30" monitor with high image quality for gaming

[gloatlizard]

Hello can you suggest something i can order from Europe? I have around 800€ to spend. I think i can't find anywhere the Dell 3007wfp-hc in Europe, and for now i've found only an Lg W3000H and a Hazro HZ30W. Tnx

[PC_User]

If you want high image quality and low input lag for gaming, try to look for S-PVA/MVA panels. The TN panels (usually with very low response times and 170/160 degree angles) are great for gaming (low input lag) but are only 6-bit and therefore have poor coloration and gamma relative to the PVA/IPS panels.

That Dell that you mentioned is a good 30" monitor.

[STEvil]

LG W3000H is the panel Dell uses for their 3008 model. The LG has no scaler, the Dell does.

I have found it to be an excellent LCD so far other than you have to manually adjust the brightness down to about -21 in CCC if you are using a 4870X2 to remove "sparkling" on some gray colors.

[gloatlizard]

if a game has no support for the 2560x1600 res(xhd) i can always interpolate it to 1920x1200 via softwer right? i got a 280gtx, will it be sufficient for playing at this res? thanks

[gloatlizard]

what do you mean with ''i've found it to be...'': that you have it or you made a research on internet for it?

[PC_User]

How about these LG IPS Panels:

LG LM300WQ3
LG LM300WQ5

[JayG30]

I but are only 6-bit and therefore have poor coloration and gamma

Not to sound like a jerk or anything but do you know anything about this? Or are you just stating what some other people have told you, most likely from [H]Forums.

I suggest you register over at a place like AVSForums and do some reading up on things such as 8bit, 10bit, etc. You might find that those pretty specs don't mean all that much. I'll cut and paste you a good post from a member, but I suggest you go search the forums yourself. More people reading AVS the better. :p:

The claims of 12-bit, 14-bit, 18-bit, etc have very little to do with the number of colors you see on the screen. Aside from Sony's AVCHD camcorder format, all sources today -- cable, satellite, DVD, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, Xbox360, and PS3 -- are 8-bit per pixel, i.e. 24-bit RGB. If you display the original source directly on the screen, without any degradation, you'll never have more than 8-bit per pixel on the screen. Some extra precision is obviously required to eliminate rounding errors in processing, but 10-bit 4:4:4 through the entire data path is more than sufficient to do that.

Unless you are going to apply some artificial color expansion** -- such that the colors on the screen no longer correspond to the colors in the original source content -- there is no practical reason to have processing with precision greater than 10-bit 4:4:4. Few LCD panels can even display 10-bit color, regardless of their processing; most displays use 8-bit panels. The only reason you even need 10-bit is to eliminate rounding errors. But 12-bit, 14-bit, and 18-bit are completely unnecessary to eliminate rounding errors with 8-bit sources.

Bitness alone is no indication of performance. In fact, to me, it suggests the opposite. The larger the width of the datapath, the more costly and complex it is to design silicon capable of quality scaling and deinterlace. If you do all your processing at 18 bits per pixel, then chances are good you aren't doing much, because doing everything at that precision would introduce significant cost. Take the example of per-pixel, motion-adaptive deinterlace for high-definition. To do this with a high degree of quality, the display processor must analyze 4-5 different 1920x540 fields simultaneously. It must compare adjacent fields to determine which pixels have moved in the past (and next) 1/60 of a second, and which pixels have not. Once it determines what pixels are in motion, it must look at the 4-5 fields to determine the properties of that motion so it knows how to best interpolate the difference, and where it should apply certain filters.

The bandwidth required to compare all those pixels at 18-bit precision is substantially higher than that required to do the same thing at 10-bit precision. Maintaining such high levels of precision throughout the entire pipeline makes it more complex and costly to implement motion-adaptive deinterlace and inverse telecine, which determines the source resolution output to your screen. Hence, in many cases, higher "bitness" equates to lower source resolution on your screen.

Regards.

