Emne: English translations? / NEC 20WMGX2

[xtknight]

First I'd like to say, great site about flat panel monitors. There's tons of information here that can only be found otherwise through extensive searches.

Do you guys plan on translating anything else other than the panel look-up utility into English? Or, do you know a site that does a good job of translating Danish into English?

Also, I hope you review the NEC 20WMGX2 (LCD20WGX2 in Europe). This monitor is getting awesome reviews.

One more thing I'd like to bring to your attention is this: http://geocities.com/icecow88/970p-dithering-en.html

It seems as though not all S-PVAs are true 8-bit!

I also operate an LCD Buyer's Guide here: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=1745344 &enterthread=y

Thanks, and once again, great site.

[Rasmus Larsen]

Welcome to the forums xtknight.

We appreciate your praise.

[yakken]

Rasmus and I are very excited about the new design that, hopefully, will be launched soon. It will feature brand new elaborate sections on e.g. panel types and how they work, more graphical illustrations and a higher degree of user friendliness.

I agree with Rasmus on the point about translations of all sections. This would be a very extensive work - you already know how much material we have in danish

The 970P monitor is furthermore not the only monitor from Samsung that lacks the ability to display true 24 bit colors - my 193P+ also suffer from this annoying defect. Yes I would really call it a defect, and so far Samsung has been ignoring my e-mails concerning the issue.
My investigation is found here:
http://www.flatpanels.dk/flatforum/viewtopic.php?t=553
My 191T does however, not suffer from this, so somewhere in between these two models, someone got a bright idea, and I'm betting my cat that it rimes with MagicSpeed...

PS. I don't own a cat, so don't get your hopes up, for scoring a housetrained specimen by proving me wrong
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[Gæst]

At one point in time, Samsung had a chart of TFT LCD monitor panels that actually labeled them as 6-bit/8-bit/true 8-bit. I save a lot of documentation about LCD/TFTs so I managed to grab it. It does make sense the 193+/970P have the same "defects". The panel they use is not listed as true 8-bit.

http://xtknight.atothosting.com/misc/UST01.xls

[xtknight]

Oops, forgot to login. Guest is me (xtknight). The link is an Excel chart of Samsung's TFT monitor panels they had up a while ago. They no longer list color fidelity.

Good to hear about the website and such.

Oh, the UST01.xls is still on Samsung's site actually, just not linked to.

http://www.samsung.com/Products/TFTLCD/common/product_list.aspx?family _cd=UST01
http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/common/excel/UST01.XLS

[yakken]

Even if it is not a true 8 bit, there is still no excuse for the dithering patterns observed on the panel. TN panels manage to produce the remaining color through FRC with a decent result, so why shouldn't this PVA panel do so as well? Dithering is an obsolete technology when speaking of color reproduction in flatpanels, and I cincerly hope that Samsung is aware of the discontent among their customers.

Even if the monitor only used 6 bit adressing pr. subpixel, it should still not behave as it does now.
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[yakken]

I have just recieved an answer from Samsung, who confirms that they are using 6 bit adressing in the final step plus FRC and most importantly they utilize spacial dithering in their PVA panels. Either in an 8x8 pixel arrangement or in a 2x4 pixels arrangement.

So there you have it...
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[cobain]

I'm glad that here in Spain it's still possilbe to buy the standard 193P (as far as I know, and unlike the 173P+, the 193P+ it's still not in the market).
I'm planning to buy a 19" TFT monitor and I don't want dithering artefacts, even if it means a high response time.

[yakken]

I'm not sure the 193P is free of dithering artifacts. I only saw the monitors briefly and did not have time to test it properly. My personal guess was that the dithering is linked to the overdrive technology in oder to speed things up, but this is not a fact.
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[cobain]

I currently use a standard 173P (manufactured in 2004), and I haven't found any dithering patterns (yet). I played some videogames and DVDs but I don't detected nothing.
Do you know any type of image or sequence of images that is specially useful to check if a monitor uses dithering or not?

