Initial Viewsonic VP930 impressions. Uh oh......

[Phantronius]

Well, after pulling some red tape, I managed to secure my Viewsonic VP930b one day early from fedex. Needless to say I raced home during lunch time and set it up to make it worked. I was halfway surprised to find the entire unit actually pre built, no installing stand or clicking into place or anything. Now I know why the box was unusually big.

In any case, I immediatly fired it up with my Dell 2405 next to it and right away I noticed the colors seemed a bit more vivid. Then again, the monitor was not calibrated and the Dell had serious tweaking of contrast and brightness but non the less, I could see a "truer" color hue's.

However, soon afterwards I noticed that my backlight had a nice "X" form eminated from all four corners of the screen. Very visible during a black backdrop but not seeable when there is actuall something on it. Hmmmm...not sure what to think about this.....

After that intial frown, I loaded up HL2 deathmatch and resized the resolution to native rez from 1920x1200.

Amazingly and very shocking, I INSTANTLY noticed a huge amount of ghosting within the game. Blurs that I NEVER saw on my Hyundai L90D+ or my 2405 were VERY plainey visible. I thought I knew what ghosting was on an LCD but this thing takes the cream of the crop. Even though my 2405 was not running at its native res, it was no where near as bad as the VP930b was. I couldn't believe a monitor with approx "HALF" the response time of the 2405 was doing this bad ghosting.

Then I remember that this thing had a very cold trip up to here in Montana so I thought "MAYBE" the crystals were still cold and slow. With that in mind, I decided to flip back to windows desktop and turn off all monitor shut off and screen saver and went back to work.

Needless to say, my intial impressions are not that great. I sincerely hope this monitor was just cold from its trip to Montana and all will be well when I get back home, for some reason, im not optimistic.....

 

[Phantronius]

I just NOW remembered that I may have scaling still enabled on my 2405 and it may be screwing up the Viewsonic because I wondered why even at 1280x1024 my desktop still looked *small*.

I'll need to verify this to hold that thought until I get back home tonight.....It could be dumbass user error over here....

 

[dingetje]

i read about the backlight problems on the new vp930 screens...dont remember what forum but several ppl had the problem (depending on manufactur date) anyhoo, the people who had the prob i read about did get a replacement screen from viewsonic so viewsonic by now must know about their booboo with these screens)
very curious to know if your screen gives you any ghosting in its native resolution...im in taiwan here and the price on those things here is 13900nt which is about 415 us dollars i believe....was thinking of getting one myself after reading this review (translated from french so dont let the yoda slang confuse u):

www.google.nl/translate?u=http://ww...e=1072&NumPage=3&langpair=fr|en&hl=en&ie=UTF8

 

[Phantronius]

Damnit, this X on the backlight REALLY sucks. Do I need to contact Viewsonic directly to get the right one? Grrrrr whata pain.

 

[Dark]

I have the VP930B AND I have the X defects which is called a Mura defect type 3. Supposedly this defect comes from an unenven pressure on the display...if the pressure is too much, the crystals will create that "backlight" effect.
I contacted Viewsonic and go it replaced (took the Express exchange service). I am expecting my new one this week. A couple of things worth mentionning:
1) A LOT of VP930B have this defect so I am afraid my replacement will have the same problem.
2) After 30 days, Viewsonic no longer has the obligation to send you a new unit but may send you a refurbished one.

 

[dingetje]

on the french tomshardware forum is a thread with more vp930 backlight bleeding victims....here is the link...its translated by google so i hope it doesnt confuse too much

translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fforum.hardware.fr%2Fhardwarefr%2FHardwarePeripheriques%2FSuite-problemes-Viewsonic-VP930B-postez-numero-serie-sujet-20677-1.htm&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

dunno who you should contact first, your dealer or viewsonic

anyway let us know about the ghosting in native resolution ok? its supposed to be a great screen for gaming just like the one it replaced (191b)

 

[Phantronius]

 

[Phantronius]

After more testing side by side with my 2405, the VP930b definently ghosts more noticebly then the 2405, depending on the cirumstance. In Far Cry, very difficult to tell. HL2 deathmatch was a slaughter, in transition to black to gray/white areas in in regards to a ladder on wall or a object flying through the air it was plainley obvious that the VP930b ghosted more wether I was in 1280x1024 with the 2405 in scaled back mode or 1920x1200 and the VP930 displaying as much as it could, I still saw same results.

I can't get the Viewsonic color correction utility to work either, it locks up my machine

 

[Dark]

I forgot to add that there is absolutely no ghosting with mine. I play fear, quake 4, nfs2 undergound etc at 1024x768

 

[Phantronius]

Soooo wtf is mines deal?

 

[SergeC]

People's sensitivity to ghosting varies, it could be that you are just one of those people who are more sensitive to the effect.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: SergeC
People's sensitivity to ghosting varies, it could be that you are just one of those people who are more sensitive to the effect.

More than likely he's got a bad panel. It sounds like it's defective if it has the X problem.

 

[Phantronius]

I guess because i've never seen so much ghosting. My Hyundai L90D+ did a better job then this did.

Sigh....RMA world here I come again....

