Classic Amiga Monitors - To Use or Not to Use?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I kind of think this topic has been debated to death.  Stubborn people are stubborn, and will only ever use CRT monitors, whether they are "purists", or think the CRT gives a better picture (better as in "the way Commodore intended it"), or just like keeping their retro machine retro.

Some people have had really bad experiences with poor quality LCD displays, and swear that all of them are prone to ghosting, or not smooth animation, or whatnot.  (I say "If they'd just buy a quality display...", but there's no convincing some folks)

Other people prefer that you're less likely to get a "pixelated, jaggy" image on a CRT, with some of the oddball resolutions the Amiga outputs.

And for the rest of us, thank god for things like the Indivision.  I personally own three of them (one for each of my Amiga's), and would never use anything else.  My old eyes can't deal with the eyestrain of a small screen, flickery, space-hogging CRT anymore.

Over the past couple years I've given away at least four 1084-series monitors after a couple bad experiences trying to sell others on ebay (and having them get damaged in shipment... no amount of packing material and bubble wrap is sufficient for these fragile things, it seems...).  Have one more still that's not much more than a doorstop or a dust collector.

But I will admit that it's cool to go to a vintage or retro computer show and see folks still using them.  So I guess I can kind of see it both ways.  They have their place, but not for everyday use, perhaps?  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

It's probably been asked before.  What monitor are you using in the pics you posted in this thread?  It appears that you have a surplus.  Do you have your hands on a stockpile that you sale?

LOL.  Me personally?  I manage the IT department for my company so I've got over 150 monitors in my inventory, with most users having 3-4 (we do a lot of large format database & mapping applications).  Most of my users are getting 3x 24" monitors on Planar triple-mount monitor stands, currently.  I haven't taken any recent pics, but here's some of my older setups:

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

...and my main A2000 is on a Dell 2007FP.  I'm a bit of a purist in the sense that I like to use 4:3 aspect ratio screens on my Amiga when I can, and this was the largest 4:3 display I could find.  Of course I cheated and my A500 at home is on a 37" TV.  Still small by TV standards these days, but eh, it's pretty nice.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

And then there's this, that I put together a couple years ago.  3x 40" screens with a total of 3240x1920 resolution.  It does all right.  

Fun to play around with this stuff, but we're still a pretty small operation in the grand scheme of things.  I get jealous of what I see at some of the tech tradeshows around here!

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

This Dell 2007FP is the monitor (with the silver speaker bar across the bottom) you have been using with the Picasso II and Indivision ECS?   It shows all resolutions beautifully?

For Amigas without RTG, I use Sony's 25" Trinitron.  It does a very good job, but, won't up-sync to RTG modes.

It doesn't go down to 50hz very well, PAL screenmodes are sometimes not displayed, or off-center, but for the main screenmodes I use (Spectrum: 800x600x16 bit, Indivision 800x600x16 color) it does brilliant.

I've done quite a bit of fiddling with the buttons and tweaking settings in Picasso96.  Seems the only modes it really has an issue with are those that drop below 50Hz.  The Spectrum is kind of a crappy card and has a lot of these modes, I.e., it'll do 1024x768x16 bit but even with the clock speed ramped all the way up it's only at like 39Hz, which puts the monitor right into power saving mode.  1024x768x8 bit works though, because that outputs at a nice, solid 75Hz, with an 80MHz clock speed.  Obviously a graphics card with a faster chipset would work better, but I'm happy enough with the Spectrum.  And the pass-through on the Indivision modes is rock solid.  If anything, the Indivision modes are even less problematic than the Spectrum, probably because it's newer tech.  

Long story short, it's really all about how much you fiddle with it, and about the software that you want to use.  PPaint is absolutely gorgeous, as is just about anything that runs on Workbench.  WHDLoad games can be a bit troublesome, but that's more because of the Spectrum and all the other hardware I have crammed into this thing (wasn't there a thread about that a long time ago?  That the Spectrum basically breaks WHDLoad?) , not the screen.  

 It does play my old AD&D games like Pool of Radiance just fine.  That's my priority when it comes to gaming.  


Edit - I just noticed you said Picasso II.  I had two of those and sold them both on, never could get their pass-throughs to work with the Indivison.  I had some tips from Jens to try, but never got around to it once I found the Spectrum card.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I think Amiga games look awful on HDTVs, some of them to the point of being unplayable, not to mention systems like the Nintendo 64 which look a blocky, blurry mess on an LCD.

In the famous words of The Dude, "Um, that's just like, your opinion, man."

As I've said before, I don't play a lot of games.  But when I do, I do it in style.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I am not sure, but I have got this impression that they seem to be preferring 4:3 monitors in China as their TVs still. This is based upon seeing some of them and not having seen Widescreens there at all (or at least not having paid attention if there was one). But this is simply having seen them in couple of peoples homes,. and not really been looking into it, hence there is the chance that i just happened to see the only 4:3 TV owners in whole china. oh, and their size was big. I would guess at least 40 inch.

Maybe Chinese broadcasting is still done using 4:3 equipment, so they would have no use for widescreen sets?  No idea.  Darn Commies.  :laughing: