Re: boot banner project

On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 15:17 -0700, /dev/null wrote:
> > Michael Nottebrock said:
> >> With CRTs on the retreat though, less and less people care about refresh
> >> rates ... you'll probably join that camp at some point as well. :-)
> >>
> >
> > I wouldn't count them out just yet! I still have a 7 year old 19" Sony
> > Trinitron that is kicking butt, despite the fact that it has about 10
> > battle scars from rolling around in a truck bed (don't ask). I haven't
> > switched it with an LCD just because it still has better clarity and color
> > quality than any LCD I've seen.
> >
> 
> Yes! I couldn't agree more. I've been *enjoying* a 20" NEC Multisync XL
> (is trinitron too) that inspite of being a 60Hz fixed freq. is *still*
> clearer and provides more brilliant color than any LCD I've seen.

The only reason you *think* your CRT looks better than the LCD is due to
the misaligned LCD's on display at most stores.

In order to really appreciate the clarity and sharpness of an LCD you
must either plug it into a DVI interface, in which case no alignment is
necessary, or spend a significant amount of time adjusting it to work
correctly on an analog interface.

Since most stores do not bother to hook up DVI interfaces, you must
spend a significant amount of time adjusting each monitor to make sure
that it matches the analog signal exactly with the dots on the screen.
If the signal does not match the dots, you get an ugly, blurry image.

You must also make sure that your screen resolution matches the LCD
resolution *exactly*.  Do not ever run an 1280x1024 LCD at 1024x768 or
even at 800x600.  You will hate the results.

Recently, a friend and I went to the Seattle Frye's and spent almost 2
hours in front of the row of 19" LCD monitors very carefully going
through each one's setup menu and finding the hidden control which
adjusted the analog signal with the monitor dots.  None of them called
the signal the same thing (not even two different Viewsonic monitors!),
but they all had a signal which essentially worked to align the input
signal with the dot mask of the monitor.  Once we got them all aligned,
it was very tough to tell the difference between the monitors.  We ended
up buying the ViewSonic V910 fir $400.  As soon as I got it home and
plugged into my Matrox MGA 550 (which has two interfaces, one analog and
one digital) it worked instantly with no adjustment other than the
brightness (backlight intensity).

If you buy a LCD, please make sure you have a card with digital I/O.  I
recommend that you stay as far away as possible from anything recent as
none of those idiotic NVIDIA cards do anything reasonable.  Buy an old
Matrox, at least a MGA 400 with the dual monitor plugs on it.

/Joe