My new Sony FW900

[Craig234]

I got a used (of course) Sony FW900 in 'mint' condition. Just hooked it up minutes ago.

Some questions!

- The second cable with a bunch of round (BNC?) connectors has the red not working. The seller says it worked for him when he last used it. Are there advantages to using that cable over the regulr VGA connector? Are they enough to justify trying to fix the problem? (It must be either the cable or connector because the monitor works ok on the VGA cable).

- Is there anything else in general I should do to optimize the monitor? I have it set to 1600x1200 75Hz, as these are the max settings for my 7600GS card apparently.

Apparently 1920x1200 is the max, native monitor resolution, so it'd be better, but how can it do that when the 1600x1200 already fills the wide screen? Is there 'stretching'?

- I found drivers for it for Windows versions pre-XP, but XP seems to think the monitor doesn't need a driver. Does it? Would I use 9x or NT, and now?

Thanks!

Time to start a game and see how good it looks

 

[JRW]

Originally posted by: Craig234
I got a used (of course) Sony FW900 in 'mint' condition. Just hooked it up minutes ago.

Some questions!

- The second cable with a bunch of round (BNC?) connectors has the red not working. The seller says it worked for him when he last used it. Are there advantages to using that cable over the regulr VGA connector? Are they enough to justify trying to fix the problem? (It must be either the cable or connector because the monitor works ok on the VGA cable).

I didnt notice any improvement going from VGA to BNC, I only did it to free up the VGA input for my Xbox 360 ,Also since BNC isnt a plug n play input XP doesnt know the monitors supported refresh rates & resolutions so you'll have to install a driver (I used the Win2000 driver) but even then you still might have to manually setup various refresh / resolution combo's.

- Is there anything else in general I should do to optimize the monitor? I have it set to 1600x1200 75Hz, as these are the max settings for my 7600GS card apparently.

The max resolution for the FW900 is 2304x1440 @ 80hz and the recommended res is 1920x1200 @ 95hz (personally I like 85hz due to the slight improvment in sharpness) if you're not able to select a desired resolution you can setup custom resolutions & refresh rates fairly easy with Nvidia cards.

As for optimizing the first thing i'd do is run the Image Restoration option which can be found in the Color menu on the monitor, The monitor has to be warmed up before the feature will work, also (this might sound wierd but trust me) before running Image Restore turn up the brightness higher than you'd normally run it so the screen looks alittle over bright (for example if the monitor is currently set on 25 brightness turn it up to 50, the Contrast setting doesnt matter here) now run image restore, after it completes you can turn brightness back down.

Apparently 1920x1200 is the max, native monitor resolution, so it'd be better, but how can it do that when the 1600x1200 already fills the wide screen? Is there 'stretching'?

Pressing the 'ASC' button on the monitor should resize the screen when using 4:3 resolutions (there should be black bars on the sides with 1600x1200) but ASC doesnt always work 100% ,you can manualy stretch or squeeze the screen vertically and horizontally by pressing the menu button and going to the Size option. If you prefer using a lower resolution than 1920x1200 try using 1600x1024 or 1680x1050 (Both are widescreen res's).

Be sure to check out the FW900 thread on HardOCP if you havent already , lots of info there: Link

 

[Zebo]

Can you still find one of these puppys in 'mint' condition with low/no hours? I need a 24" widescreen. The 20" GX2 is barley passable as a gaming monitor for those sensitive to blur and it's too small - all 24's I tried just suck bad compared to CRT and even compared to the GX2 - poor blacks, color shift and heavy motion blur when playing games... much worse than other LCDs like the GX2 which still has much blur itself like in RTS's but the 24's out there are unplayable. When scolling in say titan quest everything blurs so bad you can't read items laying on the ground without stopping.

 

[Craig234]

One new question - some things seem 'slow' with the new monitor, from some gaming (which makes sense, 2600+/7600GS at 1600x1200) to just restoring a browser window that normally pops up immediately taking about 5 seconds delay to pop up. Who knows.

JRW, thank you very much for the info! I didn't see any refresh rate above 75Hz available but will play with the nvidia menu. I did the image refresh.

On the resolutions, with 1600x1200 already using the whole screen, it's not clear to me where the extra pixels go with 1920x1200 unless there's stretching.

Zebo, this is a one-monitor sale, but if you keep an eye on ebay and craigslist, they come up sometimes. I'm with you, CRT are my favorite monitors over LCD - my NEC XP21 was great, left it on for years and one day on a whim turned the power off for the day and it blew. Haven't found a way to get it fixed, darn it.

 

[Zebo]

Probably blew a capacitor Craig. Did you see or smell smoke? Send it in to NEC and tell them to fix it. Although it's a pretty old monitor maybe not worth it. Problem is cathod electrons are probably damn near expired and glass has darkened not worth fixing.. CRT's have weeknesses too Mostly related to age and results of that aging process..darker screen and blurrier text as time goes on. Hence my apprehesion about getting one too used.