EDIT: Also another good read about why people believe TN panels are only 6bit, and how that is not entirely correct can be found HERE (http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/6bit_8bit.htm). All the different methods are presented, dithering from 6bit or extend to 9bit, and also how it compares to other panels. Note the very last sentence as well. I'll put it here for those lazy people;

In terms of colour accuracy and colour reproduction, the use of 6-Bit + FRC doesn't make a massive difference. Modern TN Film panels for instance can offer very good colour reproduction qualities and DeltaE can be very low on colour calibration graphs. To the average user, colours still look very good and it might well be very hard to tell any real difference between a 6-Bit and an 8-Bit screen.

[Soulburner]

Jay, try looking at a 6-bit TN panel from a few inches to either side, up or down, and tell me the color is fine ;)

[saki_bomber]

Jay, try looking at a 6-bit TN panel from a few inches to either side, up or down, and tell me the color is fine ;)

spot on:up:

my eyes cant fool me, i dont care what the ppl at AVS forums say. just because they stated something does not make it law

[reberto]

spot on:up:

my eyes cant fool me, i dont care what the ppl at AVS forums say. just because they stated something does not make it law

Except on the AVS forum they know what they are talking about ;)

[JayG30]

I never ever said that off axis viewing was better on a TN panel. What does that have to do with 6 bit anyway? I'd love to hear the reasoning behind that. Seems you went from me talking about 6bit, 6bit dithered, 6bit extended to 9bit, and true 8 bit and completely went off course to talk about off axis viewing angles. Why not bring up areas that TN panels are actually better? Response time, input lag, PRICE.

My point is this. 90% of the people out there have no purpose to spend $600+ on a 24" non-TN panel to get a true 8 bit display. A good TN panel, like one extended to 9 bit to reach 16.7 million colors, can pretty much match what an 8 bit panel can. Plus you can avoid banding issues that come from 8 bit. The only people that need to be THAT paranoid about a true 8 bit display should be those that are doing professional (or semi-professional) work that involves static images and such. And in that case you might be better off looking for something a bit better anyway. In contrast you are spending more money for these "better" panels when the advantages will not be present in any gaming, movie watching, general desktop work, and maybe not even when you are messing around in photoshop. Instead you have the disadvantages of worse input lag, response time, and higher prices (a good $300+ difference at 24"). As far as off axis viewing, a good TN panel still offers rather decent viewing angles. Considering a computer monitor is primarily used by one person and I bet very few of you EVER use your display at any position that would even cause this to be an issue. I find this point to always be the most pointless. I really doubt someone using it to edit a photo would be doing so while sitting off axis. Do you people HONESTLY use your display when not positioned within a few degrees left and right or do people just like to throw this argument out there as a form of justification? At a certain point you have to say "why would I be using my monitor at this angle, the picture is all deformed at this angle anyway, this is pointless".


Finally, these people that I'm quoting are not just general users that don't understand this stuff. AVSForums does indeed have some of the most knowledgeable people in the fields of audio and video. Many of which do this stuff for a living. Another good explanation from someone who actually known's from doing. Pulled from the same thread about a question of two displays that specs were similar but quote different bits.

The question the OP asked concerned 10-bit processor versus 16-bit color processing.

The precise answer is that the two specifications concern different but related aspects of the display and should not be directly compared. Since the models mentioned are two different displays within the same product family, it is most likely the case that both share 10-bit processors (referring to the width of the CPU pipeline used to manipulate the color bits) and both displays also utilize 16-bit color processing (referring to the internal colorspace depth), while the two differ only in other features and in the marketing literature. With any CPU/GPU design, the pipeline must be wider than the data being processed or multiple processors must be used to process the wider data using narrower pipelines. In the case being discussed, 16-bit color data is broken into two 8-bit bytes, then run through two seperate 10-bit processors, and the extra bits are called the "carry" bits. We design the chips this way because two 10-bit processor "slices" are much simpler/cheaper than the single much more complex 18-bit chip design.

