I’ve written in the past about not having a TV to play Console games on , And through many trials I settled on the VD-W2 Wii VGA cable. The cable definitely served its purpose, after trying many TV Cards that just could not hold up to console gaming I decided to try that cabled on a whim. Honestly it was one of the best things I bought to use with my monitor. So if you have a small room and do not want to deal with the annoyences of TV Card or having a TV and a Computer monitor in the same room with your console and PC, The Vdigi Wii VGA Cable is worth the buy!
well….
The cable earned its retirement after almost a year of faithful service, I had given away one of my monitors due to the fact we still had a monstrosity of a CRT monitor in the house, That given, It started me on a new quest.
To find a monitor to fit my needs….
Since I was using both the VGA and the DVI inputs that meant I needed a monitor to have at least 2 inputs. The last time I had purchased a monitor was 2007 and, I was not sure exactly sure how things have changed in that technology.
Well I took a little crash course.
(click more to read on)
I found that the 19inch LCD’s were limited through DVI as far as resolutions were concerned – You have basically a choice of 4 resolutions 800×600 through 1440×900. Although newer 19inch monitors will go up to 1680×1050. Prices on monitors have come way down as well, you dont need to mortgage your first born to get an LCD these days.
Anyways I decided to look Higher up on the food chain of LCD monitors, Theres a ton of decisions to make- Online or Local, Size, Refresh Rate, Aspect ratio, and other but there is one Small option I do NOT care for … Dynamic Contrast, Its a gimmick
Dynamic contrast ratio
A notable recent development in the LCD technology is the so-called “dynamic contrast” (DC). When there is a need to display a dark image, the display would underpower the backlight lamp (or decrease the aperture of the projector’s lens using an iris), but will proportionately amplify the transmission through the LCD panel. This gives the benefit of realizing the potential static contrast ratio of the LCD panel in dark scenes when the image is watched in a dark room. The drawback is that if a dark scene does contain small areas of superbright light, image quality may be over exposed.
The Monitors I’ve seen with Dynamic Contrast really bug the hell out of me. When you go from a scene thats light to dark, the monitor has a conniption of going light to dark.
The monitor I first chose was the Samsung 2253BW: a 22 Inch widescreen monitor, I purchased this from OfficeDepot seeing as it was almost the same price as Newegg.com. This monitor was OK if you intended just to take it out of the box and plug it in and do no more. The fun begins when you try to use both the VGA and DVI plugs. When you try to switch source you met with a black screen, basically you have to keep turning the monitor on and off till you get the image on the second source. Thats Failure number One. Failure number two is more evil than Darth Vader beating a kitten, I decided to try to set the screens colors to something more pleasing to the eye rather than burn your retinas out bright, After 2 hours of trying to set colors. on this monitor I just gave up, there was no way to do what I wanted without a massive amount of work or annoyence.