Sceptre E320BV-FHDD as monitor?

[MauveCloud]

I've currently got a Samsung P2770HD, which I use as my computer's monitor and as a TV for my game consoles (my oldest is a Super Nintendo, but I've also got a PS3, X360, and some others). In a few months, I'm planning to replace it with a Sceptre E320BV-FHDD, which is 31.5 inches diagonal, 1080p, and has passive 3d (row-interleaved). It's a bit big, but I haven't seen any 27 inch screens with passive 3d. The next step down for passive 3d is about 23 inches, which might be too small when I'm used to 27 inches. Also, I'm hoping it will have better speakers than my current monitor. Does anyone here have experience with this screen, or alternative suggestions?

 

[MauveCloud]

I moved up the relocation that the purchase of this TV was going to wait for, so I ordered it to be delivered to the new place. I don't have an internet connection there yet or my calibrator, but I was able to notice the following with an old xp laptop hooked up to it with a vga cable:
1. No defective pixels in the main area of the screen (the versions of Firefox and IE I have installed on that laptop keep the address bar at the top even in fullscreen mode, and a scrollbar at the right even when the page isn't long enough to need one, so I'm not 100% certain of those areas)
2. Contrast ratio looks good, though the screen is glossy (I don't think I've had a glossy screen like that before, so I don't know yet whether I'll get used to it or end up doing something to compensate). I don't know if the 3500:1 ratio on the Sceptre website is actually static contrast, but that's within the realm of possibility for a VA panel (and it would be rather pathetic for dynamic contrast compared to what other monitors and TVs claim as dynamic contrast).
3. I looked at it with some vertically-polarized sunglasses to confirm that it doesn't use linear polarization. Not surprising since the passive 3d was specified as using circular polarization, but that interferes with being able to use the polarization angle to guess the panel type.
4. The subpixel layout is BGR - I used Paint to put a small blue rectangle over a large red rectangle, and the black line appeared on the right. It's my understanding that the Windows ClearType Tuner can handle this, but it would be nice if there was an explanation of what the choices in the wizard actually mean.
5. The power led (bottom center, below the "Sceptre" logo) is red when the tv is switched off but not unplugged, and a bit large for a power led, so I might end up covering it with tape or something.
6. Input switching is fairly easy - pushing the source button on the remote brings up a list, and I can use the up and down arrows to select one. That's not quite as easy as my Gateway XHD3000 was, where I could press "input" then a number to choose the source, but much better than TVs that simply go to the next input when the source button is pressed, requiring me to wrap back around if I press it one time too many.
7. I hooked up the headphone output of my laptop to the TV and played some audio that Windows Media Player could find, and the TV speakers seem to have some reverb, but they don't quite sound "tinny" like a Samsung P2770HD's speakers. Some of that might be due to the laptop's sound hardware, and some might be due to the tv's audio settings. Once I get my desktop hooked up there, I'll see what I can do with the audio settings.

 

[requisite0]

Just ordered this model today, and your analysis was key in my decision. Thanks for the useful info, and when my set gets here tomorrow, if I can dredge up any useful information, I'll be sure to share it with you.

Thanks again.

 

[MauveCloud]

I'm glad my post was useful. I did a little research on the ClearType Tuner, and found out that there's a "powertoys" version with an "Advanced" tab to allow me to explicitly choose RGB or BGR subpixel layout and set the contrast level for the font smoothing.

 

[MauveCloud]

Update: I took a photo of the middle of the desktop with background color set to black and one with background color set to white (there were some icons on the desktop, so I don't think dynamic contrast would have been invoked even if this screen has it) with this TV to get an idea of the contrast ratio using the calculator at lagom.nl:
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/contrast_ratio.php
Unfortunately, I am limited because my camera doesn't let me manually choose the F-number or shutter time. Here are the results I got using the RGB value averaged from the center 320x240 of each image (by cropping that part, then rescaling to 1 pixel by 1 pixel in Paint.NET and using the dropper to get the color value):

Black Image: 1/4 sec exposure time, F 3.5, ISO 400, RGB value = 8,12,21; Luminance calculated as 0.04 cd/m² (but gives warning "low RGB values (below 50) are unreliable.")

White Image: 1/125 sec exposure time, F 5.6, ISO 400, RGB value = 130,146,168; Luminance calculated as 232 cd/m²

The contrast ratio it calculates for this is 6183 : 1, but it gives an additional warning: "Warning: different F numbers may cause up to 15% error in the calculated contrast ratio."

Uploading the images (which apparently have the camera model, exposure time, F-number, ISO value, etc. in the metadata already; I hadn't realized they would) to lagom got me an even less believable number: 12191:1, but with the following processing remarks:

image file 1: Note: image seems to be noisy. Try reducing the ISO setting or increasing the exposure time.
Warning: image file 1: Underexposed. Please increase the shutter time.
Note: image file 1: suggested exposure time: 23.8 s (Set EV to +6.6)
image file 2: Note: image seems to be noisy. Try reducing the ISO setting or increasing the exposure time.
Warning: Image F-number settings are not the same.

requisite0, do you have a better camera (that allows setting the shutter time and F-number), and if so, could you please use it to get a better measurement of the contrast ratio of this TV?

 

[MauveCloud]

Update: with a different camera, and an internet connection there now, after a few tries, I got a contrast ratio reading of 1501:1 for this TV, details here:
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/contrast-view.php?id=5231

 

[MauveCloud]

I've made my relocation and hooked up my desktop via HDMI, but even after changing the underscan/overscan settings to get it to fullscreen, between the text and the "clock and phase" test at lagom.nl, I can see it isn't really at native resolution. I think I might have a DVI to VGA adapter around, but can anybody offer suggestions for how to get true native resolution with the HDMI cable?

Edit: I fixed this by reducing the overscan to 0, and setting the TV's aspect to "Full 100%". Small drawback to this is that other resolutions will be stretched to fullscreen (regardless of aspect ratio), unless I use the Catalyst Control Center to do GPU scaling. I also noticed some horizontal blurring, but I got rid of that by setting the sharpness to 0.

Further edit: restarting the computer resets the TV's aspect to "Wide", so I'm going to use a DVI to VGA cable for now.