Dell Introduces New 16:9 Aspect Ratio 1080p Monitor

[Felix Torres]

24" 1080p displays?
Dorm rooms, guys.
Double duty as computer monitors and TV.
The panel manufacturers call the shots, remember? And in many parts of the world, TVs don't get all that big so a 24" 1080p TV is a desirable product when hooked up to a cable box or sat receiver. Whats the going rate for 1200p 24-inchers? $399? $499?
This lets Dell gets a 24" out the door for $349 and every bit helps in these price-sensitive times.
Heck, one of these and a $360 arcade is a complete HD gaming system for about the price of a PS3... ;-)

[Felix Torres]

24" 1080p displays?
Dorm rooms, guys.
Double duty as computer monitors and TV.
The panel manufacturers call the shots, remember? And in many parts of the world, TVs don't get all that big so a 24" 1080p TV is a desirable product when hooked up to a cable box or sat receiver. Whats the going rate for 1200p 24-inchers? $399? $499?
This lets Dell gets a 24" out the door for $349 and every bit helps in these price-sensitive times.
Heck, one of these and a $360 arcade is a complete HD gaming system for about the price of a PS3... ;-)

[Sven]

I use a monitor as a second display on my MCE machine hooked to my 50" big screen. I run them in mirrored mode because sometimes I like to browse the guide on the monitor while watching actual TV (tuner in TV), but I use the MC PC as a PVR. I have a heck of a time setting up a resolution that looks right on both the big screen and the monitor when they are mirrored. May just be a function (or lacke thereof) on the video card, but it is annoying. The picture on the TV looks great, out of the Media Center interface, but overbounds the edges on the monitor. It can look great on the monitor, but then has black edges on the TV. If this thing will help solve that issue, it will be in my shopping cart today.

Another thing I would love is a remote standby on a monitor, so I don't have to watch two screens, or a seperately settable screen saver on a secondary display, same reason.

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by Lee Yuan Sheng

Stinks. The PC industry should exert some clout to make monitors less skinny!

Less skinny? Huh? You want fat monitors?

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by Sven

The picture on the TV looks great, out of the Media Center interface, but overbounds the edges on the monitor. It can look great on the monitor, but then has black edges on the TV. If this thing will help solve that issue, it will be in my shopping cart today.

On your TV, see if you can change the mode to "Just Scan" or something similar - I was playing with my LG TV today and had that exact problem: the Windows desktop on the Studio Hybrid computer was off the edge of the display at 1920 x 1080. I had to change the TV to "Just Scan" rather than the fixed 16:9 ratio and now it looks *great* (oh, I turned down the sharpness too).

[Felix Torres]

Originally Posted by Jason Dunn

On your TV, see if you can change the mode to "Just Scan" or something similar - I was playing with my LG TV today and had that exact problem: the Windows desktop on the Studio Hybrid computer was off the edge of the display at 1920 x 1080. I had to change the TV to "Just Scan" rather than the fixed 16:9 ratio and now it looks *great* (oh, I turned down the sharpness too).

Correct.
The problem is Overscan. The onboard electronics upscale the incoming signal by anywhere between 5 to 15% and then display the center portion of the now-blurred image, letting the rest fall outside the display.-
This is because the idiots designing TVs are still applying analog TV design principles to HD displays and defaulting digital ports to overscan on (to "protect us" from garbage data that isn't there), instead of the rational zero-overscan setting they should be using with digital content.

Different TVs call the setting different things (as well as implementing it differently); some call it 1-to-1, dot-by-dot, native display, etc. It is (barely) excusable on analog SD ports (composite, s-video), an annoyance on SD component ports and totally inexcusable on any HD ports.

And, of course, retailers and manufacturers do their best *not* to talk about it.