[yakken]

Yes the black to white gradient from our "Hjælpeværktøj". You can find it here: http://tft.vanity.dk/monitorTest.exe

Pay attention to vertical lines in the dark region. You should be able to see a slight color variation along a straight vertical line. The BG-color on www.edbpriser.dk is one of the grey colors that my monitor cannot reproduce without visible dithering, so you might want to try that also.
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[cobain]

Thanks Yakken. This site is full of useful info.

The result of my test is somewhat surprising to me. I connect my 173P to the graphics card with both analog and digital cables, and I usually prefer the analog one because the DVI connection don't allow the user to modify the RGB values.

Using the analog connection, the black to white gradient of the Flash monitor test looks very smooth, and the background of the web site is a solid gray.

Then I changed the 173P input to DVI... And suddenly appeared vertical bars on the gradient, and the website's background is not solid anymore, instead there is a very tiny "grid". It looks like a solid gray from some distance, but looking at it closer (like 10 cm or less) I noticed the color is defined by a pattern!

[sol_jakobsen]

no not all S-PVAs, or p-mva are true 8-bit, from what can see from the information I have looked at, both Samsung and CMO uses 6bit + frc with all there fast va panels…that includes monitors from Samsung Belinea, ViewSonic and others who uses there panels…8/6ms va's
I agree it seams the new lg 6ms isp panel is getting great revives, but, lets see if they also have turned it into a 6 bit for speed improvement

[yakken]

There are actually two kinds of artifacts on the panel - one that is directly related to the ability to produce smooth gradients and the dithering mentioned earlier. The ability to produce a smooth gradient must not be confused with dithering - I believe this is a result of the digital handling of the DVI signal inside the monitor.

The dithering is something else. There is an example of what to look for in the Paneltyper in this forum.
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[Wildt]

[cobain]

Wildt, I think you are right.

Analog "imperfections" can hide the dithering artifacts, while DVI, more accurate, shows them.

It's ironic that an "obsolete" analog connection can provide better results (or, at least, an illusion of more quality to the naked eye) than a more modern and precise tecnology like DVI...

Finally I understand because the manual of the standard 173P/193P says that the number of colors that these models are capable of display is only 16,2 millions. Until now I always thought it was an error, but I realized it's true. :-(

I wonder if these dithering patterns are even more visible in the Plus versions of the 173P/193P.

[yakken]

I might have access to a 193P at work, but as we use a bunch of 193P+ models as well and since my firm occupy 22000 square meters, it might be difficult to track them down...

If I find one, I will post the result in the section regarding dithering in the panel section.
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[xtknight]

Regarding ViewSonic VP930b:

A while ago I along with other people have speculated that the VP930b is also a 6-bit like the 970P was, due to weird flickery patterns in a select series of colors. Then one user called in and ViewSonic told him it was a known electronics issue with the monitor (and meanwhile sent him a completely different model). But, one VP930b user in my thread at AnandTech said he never noticed the flickering until one day he turned it on and he saw it easily on his wallpaper (he had the same wallpaper throughout).

So this all boils down to: an electronics component that failed over time, and thats failure yielded weird patterns. Hmm, sounds a little suspicious doesn't it? After all, what kind of a "defect" would cause this flickery pattern? (Maybe poorly electromagnetic field-shielded ICs.) Maybe they just meant the P-MVA panel from AUO had serious issues.

I have also read lots about "swarming" on VA panels and I can say I've seen something like that in dark grayish colors. What causes that?

[xtknight]

Sorry, kind of off-topic, but wow, this is some cool stuff!!! http://www.behardware.com/html/news/cat22/page1.html#8038

More: http://www.hardware.fr/news/lire/11-03-2006/#8049

[Rasmus Larsen]

I just returned from CeBIT and have tons of pictures. I'll make an article about it soon and shall let you know when it's done.

Furthermore I will receive the 1600:1 LG monitor soon.
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Rasmus Larsen - www.flatpanels.dk