3D or not 3D, thats the question!

[DarthTengil]

Hi

My old 17" monitor is about to give in completly so now I´m going to buy a new but bigger. Since the 3D monitors appeared on the market for 3 years ago I always have had wet dreams of one of those but before I run to the store I want to ask you people of some items and thoughts I have on my mind.

For the first thing I dont want the very best, the latest, the biggest or the most expensive ones on the market. What I need is a well balanced monitor that both gives me ritch but corretctfull colour responding (a red rose next to a yellow with a black wall in the background shall show the different colours and not show a "over-red" rose and a orange rose and a grey wall), it also must have the sharpness (so the edges on the roses that leans onto eachother shows a clear "distance" to both them and to the wall so it dont get blended and mixed). Its also important that the black wall is really black and not grey or blue-black.

The second is the usage of it and what sort of picture I am planning to see on the screen. I am not going to watch movies on my PC monitor (exept 3D movies of couse), for that I allready have my Panasonic plasma TV. Therefore its not so important with showing "soft", black and dark-grey colours on that scale as a really good plasma TV does. Its more important that the screen is showing bright and "witeish" colours for gaming and surfing - its mostly snowwite clouds, marine-blue oceans, radioactive ill-green-looking aliens and crimson-red blood spraying gore I´m after - if you know what I meen.
Yes I AM sick and twisted - but hey its just me... 😀

The third is the size. I dont have use for a huge monitor with a built in digital TV-reciever. 21-24" is enough. In fact 24" sometimes can be too big, if you have maximum resolution and watch a news webpaper its like 10 cm empty space at the sides and microscopical text in the middle, not always that handy... At least in my mind its better with a smaller 21" with great picture and colours than a larger 24" with high contrast but low and bad black respons (the black wall is grey-wite).

The fourth is money! I always use to have the philosofie that its never worth the cost to buy brand-new PC components - including peripherals. Why spend too much money on a product just because its the "best" and newest? Why not choose a thing that was very high-end for one or two years ago and pay half of the ordinary price! Unfortunly it seams that its quit impossible to get "older" monitors because the market is so speeded
I´m looking for a high mid-end to a low high-end monitor and are willing to pay around 320 euro.

Now to the point of this thread:
For 1,5 years ago there was very many 3D monitors on the swedish market, in a ordinary PC store there was around 65% 3D screens and the rest ordinary screens, they all had HDMI as standard. Nowdays I only can find one or at the highest two 3D monitors in the same store, and many DONT have support for HDMI, most of them only use DVI-D. I dont know what to think or to do, I´m very supprised that the monitor market (at least here in Sweden) have changed in this direction since I last looked at PC monitors!!!

Why this extreme change in so short time? Is there really alot of 3D PC games (to watch on a 3D monitor) to buy today? Can you work with Windows clipboard, the controll panel, running ordinary desktop programs in 3D? Does Explorer support 3D for some sites when surfing? Know I´m sounding like a amature but have never thought about this items before. How about games that dont is in "real" 3D, can I still see those with the right software and 3D glasses on? I am going to play games like Battlefield 3, Unreal Tournament, Need For Speed, Top Gun fighter flight games etc. Are those kind of games on the 3D market? How does the future looks to 3D games for PC? Have all this 3D market gone in the grave or what? Please explain!

Am I in the wrong direction, am I going to regret to get a 3D monitor in a year or two? Whats your opinion? Nowdays screens is the second generation or am I wrong? I have real glasses and wonder how those 3D glasses that somehow is connected to the PC or use batteries (active) is to wear outside and on top of my own? Are they hevy or difficult to combine? Those 3D glasses you got in the cinemas can be a little bit tricky to make them stay in place, should I choose monitors with non active/clip-ons or is it rather equal to eachother? Which sort gives the best 3D quallity so to say? Whats your experiences regardings this item?

A raw technical question to you professors out there:
I have with my own eyes read on several different places that the HDMI bus and specially those really good pure copper and gold HDMI cables (like ITEC and Monster Cable) are able to transport 3 times as many data/video stream than the DVI bus and cables. Know the biggest difference is that HDMI also can transport HD audio, something I dont gonna use since I allready have my Logitech 5.1 system, but still the amont of raw data and video transfer should be 3 times greater than DVI. If this is true - why the heck have so many brands in alot of cases (at least in my own country) take the step back & down to the ageing DVI bus and cable? And why on earth do they all insisting of still having the antique and ancient VGA bus/slot? Who today want to use that abomination thing that was out of history in 1999? I just dont get it! Would be happy if someone could explain and correct me if I have got this about HDMI wrong. Has DVI-D some kind of evolved to a higher video transfer state/standard than HDMI or what? What is Dual Link? Is it two cables to the same "place" inside of the monitor so it doubbles the data transfering abillity? A link about this would be usefull please!

