re like 500:1 contrast ratio with like a 15ms response or something like that. My LG 19″ was 1400:1 with 4ms response time. Unfortunately they don’t make that particular model anymore, and no one has any left. I really liked that monitor…
BUT I purchased the L1953TX-BF today from Monitor Outlet:
It’s 2000:1 contrast ratio with 5ms response time. There were very little in the way of reviews for it, the ones I did find 95% of the people thought it was spectacular, and some people mentioned it worked well for gaming. They have it listed as 5000:1 contrast ratio on their downloadable spec sheet, but that’s dynamic contrast ratio (ie. fake contrast ratio used to sell the product). Last time I shopped for an LCD people were listing regular contrast ratios, but lately they’ve started listing this stupid “dynamic contrast ratio” stuff. Basically what that is, is their measurement of the blackness when the monitor is turned off LOL. It doesn’t really make much of a difference at that point because the backlight may end up making the contrast ratio significantly less. There’s actually a whole bunch of weird methods they’re using to rate various specs for LCDs so they can 1-up their competitors. I believe they’re working on a standard right now so they don’t keep misleading buyers.
I shopped around for some Samsung and NEC monitors, but couldn’t find one with the specs I wanted.
Hopefully this one will work out OK. I hate to have anything less that 1000:1 contrast ratio simply because the colors just aren’t as good at a lower ratio. I have 2 800:1 monitors on my desk at work, while they’re really sharp and nice, I can still tell the difference in quality of color compared to what I have at home. It took me forever to find what I wanted, that wasn’t wide-screen. Hopefully I won’t be disappointed.
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