I'm buying a new PC (thread http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=195538). I need a nice big screen to go with this, to be used for (primarily) playing FPS games and (secondarily) watching movies/shows. Budget: < 1500 GBP (the issue is that the budget must be approved by my wife). Prefer <700 as I'm already planning on spending loads of the PC and I want my marriage to remain happy. Main uses of intended build: High end gaming (Metro 2033, SupCom, Crysis 2, etc), watching movies, TV Monitor resolution: 1920*1080 Extra information about desired system: Want a matte screen as I am in a brightly lit room with loads of sunny exterior windows. I was thinking a 32-37" LED TV with a gaming mode as I want a nice mixture of image quality, low lag (and I love the crispness of LEDs I've seen). I dont want it too big as I will be sitting 0.5m away from it (yes, crazy, I know, I used to have a 40" Sony and I had to use peripheral vision to see the HUDs in games, and I could see the pixels). I dont want it too small since we will watch movies/shows from across the room. 40" was a shade too big, I think 37" will be fine, but 32" would be better for gaming (when I'm close up). Dont want to go smaller than that as I like the immersiveness of BIG screens. because its for gaming, I am concerned about motion blur and lag. I want a gaming mode so lag isnt an issue. I also want really nice image quality. I'm not married to LED tech, I just like it a lot. So I can compromise on this. I will be connecting via HDMI, dont need VGA. I'll need some spare HDMIs since I doubt I will resist buying a 360/PS3 during some Xmas sale I've done a load of research (I'm a little OCD) but now I'm in information overload, and I cant find any nice data tables that I can chuck into excel and filter/pivot/etc. If someone knows of the location of a list of gaming TVs with focussed reviews (eg: http://www.bestcovery.com/best-hdtv-for-gamers) I'd be keen for the link. I think the Sony EX503 http://hcc.techradar.com/reviews/new_reviews/review-sony-kdl-40ex503-20-08-10 http://www.digitalversus.com/sony-bravia-kdl-32ex503-p458_8401_16.html looks pretty good. I liked the look of the various LED samsungs I've seen. The issue that I'm hvaing is that there is no consensus view in reviews, and the display is one of the most important parts of a PC build (since you spend ALL your time looking at it). Argh! Please help me.
You don't know what LED LCD is do you? You know that it is just the backlight where instead of using a CFL lamp they use "white" LED's. White LED's don't exists. It's light blue (blu'ish white) or light yellow (warm white). A high end CFL lamp will provide with a very nice white. Ir, if you have the spare kidneys, you can get the RGB LED, where you have red, green and blue mini-LED's scattered everywhere and extreamly close together, to provide you with a white light. As you want a monstrosity of screen.. up close, with a very low resolution of 1920x1080 for it's size, that mean you enjoy thick pixels and hard to read text. You want a TV not a computer monitor. Any cheapo 1080p TN panel with HDMI will do. But if you have money to trow away at the window, you can get the Sony XBR series. Nope wait sorry.. you said you are hard core gamer, playing primarily FPS games... IPS and PVA panels are too slow and has too high level of input lag.. yea any TN panel based TV will do. You can't have speed and superb colro accurate display.. well you CAN.. it's called a CRT monitor (you know the ones with the tubes on the back). Also these sites, are TERRIBLE. It doesn't talk about anything, and they think dynamic constrast ratio means something. oy! THIS is an example of a good review: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell_u2711.htm Notice how it talks about light dispersion, color accuracy, speed, input lag, and much more. TV's are not color accurate, they are not sharp, they don't provide stunning colors. That is why they are bargain compare to computer monitors. Why? Because people don't use TV's as for a intensive computer usage, and don't use it up close, so they can cut on things to make it cheaper. All they are designed to be, is that movies look nice (hence why everything is shifted to blue, which is visible on dark scenes - hence why they use "white" LED's), and that explosion are bright so that it "pops". You have A LOT of research to do. You need to understand the limitation of each LCD panel display, understand what each feature is in details and how it works, and then know what you want, what to expect. If it looks good in the store, most likely it will look like garbage at home. Big chain stores like BestBuy, spend millions of dollars to position things in stores, and put specific content, so that they look the best, and so that it sells. For instance, you have a 120Hz TV or a 240Hz TV... they won't put normal digital TV... they will use the special made manufacture tech demo. Why? Try a 240Hz TV watching a DVD or TV.. look how awful it looks because the TV adds missing frames, and everything looks and feels strange, like these terrible Soap Operas which they use terrible cameras to film it (over smooth). BUT at the store it looks cool! They even put a sport channel! (which is actually a special made DVD hidden somewhere). Here is a good place to start: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/content/panel_technologies_content.htm
