Sainsbury's Amiga Ready LCDTV

[Hyperspeed]

Hrrrm, I've just bought a 17" LCD TV with VGA input from Woolworths. It's a Samsung SyncMaster 710MP (1280x1024) for £220 GBP.



I thought since it had a SCART socket it would take the Amiga signal nicely, especially as I have a scandoubler/FF too.

Unfortunately I am not happy with it at all.

I reasoned that since it was capable of 1280x1024 (double exactly 640x512 of PAL Hi Res Laced) that I would get a crisp and proportional screen. However, the display is not fitting into the pixel array properly - giving me vertical bands of ill fitting pixels.

It recognises NTSC as 640x480 but expands it to full screen which on this ratio monitor stretches everything disproportionately.

There is no vertical resizing option and the horizontal resizing is very blocky. PAL will not compress down into the screen area on the vertical plain so you either have to edit the overscan prefs with a lower resolution or in the case of demos/games lose some of the screen (even though PAL: Hi Res Laced is exactly the same screen proportion as the LCD's).

The brightness/contrast settings are too dark and on 15Khz RGB SCART I get a funny green tint (which doesn't appear on other display devices I tested).

My EZ-VGA Plus already reduces the quality of my A1200's output from 18-Bit RGB down to 16-Bit CVBS with banding, this monitor not only emphasises the scandoublers reduction in quality but adds to this with poor contrast, lack of resizing and no seperate memory banks for image settings.

Another annoying thing is that the CVBS input for accepting camcorder signals also crops the sides of images and in this mode there is no way to resize or reposition the screen. Also, the feeble speakers are positioned underneath the display which is a major design flaw in my opinion (A sound field is best appreciated when the speaker is at the same height as your ears, not above or below ear/eye level).

I was a little wary when a Samsung driver CD came out of the box when I opened it. A monitor relying on Windows drivers struck alarm bells and my fears proved correct.

I'm going to have to look for something from NEC or Philips - they know how to make good monitors.

In the meantime, I'm packing up this Korean crud and sending it right back. Glad I kept my CRT for the time being!

Oh, and silver really doesn't go with vanilla, I must look for a colour matching LCD, darlings!

;-)

[Hyperspeed]

CLS2086:
I haven't tried the SyncMaster with the Commodore VGA adaptor (I don't have one) but to bypass as much circuitry as possible I used it Multiscan:Productivity mode... this is a 29Khz mode that avoids the flicker fixing and scandoubling circuits and is passed straight to the monitor.

To my amazement the screen quality was exactly the same, dull and with vertical lines (when I use this mode on the CRT monitor it avoids the quality degradation of scandoubling and flicker-fixing).

15Khz modes work on the SyncMaster's VGA input in scandoubled modes but I can't say without that as I don't have the VGA adaptor. I doubt very much it would go down to 15Khz without scandoubling in 'PC Mode' - this is because it will not accept Multiscan:Productivity via the RGB Scart socket (the screen blanks out and refuses to sink).

If the SCART input won't take 29Khz then I doubt the VGA input will take 15Khz. They seem to be clearly seperating video and SVGA...

MASACREWILL:
My opinions reflect only for people with OCS/ECS/AGA... I see no reason why a Voodoo card shouldn't behave exactly like a PC when it comes to using 1280x1024... after all this is the exact resolution and frequency that the monitor needs.

PAL/NTSC seem to have overscan around their displayed area and I'm wondering if this confuses the monitor's automatic display enhancer.

Composite (CVBS) gives fairly good colour (no problems with green tint) but 15Khz RGB via SCART was not satisfactory. I usually use a 21" NEC XE²¹ but even compared to my 25" TV the display was utterly blurry and crap.

To recap - good for graphics cards, bad if you want to use the video port, be it scandoubler or SCART. Text is no better with RGB than it is with Composite (CVBS) - pretty dissapointing.

A warning therefore about spending money on highstreet LCD panels.

The Amiga community needs to do more research into better video-capable panels such as LCD and plasma.

[Hyperspeed]

by ikorodu:
I have a RLT17AP15 from RELISYS. Its a widescreen LCD tv with vga and Scart inputs. I use it as a monitor for my pc on the vga and for my A1200 on the scart connected to the video out on the Amiga.

Amiga picture is spot on on all pal and ntsc modes. It will not sync with double pal or ntsc. I run WB at PAL super hi res laced with crystal clear picture.

just thought some may be interested in an LCD that works great.

I've read a review or two on Amazon and the same seems to be said about this LCD panel. Unsatisfactory display characteristics similar to this SyncMaster I have.

PAL:Super-High Res Laced (1280x512) sounds feasible if the monitor does 1280x768 but surely you get flicker on it? That screenmode on the Samsung SyncMaster was completely illegible and flickery.

I'll try any LCD though as long as it has vertical and horizontal resizing to give me the freedom to move my screens about (as opposed to having them stuck off the edges of the display).

I'm so dissapointed that I couldn't get it to run flicker-free and with good quality picture on my RGB SCART cable (which I bought specially for this use). I could have sold my Scandoubler/FF then but it seems that either interlaced modes will still always flicker (contrary to what some have reported) or the SyncMaster's 5ms refresh times are too fast to disguise it.

:-(

[Hyperspeed]

pierre: I don't follow you... what are you referring to?

:inquisitive: