Gateway
In years past, Gateway's products never really grabbed my attention. This year is certainly different. First, they launched a great-looking 24" monitor that had picture-quality and a feature-set that surpassed the competition. Then they were aquired by Acer. Then they announced the Gateway One. However, as great as all of that is... the product that truly impressed me was their XHD3000 30" Widescreen monitor.
The XHD3000 is a 30" monitor that offers 2560x1600 resolution, usual fare. It offers support for 1600P video and every connector you will ever need: Single/Dual-Link DVI, VGA, Composite, Component, HDMI and even the classic S-Video. Unlike most other 30" panels, this one offers a very bright 400 cd/m2 display, with a contrast ratio of 1000:1 and 6ms response time. Compared to the 30" Dell HC monitor I've been using for the past two months, there is really no comparison when it comes to brightness and color vibrance.
The most impressive feature about the monitor though, is it's upscaling capabilities. Equipped with a Silicon Optix Realta HQV video processor, any input run through the monitor can be upscaled to the screens native resolution. When I first passed by, an HD-DVD of Willy Wonka was playing and the quality was striking. I had first thought it was an actual TV until I looked closer.
To further show off upscaling abilities, a Gateway representative loaded up a copy of Bioshock, set the resolution to 1024x768 and loaded up a saved game. Now, clearly the ultra-low resolution is going to be noticeable when run full-screen, simply because things in the game will appear larger as is always the case. However, what was surprising was the fact that the game did not look that bad.. it was completely playable, despite the black bars on each side (due to differing aspect ratios).
The test that sold me though, was when Bioshock was set to 1920x1200 resolution and then run. The reason I was most interested in this setting is because I run an older MMORPG game at that same resolution on the Dell 30" HC monitor, because the game engine was developed before the 30" resolution existed and so it's not supported. When set to 1920x1200 and "upscaled", it looks horrible. Colors are faded, fonts are somewhat blotchy. It's simply not a desirable setting... one that you would certainly not deliberately choose to use.
Bioshock however, looked simply incredible, despite being at a non-native resolution. In fact, I actually found it quite difficult to see any differences between the two resolutions. The thought popped into my head, "What about the in-game fonts and menus?", but the rep loaded up the menu and I was surprised to see that all of the characters were just as aliased as though it was a native resolution. Again making it even more difficult to distinguish the fact that it was being run in a non-native resolution.
I might sound a bit excited about this product, but it's for good reason. I walked away from Gateway's booth with plans to purchase one of these become available. This after seeing just a five-minute demo... it's that good. We will certainly be following up on all of these thoughts once we get our hands on one to experiment with in greater detail. Without question, if we had such a thing, Gateway's XHD3000 would get our product of the show award. You can pick one up sometime in October for around $1,699, which includes 8-channel speakers.
Facebook
Twitter