Hi guys, I'm going to buy a new flatscreen monitor and I wondered if you could help me decide which one to get as I only have a rough idea which specs I should go for.

The thing should be gaming proof,
have a resolution of 1920x1080 (does getting more even make sense?),
be good quality (no dead pixels would be nice; and last at least 5 years),
cost at most $300 (=200€)
and be available in Germany.

I guess the last point pretty much excludes all newegg deals.
The German equivalent would be www.alternate.de.

Here's a monitor that caught my eye:
http://www.alternate.de/html/product/TFT-Monitore_23_Zoll/Acer/H233HABmid/328056/?tn=HARDWARE&l1=Monitore&l2=23+Zoll
It's similar (but not exactly the same) to this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009201

What do you think? Thanks in advance.

Addendum:
You don't have to recommend a certain monitor if you're unsure, it already helps a lot when I'm pointed into the right direction:

1) So what contrast do I need? >= 40,000:1 ?
2) What brightness? >= 250 cd/m² ?
3) Resolution? 1920x1080 ?
4) How many inches screen size? >= 23" ?
5) Is there more colors than 16 millions? Is it worth it?
6) What connectors are recommended? DVI-D ? HDCP ? HDMI ?
7) Anything else to consider? (besides quality, design, processing)
8) What brand is cheap? What brand has the best quality?
9) Which of those points don't matter?

Showing me examples of good monitors on Newegg is also helpful as I can check if I can get that model or a similar one here.

9) Most of those points don't matter. It's all about cost, and what you would like.
Contrast ratio comes in 2 flavors: Dynamic and static(maybe?). Dynamic is generally really high on newer displays, and the difference between 40000 and 50000 is kinda negligible. Decent right now is 1000:1 static contrast ratio. Some stupid companies don't release both specs, so it's going to be hard to find both.
That's why your laptop screen might get darker or brighter based on the color of what's on the screen. I kind of think it's stupid, but it does work, as long as the reaction time is fast (it's not on my laptop, it is on my desktop).

1920x1080 is fine, I think most people like 1920x1200, but personally, I'd like to make the skip to 1080p like TVs are doing.

Brightness is again kind of moot. It's not THAT hard to see a screen, and it doesn't look a whole lot better at 500 cd/m2 vs 300 cd/m2.

Screen size is your preference. It's important to buy a screen that will fit in your area, though.

You didn't mention response rate, but anything under 5ms is decent.

I, personally, don't think brands matter when it comes to monitors. My $200 21.5" ViewSonic (at least it's very similar to this one) is doing fine, and my $400 17" 1280x1024 monitor lasted me 5 years (I think that was fairly cheap back then for what it was).

The best way to compare is to grab a list of a whole bunch of monitors you MIGHT buy, and list all these details. For example, do you want to pay 70 euros extra for an 2", half the response time, and double the contrast ratio? It's very tempting either way IMO.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Oct 13 2009, 8:53 pm by rockz.

For current LCDs, any contrast ratio stated as higher than 3000:1 (and most that state over 1000:1) is likely referring to the dynamic option, which probably most people don't like anyway. It is basically there so they can state inflated specs. It just doesn't really work well, unless it has an array of LEDs or similar for the backlight (which is expensive). For most current LCDs, assume that any that do not specifically state the real contrast ratio are no higher than 1000:1 (but they could be less!).

I don't really know a lot about the brightness specs, but probably anything 250 cd/m² or above should be fine.

As for the number of colors, any current cheaper monitors won't be able to display the full range of colors for any individual pixel, so they use dithering to make up for it. This is dependent on the LCD panel type and, to some degree, how you have the monitor configured (other than brightness, which only affects the back-light).

Connectors: HDCP is not a connector - it is a type of encryption that can be supported over DVI-D (but not required), but is required to be supported over HDMI for any HDMI-certified display. This is basically a requirement for certain types of protected content, like Blu-ray or certain protected TV content when the device is hooked up over a digital connection. DVI-D is a digital video connection and HDMI is a digital connection carrying video and audio. The video part of the two are compatible, so it is possible to get adapters to convert between them for the video. The monitor will likely also support D-SUB/VGA, which you would need if your computer does not have DVI-D or HDMI.

Other connectors to look into, if the display has HDMI, are audio outputs. This depends on the audio output capabilities of devices you might connect via HDMI. If you might be connecting something via HDMI that cannot output the audio in any other format when using the HDMI and if you will be using external speakers, you may want at least an analog audio output on the monitor to output the HDMI audio.

Response times of current monitors that are stated as below 5ms are their grey-to-grey (GTG) times. As far as I know, no current LCD does below 5ms for the black-to-white/white-to-black times, which is what is being stated when they do are not stating the grey-to-grey time. The response time is another thing affected by the LCD panel type.

