New Gateway 21" Widescreen LCD monitor

[Michael Fortson]

I was out shopping at CompUSA today looking for a monitor to replace the aging 1280*1024 display on my Mac. I'd pretty much given up and decided to go home and order the really nice Dell widescreen. As an aside, it's frustrating when a third of the laptops on display have nicer screens than any available desktop monitor in the store (!). Dell seems to be one of the few to buck this trend at an affordable price.

Then I happened upon this brief report at Engadget:
http://displays.engadget.com/entry/1234000423061801/

A quick check at bestbuy.com showed it in-stock a couple minutes away, and now I'm typing this while looking at it. Really nice display, very good price ($599). Inputs include:

- DVI (with HDCP support (!))
- VGA
- Component
- SVGA
- Composite

The video (not PC) inputs all go through a Faroudja scaler. It also seems to be counter-weighted -- it raises up and down on its' stand with very little effort.

I'm surprised by the quality (and even looks, once you peel the various marketing stickers off). Good stuff... the only addition I'd like to see them make is a high gloss X-BRITE-like coating, but the colors and brightness are pretty astounding, and WoW looks better than ever. Someone else showed up looking for one right after I did... my store might just sell out of em soon.

[mouselock]

How's it work for actual PC stuff. The combo of HDCP and the fact that it's rotatable (hello, MAME!), coupled with the fact that Dell has essentially quit running any really appealing promotions on the 2005 make me pretty interested.

[Case]

But it's not 1920x1080. It's that weird 1650x1050 res.

[Michael Fortson]

Seems outstanding for PC stuff at 1680*1050. I haven't tried any other inputs yet. Nor have I found anything 20-21" that does more than 1600*12-ish res... seems you have to get into 23"+ range for 1920 (freakish laptops notwithstanding).

[SpoofyChop]

But it's not 1920x1080. It's that weird 1650x1050 res.

From my forays at the Widescreen Forum it seems that 1680x1050 (which admittedly is the seemingly new and arbitrary 16x10 aspect) has the benefit of being about 15% fewer pixels (its 2,073,600 vs 1,764,000) which makes it a bit easier for video cards to handle. I've seen some stories of people having trouble pushing all the pixels of 1920x1080 even with pretty nice rigs and video cards.

[Marcus]

Gaming on a widescreen is the best thing ever. I love it.

Also the main reason I didnt go with the 24inch LCD is because of that resolution requirement.

[steve]

By the way, the resolution on most 23- and 24-inch LCDs is 1920x1200, not 1080.

The only issue I'd be worried about with a 1680x1050 monitor are the games with fixed resolutions. If you have the system to do 1600x1200, you'd need to drop to 1280x1024 (or lower) instead of being able to run at 1600x1200. This monitor seems like a good deal, and I've been impressed with some of Gateway's recent hardware, so I hardly thin it's a deal-breaker.

For games that support widescreen, 1680x1050 seems like a nice compromise. You should be able to handle that without resorting to $1K worth of video. But if your videocard struggles to handle 1600x1200, you might be better off just getting a 19-inch LCD with a 1280x1024 native resolution. (This is only for gaming purposes; having a ginormous monitor for regular Windows work is bloody fabulous).

[Michael Fortson]

(This isn't only for gaming purposes; having a ginormous monitor for regular Windows work is bloody fabulous).

Fixed :) and dead right about that too. Although I grew tired of the oversized washed-out pixels on my 1280*1024 display (which was a 19" LCD), the Sony X-Brite version of the 19" uses that resolution and could almost satisfy my craving for pixels by virtue of the nice glossy display (provided your room lighting supports it). Almost.

Update on the Gateway: I like it even more after a few day's use. Fantastic.

[steve]

the Sony X-Brite version of the 19" uses that resolution and could almost satisfy my craving for pixels by virtue of the nice glossy display (provided your room lighting supports it). Almost.

Yeah, I'm very mixed on the X-Brite-style screens (everyone has one now). They're unusuable in our office because of the lighting and excessive reflections, but I brought the first one I had home to see what it was like in my "normal" environment and it was fab. There's no doubt it makes everything look spectacular, but you need to be very careful that seeing yourself looking back at you while staring at dark screens won't weird you out.

