http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?sk...d=1138083976079

They have some 1400:1 monitors and this 1600:1 monitor. I must say I'm skeptical but if its true, I wonder what they could do!

And 4ms response time.... *drool*. This would be great for...well...everything (I was going to say gaming).

Nick

Read this description of LCD specs.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/other/dis.../lcd-guide.html
DJ

That article is quite long, could you sum up what the point of it is? Was it to state that those LCDs can't handle that contrast ratio?

… It basically says don’t believe the specs. Or understand how they got the specs.

DJ

LOL thanks, I am way too lazy to read a 27 page article. However I do wonder if those LCDs Mikau posted are at least near 1000:1? Would be freakin awesome if they were. The response time on them is phenominal.

An interesting comment the author made was with the newer LCD types the contrast ratio can be trusted. If the LCD is the older type, TN+film, and has a high contrast ratio listed then it would be questionable.

DJ

Yeah but wouldn't the same go for low contrast monitors? Whatever the exaguration is, it should still be way higher then a 450:1 monitor, that or they're lieing through they're teeth.

So how can we verify this? I mean, if we dig into it enough we may find its not precisly 1600:1, but we'd probably find our current monitors are not 450:1

I just looked around on a few different sites, and they all list it as 1600:1. So we know at least its not a misprint.

How can we verify for sure?

Odds are that if its >1k it is a dynamic contrast ratio, meaning the LCD is going to dim the backlight in mostly dark scenes to help improve how the blacks look. Which, in the case of a DIY setup, means it is going to wash the blacks out (and everything else) since the LCD isn't going to block off as much of the light as it should since it is trying to dim the backlight instead (it doesn't have control over the backlight anymore). At least that's the way it would work in my mind, maybe that's not true. The LCD may even freak out if it can't find a backlight to dim, I don't know about that part either.

Sounds like a possibility for sure. However, it might actually be true a true rating, considering they have achieved true 1000:1 contrast on a 17" LCD before, 1600:1 isen't impossible for a 17" panel.

I don't know if thats possible. I mean, making a dark scene darker in my oppinion will not improve the contrast ratio, it will just make it harder to see. If it were a perfectly black screen that would be fine, but that almost never happens. In darker scenes, we really heavily on the small bits of light that are still there. If the backlight dims it, we won't be able to see anything. I believe contrast is kind of like the "distance" or difference between the blacks and the whites, if the whites get darker as the blacks do, I'd say there'd be no increase in contrast. What if for instance you displayed a black and white chess board on screen? What should the backlight do?

I don't know if your just theorizing or if that backlight dimming system actually exists (in which case, I'd have to eat my words) at any rate I don't see how that could work.

Certainly not impossible, especially considering how long LCDs have been around. Their website (LG's) talks about "Adaptive Color Enhancement and Contrast", so I assume they're doing some magic to make it look a little better. Like anything, manufacturer specs most of the time are a lot of hand waving and measurement practices that put their products in the best light possible, so always take them with a grain of salt. I know LG makes good panels though, all the ones I've ever seen look good. And that's a pretty good price for a 4ms panel.

Hee hee, they mixed up the images on their site when comparing 8ms panels to "regular" panels. So the 8ms "super" one looks like crap and is all blurry and the "regular" one looks sharp and clean. (I'm looking at a different monitor, the 1780plus, but it claims the same contrast ratio as this one).

Pseudo contrast enhancement by varying the light that passes though the LCD does exist. But I’m unsure if it is applied to LCD monitors. I was reading about a commercial projector some ware the other day, I can't remember where. It used a servo motor to physically shutter the lamp to reduce the light that entered the optics. Could be more of a gimmick than proven benefit though.

DJ

Oh it applies to LCDs all right. I have seen several LCD tvs that do it. Here is the wikipedia entry:


It is a built-in technology, it doesn't require signal changes from the video card to do. And therein might lie the problem. If the LCD is trying to turn down the backlight (that you've removed) and increase the transmissiveness of the LCD. Which means it will wash everything out. I don't know if anyone has tested a dynamic contrasting LCD or not though.

This LCD may still be a 1600:1 static or it may be dynamic, manufacturers are notorious for only quoting specs that make their products sound great. Still it doesn't seem like a bad LCD.

And as I mentioned, there is also a 19 inch of the same brand with 1600:1 contrast, and also two 1400:1 monitors that also come in both 17 and 19 inch sizes.

Here's a pretty good read from PCWorld. It's "way back" from 2003, but I think it's very relevant to this and any other discussion about LCD panel contrast ratio.

Here's an excerpt:

"Our findings? Thirteen test units posted numbers significantly different (by 10 percent or more) from their specifications, and only two LCDs--one from ViewSonic, the other from Eizo Nanao--landed within 5 percent of the stated number, close enough to be considered accurate. The good news: Nine offered a meaningfully better contrast ratio than listed. The bad news: Four were markedly worse.

Of the vendors for which we found results significantly below their reported contrast ratios, CTX was the worst offender with its S730, which achieved a contrast ratio of 252:1, 50 percent below its stated 500:1 specification. On the other hand, our test LCD from Dell notched an impressive 892:1 contrast ratio, a whopping 78 percent higher than its stated 500:1 rating."

Enjoy: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,110483,00.asp

Very interesting read Herve, thanks for the article. And hey I recognize you from the avsforums. Welcome to lumenlab, hope you'll stay a while, you do make very well informed, well thought out posts.

Blake, thanks very much for that warm welcome. I cannot express how excited I am about this whole DIY concept.

I just got back from Future Shop, where I looked at the 17" 1400:1, and the 19" 1600:1 LG monitors.

I used the parlor scene (with Cary Grant, Martin Landau, and James Mason), and the soon-after scene in which a drunk Cary Grant is driving along the coast, in the movie North by Northwest (NNW) to evaluate both monitors. Believe it or not I use the blackness of Martin Landau's coat to judge contrast level in fairly well-lighted scene, and the other scene for shadow detail in an already-dark scene.

I must now preface the review with a few details about the store conditions and our home theatre set up.

I've seen this movie at least 30 times (from one screen width viewing distance) on our 100" Dalite screen being illuminated by an HTPC-driven NEC 9PG+ CRT FP. We use TheaterTek to upscale and play the DVD. I built the PC using all components recommended at the time on the AVS forum. I installed, set up, and calibrated the system myself. (I calibrated the image using AVIA.) Our room is in our finished basement, so there is total light control, even on sunny days.

The system's presentation of NNW is simply fantastic in every respect, so naturally this is what I use as the video standard against which to compare every display device I see. After one has seen on this system Landau's coat, or, in Fly Away Home, Anna Paquin's black-framed goggles against her face, or shadow detail in Blade Runner, it is easy to see deficiencies in other display systems.

Now, finally, to the brightly-lighted Future Shop and the monitor review.

First off, I was not allowed to adjust any monitor controls, because the sales folks told me that this had already been done when the monitors were first set up. In fact, I was lucky to even cajole them into putting a DVD movie on the screen. On every LCD monitor in the place, and there were at least 30, there was the same signal - two internet windows, sitting side be side, which displayed a static, bright, web page. How nice for the customer and the panels.

They would have preferred it if I had paid for the monitor, and then returned it if I did not like it. At the time, I just couldn't deal with the hassle, but, now that I look back on it, that's precisely what I should have done. (See, salesmen ARE looking out for the customer's own best interest!)

Between our HTPC and the projector we have an Extron 202xi computer interface, which "breaks out" the HD15 connector to individual BNC connectors which the PJ has on it for input. It also boosts the strength of the signal for the rather long cable-run to the projector. Significantly for this case, it also has on it an extra HD15 output for an extra monitor, if so desired.

I have an upper-end 19" Viewsonic CRT monitor on that output, so that I can use the HTPC for burning DVD's from our mini-DV camcorder, and some other work, without having to use the projector as the display device. It's also nice to be able to look at both images simultaneously, if one wants to, and it is at this point that one can see that the NEC's image is every bit as good as the Viewsonic's, and this on a 100" image being projected from around ten or eleven feet distance. Amazing.

As I only realized as I walked in the house, if I had brought the LCD home, I could have removed the Viewsonic and stuck the LG right in there, but I didn't. This would have answered very clearly all the questions about the monitor's image - at least as a computer monitor displaying movies.

However, this still would not have definitively answered the question of whether LG, like Samsung, is now using backlight manipulation to get higher contrast ratios.

I'll say right off the bat that I could not discern any difference between the contrast ratios of the two LG monitors. However, I could see that these monitors were superior to any other LCDs around them. (Remember, all monitors were getting the same signal.)

The first scene I looked at was the parlor and on both monitors Landau's tie was indeed very black, but I could also see that the color saturation was too high. Even the pasty-faced Landau looked like he had just stepped off the plane from a two-week vacation in Hawaii. (In two minutes I could have spruced up that image considerably.) But, even so, it surprised me how good the entire scene looked. At the beginning of the scene, Mason walks into a rather dark parlor and walks toward Grant and then turns on an additional light. There was very good contrast and detail even before the light went on.