I've mentioned LCD panel type a couple of times above. There are 3 main categories (ordered from what would generally be considered lowest quality to highest): TN, MVA/PVA, and IPS. TN has the lowest color quality and narrower viewing angles, but the fastest response times and cheapest prices. MVA/PVA and IPS both have excellent viewing angles (though I think I've heard it is generally a little better on IPS) and best color quality (might be a little better on IPS) but are both more expensive. MVA/PVA has the worst response times and can have input lag, too. IPS can be almost on par with TN's response times (but still isn't quite there). Both TN and IPS have very little input lag on the panel itself (can be difficult to even measure).

lol, this post took a while to write.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 15 2009, 1:55 am by ShadowFlare.

Thanks, to both of you for your detailed information.
Most of it I already gathered when I was researching for the last 2 days, but it's good to have confirmation, as Internet sometimes lies to you.
I came to the conclusion that the hard facts I want are:
1920x1080,
2ms GTG,
50000-40000:1 (1000:1 respectively),
ARC format switching (force 4:3),
DVI-D w/ HDCP (or HDMI),
Anti-glare

and there seems to be no real difference between the different manufactureres. So I did what rockz said and just picked a few candidates meeting the hard facts and then went for minor facts, optics and price.
I'vd decided to get this LG.

I wish I had seen this two weeks ago

Could've told you about it over two months ago.

I've possibly read that before.

What I said above probably largely matches with what was said there, though I'm re-reading it again right now, just because I'm curious.

So far I see one minor point of incorrect/outdated information: it says there are no desktop LCD monitors with an HDTV tuner, but there are. (and I only mean ones that being a computer monitor is the primary function) Probably just overlooked when updating it.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Oct 26 2009, 11:32 am by ShadowFlare.

OK, I got the monitor now and colors and the resolution are really awesome. The narrow viewing angle is annoying, but I guess that's what you get when buying cheap technology. (just didn't think it's already a problem when looking straight at it)

But there's another problem where I'm not sure what the source is:
When watching movies the screen sometimes is horizontally divided and it seems the upper part shows the current frame and the lower part shows the last frame. The screen is just shifted a bit to the left or right. This happens only with movies.
The links here and here seem to describe the same thing, but I haven't found a solution anywhere.

So what's causing this? And how to stop it?
My guess is it's because of a synchronization problem between the movie's framerate (24-30Hz) and the monitor's framerate (60Hz).

Have you tried another program? Different programs may handle it differently.

As far as the viewing angle, the vertical viewing angle will be worse than the horizontal viewing angle, so try to tilt the monitor to get it so you are not looking right at the edge of its ideal vertical angle, then you should be able to move at least a little without it looking too much different.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 7 2009, 9:11 pm by ShadowFlare.

omg I can't believe it. My beloved VLC is failing me while Windows Media Player does it just fine (no horizontal shifting). I'd still like to get to the bottom of this as using WMP is not a solution for me. More like an emergency plan. It doesn't even play flash movies...

About the viewing angles I'm not sure if I understand you. The problem is as follows:
I’m looking straight at the monitor in a perfect 90° angle. Horizontally everything’s fine (green rays), but as you go a little up or down from the center of the screen, the colors become darker or paler respectively (reddish rays).


The right picture shows how a plain grey screen looks on my monitor (no exaggeration!). Only inside the narrow green band the colors are shown correctly.

So if I understand you correctly you want me (or my head) to move a bit to the right or left, because it doesn't make things worse because of the better horizontal viewing angle. That's correct so far, as long as it's only a tiny bit, but it doesn't help the vertical problem. At all. And if I move my head a little more to the sides the whole screen becomes pale. So I tilt the monitor to the back (makes screen darker) but still this doesn't give me consistent contrast over the whole screen.

Oh, so you're talking about solid colors then? Yes, it will be more noticeable for solid colors. You would probably need to pay at least almost twice as much for a monitor of equivalent size to get a panel type other than TN if you wanted one that doesn't shift contrast like that.

As for your program issue, have you tried updating VLC? If you've already tried that, try changing the output mode in VLC's video configuration. You could also try the program called Media Player Classic Home Cinema, which like VLC supports many formats without needing external codecs to be installed. For use as a player, I usually prefer it over VLC.

Yeah as I said, that's what I get for using cheap technology and not watching them at a shop first... But honestly I didn't think that the problem would be this serious. It's really a pain when browsing dark websites like SEN. It almost makes me want to give it back...
Whenever I read something about it they said "TFTs lose more contrast than CRTs when looked at from an angle." (but I'm looking straight at it!) They also mentioned that the backlights are not always perfectly consistent over the screen, but nobody said that you have to look at it from 1m or more to have uniform colors all over the screen. At least now I know what they meant with "not suited for image editing".

About VLC Player, thanks man!
The glitch was only visible with the default DirectX output. Windows GDI (which is probably used by WMP) runs fine, same for DirectX 3D, which I'm using now. Could've gotten that myself but I was too preoccupied with my refresh rate theory to even think of trying.