Such misunderstandings are not uncommon when attempting to interpret the marketing jargon. Indeed, after working as an EE on new computer and graphic products for over 20 years, one of the tasks I dread in each new product program is reviewing the marketing literature and trying to keep the marketing professionals honest (at least on paper).

Which is not to say that color depth should not concern you. There are two common color depths used in consumer displays today, which are 8-bit and 6-bit, referring to the shades of the Red/Green/Blue video signals. More commonly we call these "24-bit color" and "18-bit color". These color depths distinguish video displays from graphics displays which is something that needs to be understood, especially by HTPC afficianadoes.

Computer graphics displays that must refresh quickly use 6-bit RGB for a total of 256K colors represented by these 18 bits. The reduced video signal bandwidth makes possible faster screen updates. The total number of colors possible is actually 16.2M, a technique called "dithering" generates the extra shades between the ones in the video signal. When these 6-bit monitor displays or GPU designs are used for video source material, the visible result is often referred to as "color banding" but more properly is called "posterization". The color depth actually got compressed before input to the GPU, the output got dithered in the display, and one heck of a lot of number crunching was avoided entirely. Such very fast displays are ideal for text, video gaming, and general purpose flicker-free high resolution graphics, often at 150Hz or faster refresh. Desktop images are intended to be synthesized in the GPU at extemely high frame rates limited only by processing power. Still, such displays have long been used for simulations and gaming.

Video displays including the ones used for HD use 8-bit RGB (total 24 bits) and therefore display 16.7M colors natively without dithering. More video signal bandwidth is consumed and therefore the refresh rate must be dropped to cram the extra color information into the data stream. Since film-souce video originates as 24 frames-per-second and video source as 60 fields-per-second, the tradeoff is a good one, avoiding the posterization artifact while maintaing a refresh rate that is generally considered adequate for video. The result is an excellant approximation of the infinate number of colors in nature as only 16.7M recorded colors.

Now, while it is true that the human eye can distinguish more than 16.7M colors during liesurely inspection of static images, in truth 24-bit color is more than sufficient to represent moving images. (In fact we steal two bits and master NTSC DVDs with 22 bits and hardly anyone notices.)(Those few that do notice call it a "Chroma Bug" but we did it deliberately.)(We are NOT stealing two bits on the HD media.) The 32-bit color depth of professional graphics displays simply allows pixel manipulations of the 24-bit video source that avoids loss of color information when rendered down to 24-bit color for distribution on HD media.

By contrast the prior generation of game developers worked with 24-bit color displays and rendered their games at 18-bit color depths for distribution - but technology marches on, and games intended for today's HD displays originate at 24 bit color depths and must be manipulated on a 32-bit graphics system. Likewise CGI manipulations of real video images intended for that same 24-bit HD distribution media must be manipulated at 32 bit depth, to avoid that somewhat "unreal" appearance that marred recent movies like The Chronicles of Narnia. (They manipulated 24-bit video source on yesterday's 24-bit systems.)

==> There are no plans to extend 32-bit color depth to consumer displays or consumer HD media. Such additional color depth may or may not be a feature of the next generation of consumer products beyond HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, probably 10+ years away, and therefore of ZERO CONCERN to today's consumers. Some few relatively expensive displays are being designed for the HD camcorder crowd to allow the same manipulation of video at 32-bit color depth as is practiced today, at lower entry pricing with modern PCs. The interface specifications for connections like HDMI are also being expanded for the same reasons, and for the same semi-pro applications. Such displays will have NO ADVANTAGE WHATSOEVER after the manipulated HD camcorder video is rendered for the 24-bit distribution media.

In case you ar wondering, manipulation of 32-bit color requires implementation of FOUR existing processor slices or very much more expensive chips with wider internal pipes - but silicon is getting cheaper all the time (Moore's Law). The most advanced GPU designs now use entire arrays of smaller processors in parallel, a technique borrowed from yesterday's scientific supercomputers.

