in message
They're all more alike than different... might even have the
same panel inside as the latter is going to have such higher
contrast through dynamic changes, which if the feature is
enabled makes it harder to calibrate the monitor.
I've found that the overdrive feature (by many different names) to
supposedly boost the contrast is a wasted feature and misleading. On
every LCD monitor that I've viewed with this feature - which is only
to pump up the *dynamic* contrast ratio so marketing can hype the
bogus value - it washes out the contrast rather than improve on it.
Contrast becomes so high that toolbars that had gradient coloring turn
out with solid colors and those with just slightly differently hued
background end up all looking to have a white background. When
getting an LCD monitor, check on its *raw* contrast ratio. Ignore the
dynamic value fabricated by marketers to make the number look higher.
Unless you are always looking at pretty pictures of multi-colored
flowers, the overdriven contrast looks worse, and the contrast only
looks better for the flowers because less colors are shown so
obviously there will be more contrast between the colors that are
left.
Display a grid showing thousands of different shades of gray. With
overdriven contrast, a vast majority of those shades will disappear or
there will be no differentiation so the blocks become larger. The
less difference between raw and dynamic contrast the better. Oooh,
2000:1 dynamic. I'd rather get one with 1000:1 raw than one that was
overdriven to 3000:1 dynamic from 700:1 raw. Because many LCD
manufacturers don't want you to know how low is their raw contrast
ratio, you might not find it listed in their specs. Be leery if they
don't list their raw contrast ratio. Some won't even let you know if
they are quoting the raw or dynamic contrast ratio but then some don't
bother with contrast overdrive.
http://www.hdtvexpert.com/pages/shmontrast.htm
http://www.mediacollege.com/video/test-patterns/grayscale.html
http://www.design215.com/toolbox/grayscale.php
See if there is a difference between non-overdriven and overdriven
contrast modes (i.e., raw versus dynamic contrast). The problem with
charts is that they deliberately shown differentiation between the
bars so a user can be misled into thinking that the next bar is shown
correctly versus looking exactly like the bar previous or after it.
The contrast overdrive can result in a display very similar to ramping
up the contrast setting towards 100%: grays get washed out.
When my CRT died, yeah, I went with a LCD monitor. I really miss my
old CRT (brighter, better color saturation, faster, no degradation of
sharpness for non-native resolution, equal dispersal of same color
across the entire screen, deeper black, no faint bleed-thru at the
bottom for the light tube, no dead pixels at the start or later, and
more). Just couldn't find a CRT for *immediate* replacement when my
old one died. CRT manufacture is getting phased out. Guess the
profit margin is higher for LCDs.
