What monitor for someone with poor vision?

[brikis98]

I need to get my dad a new monitor, because his old 19" CRT is dying. the problem is that his vision is pretty crappy now and he needs text, icons, etc to be pretty big on the screen. for example, he typically runs the 19" CRT at 800x600 with large font sizes!

what is the best ratio of LCD size to resolution to make everything look large? 22", 1680x1050? 28" 1920x1200? something else?

 

[swtethan]

Budget?

if you could find a westinghouse 37" W3 model 1080P LCD for like $700ish, youre in!


37" 1900 x 1200

 

[ayabe]

Yeah I think a medium LCD TV would fit the bill, 37" or 42" something like that. You get a reasonably high rez and can crank up the fonts to life size.

 

[Viper GTS]

24" 1920x1200 @ 960x600. Perfect scaling, more resolution than he's used to, and stuff will be HUGE. Plus you can get a very good (but no frills) 24" for under $300.

Size/resolution comparision:

http://tvcalculator.com/index....739dd636ba60fcadec5d59

1366x768 LCD TV would be another good option, though asking a non techie to adjust to a 30+ inch TV on their desk might be a little difficult. Not to mention they're about double the cost of the Soyo 24".

Viper GTS

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
24" 1920x1200 @ 960x600. Perfect scaling, more resolution than he's used to, and stuff will be HUGE. Plus you can get a very good (but no frills) 24" for under $300.

Size/resolution comparision:

http://tvcalculator.com/index....739dd636ba60fcadec5d59

1366x768 LCD TV would be another good option, though asking a non techie to adjust to a 30+ inch TV on their desk might be a little difficult. Not to mention they're about double the cost of the Soyo 24".

Viper GTS

Great suggestion, and best bet overall. The Windows accessiblity options just aren't flexible/uniform enough to run at high native resolutions. The LCD TVs would be big....but that's quite a leap from a normal desktop PC monitor in terms of both practical use and perspective.

 

[brikis98]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
24" 1920x1200 @ 960x600. Perfect scaling, more resolution than he's used to, and stuff will be HUGE. Plus you can get a very good (but no frills) 24" for under $300.

what do you mean by "perfect scaling" - is there really no noticeable degradation in quality just because the resolution is halved?

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
Size/resolution comparision:

http://tvcalculator.com/index....739dd636ba60fcadec5d59

nice, thanks!

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
1366x768 LCD TV would be another good option, though asking a non techie to adjust to a 30+ inch TV on their desk might be a little difficult. Not to mention they're about double the cost of the Soyo 24".

Viper GTS

he's definitely techie enough, but that size of a tv might be a bit awkward on his desk. still, the tv thing is a good idea.

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: brikis98

what do you mean by "perfect scaling" - is there really no noticeable degradation in quality just because the resolution is halved?

Yes. Each single pixel will be replaced by a 2x2 grid of pixels. No interpolation.

Viper GTS

 

[brikis98]

out of curiosity... do LCD TV's look alright as monitors? for example, how would a ~28" 1366x768 tv look on a regular desk? i mean, i guess the only *real* requirement is that it looks better than an old 19" CRT running 800x600...

 

[JBT]

if you decide to go with a monitor a 22" is a good choice as the text will be pretty large at 1680x1050.

 

[swtethan]

Originally posted by: brikis98
out of curiosity... do LCD TV's look alright as monitors? for example, how would a ~28" 1366x768 tv look on a regular desk? i mean, i guess the only *real* requirement is that it looks better than an old 19" CRT running 800x600...

Its just a LCD with a tv tuner, thats why its a TV not a monitor.

yeah a 720p LCD TV @ ~30" is a good large panel with large text and such

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: JBT
if you decide to go with a monitor a 22" is a good choice as the text will be pretty large at 1680x1050.

That would actually be a terrible choice considering he's coming from something running ~56 dpi. Going to a 90 dpi display would probably be unusable.

Viper GTS

 

[Peter]

Extrapolating to a 2x2 pixel matrix on a high resolution screen will look a lot better than using .5mm pixels to begin with. The latter will look very much like Lego from up close.

I'd go with a non-widescreen 20" (1600x1200), and run it at 800x600.

 

[brikis98]

Originally posted by: Peter
Extrapolating to a 2x2 pixel matrix on a high resolution screen will look a lot better than using .5mm pixels to begin with. The latter will look very much like Lego from up close.

I'd go with a non-widescreen 20" (1600x1200), and run it at 800x600.

why would the 2x2 pixel grid look better? wouldn't the 2x2 grid be the same size as a .5mm pixel anyway?

 

[Peter]

Yes it would, but the monitor's scaling algorithm will make things look considerably smoother than a single pixel could ever be.

 

[Geraldo8022]

What about cards? I swear an old MSI FX5200 AGP card I have in old computer has sharper text than several newer cards, i.e. XFX GS7600, I have in a newer computers. Are there cards noted for producing sharper text? I don't game so that is why I don't have anything fancier.

 

[swtethan]

Here we go: 42" Magnavox LCD 720P for $650

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2115717&enterthread=y



I would hop all over that