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?