 

[Craig234]

It was nothing like that - no smoke, no darkened screen - jus twhen you turn the power on it sort of goes on for a second and then off. NEC wants it shipped somewhere and they charge a lot to fix it, probably looking at $400 or $500 with shipping... darn it.

 

[PingSpike]

Widescreen CRTs...man, that is where its at. To bad they're hard to find, used and my desk would probably buckle under the weight.

I can't believe some company hasn't moved in to fill the high end CRT niche. I know most of the market wants LCDs these days but I'm pretty sure the margins have dropped way down on those and a product line catering to the niche of graphics professionals and gamers could charge a solid premium since they wouldn't have any real competition.

 

[hans007]

the better 1920x1200 lcds are the 23" ones if you can find them since they use the lg/phillips IPS panel instead of the mva one in the 24" monitors.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Widescreen CRTs...man, that is where its at. To bad they're hard to find, used and my desk would probably buckle under the weight.

I can't believe some company hasn't moved in to fill the high end CRT niche. I know most of the market wants LCDs these days but I'm pretty sure the margins have dropped way down on those and a product line catering to the niche of graphics professionals and gamers could charge a solid premium since they wouldn't have any real competition.

Well the FW900 was like 2k when CRT's were the thing so not exactly a budget option compared to $600 24" LCD's which are bigger. Today it would cost even more. For example Sony still makes the 24" wide for broadcast and television and it costs $24,000. Not saying it would be that much but selling to a small maket would raise costs well above $2000 making them unsellable. I mean everyone has a price threshold before they say "this is good enough"

NEC tried to keep a 22" AG-CRT afloat for the last two years (Diamondtron UWG RDF225WG) and sold them for $5000 with no takers thus discontinueing the line.

The delima is certain fixed costs must be ammortized over monitors sold. Sell a lot costs go down. Sell a few or even project to sell a few and price them high, no one buys. Next problme is materials used in each AG-CRT cost a lot more than any LCD.

I afraid high end CRT's will never come back.

 

[Craig234]

It's sad, Zebo, because they're the best monitors IMO.

Was there an answer on how the monitor can fill the widescreen format with 1600x1200? You would think it's somehow 'stretching' but the image looks normal.

 

[JRW]

If its filling the screen then it is stretching, 1600x1200 is 4:3 aspect... even if it looks 'normal' its not , Just use a proper widescreen resolution such as 1600x1024 or 1650x1080

 

[Cenarius]

Originally posted by: Craig234
Was there an answer on how the monitor can fill the widescreen format with 1600x1200? You would think it's somehow 'stretching' but the image looks normal.

It?ll probably be easiest to see aspect ratio distortion when viewing static images (ie JPGs) of objects you are used to seeing regularly, like people.

Originally posted by: JRW
Just use a proper widescreen resolution such as 1600x1024 or 1650x1080

1680x1050 should be good (you typed it correctly earlier), that seems to be what a lot of 16:10 LCDs use. 1600x1024 isn?t quite as good as it doesn?t fit the 16:10 screen.

 

[Bull Dog]

I personally use 1920x1200@85Hz on my FW900.

 

[The Green Bean]

pics?

 

[JRW]

Originally posted by: The Green Bean
pics?

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=952788

 

[gramboh]

FYI to the original poster, CRT monitors do not have a native resolution in the same way that LCDs do. On an LCD with a 1920x1200 native resolution, using 1680x1050 (still a 16:10 resolution) results in stretching/shrinking and loss of image quality.

On your FW900, as long as you maintain a 16:10 aspect ratio there is no stretching/loss of image quality (that said, CRT's optimal resolution is usually slightly sharper).

As said, using a 4:3 ratio resolution (1600x1200, 1024x768) if it is taking up the whole scren it is stretching it out to 16:10. You should have black vertical bars on each side of the image using 4:3 resolutions.

 

[Cenarius]

To clarify a couple of things.

Originally posted by: gramboh
FYI to the original poster, CRT monitors do not have a native resolution in the same way that LCDs do. On an LCD with a 1920x1200 native resolution, using 1680x1050 (still a 16:10 resolution) results in stretching/shrinking and loss of image quality.

Let?s say the loss of image quality on an LCD is due to pixel interpolation rather than "stretching/shrinking", which is actually what the OP is experiencing on his CRT without even realising it.

Originally posted by: gramboh
On your FW900, as long as you maintain a 16:10 aspect ratio there is no stretching/loss of image quality (that said, CRT's optimal resolution is usually slightly sharper).

Technically there won?t actually be any loss of image quality on a CRT if the wrong aspect ratio is used.