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About LinkBacksHalf-Life 2 in 16x9 widescreen looks damn sweet.... Aspect ratio's correct as well, you get a much better FOV and it just feels more natural to play that way. It's a good sign for future games I'd reckon.Originally Posted by azrael1
Half-Life 2 in 16x9 widescreen looks damn sweet.... Aspect ratio's correct as well, you get a much better FOV and it just feels more natural to play that way. It's a good sign for future games I'd reckon.
/me drools
God i want one.......
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Im still working with two cheapo LG 12ms 19" TFT....
maybe buy one of these when I have my X'mas holiday in HK.
Is that with Delivery ?
My price was, yeah. ETA next hour
Mines a 20.1 incher but not wide screen... Personaly I'm not a fan of wide screen simply cause not all games suport it. Mines the 2001fp...
Mine >
But its not thisMines a 20.1 incher but not wide screen... Personaly I'm not a fan of wide screen simply cause not all games suport it. Mines the 2001fp...
Mine >
It arrived on friday afternoon, and I have fallen head over heels in love with it.
love that monitor. looks really good. would really like to watch my movies on that.
hehe
HEXUS|iMc
/me thinks I know what I'm getting myself for xmas
Wibble
Currently wanted:
DVB- satellite pci card
does this thing have scart?
Lovely, would be great for movies - hehe that photo, if you look at it you keep thinking the loading bar on HL2 is gonna move.
Surely the wider monitor makes the hl2 loading time longer
it has VGA, DVI, S-Video & Composite video inputs.
Will hopefully be able to order it in time for my birthday
Posted in other forums also:
After owning this monitor for about a week now, I guess I should make an update. The full review I was planning is being posponed in leu of coursework... the lecturer is having a laugh and trying to make us design and code an operating system. As if I can do that....
Anyway, my thoughts:
Packaging:
Came in a huge brown box, monitor and stand come seperate. Everything was pretty well packed in polystyrene, unlikely to take much damage in transit. However, I am used to the packaging for my shuttle SN45G and the hercules 920pro 17inch boxes, which I still retain, as they are sturdy, compact, and have convenient carrying handles.
The 2005fpw has no such thing. Carrying it to lans might be a little difficult.
First impressions:
The stand comes out first, looks particularly fancy with twisting parts in all directions. Alot more adjustment options. Very useful. Quite heavy, but I guess thats needed for it. One thing I did notice was the stand seems spring loaded, so actual adjustment is misleadingly easy. Almost too smooth action, which caused me to almost drop the thing as I lifted it by the screen. At this point, the height adjustment and the tilt adjustment suddenly moved, and my heart almost stopped. Don't be foolish like me, and when you move yours, hold it by the stand AS WELL as the screen.
On taking out of the box, the actual screen part has the VGA cable attached. At first I thought this was unremovable, like my hercules, but then I saw the screws, unscrewed the cable, and no harm done.
The screen seemed lighter and smaller than I first expected, but you can never tell these things without turning it on.
Monitors side to side:
I placed the dell next to my hercules, and compared styling and size. The bezel on the hercules seems ridiculously wide, but the design of it is far more attractive in my opinion. The height of both screens seem the same, but obviously the 2005fpw is a huge amount wider. (as it should be) Still looks a little small to be 20 inch.
Screen quality:
oh my god, my eyes! At first I thought I had a faulty monitor as it was hugely bright. I had the room dark at the time, so it was almost blinding. However, once my eyes got acclimatised to it, it is an absolute joy to use. I'm not a colour, contrast expert or photoshop master, but the colours look as they should, whites are bright white, blacks are black (except for a very minor backlight bleed in the top right corner) and everything in the middle is shown on the screen with ease.
Once I set up the extended desktop, I was dragging windows between my hercules and dell, and noticed several things. I hadn't noticed before, but the hercules has a slightly yellowy tinge on all of its whites, and the dell is colgate white. Its was like seeing a before and after picture at a teeth bleaching clinic. However, the hercules seems a little easier to look at as it is less bright.
I could of course lower the brightness, but I quite like the fact that its so bright. I've tried turning up the brightness and colours for the hercules, but I cannot for the life of me get rid of that yellow tinge. Any tips? (its running off the VGA)
On a secondary opinion, when dragging, there is very little ghosting. While scrolling forums, the dell appears to ghost less (not completely free of this problem, but my eyes are quite sensitive) than the hercules, and everyone knows that the hercules is a pretty damn fine LCD.
Games:
Games. Widescreen. Works SO well, I can't believe there aren't widescreen monitors in greater abundance. Same about the lack of support, but I assume it will be similar to the uptake of DVDs. It can't be too hard to patch most games to support widescreen... but what do I know, I do a computer science course :/
3 main games were tested/played, some other games i think are having problems with drivers, my computer occasionally crashes, but i'll sort that out eventually. Driver cleaner to the rescue. If that doesn't work there is always the reformat option...
