I've got a shiny new rig, had it for quite a long time, but still haven't been able to switch to it (and thus, back into serious video editing) because I can't seem to find a good monitor for my purposes.
I live way far off from brick-and-mortar electronic stores (thanks to the tragic loss of Circuit City...
), so I made a friggin 4-hour round-trip to some shops and ended up leaving empty-handed and disappointed.
See, I'm currently on an old compy and a big ol' CRT monitor. And it's been great to me. Colors are a bit muted, but the viewing angle is of course perfect from all directions. And no lag. It's great. But I keep telling myself I need to step into the 21st century and get the glorious, gorgous, modern LCD flat-panel for my new baby.
...Except they all friggin SUCK!!!
Mainly either still with unacceptable lag figures, a still existing lack of good black in my price range ($200 or so), and worst of all... HORRIBLE viewing angle!
Here's the thing... most of them have nice horizontal viewing angle, decent even. But NOT A SINGLE ONE, from HP to Dell to HaanSpree, to Samsung, to LG, from $120 to $650... NOT A SINGLE ONE had even REMOTELY sane VERTICAL viewing angle!
The salesmen all told me they never heard of that being a concern before. I about burst a vein in my head. Dude! When I lean forward to work on a vid or art piece, then lean back to get a better look, my altitude changes. My vertical viewing angle changes. And with ALL of the modern, supposedly superior monitors I tested... the brightness or dimness or contrast would shift.
I can NOT have that. If I'm using these beautiful, bright colors, then I need to know if I'm actually getting them RIGHT or not, without having to constantly make sure I'm in the 2-millimeter sweet-spot dead-center-perfect at all times. I have back and neck problems. I have to shift my position a lot, and I can NOT be straining my neck muscles to constantly gauge my position. That's just way more stress than I need.
I think it's bull that CRTs have been gotten rid of before their replacement was perfected. I think it's bull that LCDs have been in use for over a DECADE and they STILL DON'T MAKE THEM PROPERLY!!!
And I'm sad as heck that the SED display project was abandoned; those would have remedied the problem. I guess it's Beta vs VHS all over again; inferior tech becomes the new standard while superior tech goes extinct... *sigh*
Anyway... yeah... it's friggin 2010 and we still don't have our hoverboards, flying cars, or computer monitors that show to our eyeballs what's on our computers. We had that last thing in like, uh 1988, but not now... That's balls, man. That's balls.
Seriously, how is that asking too much? Asking for a WYSIWYG monitor that's superior to a CRT other than power consumption and footprint. It CAN be done, it SHOULD be done... so why isn't it? I saw a friggin' MAC in the store who's monitor was perfect from all sides, but it was a full system and out of my price range, all in one piece. And HDTVs do it perfectly fine too! I've seen plenty that have great viewing angles, even vertical.
The only reason I don't just get a small one and use it as a monitor, is because the change of signal type would cause lag. And for AMV precise timing, that ain't gonna fly.