What's the Best General Purpose Display?

Who Man asks: "There are many options when buying a display today: Direct-View CRT, CRT-Based Rear Projection, CRT-Based Front Projection, Direct-View LCD, LCD-Based Rear Projection, LCD-based Front Projection, DLP-based Rear Projection, DLP-based Front Projection, Plasma, lcos-based front projection, and lcos-based rear projection. Did I leave anything out? Each of these seems to have a distinct trade-off, and it gets especially confusing when the display is intended for multiple purposes--watching analog 4:3 video, watching hi-def 16:9 video, watching DVDs (in several different aspect ratios), playing PC games, and playing console games. A particularly sticky area seems to be getting a display that handles analog and digital signals equally well. Seems that the newer digital displays are great at displaying hi-def signals but make an analog TV show look horrible. Is there a display that's adept at handling multiple inputs? Has anyone had specific experience, good or bad, with any particular displays? What about using an external processor with a digital display?"

My experience with HT displays

[i_am_nitrogen]

I'd have to say that a digital projector in any case is going to beat out a direct view CRT or rear projection CRT (unless you're talking about a 19" computer monitor). Only the most expensive 8" and 9" front projection CRT's can equal or outperform a nice digital projector. DLP projectors are the best bet in my opinion. They have perfectly square pixels with very little space between them (i.e. no screen door effect). DLP's do have their downsides, like reduced color saturation at low luminosity, the RGB flickering effect visible when moving your eyes around quickly (this is reduced significantly by projectors with 6-segment color wheels and/or higher color wheel rotation speed), and the "DLP crawlie effect" caused by the dithering done to convert the high bandwidth signal to the (binary?) range of the DMD; this effect is most visible when displaying a dim image with lots of similar colors next to each other, and standing right next to the screen and moving your head toward and away from the screen. Still, for the increased lifetime over LCD projectors, I'd always recommend DLP front projection for almost any application. I bought my projector 3-years used, and it still has perfect image quality. Bulbs are about 20-50 cents per hour of usage, so if you always have friends over to watch movies/TV, you can have them pay you a quarter each and recover your bulb costs.

In short, an XGA or WXGA DLP projector will probably suit your needs. For digital viewing, an HDTV tuner that can scale to 1024x768p (or 1365x768p) will be fine (I recommend the MyHD PCI card), and for analog viewing, Dscaler does a great job. For Linux, there's tvtime, but tvtime seems to delay the video more than Dscaler, so you might need to add a delay to the audio to compensate. For DVD, Ogle or Xine is best for NTSC titles.

Re:My experience with HT displays

[Gangis]

I agree wholeheartedly. A DLP with S-Video, Composite, VGA and BNC input will cost just a couple of thousand dollars (USD). Like this fellow said, though, you'd need a computer or a tuner connected to it to be able to switch channels. If you have Digital Cable service in your area along with HDTV support, you could theoretically plug that into the projector just fine. A ceiling-mount projector would be excellent too.

Direct-View CRT is the Benchmark

[RobKow]

High-resolution direct-view CRTs are still the quality benchmark that other displays strive for but still fall short of. It has a superior combination of contrast, dynamic range, and resolution compared to any alternative.

Other displays may be larger (direct-view CRTs drop off at a size considered modest for home theater), but none beat the quality.

Re:Direct-View CRT is the Benchmark

[UnknownSoldier]

> High-resolution direct-view CRTs are still the quality benchmark that other displays strive for but still fall short of. It has a superior combination of contrast, dynamic range, and resolution compared to any alternative.

If you mean the Loewe Aconda as being the standard, then yes, you can't buy a better CRT.

However, these Plasma owners beg to differ:
If plasmas were not available, which set would you own? [avsforum.com]

Cheers

Re:Not much to offer.

[Apreche]

Sony probably does make a solution. Viewsonic also probably does.

I personally reccomend a large flat screen crt television. Get picture in picture for two tuners and extra inputs (sounds like you'll need them). Make sure it has S-Video, RCA, Coax, and Component. Also make sure it is a progressive scan HDTV. You can plug your pc into it via S-Video out on the video card. You can plug your console in by component (the 3 plug one) and your old console by RCA. Your DVD player on the other tuner via component a

Plasma? Oled?

[Paddyish]

I've found wide-view Plasma displays hard to beat (I worked with dual 48 inchers on my work PC for several months!). They are extremely expensive though. I'm waiting until OLED becomes mainstream before I upgrade my home PC monitor.

Re:Plasma? Oled?

[Paddyish]

Actually, I was working on control displays for a steam turbine/recovery boiler at a paper mill. They require large numbers of operators to see them simultaneously, or things go *BOOM!*

I had to sit clear across the room from those bad boys...it was nice :o)

Re:Plasma? Oled?

[UnknownSoldier]

> I've found wide-view Plasma displays hard to beat (I worked with dual 48 inchers on my work PC for several months!). They are extremely expensive though.

Eh? A 42" can be found for less then $3300, which is a bargain. A far cry from last year's $5K !

Re:Plasma? Oled?

