22" flat panel monitors

[shankle]

I'm absolutely GREEN with envy.
My day will come.

Regards,
JPS

[Wistrik]

Don't be envious. My eyesight is slowly degrading with age and that's primarily what prompted this upgrade. :red

[shankle]

Would someone be so kind as to explain (in non engineering terms) what the following
terms mean in relation to monitors:
        lcd
       digital
       lcd-digital
      analog/digital lcd

or any other variations not covered above.

Thanks,
JPS

[Wistrik]

LCD = liquid crystal display -- this is the type of display used in calculators for example. Many monitors nowadays use TFT (thin film transistor) LCDs, which describes how they're constructed internally. All you need to know is that such a screen is flat and can provide a sharp, colorful image.

Digital = this pertains to the type of video signal the monitor accepts. Digital signals tend to produce sharper, clearer images due to the separation of various bits of video information. They can also do a better job with brightness because each pixel can have a brightness value associated with it. The digital video interface (DVI) has several configurations which you can see at this website.

Analog = this is the older type of video signal commonly used with CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors. It tends to be less crisp than digital due to various bits of information being combined together by the video card and then being separated by the monitor. The most common video connector for analog has 15 pins.

LCD-Digital = this is an LCD type monitor that is only capable of working with newer video cards that provide digital output (DVI).

Analog/Digital LCD = this is an LCD type monitor capable of working with both signal types. The monitor I recently purchased supports Digital, Analog, S-Video (DVD) and Composite (game consoles). It looks best with a digital signal, which my GeForce 6800 provides. (By the way, S-Video stands for Super Video and also provides a sharp picture for DVD players.)

One other term you should be aware of with LCD monitors is the term "Native Resolution". This is the screen resolution that looks best on the monitor. Lower resolutions will tend to look fuzzy. It's not usually a good idea to try to exceed (go higher than) the native resolution. My monitor's native resolution is 1600x1050 pixels and the drivers won't let me go any higher than that. It looks good down to 1024x768 pixels, but 800x600 and lower is noticeably fuzzy. The NVidia drivers have the ability to force standard aspect ratio so I can play games made for non-wide-screen monitors on the wide-screen display; there is a bit of black border on the sides, but at least everything looks like it should, not flattened or stretched.

Also, don't bother with built-in speakers if you can help it; they're typically inferior to stand-alone speakers. My monitor came with built-in speakers but thankfully they're disabled by default. I use a Creative 2.1 stand-alone speaker system instead.

I hope this information is helpful.

[shankle]

Thank you very much Wistrik for taking the time to write a very good
explanation of those terms. It's certainly appreciated  by me.
JPS