(Like the old Trinitron lines, I suspect people eventually stop noticing.)

Update on the Gateway: I like it even more after a few day's use. Fantastic.

Terrific news. I need to contact those guys about a review unit, since it sounds like a nice mid-point monitor bewtween the 19s and the 23- and 24-inchers.

[Motherhead]

I attached an Apple 20-inch Cinema display (1680x1050) to my main game rig about five months ago on a lark and haven't it pulled it off since*. Most games that res past 1280x1024 have a 1680x1050 mode added alongside the 1600x1200. Once you play WoW widescreen, there's no going back. Not to mention any RTS game that supports it. Playing Dungeon Siege II (and older titles) at 1280x1024 doesn't kill me either, though I now give the stink-eye at any new release that doesn't support widescreen resolutions. Especially, as pointed out, with prices nose-diving.

*I did, for a bit, connect my Samsung 243f (24-inch 1900x1200) and it was bliss, but that unit really belonged to my work Mac (gasp!) next to a 23-inch Cinema display. (These are the reasons, I tell myself, that I sold out to the Man)

[Marcus]

You can Run DS2 at 1680 it looks pretty good too.

[steve]

Playing Dungeon Siege II (and older titles) at 1280x1024 doesn't kill me either, though I now give the stink-eye at any new release that doesn't support widescreen resolutions. Especially, as pointed out, with prices nose-diving.

You can manually edit an .INI file to add the widescreen resolutions to Dungeon Siege II. I play it at 1920x1200 and it maintains 30-40FPS.

*I did, for a bit, connect my Samsung 243f (24-inch 1900x1200) and it was bliss, but that unit really belonged to my work Mac (gasp!) next to a 23-inch Cinema display. (These are the reasons, I tell myself, that I sold out to the Man)

Do you know what the specs are on that Samsung? I wonder if it's the same as the Dell 2405. 12ms response, etc.

[Moggraider]

I went with the Dell 2005 and I love it, except there's no widescreen support in Battlefield 2 =/.

[ambushbug]

I went with the Dell 2005 and I love it, except there's no widescreen support in Battlefield 2 =/.

You can kind of cheat it by adding "+menu 1 +fullscreen 1 +szx 1680 +szy 1050" to the shortcut.

It seems to chop off a bit from the top and the bottom but at least the aspect ratio seems more accurate.

No excuse for them not really supporting that mode though =(

[steve]

You can manually edit an .INI file to add the widescreen resolutions to Dungeon Siege II. I play it at 1920x1200 and it maintains 30-40FPS.

Oops, I was wrong here. You just change the shortcut. Mine is:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Dungeon Siege 2\DungeonSiege2.exe" width=1920 height=1200 bpp=32

[Motherhead]

You can Run DS2 at 1680 it looks pretty good too.

You just change the shortcut. Mine is:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Dungeon Siege 2\DungeonSiege2.exe" width=1920 height=1200 bpp=32

Sweet! Thanks for the heads up.

Do you know what the specs are on that Samsung? I wonder if it's the same as the Dell 2405. 12ms response, etc.

Specs (it's the 243T, not R, sorry), I wish it was a 12ms unit, though I hadn't experienced ghosting with it much at all. Most likely because of what I was playing at the time. Tasked with what I bought it for (layout and 2/3D design) it's dead sexy.

[stusser]

Quick review:

You paid $600 for essentially the same thing as the $400 dell 2005fpw after determining (correctly) that it was a bad deal. And you're happy about it.

How about next time you send me the $200, I'll kick you in the nuts, and we'll call it even?

[Marcus]

The gateway is a 21 inch and inches are expensive.... just ask your doctor.

[stusser]

Oh, yep, I missed that. $200 for 1" seems like a lot, though. Especially considering that another $200 would buy another 2005fpw and you could be looking at two of em.

[Marcus]

It is but it isnt.

The 20 inch dell is 400 while the 24 incher is 890 ish.

