eMac Displays
I have heard a lot of bad reports about the screens on the eMacs. I have heard that they have crippled screens that don't even utilize the full ability of the video cards? Is this true? Their specs aren't entirely useful. Also, what do you get if you go out to another monitor in the way of resolution, refresh rate, etc?
Comments
Well they did have a problem when the eMac was first released, at some resolutions the screen seemed to shutter... the one at my old school did this (700mhz model), but the one that I played with at the reseller did not have this problem.
They are shadow mask and suffer from moire patterns, you get used to them but they are noticable and annoying.
I have yet to see one with good geometry. The image is not square, and the controls are inadequete for fixing the problem.
At high resolution the refresh rate is too low ( 72hz ).
Many people complain that the speakers cause jittering of the display ( havent personally seen it ).
None of these are killer problems, just dont expect a perfext display. You have a couple of ongoing choices after purchase.
Get a second monitor, a good one, lcd maybe, hide the emac under your desk, and pretend that it is the cheap tower you always wanted.
Or
Enable the vga out for spanning, and use the second display right next to the emac. Now you can have a nice 19" lcd running at hi res, and run the emac at a lower res/higher refresh rate and get the best of all worlds.
Knowing that you have an upgrade path for your display really helps you get over the problems with it.
It's a damn site sharper than CTX's professional line of Flat CRT's.
I think you could be right about the vid side though Rob. My G4 Tower has a geforce 4MX in it and under Xbench pulls about 69FPS while the new emac with a Rad 9200 is only pulling 74FPS. I know thats not much of a comparison so i put in my Rad 9000 in the tower and ran glxgears and i get around 2300 FPS on the emac with it's 9200 It varies greatly from 380 - 1100.
Though Don't be put of by that because in Games it's more than capable.
Originally posted by mmmpie
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Many people complain that the speakers cause jittering of the display ( havent personally seen it ).
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It's apparently mostly a problem when running at the higher resolution; it's either not noticeable or not a problem at the lower resolutions.
As for the quality of the monitors, they're pretty good (good enough for most non-graphics pro purposes I would think). My only worry is reliability... they do tend to go "pop" every once in a while, although I **think** they've fixed the infamous "raster shift" problem.
Originally posted by mmmpie
The emac screens are cheap, super cheap, dont expect more from them than a really cheap screen, maybe a free one you got from the rubbish.
My experience is quite different.
Everyone comments on the excellent quality of my eMac's display. The geometry is perfect and the contrast/brightness/saturation are great.
That is... when you run it at 1024x768. Higher resolutions look horrible. Pixel junkies jack the resolution up and then complain about the picture quality.
It's my feeling that the only shortcoming of the eMac's display is that it can't be comfortably run at high resolutions. If you're ok with 1024x768, the eMac screen will be quite pleasing. If you desire higher pixel density, the eMac's display might be annnoying.
It's not horrible, it's not phenomenal. It is simply "good"... at the typical resolution of 1024x768.
Originally posted by dfiler
My experience is quite different.
Everyone comments on the excellent quality of my eMac's display. The geometry is perfect and the contrast/brightness/saturation are great.
That is... when you run it at 1024x768. Higher resolutions look horrible. Pixel junkies jack the resolution up and then complain about the picture quality.
It's my feeling that the only shortcoming of the eMac's display is that it can't be comfortably run at high resolutions. If you're ok with 1024x768, the eMac screen will be quite pleasing. If you desire higher pixel density, the eMac's display might be annnoying.
It's not horrible, it's not phenomenal. It is simply "good"... at the typical resolution of 1024x768.
Don't agree with there, at least not mine, I'm running mine at full res 1280x960 at 72hz and the picture quality is very good, as i sad above its a damn site better than my CTX pro Flat screen.
the only Problem that bothers me with this screen is that when the comp is cold ( Been switched off for a while) It takes a few mins to warm up.
Ive looked at lots of emac screens to make sure that I was happy with the display.
It is good enough, Im not unhappy with it. I wouldnt not buy an emac because of the display.
But, Ive never, ever seen an emac with good geometry. I consider the viewsonic Im in front of now to have good geometry, I can _just_ see variations in the straightness of the display edges. My emac ( and every one Ive looked at ) has much more noticable 'waviness'. Its not bad enough for me to be concerned. You cant see it when you are focusing on work.
Neither do I particularly notice the moire in day to day work, but some colours and textures are worse than others.
The refresh rate of 72hz is bearable. I would like 80, but 72 is ok with incandescent lighting, running at any lower res is too much masochism for me. OS X is not a system for 1024x768 or less ( I know many people get by on ibooks etc, as I did, but when you go hi res you wont want to go back ).
When I look at the emac monitor I just see a cheap shadowmask display that hasnt been properly calibrated. An aperture display would be better.
I havent seen any problems from my speakers, I think it probably arises from poor quality control of the speaker sheilding ( cheap cheap cheap ). But I cant see why you would buy external speakers. The ones included with the emac are better than any Ive ever owned for a computer before, and plenty loud enough for music in my apartment.
The contrast, brightness, colour are all fine, just as I would expect from a crt, and apparently the emac screen even does over bright for movies and games.
I wouldnt have bought an emac if you couldnt hack to support spanning, but you can. Im not worried about my current monitor, because I know I can add a better one in the future. I dont want people to think that the emac monitor is useless, but it hardly compares to a nice expensive crt, or an lcd. Better monitors do cost more, and I would have no problem spending the price of my emac on a new monitor.
[edit]
What I want to say is: lots of people have sung the praises of the emac screen. It doesnt deserve that, it is not great, it is _good enough_. Just like the emac.
Thanks.
It is important to realise that the spanning hack is simply enabling the dual display capability of the video card which is off by default. Because Apple dont claim that the eMac supports spanning they are under no obligation to use video which does, but they have no choice, all modern video chips do dual display.
I dont consider this to be anymore of a hack than enabling the NMI ( programmers switch ) mode of the power switch, which requires setting nvram as well. The only reason that eMacs dont officially support dual screen is marketing.