cheers for all the info goodbytes. yeah, i did know about led lcd issues, no i dont want thick pixels (...again... been there, done that), etc etc etc. but i have to pick something and sadly nothing is obviously perfect. i should add that my flat is not big enough for a tv and pc screen (I kid you not!) which would make solving this issue easy (buy one for each purpose). the first issue is that its got to fulfill both gaming and movie purposes. gaming = any decent tn tft. movies = any decent lcd tv. both = ? the tradeoff between them is that it'll be more for gaming, but it needs to be used for movies as well, hence my thoughts on a lcd tv with 32" size (to reduce pixel size) and emphasis on lag/ghosting. i dont think a 27" tn panel is going to cut it for movies, its just too small and viewing angles are too shallow. as for using a tv for gaming, i did it all last year on a sony 40" lcd with no issues (once i got it setup right...). i play a lot of fps (well, i did) but i didnt have any issues (well, i did notice a bit of ghosting and it could have been a bit more responsive, but i could live with it). i might just not be that hardcore... so i probably dont need "TN type" speeds and "CRT type" lag. but the ms246h is mighty tempting http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/asus_ms246h.htm... apart from the crappy no-stand i want a nice picture, but i should clarify that i dont do image editing, so it doesnt have to be "good", just not poor (like lots of lcd tvs are). nothing is perfect, but given this clarification of my needs and the fact that i am willing to compromise on all fronts (as long as the trade-offs are right), do you have any recommendations? ps: thanks for the tft website btw. i found this a couple of months ago and thought it was brilliant, but couldnt re-find it in my recent searches, just those other websites which as you say arent anywhere near as good. sadly it doesnt have lcd tvs as well or else i could just use its selector to narrow down my search. my new plan is to go to a dept store with my laptop tomorrow and try each type out. im sure i'll find something because the tech is a lot newer than what was in my sony 40".
Ultra high resolution displays are the best imo. Too bad they don't make any TN panels or TVs with anything close to those 27" and 30" IPS panels. As a owner of a 30" and a 27" Dell. The colors are awesome. The resolution is even more awesome. A 2560x1600 display is practically double 1080P. A 2560x1440 display is almost 80% more pixels than 1080P. Sit right infront of it and it still looks amazing. Has every connection you will ever want on the back. You can plug in PS3, Xbox, wii, whatever you like. The response time is 5ms which is fast enough and input lag is low. The only thing bad about 30" or 27" Dell ultrasharps is price. Another thing you should consider is 120hz monitors. They offer smoother pictures for computer games but there are no 3D enabled monitors with multiple connections at the moment. So maybe a 3D TV but TVs have high input lag.
That is IF your TV service provide or game consoles provides you with 120Hz signal (which they don't, so the TV fill in with guess images, which makes everything looks strange). As for games, you need to have the power to run your games at 120FPS... not worth it, unless you enjoy playing your games at their lowest settings with a very high end gaming computer.
With that budget I'd buy three of these (or these) and a high-end eyefinity card. That way your PC would span 3 screens...or you could have play a console game on one, have a movie going on another, and read bit-tech on the last
ok, i'll look into the dell ultrasharp today. i wasnt thinking of resolutions higher than 1920*1080 because even though i am buying a relatively powerful PC, i figured that higher resolutions will quickly kill fps, and blue ray is only 1080p. it would be nice to have that resolution though for web browsing and programming (reading text). ... wow the dell3008wfp isnt cheap. im not sure i can sell this to my wife given its only 30" for movies (which is what she is concerned about). is there a dell type display that is 1080p, 32"-37"? for similar reasons i didnt think i needed a tv with a refresh rate higher than 50hz for gaming - i cant remember the last time i played a game with fps significantly greater than that once all the graphics options were turned on high. 100+hz would be nice for movies though. damn, i've woken up this morning and im tempted y the ms246h again (it looks really good for gaming...) and im trying to figure out where we can put a movie only lcd in the flat.
