tv and monitors inconsistent viewing angles


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So here is my bother.

 

My first 2 LCD's were TN after I ditched CRT, I brought without any research, needless to say I was horrified with what I had, horrific viewing angles, trails behind the mouse when moving it, behind text when scrolling etc.

 

I eventually got a PVA (might have been MVA not sure now).  Viewing angles much better, still bad trails when moving mouse etc. tho.  But could at least watch stuff in bed (as on a TN it got too distorted).

 

Then a while after when dell released the brilliant one of a kind 2209wa I thought thats it the future of lcd's is sorted.  a e-IPS panel, great near perfect viewing angle, I can stand at quite extreme angles and the picture is about the same as been right in front of it.  The lag when objects mvoe on the screen is gone.  So it was near CRT performance but as a LCD.  However it seems things have gone backwards since.

 

So about 2 years after I got the 2209wa I got a 2nd e-IPS, the 2209wa was discontunued by dell very quickly after launch, no real obvious reason why as it sold very well, so this 2nd monitor was a different one, but also due that I needed hdmi input which the 2209wa doesnt have.   This 2nd e-IPS is edge LCD backlit vs the traditional baclight the 2209wa has.  I also think it has a lower spec 6bit panel vs the 8bit in the 2209wa.  I was expecting possibly increased lag, and lower colour accuracy.  I wasnt expect the much worse vertical viewing angles.  When standing up on the new monitor a dim bar appears and moves depending on how much I am standing up, it dissapears funny enough when its an extreme angle but is viewable sort of in all the in between angles, it also has noticeble lag, eg. scrolling text has issues.  It does have superior contrast ratio due to LED backlighting but thats the only improvement.  So a 2 year newer monitor using same panel type is for the most part inferior.

 

On to tv's.  Samsung seem the most favoured brand by a lot of people (I know not by everyone), I got a samsung lcd tv, my first lcd tc, about 4-5 months ago.  It does have a samsung panel not an outsourced one.  I checked on the service menu.  Now after calibrating the tv, taking it out of the demo settings, it looks great but have to view it bang on in front of it, which I do most of the time thankfully but obviously is instances I may get up to do something and then look at the tv eg. whilst standing up.  This is the current year model and VA screen but the viewing angle is almost 0.  Is noticeable severe reduction of contrast ratio off angle both sideways and height wise.  My sister's old samsung tv had the same problem but much less severe and it only had it for height not sideways.  It was the same spec tv but the year's previous model and the same panel type, what was the difference? mine has edge led backlighting hers was the traditional backlight.

Now she has a newer samsung tv, a high end model, the panel isnt a samsung panel, its one of the supposedbly inferior panels that samsung outsources, it is LED edge backlit.  However the viewing angle is very good, not as good as my 2209wa monitor but its leagues apart from my tv and her old one.

 

I do get the impression viewing angle isnt considered important by LCD manufacturers.  As the 2209wa seems an oddity not something that became a trend, and my theory as to why the 2209wa got canned was it was "too good" hurting sales of premium IPS panels.  I would like to be in a situation eg. where I can be confident every e-IPs has the same viewing angle but it seems even with the same viewing type there is huge variances.

 

I am also curious if manufacturers deliberatly hinder viewing angles on lower priced products that use tech thats capable of good viewing angles.

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You didn't list any of the other monitors/tvs, but the 2209w was a relatively small IPS panel marketed as having a 178 degree viewing angle so it isn't really surprising that it had a good viewing angles.

 

I don't really see why you think Dell discontinued the product for nefarious reasons. Dell would have just raised prices to match market demand instead because economically it doesn't makes sense to cut products that are selling well in a free market because other products at the price point will just fill in the gap. According to Dell the supplier stopped manufacturing the particular panel so Dell couldn't continue to manufacture the particular model of monitor.

 

Also, why do you think manufacturers purposely hinder viewing angle? There's a free market in place so what benefit would you have for artificially making your monitors bad? The competition would just release monitors that were better and people would buy those instead. Artificially hindering the market requires some sort of dominance or collusion on the part of manufacturers.

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Seems your problem is buying cheap screens, stop, spend the extra money and get a good one you will be glad in the long run

 

Also how cheap are you going, I've had a cheap HDTV for a few years and have not had any of your problems, tis is a Visio screen frm before they gfot their act together and started producing superior products with lower prices

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Also, why do you think manufacturers purposely hinder viewing angle? There's a free market in place so what benefit would you have for artificially making your monitors bad? The competition would just release monitors that were better and people would buy those instead. Artificially hindering the market requires some sort of dominance or collusion on the part of manufacturers.

They are certainly hindering the market with display resolutions, quality, and features. Monitors nowadays are built extremely cheaply (most have paper thin stands), a lot feature no tilt or rotation or lift, and many have very few inputs. I tried to find a monitor similar to my LP2475w. I gave up and just bought more used ones off ebay because there was absolutely nothing comparable even in the $600 range.

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They are certainly hindering the market with display resolutions.

There's a large difference between the market itself shifting to standardized resolutions in order to match the resolutions that content is made at, and manufacturers purposely making their products to be garbage...

 

Only a minority of people care about resolutions that aren't 720p, 1080p, and 4k (etc.) so the market largely stopped producing products with native resolutions that didn't match those. Not particularly surprising given the circumstances. Your products in general aren't going to sell well if they are oddball resolutions and cause issues with content display.

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I think its a bit harsh to say cheap screens.