Here's a non-technical discussion of color depth as applied to consumer displays: http://compreviews.about.com/od/multimedia/a/LCDColor.htm

...and for those who have it bad, the gory detail on Chroma Bug: http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...ug-4-2001.html

But by all means keep telling yourselves that you understand because someone told you once on some PC forum that one has to be better than the other and therefore worth 2x the price.

And FYI, it isn't just people on AVS that say this. All people in the field have said this. The TFT article link says it, articles on About say this, and there are tons more. Again this was not about off axis viewing, it is about true 8 bit compared to 6 bit methods. If your off axis viewing is that bad that a few inches screws up color I suggest you use a better TN.

[stevecs]

In my case I am still hoping to pick up true 30-bit (10bit/per channel) at least. But this is NOT for any gaming or video viewing reasons. I do a lot of work with photographs (16-bit per channel/48bit tiffs)). The problem is that when dealing with a much wider spectrum what you see on the screen is NOT what you actually have. When you do any colour transforms your monitor colour profile will mask what the change was so you only see gross changes. This is ok if you are intending to down-convert to jpg or 24bit colour. It is NOT ok when you are going to output back to 48bit or any output medium that has a wider colour space than RGB.

Right now there are only very few (2-3?) monitors that have wider gamuts and they are pricey (only sold to graphic artists really) plus it's small (24" / low resolution). I'm hoping that there will be at least a 2560x1600 one available in the next year or two (ideally 3840x2400 would be much better) dealing with 4-6K DPI scans creates very large images especially when doing medium or large format.

Actually, just looked and found a nice one: http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/product.htm?pid=11095 looks like only $4K USD for 30" kind of overkill for just gaming though.

[Soulburner]

stevecs, how do you work with photos on a 30-bit display and know what they will look like on the web when everyone else viewing has 6-8 bit displays?

[stevecs]

Short answer, there's no way. People like me who are looking for 30bit displays are NOT doing it for web content (heck, that's probably the worst as generally no-one on the web colour calibrates their monitors in the first place so it's rather pointless to even try). Generally though it's no real difference than if I gave you a 16bit tiff, YOUR computer will map it into your color profile (sRGB or whatever you're using). There is no guarantee at all without proper calibration of every piece of your equipment (and mine) that I could say that 'RED' here will be the same 'RED' you'll see. (and depending on the physical limitations of your equipment it may still not work out to be exact but 'close')

The whole point in accurate displays is so you can have an end-end colour match and to do that you have to calibrate all points (scanner, monitor, printer, et al) and keep them calibrated frequently. If you're looking to hang them somewhere then you need to know the lighting of the place where they will be hanging (assuming you have an option and control of that). And the point of wide gamut is to handle the much wider ranges without clipping (why you see banding in images). Couldn't find any better links real fast but this shows some visual examples of colour space work: http://www.outbackphoto.com/color_management/cm_06/essay.html You don't always want a wide range but you have to pick the space you need for your intended purpose. (ie, web pages would be good in a small space like sRGB)

Don't want to side-track this, but for gaming or viewing current DVD's/HD DVD's, don't really worry about colour accuracy as much as you're the last point in a long chain. Any recent monitor with calibration will do a good job for that. If you're doing photo work (or professional wide gamut post production) then gamut & accuracy are paramount and why it commands $$.

[swiftex]

In my case I am still hoping to pick up true 30-bit (10bit/per channel) at least. But this is NOT for any gaming or video viewing reasons. I do a lot of work with photographs (16-bit per channel/48bit tiffs)). The problem is that when dealing with a much wider spectrum what you see on the screen is NOT what you actually have. When you do any colour transforms your monitor colour profile will mask what the change was so you only see gross changes. This is ok if you are intending to down-convert to jpg or 24bit colour. It is NOT ok when you are going to output back to 48bit or any output medium that has a wider colour space than RGB.

