Quote Originally Posted by ronss View Post
thanks,,,just ordered the 226bw from dell, proaby get in mon or tues... i have read a lot on this monitor, and their is a lot to read. the different panels, that seems to be the big buzz, s, a , and c panels from what i gather.. i doubt if i look when i get mine, because i have had some say that the c panel just looks great... to it could be a big myth on the s panel. will find out soon, and will try to use magic tune... i almost bought the 225bw...but changed my mind at the last minute...how does dvd movies look, and can i use a blu-ray player on this monitor..i just noticed phylipps came out with a $300 blu-ray player, more my price range.
You'll love the monitor whatever panel you get.

I hope magictune works with your video card (some folks with newer cards get a 'not supported' message.

I've found the calibration routine to be ESSENTIAL in getting greys and other colors in the XP interface to look dense and more saturated than your standard uncalibrated LCD.

I just installed a Samsun 914v 19" LCD for a friend and the uncalibrated image when viewing continuous tone colors in the XP interface was just so washed out and thin.

Luckily Magictune worked fine with his system and post the calibration routine (described in my original post) ... it was like night and day.

Coming from CRT's and Trinitrons ... there's simply no way I could use my LCD with out some sort of calibration routine.

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Regarding DVDs:

The 226BW is phenomenal with DVD's ... again, if your a purist who can't stand backlight bleed and blacks that aren't really black (big problem with LCD's) ... it'll take some tweaking to get things perfect.

Myself, I use Nvidias PureVideo codec which has a good set of color/contrast adjustments and also, once that is set to the optimum level for Blacks and backlight bleed elmination ... I can use MagicTune's brightness and contrast to polish it up.

Here's a bunch of UNAFFECTED camera shots I took of the monitor's output while watching the film Munich in a completely dark room. Great color and zero backlight bleed:

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Otherwise ... enjoy your monitor!