Displays Whats the "best" way to connect a monitor?

What connectors does your TV have? I'm using a 32" Sony LCD TV as my main display, and after having tried the different connector options to see what gave me the best quality I ended up using the VGA connector.. HDMI came out blurry and strange looking, and it wouldn't fill up the entire screen. VGA comes out crisp and full. Counter-intuitive I know, but I'm just going with what works. Try it out!

One tip I can give you is to put the TV as far back on your desk as you can, you definitely don't want to have this kind of display as close to your eyes as a normal screen given the pixel pitch.

 

You sicken me...

 

Oh I'm not daft enough to sit that close to a big TV. It's mounted on the wall across the room from me. However now that I have a PC worthy of it I'm getting a proper desk and monitor for it. My old PC stayed hidden away and doubled as a space heater. It was old clunky and inefficient.

I had tried the VGA cable method before but only with my laptop. Perhaps it is worth revisiting that idea. However I'm most likely going to get the monitor in a week or two (come on payday) so it might not be worth it

 

Why??



@Tigernos

It's worth a try to see if using a VGA cable will solve some of the issues you're having, worked for me.

 

DVI Cheesecake!

 

Thunderbolt is the best display out there but I only know of one monitor that uses it and its from Apple. I always try and use DVI if I can. HDMI has always worked ok for me too. Try em all and find what suits you best.

 

How is thunderbolt better?

 

It is if it could be hot-plugged. Displayport and integration with other hubs. Awesome. But lack of hot plugging and adoption (not to mention extreme costs) make it far less attractive.

Still I'd kill for proper thunderbolt implementation but the introduction cost is far more than DisplayPort.

So DisplayPort wins.

 

Exactly. Beside anything that Thunderbolt does in terms of image output, so does DisplayPort exactly the same. Thunderbolt is silly concept. While yes it's fast, the cost of the device AND having the feature on a system is extremely high. It's one of those ideas that sound good when mentioned, but terrible in real life application. Their is nothing wrong with eSATA, USB 3.0, and DisplayPort. You COULD argue that these take 3 different ports, however this is not true. Only 2, and you want at least 2. Why? eSATA/USB port combo (2 in 1) exists and many business class laptop have it (mine does as well.. and this is really not new). eSATA is exactly the same as the internal SATA plug, just a different shape (holds better), And the second port is DisplayPort , which you either way want to be separated. Right now, if you have a Mac with only 1 thunderbolt, and a device using thunderbolt and using the external monitor.. well guess what.. you'll have too choose. So a separate port is better. So either way you need 2 ports. So at the end of the day, you save no ports. You just have a more expensive computer, and more expensive device, for something that isn't better in any shape or form.

If it was carrying PCI-E 16x, then you could argue in saying that you plug an external graphic card or sound card, or TV-Tuner or desktop internal hardware for laptop, Yes. But it does not.

 

It has the potential and it's why I find it interesting. The problem is still proliferation. What would be cool is if thunderbolt monitors had USB ports AND ESata ports within them that just was controlled via the thunderbolt controller.

It would make for some awesome connectability. Still I can't find a reason to not like thunderbolt. It's brutally fast, it's a step in the right direction (remember Expressport?) for high bandwidth interconnects.

 

Apple is dumb and so is thunderbolt. The CABLE has fireware, that right a cable with firmware. It makes the cable harder to produce so 3rd party vendors can't reproduce the cable for what it's really worth ($3-$7) and Apple rakes in the cash with a $50 cable only they make/sell

 

No. There's dedicated hardware at both ends of a Thunderbolt cable. Much of what makes Thunderbolt "tick" is in the cable. That's why it's so expensive.

 

And what's the difference of simply having these connections on the system itself. And now you are gong to have a bunch of cable connecting to the monitor and is a mess. I guess you can argue that it makes it like a Docking station for laptop.. ok well,first of all.. docking station for laptop exists, they are part of the integral of the laptop, you see it more on business class systems, as it cost more money, and isn't a feature that a person walking into a retail store looks for (also they want the lowest price), also this is useless for desktops. Not to mention the higher cost of the monitor (already people, even on this forum, have a hard time swallowing the price of the Dell U2410 and U2711.. imagine with thunderbolt added to it.)

So no, it's again.. nice idea, but in practice it's expensive.

 

I acknowledge this. I'm merely saying that Thunderbolt has massive potential. Sadly it's marred by entrance costs and not doing much in terms of real innovation.

However thunderbolt GPU enclosures I am waiting for.

 

Thunderbolt is first and foremost intended for purposes such as docking stations. It'll help make docking stations less proprietary. It won't replace USB3 et al for the foreseeable future.

One of the reasons for the hardware signal conversion in the cables themselves is that those are still intended to make use of fibre optics (remember the original LightPeak?). By putting the signal conversion hardware into the cables only the cables need to be upgraded. At least that's the theory.

 

Only now have a I tried HDMI with a 1080p screen and looks good and works fine. Always used to use DVI and never had a problem with that way.

 

For giga-powered laptops isn it.

When that happens a Gaming laptop will only really depend on its CPU, opening a wealth of options and better prices for somewhat portable ubergaming

 

Or for making regular capable CPU'ed laptops gaming worthy. You don't need that much CPU for higher resolutions.

 

My question started an argument \o/

Going back to my monitor. Is there a better monitor for similar price than the U2412M? The price tag is pushing my budget outside normal operating range but I want the best monitor I can afford.

 

Look for an old Dell 2407WFP. If you want a decent 24" that is, also check out old U2410s.

If you don't care about brand, there's always those catleap monitors from korea.