OT: What to know before buying an LCD monitor??

[Renegade 13]

I'm looking to buy a 19" LCD monitor, and I'm wondering what I need to know before buying. Things like response time, characteristics LCD's have that aren't issues with CRT monitors, pixel pitch, contrast ratio, resolution limitations, etc. I know very little about any of the above, so anything you can tell me, or any helpful websites you can point me to would be awesome. I'm not a techno-idiot, but just haven't looked into LCD's yet in my internet travels. Any opinions of optimal characteristics given would be very helpful as well. Thanks!!

[Captain Kwok]

Usually future shop or tigerdirect.ca have some good technical primers on these kinds of things.

[Renegade 13]

One more thing; what are the big, trusted names in LCD's, and which brands should I avoid?

[Fyron]

I'd avoid Sony out of principle. Dell tends to make fairly good LCDs from what I gather.

[Atrocities]

I have a Hyundai and it working well for me.

[Will]

Apple Cinema Display... they're puuuurrrdy.

I got a no-name Taiwainese LCD three years ago. It's served me pretty well, only issues are due to not handling it very well during transport (thumbprint sized dark spot, where the screen is a little darder, little scratches, etc). If you can find one that promises zero dead pixels, take it. Most will only take back an LCD if there are 8+ dead pixels. Also, I have yet to find any LCD that handles dark video well. Doom3 is already hard enough with a CRT, but in some places, the varying levels of darkness are imperceptable on an LCD. At times, something that's supposed to be absolutely black will be brighter than something that's supposed to be a color like navy blue. Just some things to consider...

[DarkAnt]

acer makes good ones. Just remember to check the native resolution and refresh rate

[NullAshton]

I have a MAG innovision display. I am happy to say that I have 0 dead pixels.

Also, there's programs avaliable to fix the colors on a LCD. I used the Monitor Calibration Wizard and the colors on my monitor are now a lot crisper. Stuff that's supposed to be absolute black are actually absolute black on my screen, after running that program.

[AgentZero]

Samsung make some pretty nice ones too, you can get a nice one with 700:1 contrast ratio & 4ms response time for around $460CAD. Or, if the response time isn't such a big issue for you, there's a 1000:1 constrast ratio with 8ms response time aronund $690CAD. Although the prices I'm quoting are conversions from GBP to CAD, so you can probably get them cheaper on your side of the Atlantic.

[PvK]

I noticed an LCD monitor on retail display that looked fairly good (I'm an LCD skeptic), but then I noticed that it had a very wide aspect ratio. Since LCD's don't seem to do very well at other than their native resolution, this sort of had me wondering how that was supposed to work with things other than wide-screen movies and desktop applications. In SE4, for example, I guess you'd just have a lot of black to the side(s) of the application... hopefully it wouldn't stretch everything.

I had also just seen some modern expensive TV's on display and I have yet to be impressed by those, either. They _were_ stretching things to fit their aspect ratio, which looked awful (welcome to the WIDE Wide Wide Wide World of Sports...), and like an LCD the display was dark unless viewed from just the right direction (which gets harder for a huge screen), and the resolution really doesn't impress me, especially with so much video these days being compressed digital for cable or DVD instead of analog, so more resolution gives a better view of how crappy the encoding and format are, with jaggy lines, pixelated movement, rectangular compression artifacts... crap, just give me a CRT.

PvK