[lindsayt]

However,

Remember that the bargain $3.3K screens are just EDTV (852x480) whereas last year's (and this year's too for that matter) $5K screens are HDTV (1280x1280, 1280x1024, 1280x768, or 1080x853).

Re:Plasma? Oled?

[UnknownSoldier]

> Remember that the bargain $3.3K screens are just EDTV (852x480)

Correct. The reason I have one, is because they match up the best with DVDs resolution of 720x480.

> $5K screens are HDTV (1280x1280)

Which you should avoid like the plague, or any other same-size resolutions. Although 1366x768 is a good aspect ratio.

Re:Plasma? Oled?

[lindsayt]

Yes, I expect I'll be buying an EDTV plasma screen soon as well - they're perfect for DVD viewing, and as long as they can downconvert 720p and 1080i signals to 480p, they'll be perfectly fine for HDTV (nearly perfect for 720p, a bit goofy for 1080i/540p).

I would disagree that same-size resolutions are inherently bad - at first it sounds kind of silly, but any good digital processor (which all the expensive screens have) can map the image such that having extra pixels won't hurt anything. Of course a 16:9

What about LEDs?

[SN74S181]

I like LEDs. They work great on my calculator, and I've even seen some pretty flashy action on the front of an Animatronics TeleTubby doll. Bicolor LED matrixes are cool.

You're correct. There are tradeoffs.

[smalloy]

First of all, go to www.avsforum.com and you can find information about all these different technologies. There's tradeoffs, and there doesn't seem to be a perfect set yet. Especially not in the price range of mere mortals. Having said this, my Samsung 50" DLP rear-projection set came in on Friday, and it's amazing for component DVD. Only okay for standard definition cable, and Time Warner is having some trouble getting a HD signal to me, but that is supposed to be very very nice as well. Where this set is really supposed to shine is PC viewing, either through the VGA or DVI connectors. I haven't tried either, as I've been too busy re-watching my entire DVD collection :) The drawbacks on these sets tends to be in black levels, and a "rainbow" effect when you move your head that some people can see, and I cannot. There's also a $250 bulb that will occasionally need to be replaced (mtbf 8000 hours). The Sony Grand Wega LCD set is supposed to look better for SD cable, and really good for DVDs, but LCDs are prone to pixels getting "stuck", and you have to worry about image burn-in. Plus, getting a PC to display on the Grand Wega takes some fiddling; on the Samsung DLP, you more or less just plug it in.

Re:You're correct. There are tradeoffs.

[UnknownSoldier]

> The Sony Grand Wega LCD set is supposed to look better for

The KF-50XBR800, or GWII as it is more commonly called, is an excellent TV. Almost picked one up, but went the Plasma route. :)

> as I've been too busy re-watching my entire DVD collection :)
Yeap, I hear ya!

> , but LCDs are prone to pixels getting "stuck", and you have to worry about image burn-in.
I believe you're misinformed. LCD's don't have image burn-in, at least to my knowledge.

Plasma's can have burn-in issues (and usually did a f

My favorite

[mike_mgo]

This is my favorite viewer. thisoldtoy.com [thisoldtoy.com]

Dell 2000FP

[rakerman]

The Dell 2000FP 20" LCD has four inputs: D-sub (analog, VGA), DVI, composite and S-video. Nice display.

Re:Dell 2000FP

[lindsayt]

I am staring at one even as we speak. Yes, it's a nice screen, especially for the price. However, I have had extremely mixed results with its analog signal processing (both VGA and DVI-A). With some video cards it's excellent, but with others I have had vast amounts of ghosting. Its automatic adjustment is not very good, and it doesn't seem to keep manual adjustments very well if you're using a KVM.

Bottom line: since it's my boss's money, I love the 2000FP. If it were my money, I would only buy one if

Re:Dell 2000FP (and recent TV shopping)

[SamHill]

They are definitely really nice monitors. I got one at work, and then ended up buying one for my home machine.

They don't make great TVs, though, although they are workable if you're desperate. I had the monitor a couple of weeks before I got the new computer, so we put it next to our real TV for comparison, using its S-video input. We weren't that impressed, because it showed significant ghosting.

Then our real TV died and we used the 2000FP again while we were trying to find a replacement. It's fin

No such thing

[fm6]

Trying to find a one-size-fits-all solution to something like this is silly. Everybody's different. Is money no object [sgi.com] or are you on a budget? Do you really need your own big screen, or will that old department project do for the weekly meeting? Etc., etc.

Right now I'm really anxious for my monitor to wear out because LCDs have fallen into my price range. But have they worked out the latency kinks yet? Well, I don't care, 'cause I'm not a gamer. YMMV!

New RCA rear projection

[p7]

The new RCA rear projection TVs (CRT I believe) have some pretty impressive connection features.

Tuning Capability: NTSC/ATSC
Digital Cable Capatibility: IEEE1394DTV-LINK/DVI/YPrPb

That is for the HD65W140.

My all time favorite general purpose display,

[mbstone]

Nixies. Or IEEs.