UPDATE: WOW. This is AMAZING.

[eLiu]

Hey all,
I'm currently in China visiting my dad...I'm going home on Friday, and there's a new 2001FP waiting for me there 😀 I ordered it in the recent Hot Deal.

Anyhow, this is the first LCD I've ever owned, and I'm wondering if there's anything I need to know about setting it up? I know it comes with one of those auto-calibrate features, but is there anything extra I need to do? Any current owners have tips for enhancing viewing pleasure/quality beyond what the Dell instructions will (i haven't seen'em yet, naturally) say?

Thanks in advance,
-Eric

EDIT: See new title...all I can say is WOW.

 

[lowinor]

If you're connecting it by DVI (which you should be), the only thing you can calibrate is color balance. Everything else is automatic.

 

[eLiu]

Originally posted by: lowinor
If you're connecting it by DVI (which you should be), the only thing you can calibrate is color balance. Everything else is automatic.

Oh okay, that's good (I think?); less things for me to screw up 🙂 I have a Radeon 9600 pro, which has the DVI out...which I most certainly will be using.

Also, by automatic, do you mean that when I plug the DVI in, the monitor will figure everything out for me? And uh, supposing it's too bright or something...there's nothing I can do to tone it down?

As far as color balance goes, is there anything I need to know about that? Like...are there "ideal" settings for it? Or do I just need to fiddle with it until I find the results that I like the best?

-Eric

 

[lowinor]

Sorry, I forgot to mention brightness, I kind of take it as given 😉

But you can adjust the brightness level of the backlight and the color balance, and that's it. It's a digital signal, there's no need for any other settings -- the geometry and contrast are perfect pretty much by definition.

The color balance can take a while to get right, though, as the colors respond a bit differently than they do on CRTs just by virtue of the underlying technology being radically different -- with my lcd panels (including a 2001FP and two 2000FPs) I've found that white/black/'photographic' color are easy to get to a good level but grays are trickier to balance properly. But that's really all you have to configure (other than the obvious brightness).

 

[eLiu]

haha, oh okay, cool 🙂

If the settings have like, a numeric readout or something, could you give me your settings so I have something to start with?

Thanks for all your help,
-Eric

 

[crimson117]

Originally posted by: eLiu
Anyhow, this is the first LCD I've ever owned, and I'm wondering if there's anything I need to know about setting it up?

Congratulations, you're going to love it 🙂

If you experience strange behavior, like buggy display, you may need to enable "Reduce DVI frequency on high-resolution displays" in your display properties. See this faq for details.

 

[lowinor]

Originally posted by: eLiu
If the settings have like, a numeric readout or something, could you give me your settings so I have something to start with?

It's a numeric readout; I'm currently running it at Red 48, Green 51, Blue 49. Primarily, though, run what looks most natural. White is easy to get to a good balance, and if there's a problem with your black, just turn brightness down a couple of notches 🙂

Generally, though, any reasonable setting (most colors reasonably close to each other) will work fine for browsing/gaming. I use Visual Studio most of the time which involves a lot of gray and has taken me a bit of tweaking to get the gray at a good level. Either way, it's all personal taste.

Originally posted by: crimson117
If you experience strange behavior, like buggy display, you may need to enable "Reduce DVI frequency on high-resolution displays" in your display properties. See this faq for details.

I had this problem with a Viewsonic 213b I had before returning it and getting a Dell 2000FP. Neither my 2000FPs nor my 2001FP exhibits the problem.

 

[crsgardner]

I recommend starting at 50, 50, 50 for RGB. The initial settings have too much of a color push, in my opinion. 50, 50, 50 looks great, and you can adjust accordingly from there.

 

[eLiu]

All right, thanks everyone 🙂 Seems like it'll take all of 5 minutes to start enjoying this monitor then...I can't wait 😀

-Eric

 

[eLiu]

Holy cow...I just got it fired up...and this thing is AMAZING.

 

[howdyduty]

Think it would be better than a pixie 19" crt? 😉