Getting the best image on a wide screen LCD?

karavite

karavite

Registered
Hello All,

I just purchased a Samsung 225BW 22" 16:10 monitor. It was "only" $400, and I knew it wasn't the best monitor in the world, but I am wondering if someone could recommend settings in the OS and monitor I could try to get the best image possible from this. Text is a little fuzzy and though I could live with it as-is, I am betting there are a few things I could do. I have calibrated in the Mac and fiddled with various other settings in the monitor, but I thought maybe some of you graphics pros would have some tips. This thing replaced 2 19" CRTs and I am finding that I like this arrangment better (plus my office shelf is 60 pounds lighter). Other than email, web and office apps, my main work on this machine is video editing in FCP. I didn't need the best monitor in the world because I view my video on an external TV via my Canopus ADVC-300.

Thanks in advance!

P.S. HEre is a review of the monitor (someone has too much time!)
http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=336
 
karavite said:
... I just purchased a Samsung 225BW 22" 16:10 monitor. It was "only" $400, and I knew it wasn't the best monitor in the world, but I am wondering if someone could recommend settings in the OS and monitor I could try to get the best image possible from this. Text is a little fuzzy and though I could live with it as-is, I am betting there are a few things I could do. ...
...
Click to expand...

The native resolution for your 225BW is 1680 x 1054, so that's a good place to start. You will get the sharpest image possible at that resolution.
Most of the 'Buy' links from the Samsung web site, show that monitor for sale for less than $400, but that's not a bad price.
 
I am running a 21" Gateway at 1680 x 1050 via the mini-DVI to VGA adapter, and I also feel that the image isn't quite as sharp as it could be. It may just be the VGA connection, as I could not get the DVI connection to work. Perhaps the integrated video adapter is the culprit.
 
The best advice I could give you would be to connect using straight DVI and set it at it's native resolution (which I'm sure you did). If your text still seems blurry, maybe you should calibrate the font smoothing preference in the "Appearance" menu.
 
Thanks everyone. I am using the DVI connection, have it at 1680 x 500 and have font smoothing set to Strong at 8 pt and lower. I did the color calibration in System Preferences using all the advance settings, and that seemed to give the bigggest payback. Maybe I will try it again. The monitor has a few settings including color, gamma, contrast and sharpness which I have tweaked as well. I will give it all a go again, but I am thinking that coming from a CRT to a relatively low priced LCD (even though it is big) is a step down in image quality no matter what you do. Oh well, like I said, it is nice to have some desk space back (vs. two 19" CRT monitors) and yet still have a good chunk of screen space available.

Edit. Maybe I am crazy, but I just tried this and I swear it looks a little better with the refresh rate at 59.9 Hertz over being set at 60 Hertz. How can that be?
 
karavite said:
Edit. Maybe I am crazy, but I just tried this and I swear it looks a little better with the refresh rate at 59.9 Hertz over being set at 60 Hertz. How can that be?
Click to expand...

I have no clue. I thought LCD's didn't even use refresh rates...
 
karavite said:
have it at 1680 x 500
Click to expand...

hope that was a miss type. if not, that is why your text is fuzzy. it is also the way os x draws the screen. i have seen text look chrisper on win xp than 10.4 on my lcd. i know there are several apps out there that will let you tweek text settings more than the os will. i use tinker tool myself.
 
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