Another question while I´m writing this thread:
Contrast! Some dealers/brands are typing eider the static or the dynamic ratio, a few both values. How can I judge a monitors dynamic ratio when they just are typing the static value? Can you please help me finding the "real" contrast ratio for those I have choosen to compare? Would be greatfull if someone want to teach me the differents between those two types of contrast, just make it simple and short.
A link to a more advanced guide would be super

I also are looking for guides and common knowledge about the different panel types,
an in-depth article with panel type timeline history to study and learn from would be fun.
If you got any links I´m very thankfull.
Please make my head go spinning

If I am going to buy a 3D monitor I need some help to choose and rank the screens I have found thats in my price category.
How do YOU rank the following brands I´m thinking about to get? Please help me to find out which panel type those monitors use (like TN etc)
exept those I allready have wrote. I have choosed 23" as a frame target and found those monitors that mostly is in that size range here under:


A: - Dell AW2310 23" 3ms 80.000:1

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?baynote_bnrank=0&baynote_irrank=0&c=us&cs=19&l=en&sku=320-8846&~ck=baynoteSearch

B: - ASUS VG236HE 23" 2ms 100.000:1

http://uk.asus.com/Display/LCD_Monitors/VG236HE/#specifications

NOT ON THE LIST ANYMORE C: - Samsung S23A750D 23" 2ms 1000:1

http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/monitors/LS23A750DS/ZA-specs

D: - Zalman ZA-M215WGD 21,5" 5ms 10.000:1

http://www.zalman.com/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=384

E: - LG D2342P-PN (in USA) or D2342P (in Europe) 23" 5ms 5.000.000:1 TN panel type (Spec in PDF)

http://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-D2342P-PN-led-monitor

NOT ON THE LIST ANYMORE F: - Acer GD245HQbid 23,6" 2ms 80.000:1 TN panel type

http://purpleflytrading.co.za/shopping/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=8_60&products_id=735

G: - BenQ XL2420T 24" 2ms 12M:1 / 12.000.000:1 (I doubt if this is true!) TN panel type

http://www.benq.com/product/monitor/xl2420t/specifications

H: - HP 2311gt 23" 5ms 3.000.000:1

http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Accessories/Monitors/QJ684AA?HP-2311gt-23-inch-Diagonal-3D-LED-Monitor



Please type your choise like this (ex):

E
A
G
C
F
B
H
D


Bring forth your chainsaws and cut me to the ankles with my choises, opinions, questions and resoning 😉 Bruuumbruum :lol:

 

[MauveCloud]

As far as passive vs. active 3d, see this article:
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/3d_technologies.htm
Plenty of games support 3d; I think video card drivers primarily support active 3d with shutter glasses, but iZ3d makes a driver that can output various types of 3d, including active, passive line-interleaved, and anaglyph. The anaglyph driver is free, and I don't consider it adequate for frequent use as a 3d method, but it can help you find out which games you have would work in 3d. Personally, I'd prefer to get passive 3d (especially since, like you, I have glasses already, and the polarized glasses tend to be lighter than the shutter glasses), but it's hard to find in screens smaller than 32 inches.

As far as the HDMI cables, newer revisions of the HDMI specification allow more data to be transferred, but from what I've seen, most monitors and TVs don't support the newer revisions, and I don't know whether the high-quality gold-contact cables are really required for it. Dual-link DVI requires a thicker cable with more pins, so it's like two cables in one.

Static vs. dynamic contrast is easy to explain: if you measure the light output from black areas and white areas shown on the same screen (such as showing a chessboard-type pattern), and divide the white output by the black output, you get the static contrast. if you measure the light output from an all-white screen and divide it by the light output from an all-black screen, you get the dynamic contrast. In many cases, independent reviews show the dynamic contrast ratios to be exaggerated, and even if they're not, dynamic contrast is basically useless for comparing monitors. Look for monitors with good static contrast (and independent measurements of it from sites like tftcentral are more reliable than manufacturer specifications, but not always available). If it doesn't say whether it's static or dynamic, anything over 3000:1 is usually dynamic contrast (emissive displays like CRTs, plasmas and OLEDs can give better static contrast; LCD is transmissive)

 

[DarthTengil]

Thanks 🙂

This explain alot of things and the link is very usefull! Two new questions:

1: Does those new Dual Link DVI cables requirer a new sort of adapter (DVI to Dual Link) with different size and more pin-holes in the other end than the ordinary old blue ones use to have and look like, or is it just "inside" the cable it spreads out to twice as many threads/lines like a big fat fiber lane cable that lays underground and ends with a single fiber lane into the telephone jacket so to speak?

2: How is brightness (xxx cd/m2) comparable and involved with static contrast? In my mind I think the higher contrast value - the more bright the screen can be without the black text or wall looks washed-out. Am I totally wrong here? And how is colours shown and responding in relationship with the contrast ratio? Both funny and interresting to learn and find deeper knowledge about all this that have with the screen to do!

 

[MauveCloud]

DVI sockets usually have the full set of holes to reduce the chance of damaging the cable, so you don't need a special adapter. You just need the cable with the extra pins, and monitors that need dual-link dvi often have such a cable included.

Static contrast is the ratio between the brightness (in cd/m2) of the white and the brightness of the black (the latter is often called the "black point"). Calibration software generally recommends a brightness of 120 cd/m2 (in normal lighting conditions). The specifications generally give the maximum brightness, so as long as that's well over 120 cd/m2, the monitor should be okay, since you can turn down the brightness in the OSD (if the brightness is too high, a white background can be painful to look at, regardless of whether the black text looks washed-out). 3d tends to halve the effective brightness, whether active or passive, so you might want to make sure such a screen is capable of over 240 cd/m2. Some screens give a separate number for the brightness in 3d mode, but I don't know whether that takes the 3d glasses into account.

 

[DarthTengil]

How about the monitors I have choosen to compare? Everybody please just say what you think of them! Which ones would best meet and fulfil my sort of need? You that have one of them - what are your experiences and how pleased are you of your screens? If you use passive glasses - do you regret that you did´nt got active glasses - or the other way too?

 

[MauveCloud]

Many of your chosen monitors pretty much tie with each other when I look at specifications - you could look at price, included software, or other features like usb ports to break the ties. All these monitors use TN panels, so color quality is unlikely to be significantly different between them, but here's how I'd rank them:
1. E/D/H (these are passive 3d and include the 3d glasses)
2. A/B/G (these are active 3d, but look like they might require you to buy 3d glasses separately)
3. C (specs mention that it comes with a displayport cable, but it doesn't list displayport among the inputs further up in the table)
4. F (specs are inconsistent with the heading as to whether this is 120hz active 3d or 60hz 2d)

 

[DarthTengil]

So Samsung and Acer is out. When looking twice I discovered that Samsung is trying to fool us users - in fact this screen only is 21,4" and not 23" as they sell it as!!! Pasteing their own words:

Display
Screen Size
23" (16:9)

Dimensions (W x H x D)

Product Size With Stand
21.4" (W) x 15.9" (H) x 7.5" (D)

Product Size Without Stand
21.4" (W) x 12.6" (H) x 0.7" (D)

Shipping Dimensions
23.7" (W) x 18.7" (H) x 8.9" (D)


What a joke! How could they?

What about the rest of you in this forum, what do you think of this screens (not C&F)? Which one would YOU buy from this list? Please give me more flesh to the bones! MauveCloud: Your super and will be rewarded 🙂

 

[MauveCloud]

The screen size is the diagonal, not the width.

 

[DarthTengil]

Have come to a turning point when choosing active or passive screens. In another thread I have found out that there unfortunly is more games on the market that support shutter (active) glasses than passive, and why not since the active technology have being on the market way longer than the passive, specially for older games. Not saying it always will be this but for now I´m not sure. I would want to ask you if you could choose out a "winner" in both categorys, if you can so to say?

Active:
A/B/G

Passive:
E/D/H

Thanks for supporting me 😉

 

[MauveCloud]

I don't think the games control whether active or passive is supported - that should be handled by the driver.
I don't see anything in the specifications to indicate a "winner" in either category, so I suggest you pick based on price or aesthetics.
Also, I think you are mistaken about active 3d being on the market longer than passive. I checked Wikipedia, and passive 3d glasses were first made in 1934, whereas shutter glasses were invented in the mid-1970s.

 

[DarthTengil]

To continue giving this thread even more depth and profound both to myself and to
those that may at a later time finds and reads it for inspiration, ideas, knowledge and
references of todays date 3D monitors I want to add a new monitor I found.
Its the BenQ XL2420TX and this one seams to be very new and interesting!

* It is 24" and is equiped with shutter (active) NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 & LightBoost,
and also an IR Emitter and comes WITH shutter glasses!!!

* It has brightness (350 cd/m2) and static & dynamic contrast (1000:1 / 12M:1)

* Respond time is only 2ms and it only consume 24W/0.5W.


http://www.benq.com/product/monitor/XL2420TX/


This is absolutly something to appreciate next to both ASUS and LG even if I mostly associate
brands like BenQ with low-end budget screens! Time to re-think it all over again. I hold this
thread open a bit longer so I (hopefully) soon can write down what monitor I decided to buy.
Fun to mantain a thread in its whole lifeline, particular this one where I thanks to the
walking PC monitor lexicon MauveCloud have learned - if not everything -
so almost everything there is to know

Question: Does anyone know what this monitor costs?

 

[MauveCloud]

The XL2420TX currently costs about $500 in the US:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2406377

 

[DarthTengil]

Have checked with Amazon and the XL2420TX is not to be sold outside US mainland. Are going to get the BenQ XL2420T when there for now does´nt exist any other choises. Thus the 3D-glasses is included with this screen, at least with my dealer, but they dont write it in the spec.

Thank you very very much MauveCloud -
by you I have learn my lessons and know-hows!

Hoping that other users in this forum in the future may can
use my own seek-and-question-the market
homework for later usage!

This thread is now (also) SOLVED!