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I have a Planar PL2010M, a nice monitor with 1600x1200 resolution (4:3 ratio). It's exhibiting a known defect but is out of warranty.
I just got off the phone with Planar, who will fix it for $150 if I ship it to them. What they do is flash the firmware. It wouldn't be refurbed or come back as refurbed—if anything else is wrong they won't touch it. Nothing else is wrong with mine, I don't think, but then how can I know for certain.
I'm on the fence here, because I don't think I can buy a new monitor for $150 that will be as nice—I'm not interested in the widescreen stuff usually sold these days, and those have less total resolution anyway unless significantly bigger/wider, which isn't needed or desired.
I'd consider whatever's a decent 19" or so model if that's where most of the 4:3 screens are these days.
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Yea, you're not going to find a cheap 4:3 monitor with 1600x1200 resolution anymore. Not new, at least. You can probably find something used (i.e. this Dell 2007FP http://cgi.ebay.com/Dell-2007FPb-20-Flat...d=ViewItem&pt=Computer_Monitors&hash=item3caf2c6c45 which is $400 new from Dell.com).
You can probably find a widescreen 1920x1080 display for near that pricepoint. For a little bit more you can get a nice 1080p display. But 1920x1200 displays will cost more.
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I know you said smaller monitor...but for $169 and well-reviewed:
I-inc iH-252HPB 25" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 1080p, 1920x1080, 15000:1 Dynamic, 800:1 Native, 2ms, 16:9
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/...No=4938551&sku=H94-2502&SRCCODE=WEM2340MS&cm_mmc=Email-_-Main-_-WEM2340-_-tigeremail
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Interesting suggestion. Never heard of I-INC nor am I familiar with what I guess is a tunerless-TV. But it's good? Guess I'd want a DVI to HDMI adapter for it, too.
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deckeda wrote:
Interesting suggestion. Never heard of I-INC nor am I familiar with what I guess is a tunerless-TV. But it's good? Guess I'd want a DVI to HDMI adapter for it, too.
Do you have a Mac that can even hit that native resolution of 1920 x 1080?
Jeff
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onthedownlow wrote: I-inc iH-252HPB 25" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 1080p, 1920x1080, 15000:1 Dynamic, 800:1 Native, 2ms, 16:9
With that 2ms response time it has to be a TN panel. I think Planar has an ips panel. I think your best bet is to buy a 19" or 21" TV to get the better screen that you are used to seeing. I wouldn't drop $150 in an old monitor.
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kj4btkljv wrote:
[quote=deckeda]
Interesting suggestion. Never heard of I-INC nor am I familiar with what I guess is a tunerless-TV. But it's good? Guess I'd want a DVI to HDMI adapter for it, too.
Do you have a Mac that can even hit that native resolution of 1920 x 1080?
Jeff
Beats me, and I guess I wouldn't want to anyway. But that brings up another question which is, how good would the quality be running the monitor at less than native resolution … ?
My DVI-to-HDMI adapter comment was based on the belief that it would be better to connect digitally than via VGA, apparently that monitor's only other choice.
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Trouble wrote:
[quote=onthedownlow]I-inc iH-252HPB 25" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 1080p, 1920x1080, 15000:1 Dynamic, 800:1 Native, 2ms, 16:9
With that 2ms response time it has to be a TN panel. I think Planar has an ips panel. I think your best bet is to buy a 19" or 21" TV to get the better screen that you are used to seeing. I wouldn't drop $150 in an old monitor.
I actually do like the idea of getting a small TV so that I could have a box that could do double duty in different places of the house but I know I'd pay for it. I don't expect to pay $150 and get a good TV of that size necessarily, but somewhere I should be able to spend $150 or so and get a good monitor.
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deckeda wrote:
Interesting suggestion. Never heard of I-INC nor am I familiar with what I guess is a tunerless-TV. But it's good? Guess I'd want a DVI to HDMI adapter for it, too.
It comes with a DVI to HDMI cable:
2ms response time is great. So what if it is a TN panel (likely)...that is what most all LCD panels are right now. This will be your average LCD experience. There are some IPS-based LCDs there for a good price too (HP, etc.)...but this is a good buy if your system will support it. Shouldn't be nit-picky with the response time. While there are other factors to compare, even Apple's LCDs only have around 14-16ms response time. ; )
Even pretty good reviews on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/I-inc-iH-252HPB-10..._5?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addFiveStar
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Something to note about using TV's as computer monitors is their energy saving settings, if any. I didn't think about this since I have a tuner-less 37" Westinghouse I'd been using as mostly a monitor, occasionally a TV.
When my computer goes into display sleep, the Westinghouse goes into display sleep also. When I tried to replace it with a 46" Samsung from last year's line-up, I realized the Samsung doesn't have any sort of display sleep functionality and stayed on with a message about no signal and it was slow to pick up the signal when my computer woke up, wreaking havoc on the settings and application windows. This year's line-up of Samsung and some other manufacturers I looked into at least put the display into display sleep after 15 minutes, but none seem to be (from the descriptions, at least) instantaneous display sleep like my Westinghouse or a real computer monitor.
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