 

eg. the dell was marketed as a budget monitor it has a e-IPS panel.

the asus is a budget monitor it has a e-IPS monitor.

 

The marketed viewing angle generaly = bull****.

 

so as a consumer is it wrong to expect one e-IPS to be the same as another e-IPS for viewing angles.  I had a friend who spent ?1000 on a monitor and the viewing angles were bad.

 

My sister's tv has the same panel type as her older tv (found out now) yet the viewing angles are very different.  Both tv's have a marketed viewing angle of 178 degrees.

 

The only thing I can conclude is effectively the spec sheet is useless (other than making sure not buying a TN), and one has to go and view a display unit physically before buying to be sure its good enough quality.  Unless they are buying the same model they are already happy with and isnt a panel lottery.  As some products have a panel lottery.

 

Regarding resolutions, I can understand for tv's not so much for monitors.  Monitors are not just used for watching films and tv they are used for pc desktops, and a 1080p resolution on a 22" screen is too big, its not ideal for me.  For me I would need at least 27 inch for 1080p.  The pixel density is simply too high for 1080p at 22 inch.  Plus higher resolutions = lower performance in games, needing better gpu etc.  So whilst its possible the 2209wa was abandoned early due to its resolution, I dont think its the case as it had very high demand (due to its very good quality at a low price).  My opinion remains the 2209wa was trashing sales of dell's higher priced monitors so had to be taken of the market.  The 2209wa I think was an experiment for dell/LG to see if ips would sell at a low price point against TN screens, it was a resounding success and then lower quality IPS screens came out to replace it for the long term.

 

Sadly it seems buying a lcd remains a complete lottery over the internet unless before hand you know what you buying.  I am going to have a hard time if this 2209wa ever dies on me, I think its irreplacable I will have to compromise when replacing it.

 

Also to mention the xbox360 will happily run natively at 1050p (2209wa resolution) it has software scaling for games so they look fine, the ps3 however isnt so good in that regard and most games run at 480p or 720p, and look bad on my 1080p screen as a result.

 

Maybe the 2209wa is an oddity and all modern e-IPS arent that great.  But LCD is in a bad state if one has to spend high amounts of money to get decent viewing angles.  Roll on OLED?

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The only thing I can conclude is effectively the spec sheet is useless (other than making sure not buying a TN), and one has to go and view a display unit physically before buying to be sure its good enough quality.  Unless they are buying the same model they are already happy with and isnt a panel lottery.  As some products have a panel lottery.

That's not really different from any other product. Bad products and misrepresentative information is pervasive everywhere  :laugh: You always have to check out what you are buying before hand be it by looking up reviews or going to the store.

 

Regarding resolutions, I can understand for tv's not so much for monitors.  Monitors are not just used for watching films and tv they are used for pc desktops, and a 1080p resolution on a 22" screen is too big, its not ideal for me.  For me I would need at least 27 inch for 1080p.  The pixel density is simply too high for 1080p at 22 inch.  Plus higher resolutions = lower performance in games, needing better gpu etc.  So whilst its possible the 2209wa was abandoned early due to its resolution, I dont think its the case as it had very high demand (due to its very good quality at a low price).  My opinion remains the 2209wa was trashing sales of dell's higher priced monitors so had to be taken of the market.  The 2209wa I think was an experiment for dell/LG to see if ips would sell at a low price point against TN screens, it was a resounding success and then lower quality IPS screens came out to replace it for the long term.

They even put 1080p on smartphones and laptops now. Monitors may not just be used for watching 720p/1080p content but really that's what the consumer market is doing with them. Just check video sites online, they generally do 720p/1080p now. No-one cares about us workers who could use different non-standard resolutions because we don't drive the market.

 

Also, I just realized I'm using a Dell 2309wa at work right now. Is it different from the 2209wa other than being 23"? I'm asking because the viewing angle isn't really great. I mean you can see it from an angle, but the color changes depending on the angle you are viewing it at. It's better than some other monitors I've seen, but it's not great. I actually DO scale the GUI slightly on this monitor because I think the default Windows font size is too small for 1080p, but I wouldn't want it to be 1050p. I switched monitors to this one just to get the larger resolution.

 

Also, I already said in this thread why Dell stopped selling the monitor --> the manufacture of the panel stopped producing it (or they were lying, but why bother giving an explanation at all at that point?). I also pointed out that your conspiracy doesn't make economic sense in an open market because you wouldn't stop producing a selling product regardless of whether it was an experiment or not. You'd just lose money by doing that so why would you?

 

 

Sadly it seems buying a lcd remains a complete lottery over the internet unless before hand you know what you buying.  I am going to have a hard time if this 2209wa ever dies on me, I think its irreplacable I will have to compromise when replacing it.

Why are you acting as if the 2209wa is the only good monitor ever made? There's a bunch of good monitors on the market. If you don't want to spend money on a good monitor then I guess this is true? Honestly, based on the 2309wa it seems to me you are over-hyping the 2209wa.

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if you're getting noticeable lag(not just reading the numbers, but lag you actually notice) and trails on a monitor from the last 5 (or re if you didn't buy the cheap ones) then, yes not only are you buying cheap monitors. you're buying REALLY cheap monitors. 

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yeah LCD introduces its own problems that previously unheard in CRT era.

 

others follow suit to adjust for LCD deficiency, like firefox logo adjusting its image to make it 'acceptable' for LCD display

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