 

[meelk]

ghosting on an LCD! someone notify the president!
:x

 

[Matthias99]

Phantronius, your PM had a busted link, so I assume this is the thread you wanted me to respond in.

My VP930b has slight backlight bleeding in the corners, but I wouldn't describe it as an "X", or bad enough to RMA the screen. Like you said, I can only notice it on a completely black background.

With the two monitors sitting side-by-side, I found my VP930b to be better in terms of ghosting. Certainly they were VERY comparable. If you have a VP930b that looks WAY worse than a 2405FPW, then something is wrong with your VP930b.

 

[Matthias99]

After looking at this thread again, and running my VP930b simultaneously with a CRT, I went back and looked at the ghosting on the VP930b more critically.

Conclusion: the monitor's very good overall, but not as good in certain situations.

I've found that on dark->light transitions with relatively low color values (that is, going black->dark grey, or dark grey->lighter grey), it does show some visible latency effects. From the exact effect I'm seeing, I would have to guess this a combination of regular pixel response latency and the Overdrive functionality -- I'm seeing almost a 'wake' behind thin objects as they move. It looks like the panel is overshooting the desired color values in this situation. This is pretty much the worst possible scenario in terms of ghosting for any LCD monitor, though, so I'm not surprised it looks worse doing this. In just about any other situation, it looks great. In any kind of remotely high-contrast situation, or with a light object on a darker background, ghosting is very minimal. It only seems to stand out with a dark object on a slightly lighter background.

Unfortunately, I don't have my 2405FPW anymore, so I can't compare them side-by-side with exactly the same scene. However, I had run through some of the same games/areas where I see this with both monitors hooked up, and it didn't jump out at me as being worse on the VP930b. This makes me think the 2405FPW was probably also not looking great at this sort of transition.

 

[Waylay00]

Sorry about the problem man. Tell me how it works out, as I was seriosuly looking at this monitor.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Waylay00
Sorry about the problem man. Tell me how it works out, as I was seriosuly looking at this monitor.

I don't know that it's really a 'problem', as most LCD monitors will be better or worse in terms of ghosting depending on exactly what is being displayed. And it didn't really stand out to me until I had it running the same image as my CRT and I went back to carefully look at the differences; next to the 2405FPW, it looked nearly identical.

As I have little personal experience with sub-16ms LCDs, it's tough for me to say just from looking at this in isolation how it compares with other screens currently on the market. It's not the sort of thing that's going to bother me while playing games. It also seems like it may be a little better on the DVI connection, but I need to play around with it some more.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
As I have little personal experience with sub-16ms LCDs, it's tough for me to say just from looking at this in isolation how it compares with other screens currently on the market. It's not the sort of thing that's going to bother me while playing games. It also seems like it may be a little better on the DVI connection, but I need to play around with it some more.

The connection won't affect it directly, unless you're actually talking about analog ghosting from interfering signals. However I noticed when I use VGA, it has a lot less contrast. That may increase 'ghosting' if your LCD has higher response times in the middle end of the spectrum (like if gray on black ghosts like hell).

 

[Compellor]

I got this monitor about 2 weeks ago and really love it. I do have a bit of backlight bleeding at the corners, but it's not that bad and it doesn't affect gaming or just general desktop use. It's one of those things you only see if the screen is completely black. And the bleeding itself looks grayish in color and not purple, which I've seen on some other LCDs.

I've played several FPS games on this monitor and I just don't see any ghosting. There may be a bit of motion bluring at times, but this doesn't really effect gameplay at all.

The VP191b appeared to have the same backlight issue, so I can only assume ViewSonic must find this within specs on the newer VP930b. But I think this monitor is one of the best 8 bit panels on the market despite this.

 

[philipp]

Hi, i'm just curious how you tell you have an 'X' on your screen? I looked at it with a black background and I can definetely make out some greyish bleeding on the edges but i can't see an X? I'm just curious if i should return mine (i.e., if it gets any better than this)? you got a pic maybe??

cheers,
P

 

[paapaa]

Does ViewSonic VP930 emit high pitch whining, buzzing, whistling etc?

I've read many places that it can be a problem when you lower the brightness of the backlight. If you own a VP930, could you lower the brightness quite a bit (to 50% and to 0%) and listen very carefully and very close to the monitor if you hear any kind of whining, buzzing etc? You, however, should NOT hear it when the brightness is set to 100%. Please report your findings here to help others considering this monitor.

I have heard many TFTs whine that way and it is very annoying problem especially if you have a silent computer. If your computer is not very silent, then it is not a big issue.

 

[Compellor]

Originally posted by: paapaa
Does ViewSonic VP930 emit high pitch whining, buzzing, whistling etc?

I've read many places that it can be a problem when you lower the brightness of the backlight. If you own a VP930, could you lower the brightness quite a bit (to 50% and to 0%) and listen very carefully and very close to the monitor if you hear any kind of whining, buzzing etc? You, however, should NOT hear it when the brightness is set to 100%. Please report your findings here to help others considering this monitor.

I have heard many TFTs whine that way and it is very annoying problem especially if you have a silent computer. If your computer is not very silent, then it is not a big issue.

No whining or buzzing on mine. I currently run my brightness setting at 45 since my eyes can't tolerate a much higher setting over long periods of use. This monitor is very bright.