Right now there are only very few (2-3?) monitors that have wider gamuts and they are pricey (only sold to graphic artists really) plus it's small (24" / low resolution). I'm hoping that there will be at least a 2560x1600 one available in the next year or two (ideally 3840x2400 would be much better) dealing with 4-6K DPI scans creates very large images especially when doing medium or large format.

Actually, just looked and found a nice one: http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/product.htm?pid=11095 looks like only $4K USD for 30" kind of overkill for just gaming though.

Thats a nice panel. I found the pva panels better due to eyesight(and cost vs ips).
I have 2 refurbished samsung 242mp 24", which, I prefer over any tnt panel so far regardless of spec.
Not the quickest but trade-offs more than tolerable for multi purpose use that I subject it to.

[adamsleath]

i thought the 30" hazro had the 'super-low' input lag. i dont know which hazro model that was though...

[STEvil]

what do you mean with ''i've found it to be...'': that you have it or you made a research on internet for it?

I own one, it works very well.

[dnewhous]

I say save your money and buy an HDTV that you can hang on a wall - at present the picture quality of desktop monitors just isn't very good. You'll get a lot more for your money with a DLP or Plasma display.

[STEvil]

how can 50" at 1920x1080 be better picture quality than 30" at 2560x1600?

[Soulburner]

I say save your money and buy an HDTV that you can hang on a wall - at present the picture quality of desktop monitors just isn't very good. You'll get a lot more for your money with a DLP or Plasma display.
This is true, but you can't hang a DLP on the wall ;)

60" + Samsung LED DLP sets are going for under $1700-2300 and get you 10,000:1 contrast, ~225-250 watts used and weigh only 60-75lbs. Problem is finding a place to put it.

STEvil, resolution is relative to viewing distance. The larger screen may have much less dpi but because of its larger size you will be sitting much further back. We're talking about 10 feet. Not sure if its enough to make up the difference, but much of it. Besides its much easier to push 1920x1080 from a hardware standpoint. If I can't game smoothly at 2560x1600 then there isn't much point.

Then there's the smooth motion and pure blacks you get from a DLP which can't be matched by any LCD. Also, less need for Anti-Aliasing.

Now I wouldn't use one of these for every day tasks...strictly gaming and movies. I'd still rather have a 24-30" monitor for web and photo use.

My .02

[ewitte]

how can 50" at 1920x1080 be better picture quality than 30" at 2560x1600?

Pixels so small you can't see the detail? I've always liked larger displays for video.

[stevecs]

For gaming that's a personal choice, I have a 72" DLP here, plus a 65" LCD upstairs both 1080P. I /hate/ them for gaming always going to my 30" 2560x1600 instead. Maybe if they were 3840x2400 resolution or even 2160P, possibly but that's not going to happen (I'd buy one of those for the computer first for graphics work).

[Soulburner]

For gaming that's a personal choice, I have a 72" DLP here, plus a 65" LCD upstairs both 1080P. I /hate/ them for gaming always going to my 30" 2560x1600 instead. Maybe if they were 3840x2400 resolution or even 2160P, possibly but that's not going to happen (I'd buy one of those for the computer first for graphics work).
Is it just the resolution that bothers you?

It would be nice to have higher resolution HDTV's - when you get into the 40, 50, 60, 70" and beyond ranges...1920x1080 isn't what it used to be. But like I said, you are sitting much further away, hopefully 10 feet or so from something that big.

At the same time though, we don't even have game hardware that can run higher res than that on current games at 60-120 fps if you really want to turn up all the image quality options and special effects. The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 both render at a lower res and just upscale to 1080p, which looks nothing like hooking up your PC and really showing what the display can do. The reason they can't is the hardware - they would not run at the minimum 30fps and you would have big framerate issues.

[stevecs]

Resolution is the main item by far (as for acuity in my case I have no problem sitting ~24" away from my 30" 2560x1600 monitor). The other is the space/environments I play a lot of strategy type games, complete opposite of things like the 'wii', where sitting a a desk to hold your notes, game controls et al, is something that I just can't get/duplicate in the media rooms. (that and the fact that I don't play games solely it's more of a task-switching item when I'm waiting on something else and can't speed it up I'll fill in the cycles by playing something).