The Dell U2410 is what I want to suggest. I have it, I love mine, you have almost all the connection one can possibly need.. like it's only missing a TV tuner. Like the bigger models, it an IPS panel, come with 2 pre-calibrated color profiles, like the 2711 (Adobe RGB and sRGB). It provides stunning colors, movies and games looks superb under it. It's full matte (no glossy parts), which is exactly what you ask, metal stand with a metal mechanical system for easy adjustment, fully adjustable. It's 1920x1200.. so a 1080p movie will fit without any scaling (just a bit larger black bars at the top and bottom), but makes it ideal if you are working on a computer. Like the bigger models, it feature a high-end CFL lamp for a nice white. Also, it's much cheaper in price. The problem, is that it's 24inch. Well it's fine for me, I like it.. but I don't know for you.
hmmm the dell 2410 does sounds nice, but at that size it'll be for gaming only, which puts it into competition with the ms246h. asus ms246h: half the price (200gbp = no spousal signoff required) colours etc are limited, but im guessing good enough for me (esp when gaming) - any disagreements? do games look much better 70% -> 100% NTSC colour space? way better for gaming in tests (although once again i wonder if i would be able to tell the difference in real life crappy stand (the dell stand looks really nice) - anyone know of a mount for the ms246h? i cant find one. ONE hdmi, whereas dell has a few options. this would really annoy me when i get a console again. still doesnt solve the movie issue. love the tft central reviews though, is there an equiv for lcd tvs?
There's quite a few Dell 3008FWP recommendations in here... allow me to present another side to that please. Having used the Dell 3008, I can give you some quality feedback on it. I'll start with the good stuff: Colour is superb, but out of the box was very warm on mine. I have means of calibrating screens here however, so I wasn't worried, but if you do not, a visit to Lagom might be needed to set it up. The gamut is a healthy 95% of Adobe RGB1998, so it definitely qualifies as a wide gamut monitor. However, is beaten by others, both more and less expensive. Unless you are a professional graphics worker however, this feature will be more of a hindrance than a help, as a wide gamut screen will exaggerate most web site colours, and also colours in games and DVDs unless every single aspect of the work flow is colour managed. More on that here. You'll probably want to run it in sRGB most of the time to retain accurate colours in every day use. Viewing angle was excellent, being a IPS panel. (except with blacks... more on that in a minute. Leaving the black "glow" to one side for a minute, the black levels in general were quite good at 0.2 cd/m2. This is pretty good for a IPS panel, as IPS have the weakest blacks compared to other technologies. Reasons I returned it. Build quality was not the best I've seen, with the top edge of the panel being loose. I've since learned that they are all like that however, and it's an issue with alignment, and a "feature" that helps control backlight bleed. Black levels and black viewing angles were astonishingly poor. If you sat at the monitor at a normal distance from it in normal room lighting, and looked at a black screen, or dark scene from a movie or game, the corners of the screen have a very annoying "glow" to them. This is only noticeable in dark scenes and a full colour screen will mask it. However, watching a DVD in original cinema aspect ratio is almost impossible as the extended black bars just end up glowing an annoying blue/grey/white. I made a video of it below. That's with bright room lighting to demonstrate how bad it was. Imagine it in a darkened room watching a DVD! As the screen is so large, even sitting dead on centre means the corners are glowing in dark scenes. This is NOT light bleed, as moving a long way away from it cures it... it's a viewing angle issue with blacks. Most larger IPS panels will suffer in the same way, but being so large just exaggerates this, and it was particularly bad on the 3008FWP. Also, it can not support a 24fps blue ray input. You can watch them of course, but it doesn't support 24P, so movement such as slow pans from left to right will flicker. This is a common problem with computer monitors in general however, but one with so many multi-media inputs should really support 24P. Input lag was only noticeable when the same window straddled two monitors, and one of them was known to have little or no input lag (my NEC 1970nxp). If you can live with the black issue... you'll love it, but otherwise, it's an expensive way to get frustrated.
