Questions for 20" ACD owners

sidane

First off let me say I'm a PC user. I'm in the market for a 20" widescreen LCD. I currently have the Dell 20" Widescreen 2005FPW which I received earlier in the week.



It's a great monitor with a super picture, lots of connectivity options, PIP, adjustable stand, 90 degree rotation, good response rate/little or no ghosting in games. Alas it has one major flaw which is a deal breaker - there is MASSIVE backlight leaking from three corners.



See here:

http://img64.exs.cx/img64/7752/2005fpwbacklight11nc.jpg (lights off)

http://img64.exs.cx/img64/5633/2005fpwbacklight27be.jpg (lights on)



This is a very common problem with the 2005FPW as very long topics in other hardware forums testify. I'm sending it back for a full refund next week and the 20" ACD (aluminum) looks like the only equivalent widescreen replacement.



From what I've read both panels are essentially the same (LG manufactured?), so my questions to existing 20" ACD owners are:



- What kind of backlighting leakage, if any, does it suffer from?



- How many dead pixels out of the box did it have?



- Does it rotate 90 degrees so you can view the screen in portrait?



- From what I've read the stand is non adjustable, how high off the table is the bottom of the monitor? I ask because I have 5.1 speakers and need to put the centre speaker somewhere (ideally under the panel since there is very little room in front of it, small table).



- How does it fair with games regarding ghosting/response rate? 80% of my time is spent in windows surfing, coding, graphic design, the other 20% is gaming.



- What options are there for running non-native resolution applications (e.g. games not played at 1680x1050). Does the monitor stretch the image to fill the whole screen or can you choose 1:1 pixel ratio or maintain aspect ratio as you can with the 2005FPW?



- When it comes to connecting to a PC, what is involved and are their any disadvantages as this is an Mac product? I've read about the DVIator so I assume I need one of those (they're not cheap tho!).



Answers to any of the above questions would be much appreciated.



Thanks!

nguyenhm16

I have the previous 20" ACD, but can answer some of your questions:



1) Little/no backlight leakage out of the corners. What I thought was leakage were reflections from a not entirely dark room. The display is uniform when displaying "black." I would imagine the new 20" is the same or better.



2) I bought a store demo 20" and it has one stuck blue pixel.



3) I don't think any Apple display in recent memory can rotate. They don't even tilt/swivel... well, the newer ones tilt, and you can swivel by just rotating the entire disply on your desk. Of course the 20" has a VESA mount, so you might be able to find a VESA arm that lets you do that, and the software on your PC allows it.



4) It's about 3-4" off the table. Get a VESA arm, will solve many of your placement problems.



5) Response time - no idea with games, but it plays DVDs at full screen fine, with no ghosting, etc.



6) No idea. Apple says it will work with PCs w/ DVI out, but OTOH, there are no controls on it besides power and brightness. With my Mac, selecting a non-native resolution either scales or maintains aspect ratio with the accompanying black bars (e.g. for 4:3 modes like 1024x768, it has two options, 1024x768 and 1024x768 (stretched), for non-native 16x10 modes it scales). I don't think it has a 1:1 pixel mapping mode.



7) You need nothing extra. Current ACDs are DVI (well, with the 30" you need a dual-link DVI card, rare in the PC world). As an added bonus, the single cable to the display branches out to DVI, USB, and FW, with the corresponding USB and FW connectors on the display itself, so you can attach keyboard/mouse, iPod, etc. to your display. It was the old style Cinema displays that required an adaptor to break out the DVI port from the ADC port and provide power to the display if you were not using a Mac. ADC was DVI+USB+power for a single-cable connection from display to CPU, Mac video cards with an ADC port provided power to the display, obviously if you weren't using a Mac you needed something else to power the display. Apple has stopped using ADC in it's current generation of displays.

amorph

For what it's worth, the stated response time for Apple's Cinema Displays is 16 milliseconds, which means that the pixels can change color about 60 times per second.



Based on that admittedly theoretical calculation, ghosting shouldn't be an issue.

dgnr8

The new 20 inch is far and away the best out there. I have gone thru 5 other name brands in the last two and half years, and this is the cream of the crop. Now I do not know how it will run on pc. I had a dell 19 inch on pc and it was ok but when I connected to my power mac it was much better. Dont know why, not a hardware geek I just know what I saw. I can't recomend this bad boy enough.

sidane

Thanks for the replies, they're very helpful.



I put in my order for the 20" today, so should have it before the end of the week.

emdash

Just to clarify, you *won't* need the DVIator for the new (aluminum) Cinema Displays. That was just a kludge to get the old Studio/Cinema displays -- the ones with ADC connectors -- to work with computers that weren't equipped with ADC ports.



The new Cinema Displays use regular DVI connections, plus USB for display controls (I believe), plus FireWire for the built-in FireWire hub in the display.