[dnewhous]

how can 50" at 1920x1080 be better picture quality than 30" at 2560x1600?

This is an extraordinarily stupid question. How can 36 bit color not be better than 18 bit color? A 30" desktop display with 24 bit color is going to cost at least $2500 and Eizo is the only brand that would make something like that.
And then there's the contrast ratio, which is limited to 1000:1 for 24 bit color from an LCD.

[STEvil]

Thanks for completely missing the point dnewhous, and within 15 posts you insulted a moderator!

wow.

[dnewhous]

Thanks for completely missing the point dnewhous, and within 15 posts you insulted a moderator!

wow.

And before that, I was insulted by a moderator. Wow! What goes around comes around.

[JoeBar]

And before that, I was insulted by a moderator. Wow! What goes around comes around.
Are u serious or u playing stupid?

[IronWarrior]

Hey don't get off topic, am interested to see what monitor he chooses. :D

[itznfb]

i use a Samsung LN32A650 for my gaming monitor. i love it.

What goes around comes around.

i'm sure you'll eventually regret that one.....

[B.E.E.F.]

This is an extraordinarily stupid question. How can 36 bit color not be better than 18 bit color? A 30" desktop display with 24 bit color is going to cost at least $2500 and Eizo is the only brand that would make something like that.
And then there's the contrast ratio, which is limited to 1000:1 for 24 bit color from an LCD.

I agree. But you forget one thing.

No one makes a 1080p plasma display that's ~30" in size.

[adamsleath]

30" is a sweet spot for high res and screen size imo.
you can sit close to it and at a distance.

say you got a 42" plasma instead, hypothetically, @ 1080p you will need to sit back from the screen so you dont see the pixellation...but still pretty good...and potentially much better contrast and motion picture characteristics.

i assume hdmi is the way to go?

also 1080p will give you better fps than 2560 x 1600, depending on what grfx you have.

[GiosBrah]

1080p will give you more fps cause the reso will be :banana::banana::banana::banana: which means yeah...you gotta sit far away...

can't really sit 1.5m away from your computer screen?

[Lu(ky]

Resolution is the main item by far (as for acuity in my case I have no problem sitting ~24" away from my 30" 2560x1600 monitor). The other is the space/environments I play a lot of strategy type games, complete opposite of things like the 'wii', where sitting a a desk to hold your notes, game controls et al, is something that I just can't get/duplicate in the media rooms. (that and the fact that I don't play games solely it's more of a task-switching item when I'm waiting on something else and can't speed it up I'll fill in the cycles by playing something).

stevecs I have a couple of questions to ask. I see allot of Forum people pointing out this LG W3000H-Bn Black 30" 5ms (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824005115) to me, any comments on it? I will only be using it 90% for gaming and may be 10% photo editing. There is really not many reviews out there yet on it. I am trying to find the best eye candy at 2560x1600. I already used my Sharp Aquos 52" as a monitor so I am over that Res. And my current setup I usually run at 1920x1200.

Thanks for your input..

[stevecs]

The LG W3000H is 5ms g-g and about 12ms w-b similar to my LP3065. It only has one dvi input if that's a problem (I hook up multiple computers to the lp3065 and switch between them). The ~370cd/m^2 is a little better than the lp3065 (screens loose brightness over time so in a hot (bright) room you'll have a hard time with viewing colour accuracy. (you don't want to run your monitor at full brightness as you will need to compensate for natural intensity loss over time). Besides that it has slightly better contrast (dynamic). The main thing is no built in scaler (just like mine) so you need to have a card that can output at native res. If I was buying again right now I may go with it over the LP3065 for the slightly higher brightness. colour gamut is the same, won't find anything better until you get into the led backlit ones or ones that are full 30bit capable.