well, i just spent an hour in comet trying out various tvs. the samsung had terrible lag, it didnt go away when i renamed hdmi2 to pc. something was also going wrong at 1080p (it showed only about 1800*1000 pixels). Q: any ideas on what was going wrong and how to fix? otherwise it's out of the running. panasonic also had lag. sony 37ex403 was great for lag (non that i could feel) and worked straight away. colours looked a little faded but i didnt spend any time calibrating (and on my old sony i could get a nice image after a little tweaking). image was a little grainy though - i thin ki had the same on my old sony but i cant remember how i fixed it. can anyone confirm the same issue and that i ca be resolved? ran out of battery at this point. will go back at try the sony 40ex703 (led version basically) once my battery has recharged (and will take power cable next time) and will muck about the with 37ex403 to see if i can clean the image up.
oh yeah, 32" (and below) is definitely out of the running, just too small a screen, not nearly immersive enough. yes the pixels are VERY noticeable, but i can live with large pixels when typing and when gaming the immersiveness totally wins.
this site is good for lcd tv reviews, the analogue of tft central http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/selector.php
Sorry to thread hijack here but...really? I've just bought a 40EX403 and the lag is awful when using my PS3 via HDMI. Ok, it's not bad in some games, but FPS/racing/rhythm games are really bad with a noticeable lag. I've actually emailed Sony to find out whether the VGA port is better for lag-free gaming (seeing as, supposedly, the Bravia Engine processing isn't used on the VGA port). I'm basically gonna end up spending another £60 on a HDFury HDMI->VGA cable to get a better gaming experience, assuming of course that the VGA port does indeed have less lag.
try putting your sony in game mode, it makes it heaps better than normal mode. so yeah, so i went back to comet with my laptop and tried most tvs, and measured the lag versus the laptops screen by playing alien vs predator 2000 (ultimate twitch shooter, more so than quake3) and watching the laptop and tv at the same time. RESULTS: the samsungs (even in game mode/hdmi2 trick) were terrible. felt like 60-80ms, totally unplayable, like i was drunk, visibly shoddy lag. the sony 37ex403 was OK (note, the 40ex403 might be a different panel and so have different latency). the 37ex403 felt like 30-40ms, which is OK for me, although not perfect, but obvious visual lag and once i could see the lag (even if i couldn't really feel it) i knew i couldn't buy it. the panasonic tx 37g20b is amazing. it looked like about 5ms but i could see an infinitesimal amount of lag versus the laptop, so its gotta be a number >0, but i couldnt feel ANYTHING. awesome. ive bought the panasonic tx 37g20b, hooked up to pc right now. so happy. yes, its blurry in comparison to a normal pc display, since im sitting so close, but its brilliant for watching movies across the room, brilliant for playing games on (across room and close up immersion style), has great colours, angles, etc. no visual artifacts at all, no latency, no ghosting, im so very happy. so to all you hdtv gamers out there, if you are looking for an hdtv, the tx 37g20b is a complete win. the s20b should be the same, but i didnt test it (since i wanted the extra features of the g20b and the price diff was only 50 quid). if i were looking for a different size telly/led telly i would take my laptop and test panasonic first (not last) next time.
Yeah, already got it running in game mode but it's still a tad too laggy for me (around the 40ms mark). I've actually emailed Sony regarding the VGA input lag time but they've not got back to me yet...
I have that iiyama mentioned earlier, fantastic for gaming and for watching movies on my own using Sennheiser headphones, perfect. I also have a Samsung 42" for the consoles and shared movies. €300 for the monitor, €600 for the TV. Sorted really. Playing something like BC2 on a 42" would drive me mad trying to take everything in. On the 26", it's perfect and runs at a steady 75 fps at 1920x1200. Not hugely constructive, I know, but thought I'd just post with my thoughts of "why not get both"...
hey riggs, from memory vga was ugly (I briefly connected xbox 360 to my old sony before switching to hdmi) - only hd not full hd through vga. just something to consider. if you do have no joy with the sony, see if you can return/sell it and pick up my tv. word of caution here is that unless its identical (37g20b) you should test in store.
