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Videos and photos pixelated with vp171b

C

cb

Member
Just got my vp171b. Generally, very nice. I have a couple of questions, though. Playing video files, especially lower grade ones, the images appear more pixelated than on my CRT monitor. Has anyone else noted a similar problem? If yes, for those who could, did switching to a DVI cable make a difference?

My system is an Athlon 1600+, 256 MB ram, and an ATI 64MB VIVO Radeon. I ran all the LCD checks from MonitorsDirect (where I bought the monitor) and there isn't a flaw to be found. I am running at the 1280x1024 60Hz native resolution. Because of my video card, I'm forced to use the analog cable.

Thanks in advance for any responses.

cb
 
The color issue is because the monitor only does 262,000 colors. It can not reproduce all of the colors. I have this monitor too. I might send it back and get a 22" crt. I am not sure. How do you like yours. The picture on mine is real bright and the colors are great! Text is good too but it is real small.
 
gplracer, I concur with with you on your assement of the monitor. I still need to try some games and see if I can get a DVD to try for comparison. If I'm not happy with what I see, it goes back and I get a 19" crt.

cb
 
It's the same on my laptop with a 14" XGA. Small pictures like animated gifs seems really pixelated. I got used to it, so it doesn't really bother me anymore.

On another note: gplracer, have you tried to up the dpi and all the other things one can do in order to scale Windows.
 
Thanks, JZilla. Any others experiencing the same thing with their desktop LCD monitors, especially the vp171b?
 
Of course. LCD screens do not blur pixels and blend lines like CRTs do - so if the source media is low quality, it'll be much more obvious.
 
Peter, thanks for that little tid bit. I wasn't aware of the particular nuance.

glracer, I've just had mine a few days and am just experimenting with it. I watch a lot of videos and am disappointed with the pixelation that I've described. Gaming seems just fine so far, but I've got a bunch more testing to do. I'm trying to decide if it is worth twice the price of a decent 19" CRT. I got my vp171b from monitorsdirect, so I have 30 days to decide if I want to keep this or return it.
 
did u talk to GoSharks? He's the engineer and has been very helpful in my monitor purchasing decisions from monitorsdirect.com.

-dejacky
 
I did talk to one of the reps. They concurred about the pixilation. The one I talked with, don't recall his name, recommended the Hitachi 721 over the Samsung until I mentioned the 957mb has the ultrabrite tube. At that point it was down to saving $20. Of course, the Samsung currently is out of stock. :frown:
 
I can vouch for hitachi tube in high quality crt monitors since my Cornerston p1460 has one. The visual quality is very stable, has high refresh rates, and produces a sharp/vivid image which is very pleasing for my eyes.
 
Thanks, dejacky. The MonitorsDirect rep mentioned that Samsung uses the same tubes as Hitachi. Hitachi just doesn't have a model with the new MagicBright tube, yet. MonitorsDirect was great on my return. They even sent me the FedEx shipping card for the return of my vp171b at no charge to me! I'll be packing that one up tonight and hopefully will get the Samsung before the week is over. They came back into stock over this past weekend.
 
Well it's been over a month or maybe even three since I've gotten my VP171b. This was my first LCD. I've used nothing but 17-19 CRT's for gaming, work and video. My first impression of this monitor was AWESOME! It's small, pivots, bright, multi-inputs, light, etc., but now after using it went from AWESOME to Okay. I just know my CRT never gave problems like this.

CONS:

-Most quake 3 engine games are dark. I find myself getting confused if I have to play with the game, lcd or windows settings to get it brighter. Don't get me wrong, the monitor itself it bright it's just in these game (RTCW, Q3).

-Browser text wasn't readable on certain sites. It took me awhile, but I fixed it by setting the font in my browser to normal vs small font.

-Each time the resolution/2D-3D changes the monitor flashes blank before/after each switch. For example if I play ET it flashes to the opening screen, when I click to join a server it flashes and while awaiting game state/map load it flashes. Not a problem, just a nuisance.

-Low Quality movies. Don't look good at all!

For now I'm okay with my purchase, I guess I have to be. Newer games don't have problem like RTCW and Quake so we'll see.

Hey JZilla. I think you'll remember when I bought this. I was so pumped.

I will have to say, that I was nice only carring 7-10lbs vs 50-55lbs to my last LAN Party! 😀

No big difference from the VGA to DVI.

CB..awesome that the return was so easy. Good luck on your purchase and please let us know how it goes.

-JC
 
Well, here is the latest and virtually all good! 😀 I shipped my vp171b back MonitorsDirect yesterday morning and my Samsung 957mb arrived from them in the afternoon. I had placed the order Sunday night. Standard shipping in 3 days. Hard to beat that! 🙂 So, I'm pretty happy with the Samsung on the first night's testing. My lower quality images and videos look better than on the vp171b. This turned out to be more important to me than I originally thought. The Samsung has a couple of nice features associated with provided a brighter picture. First is the MagicBright option for the tube. Push a button to advance brightness levels through three levels - text, Internet, and entertainment (videos and games). It works great. Second is a feature called Highlight that allows you to either manually select a section of the screen to be brightened or automatically brightens the window where a video is playing. Makes noticible difference. At 1280 x 1024 the picture is sharp throughout although at the deep corners one can notice a little bit of a bend to the viewable screen. Tried mucking around with the settings to eliminate this but without success. This isn't that big a deal since unless you are focusing on the screen edges/corners, you don't notice. I did rung MonitorsDirect's calibration tools and while some of the geometry measures weren't perfect, they were within tolerances. Focus was fine all over as were the color, brightness, and contrast measures.

A final note on the vp171b. If it weren't for additional degradation in lower quality images and videos, I would have kept it. But since, I gain an inch diagonal, save over $200 and get the image quality back, it made more sense to go the 19" CRT route especially given that my system is unlikely to move much if at all. The vp171b's edge to edge sharpness was beautiful especially for text work and surfing. I saw now problems in games although in a few cases, a quick brightness a adjustment would have been nice.

So, if MonitorsDirect gives me a full refund (less shipping, of course), I will be very satisfied with their service!! 😀
 
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