Does anyone actually use dynamic contrast?

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Playing around with Samsung’s XL2370 TFT this week, I hit a bit of a wall. In fact, not so much hit it, more slammed my head straight through it in sheer, irate frustration. You see, it uses an LED backlight, which Samsung’s press bunf confidently told me would produce a level of contrast the old CCFL kind simply can’t match.

And it does. Not just any old contrast, but MEGA contrast! Yes, MEGA, in capitals. In non-marketing speak that converts into a figure of 5,000,000:1, or 5,000 times higher than the standard contrast ratio on most of today’s TFTs.

Except the XL2370 doesn’t manage that at all. (more…)

2009 will be the year of DisplayLink

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

We’ve talked about DisplayLink quite a bit recently at PC Pro, whether as a boxout in a recent TFTs Labs or in product reviews like the Village Tronic ViBook. Late 2008 saw a few tentative moves by major manufacturers like Samsung, LG and InFocus to incorporate DisplayLink natively into monitors and projectors, but 2009 looks set to be the year when the technology really explodes into life.

Early reports from CES in Las Vegas have most of the major monitor brands launching DisplayLink versions of products, and mainly on previously successful, high-quality monitor lines. Several companies are also launching adapters that will convert any exisiting monitor to DisplayLink, which takes care of backwards compatibility.

DisplayLink – sending the video signal via USB rather than standard graphics outputs, for those who haven’t been keeping up – won’t revolutionise your use of your main monitor, let’s be honest. But I’m pretty certain it’ll grow in popularity among those with multi-monitor setups, those who regularly hook up TFTs to a laptop with limited outputs, and those who simply don’t want or need graphics cards cluttering up their compact PCs.

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Instant upgrade: dump your specs

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

Taking a rough poll based entirely on my fellow companions on the train as I type this, I feel confident in saying that precisely 30% of the UK’s population wear glasses. Well, let me tell you, you shouldn’t. The way forward is contact lenses, as it revolutionises the amount of screen space on your desktop’s TFT or your laptop’s built-in display.

I’m not a habitual wearer of contact lenses – the only reason I am now is because a few of us just headed down to Regents Park to play football against infinitely fitter opposition – so it’s something of a revelation.

The 12.1in screen of my laptop suddenly looks closer to 14.1in, and the 17in display I use as my second screen during the day appears to my lens-blessed eyes as a 19in or even 20in screen.

So, fellow glasses wearers, we need to work out the economics. Pay an extra £50 to £100 for a larger display, or simply use contact lenses every day. Something to work into our calculations in the next PC Pro monitor group test, clearly.