If you're doing photo editing of large (high dpi) photos, I'd say buy a high res set like that as it really aids your production/editing, pays for itself generally in time saved. For gaming it's expensive as you need to get some high end graphics cards to power it with current games (but it's sweet/seductive when you spend the $$'s ;) )

[Lu(ky]

The LG W3000H is 5ms g-g and about 12ms w-b similar to my LP3065. It only has one dvi input if that's a problem (I hook up multiple computers to the lp3065 and switch between them). The ~370cd/m^2 is a little better than the lp3065 (screens loose brightness over time so in a hot (bright) room you'll have a hard time with viewing colour accuracy. (you don't want to run your monitor at full brightness as you will need to compensate for natural intensity loss over time). Besides that it has slightly better contrast (dynamic). The main thing is no built in scaler (just like mine) so you need to have a card that can output at native res. If I was buying again right now I may go with it over the LP3065 for the slightly higher brightness. colour gamut is the same, won't find anything better until you get into the led backlit ones or ones that are full 30bit capable.

If you're doing photo editing of large (high dpi) photos, I'd say buy a high res set like that as it really aids your production/editing, pays for itself generally in time saved. For gaming it's expensive as you need to get some high end graphics cards to power it with current games (but it's sweet/seductive when you spend the $$'s ;) )

Thank you for your help.... I will pull the trigger on it tomorrow from newegg with free shipping.. And it helps that I live only 15-minutes away from there Whittier Warehouse, so it mean less transit it time, and soccer time with the UPS/Fedex man kicking the box around..:ROTF:

[stevecs]

Cool, it was one of my better investments. If you're looking for a decent colorimeter the spyder3 pro is pretty good, I've used it & the old spyder2 here (3 is a bit faster in calibrations but not much more in accuracy if you already have the 2). Though I've had problems w/ vista and it not keeping as accurate colour as XP does (never really dug into it, it's come up often at the photo forums as well). I didn't like the interface so I went back to XP anyway. Post a shot if you can when you get it.

[Blacky]

LG W3000H dropped price too :-)! planning grabbing one for my new setup soon!

[Lu(ky]

Cool, it was one of my better investments. If you're looking for a decent colorimeter the spyder3 pro is pretty good, I've used it & the old spyder2 here (3 is a bit faster in calibrations but not much more in accuracy if you already have the 2). Though I've had problems w/ vista and it not keeping as accurate colour as XP does (never really dug into it, it's come up often at the photo forums as well). I didn't like the interface so I went back to XP anyway. Post a shot if you can when you get it.

If I use the spyder3 pro will it create input lag? Can I use it on multiple computers as well? What about X-Rite EODIS2 Eye-One Display 2 is it just as good. My brother said he will go halves with me on it. I should get the LG on Thursday and I got additional -$50.00 taken off the deal from LiveSearch.. :) $1200.00 OTD but I will get back the $50.00 in 60 days..:yepp:

[stevecs]

input lag? a colorimeter creates a monitor profile that your computer uses to display colours. There is no more or less lag than what you normally have with your system (you are already using a profile 'default' if you haven't done anything). If you're working with photos though and want to have some repeatability you really should have a colour corrected workflow (capture (scanner/digital camera), display (monitor), output (printer).

As for multiple monitors sure, just install the software and use the calibrator on each system. Eye-One is also good haven't used the current model though, from the reviews with current models that are out now pretty much it comes down to how you like the software. Accuracy is pretty close across the board for calibration.

[Lu(ky]

Thanks stevecs I received my new LG today. No dead or stuck pixels I am on a role now 4 LCD monitors and 2 Aquos TV's none...:woot:

I think I will try the Eye-One I hear it is great.

[Lith]

I used be just like you to get a 30" monitor for high quality gaming but, since the nvidia 3d vision launch. I seen better quality but as of now nvidia only supports 22" samsung and etc no high end 30" or 40" monitors can suppport it (refresh rate at 120 hz to prevent flickering) projectors 1080p are okay for launch... we'll hafta see if the lcd market or display market supports nvidia ;)