[John Reynolds]

Just picked up a Dell 2405 24" a few weeks ago and love it. Been playing EverQuest 2, Painkiller, FF vs. 3rd Reich, Rome: Total War, Call of Duty 2 demo, a few other games at 1920x1200 on a Radeon X800 XT (though with a FX-57 CPU and 2GB of RAM). Best hardware purchase I've made in years.

[mouselock]

Oh, yep, I missed that. $200 for 1" seems like a lot, though. Especially considering that another $200 would buy another 2005fpw and you could be looking at two of em.

Err.. 200 for a nice deinterlacer, component, and HDCP input, as well as 1".

Dunno about you, but I *like* the idea of being able to seamlessly use my monitor as a small bedroom TV or the like too. The Dell is available right now at $400, but those differences are enough to make me hold off and debate which is better. A nice 10% or so sale on the Gateway would push me firmly into the gateway camp.

[mono]

I don't mean to come off as a commie or anything, but isn't HDCP a technology that would be good for consumers to reject? Much like the original DIVX?

Is it already destined to be integrated into all new displays, so the battle is lost?

[Marcus]

hdcp can fuck off. Its very bad news.

[Case]

I don't mean to come off as a commie or anything, but isn't HDCP a technology that would be good for consumers to reject? Much like the original DIVX?

Is it already destined to be integrated into all new displays, so the battle is lost?

No HDCP = no high res HDTV over DVI or HDMI. You'll still be able to do component video for the time being, though in some cases only at 480P. Almost all HDTV set-top boxes and the upcoming high definition DVDs (whatever format wins) will use HDCP.

[stusser]

HDCP uses a flawed cryptographic mechanism. It's based upon symmetric key exchange; the display device (TV) and the content generation device (your HD-DVD player) both possess a secret key and a public key. They share the public keys, then combine with their secret keys to generate a shared secret. It's very close to standard diffie hellman encryption. So far so good, right? Well, no. This kind of encryption is only secure if the private keys remain private... and they're shipping out millions of consumer electronic products. It's fundamentally flawed as it uses a linear combination of foreign public keys to authenticate. With as little as 50 and possibly as many as 74 (depending on the attack chosen) consumer devices, you can get every private key, likely within a couple of weeks. Once you have every public key and every secret key, you can generate the master key matrix and the entire system is entirely compromised. In other words, don't be too concerned about HDCP. It's less effective than DVD's CSS.

These attacks have been widely published... google for them.

Now this still doesn't mean that high def video can be effectively recorded in the digital realm. HDMI is an uncompressed bitstream. Uncompressed HD is roughly 185MB/sec, 675GB/hour. Not only would you need 675GB of storage to store the latest episode of Lost in HD, but you'd have to have storage capable of writing 185 megabytes every second, and then have to process all of that and compress it down to divx/xvid/whatever before distributing it on the internet. It simply isn't practical right now. Of course sometime in the future "they" will release chips capable of compressing a HD bitstream in realtime, but who knows how long it'll take to get there?

[Michael Fortson]

Something else about this monitor: no ghosting that I've been able to detect. 8ms claimed response (pretty low compared to the competition) seems accurate as far as I can see (WoW-tested, guess I'll try Doom3 for some good contrast challenges). My last LCD was a ghoster so it's something I look for. Makes sense I guess, since this is apparently using a brand new LCD panel -- no idea who makes it but it smokes.

[Hump]

Like John I also picked up a Dell 2405 24". I'm very very satisfied with this. The only downside I'm experiencing is the quality of my Xbox games (it also doubles as a TV monitor). I've done everything from pick up the Xbox HD cable pack to playing with the settings on the Xbox, the monitor and my vid card....every game still looks like shit. If anyone has a suggestion as to how I might resolve this I'd be grateful.

[steve]

I've done everything from pick up the Xbox HD cable pack to playing with the settings on the Xbox, the monitor and my vid card....every game still looks like shit. If anyone has a suggestion as to how I might resolve this I'd be grateful.

Get an Xbox 360.

[Michael Fortson]

Oops, one more thing: the gateway did not come with a DVI cable. I had a nice spare from my old HD Cable box, but supplying a nice monitor with only a VGA cable could be annoying to some users.