Half life 2 - The god of games. 1680 x 1050 res 6x temporal AA, 16x AF. x800pro @ xt. Absolutely stunning. You won't believe how much the widescreen adds to the experience. In addition to having a wider field of vision, it makes it feel more cinematic, due to the aspect being originally for films. Has a subconcious cinema effect, which is quite welcome, makes it more immersive I feel.
I couldn't detect any ghosting, but I obviously need time getting used to playing games on this monitor, as after a couple of hours I was feeling a little motion sick. I think its the information coming from your peripheral vision that does it.
CS: source - What can I say, wider field of view helps. As does headphones with incredible soundstaging. I could tell to roughly 10degrees what direction someone was shooting/running from. Doesn't look as good as hl2, but thats hardly the monitors fault.
Far Cry - Computer slightly struggled with the same settings as above, so I brought the tAA down to 2x, and the AF to 8, and it seemed to work fine. And good it looked too. Again, no ghosting problems, only problem being, i'm not used to using a mouse in widescreen. I kept overcompensating up or down, and not moving fast enough to the left or right. My FPS brain is primed for 1280 x 1024, so its a little bit ofa jump, but I'm sure I'll get used to it through practice.
Rome: total war - didn't realise this had a widescreen setting until last night. Not as graphically intensive as the above, but it looked fantastic in its own way. Again, looked incredibly cinematic in widescreen, especially in the cutscenes, and scripted sequences. And the fact that you see so much of the world in the battle view is really quite a pleasant thing. Doesn't make you any better at the strategy element though, which I probably shouldn't have been hoping for. No problems at all with the game.
Work:
I am a computer science student, and as such read more code/text than should be legal. Add that to forum addiction, and you've got a lot of characters read per day. I have to say, test looks great. Its pleasant to see such clear text on such a pure white background. I get the same feeling as I do when I buy a brand new book, and the pages are beautifully white. EVERY time I turn on the computer
The first day, my eyes fatigued due to the brightness, but now its completely fine, and I can just look at the screen for ages, without any negative effects. Even more wonderful is the rotation. I have to say, 16:10 20inch screens look positively towering when you have them vertical. So much text on the screen. With help of the firefox text size changing function, I managed to fit the entirity of the overclockers forum index on the screen. Coding seems less of a pain, reading lecture notes is almost pleasurable.
DVDs/ DivX (shh)
This is where the screen really shines. Widescreen format, means smaller black lines on the top and bottom, which means much bigger real estate for films and TV series. And they look unbelievably good. Aside from the slight backlight bleed in the top right corner, which doesn't really matter at all, the colours were crisp, the movement was good, and the picture was huge. Who would have thought looking at DVD on a computer could look so nice? Watching the DVD (hero at the time) with high quality headphones, was such an experience, it felt like watching it on a 42inch sony plasma.
I will update once I see more films.
Misc thoughts:
I got a dead subpixel stuck on green near the centre, but I don't actually notice it at all. On pitch black screens, I get a slight bleeding backlight in the top right corner, but its not irritating me at the moment, so I shall keep it for now.
The surface of the screen is quite hard, and when you push on the screen, it doesn't have that ripple effect of other LCDs. Seems sturdier and harder to damage. Probably still wouldn't survive a punch from me due to coursework frustration, but at least cleaning the screen won't be such a tiptoe job.
The upright widescreen is so incredibly fantastic. So fantastic in fact that I relish the thought of having two upright dell 2005fpws on my table. As you can probably imagine I've been trying to tell myself that I can afford it, and that I can afford to change my brand new gigabyte x800pro vivo, for a dual DVI x800xt. Shame that I can't, maybe next year....
I have decided however, that due to the difference in colour and design, I can't bear to keep my hercules and I am selling it. Which I wouldn't have dreamed of doing when I bought it, but I need to fund this current dell, and I'm getting fairly good offers for the hercules. It needs a good home. Any offers?
Things to add in future update/review:
PIP and PBP, I don't actually have anything to plug into these, but if I get a digibox like I'm planning, then an update will be in order. Perhaps I'll steal my housemates gamecube/PS2/xbox and see what happens.
USB2 hub. It has one. Anyone want a review of it? No? I thought as much.
Conclusion:
I have written a great deal for a small update. In fact its positively review sized... goes to show what lengths i'll go to to avoid coursework due in tomorrow. And perhaps goes to show how much I like this new screen of mine. When i have more time, i'll refine what I've written here, incorporate some pictures, bulk it up with some idle chitchat, and possibly have got better at CS:source (pah). More importantly, start saving for a second one. I must have two...fgsdgh
How did you manager to pay £566 for it?
Its £616 here
http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna...194&first=true
he 'chripsed' the sales woman
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