In the beginning of the later sea-side scene (where she sold sea shells), there is good detail of the background countryside (actually a mat painting, I think), where older LCD projectors would show almost none. During the next couple of minutes of the wild drive down the winding road, there was good detail in the dark areas.

The major shortcoming was that in very dark parts of scenes, there was considerable - for lack of a better word - "noise", that has been typical of LCD displays. I could discern this clearly from being just a few inches from the screen, and this is precisely why it's too bad that I didn't take the monitor home - I know absolutely nothing about the signal source in that store.

Power DVD was being used to drive the panels, but that's really all I know about the source of the signal. We all know that quality of the signal is one of the most important factors in producing a good image. I don't know how, or where, they split up that signal from the source computer, or whether the computer was set up appropriately for the job, etc.

So what I've said here just might be, for all practical purposes, worthless. Even after having just been there myself, I certainly wouldn't pick one of these monitors without further testing, although I can say with certainty that black level and shadow detail on these two monitors is the best that I have seen to date on an LCD monitor - noticeably better than the two+-year-old, 17" Dell monitor that I'm using right now.

As for the noise, the Dell computer I'm using right now was their cheapest system at the time - a bare bones 2.4 GHz Celeron w 256 Ram, and I couldn't even tell you what kind of motherboard it has. I did, however, spring for their good 17" LCD monitor. In short, even on this low-end computer, I see NONE of the noise I saw on the two LG’s at the store, and, because it was also apparent on every other display, I'm almost certain that is was a source deficiency and not a deficiency in the monitors.

Another thing I can say with certainty is that these two LGs had the best images in the place, and there were other high-end LCDs of all brand names displaying the same movie.

Hope doing this hasn't been a complete waste of time.

When our NEC finally kicks the bucket, I'll first test at home any monitor I'm interested in. For now, I'm going to try contacting LG to ask if their monitors' stated contrast ratios are "native" to the panel, or due in part to some backlight manipulation.

Once again, I'd like to say how happy I am to be a member of the LL forum.

Thanks for the breakdown of the LG monitors, much appreciated. I think I'll be picking one of these up when I build my 17" projector.

Nice work, man! I already contacted LG, heres what they said, or rather, what they didn't say..

Thank you for contacting LG Electronics.

Many aspects of the panel design affect contrast ratio and
unfortunately, we are not privy to all the changes made to this panel as much of
the technology is proprietary. Using column spacers and and a higher
aperture ratio probably had the most influence on the higher Contrast
Ratio.

For assistance with your computer-related inquiry, please call our
Computer Support Department at 1-800-243-0000 or 256-772-1515. Please make
sure your computer is accessible when you call in order for our
technicians to assist you in troubleshooting. Our Computer Support Technicians
are available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. through 7 p.m. CST.

Thank you again for contacting LG Electronics.

Cyndi
E-mail Administrator
Customer Interactive Center
LGEAI

Perhaps we should call them up and stead, it will be harder to sidestep the question that way.

You see now that right there ^ is the definition of giving someone the run around.

lol, precisly. But it may have been my fault. I was kind of asking how is it this monitor has more then double the contrast of a standard, heck even a high quality monitor. I've never seen a 17 inch monitor with as much as a 1000:1 CR let alone 1600:1. So I kind of asked why the heck its so superior. I suppose its a company secret or some monks in Tibet have a sacred technique for making these crazy good monitors. Whatever the case, maybe we could at least write in to verify if the 1600:1 ratio is correct within a reasonable margin.

I called LG today.

I went through three people before I was put on hold for the fourth. After a few minutes of that, I was told that I could wait further or I could give my phone and pertinent information and someone would call me back.

It's been 4 hours and no one has called back.

If this is any indication of LG's customer service, it doesn't look good. They have no idea whether I actually own one of their monitors or not, but if I had bougtht a monitor on the weekend, and now had some trouble with it and needed help, I'd be rather choked right now.

LG's own site says something about column spacers:

http://www.lgphilips-lcd.com/homeContain/j..._column_j_e.jsp

The LTPS page looks interesting as well. Might have less FFC issues than many monitors by the looks of it. Also look at the BCB page. Higher aperture ratio = less leak. So, just by looking at this stuff it doesn't appear to be dynamic contrasting. Might be well worth the price to give it a try.