Help needed for monitor buying decision

[Six Of One]

Hmh, ok, i am not as far as Guru is. I just recently lost my trusty 7-year old 15" monitor (69KHz, 0.27 Dot). Now i seek a replacement. Since i am at the beginning of my cruise and i have been very satisfied with my 15"er i am more after general recommendations like: should i go for another CRT, a LCD, good experience with this company or that, etc... Money is a non-issue but i am definitely not willing to reinforce my desktop with I-beams to host a 21" CRT or some similiar monster. So let's say i am looking at the 15" to 17" range.

I would say i use my computer for gaming (both 2D/3D), internet and word processing to the same part and very occasional coding. (hey, that's what work is for, isn't it? ) So it's 30/30/30/10.

Regards

[Wombat]

A lot of people here are Cornerstone fans. I don't know how their European program is though.

www.bigmonitors.com, right guys?

[Electric Amish]

I personally like KDS.

Their AV line of Trinitrons is very nice and affordable too.

amish

[Jammrock]

Being one of the new Cornerstone converts, I will now pimp their products.

If you contact our Cornerstone office in the U.K. at
+44-(0)-1530-274121 or e-mail ablack@cptmail.com

They can help you get our products in Finland (or where ever in Europe).

Jim Witkowski
Chief Hardware Engineer
Cornerstone / Monitorsdirect.com

If you are having problems contacting Cornerstone in Europe, try our Munich office at 49-89-45835-321 or our UK office at 44-1530-273-800 durning normal bussiness hours.

Jim is GoSharks here on the forums and he jumps on now and then to answer questions and give out information. If you want to know specifics, he's the man to ask. Greebe has his direct email so if you really want to talk with Jim, I'm sure Greebe can ask him jump on the forums.

I have a Cornerstone p1460, 19" monitor. It is by far the best monitor I have ever used. I hate going to work and looking at my NEC MultiSync FE700. They do have some 17" models for you to chose from, but my 19" screen really isn't that heavy, ~24 kg.

Jammrock

[borat]

if money is no object then go for an LCD.
you dont need much space and the radiation levels it emits are far less than a CRT.
To top it all off the image quality is far higher than any CRT will ever be if you get a good one.
irecommend a 15 - 17" iiyama.
i have had good experiences with this company.

[xortam]

Originally posted by borat
... if money is no object then go for an LCD. ...

6o1 said he was a gamer, in fact that was the first use he stated. LCDs generally aren't good for fast animation.

[Six Of One]

Thank you so far

Thank you for the input. Keep it coming

I am checking out these Cornerstones you mentioned. Never heard of them before... then, a LCD would be nice too

Ilyama? Checking this one also. Thx. Regards

[xortam]

Search the forum. There's been several discussions about monitors. Jim and various MURCers have talked about the benefits of the Cornerstone monitors. There also short-necked monitors which save space and perhaps weight but they have image quality drawbacks. Its all been talked about several times before. Post back if all your questions weren't answered.

[Indiana]

I have good experiences with Iiyama CRTs as well - had a 17" one for years and recently upgraded to the 22". But I've read somewhere that their TFTs are of lower quality than the CRTs. Don't know if it's true, however, since I never looked at any Iiyama TFT myself.

I'd also disrecommend a TFT for gaming - as well as for watching DVDs / TV / videos in general as the TFT have even less "natural" colors than the CRTs. And the picture is too "pixelized". For the usual 2D work however a TFT is great.

[borat]

most lcd's do suffer from pixel lag which makes them less suitable than a CRT for gaming however the 17.4 inch iiyama AS4431D uses MVA technology instead of IPS which reduces this effect almost completely. for a review check www.pcpro.co.uk and search in reviews for the affrmentioned monitor. it apearred in issue 80 which will help you locate the review. to enter the site you will first have to supply a username and password to create a new account.

[Six Of One]

HI again,

i have struck a deal with a local dealer to get a first impression of a Cornerstone CRT. Personally i have set my eye on the c650 17" but the vendor is getting the whole range for "evaluation purposes", because he has heard of these monitors and considered some time ago to add them to his portfolio. He just never had the right impetus for doing so. Enter myself here

Anyway, i'm still not decided. I was seriously considering some kind of LCD but the reports of bad interpolation and therefore bad DVD playback and sluggish response times are confusing me. With a G400 vanilla i don't even think about playing games in 1024*, which apparently is the standard resolution for 15" LCDs, let alone the 1280* of 17" LCDs.

On one hand i hear/read that response times are no issue anymore since the reaction times of LCDs have been reduced to about 30-35 ms. Interpolation is, reportedly, handled very well nowadays and a standard resolution 17" LCD of 1280* can display 800* without flaws.

OTOH i heard this is true only for the most modern LCDs, which are hard to get BTW, while the "normal" stuff is not capable enough for this. Any info on this?

Man, i really would like to get this extra space and good picture quality but not at the expense of versatility.

Xortam, i'll do a search on these topics right after this post and come back afterwards.

Regards

[borat]

the iiyama i mentioned has a response time of 25ms so does not suffer from slow reaction times

[Six Of One]

Confused but happy

No no no, not true. I am not really happy.

Xortam, i have done a search and found that there is a viable Cornerstone fanclub around. Good to know. The search on LCDs was less, err, convincing. Almost nothing

Anyway, because of interpolation issues and sluggish response times it seems a CRT is the better choice for me - and it helps saving money too. I know one person that will be very happy about this. I wonder, why I go to work? The car? The house? Oh yeah... whatever, CRT vs. LCD: 1:0

As always, pending buying decisions teach you a great deal about the subject of desire. I want a small (15-17"), lightweight CRT. CRTs are best with small dot pitch (~0,22), low convergence (~0,25/0,35) and high horizontal scanning frequence. Learned this here:

http://www.bigmonitors.com/learning_center/faqs.htm

Low power consumption and long warranty are additional desirables.

Using the handy tool found here:

http://www.monitorsdirect.com/shopping_tools/monitorselector.shtml

I phrase it that way: i want good picture quality, high resolutions, low power consumption, long warranty and i don't give a flying f*ck about the money (well, Idon't...)

Strangely the tool always places the Hitachi CM621F on top. But taking my previous statements about dot pitch and so on into account the technical datasheet (yes, i know: lots of marketing) identifies the Optiquest Q75 as best solution.

Since the price tag isn't that big a difference i wonder why the tool doesn't rank this one better?

Whatever, has anybody seen this monitor, how does it look, quality? Satisfaction? How does it compare to the c650 from Cornerstone (besides the datasheets)?

Ahhh, question upon question...

Regards

[Six Of One]

Interpolation?

Borat, how does it handle interpolation? I am thinking games here, primarily like Starcraft (fixed at 640*) or the upcoming Master of Orion 3 (allegedly fixed 800*).

I asume that interpolation is not so bad a deal in 3D action games but i would hate to miss because of the blurry crosshair and not because i am completely unable to keep my hand still

Anything about that?

Regards

[ALBPM]

Well, it appears that Cornerstone uses Hitachi Tubes (Invar Shadow Mask). They are the Tops for shadow mask tubes. Very vibrant colors and nice sharp images. They also last forever. I still have a hitachi 751 19" that I got back in 1996 when they first came out.

The difference is in Cornerstone's Customer support. It's the best as Monitors go. Prices are very competative too.


My favorite are the Sony Trinitrons (Apperature grill tubes)

But you just can't beat Cornerstone for their warrenty and support.

Paul