Need Help Deciding On New Monitor!

[Koenig]

Alrighty, I really want one of those widescreen monitors for my computer. I have a Toshiba A70 laptop with a 15'' widescreen and movies rock....but 15'' is a little small right now. Eventually, I want to hook up videogame systems to it and HDTV and obviously my computer.

I'm trying to decide between this one, the Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW (24")


OR....

the Dell W2606c 26'' widescreen LCDTV



Which one do you think is better? They are both the same price. ($1099CAD)

Also...I am considering to save up some more money and then splurging on the Dell UltraSharp 3007WFP 30-inch monitor. I'll have to save up for the next 3 months....and hopefully the price will come down a bit by then ($2299CAD right now), but if I do get it....hot damn, TG will never have looked better .

I do have one concern though....will i need a new video card if I do get one of the aforementioned monitors? My current vid. card is a ATI Mobility Radeon 9000, which supports widescreen since my laptop is a widescreen. Will I have to upgrade?

Thanx

[Koppel]

I'm quite confident that the LCDTV has a resolution of 1366x768 wich is capeable of showing a reduced HDTV video with 720 horizontal lines. Some say this is a low resolution even for a 17" monitor. A little calculation.
26" = 2,54x26 = 66,04cm = 660,4mm
Because the screen has a ratio of 16:9 and the diagonal is 660,4mm we can calculate the bottom side of the screen.
sqrt(16²+9²) = 18,36

the length of the bottom side would then be (660,4x16)/18,35 = 575,5mm
Divide that into pixels and you would know how big one pixel would be.
575,5/1366 = 0,42 mm
Thats one big pixel and its very noticeable. Your picture would look close to teletext
(a normal monitor has a pixel width close to 0,21mm, that means four times smaller)


The other one is made as a monitor and therefor has a lot higher resolution: 1920x1200 to be exact and that means it can display the full HDTV video signal with 1080 horizontal lines. 1920x1080pixels.

[Sambo_Car]

Yeh I would definetley go 24" Dell over the other one. Koppel nice response

[Koenig]

Thanks for the response Koppel, I never really thought of it that way. I think I'm actually gonna wait for my tax returns to come back, cuz I figure I'll get about $600-$700 in returns, and then I'm gonna go all out and get the 30-incher. Max res: 2560x1600

[hokiethang]

Originally Posted by Koenig

Thanks for the response Koppel, I never really thought of it that way. I think I'm actually gonna wait for my tax returns to come back, cuz I figure I'll get about $600-$700 in returns, and then I'm gonna go all out and get the 30-incher. Max res: 2560x1600

That's it? 640x400 more screen for $1200 more? I'd suggest getting the 24 inch and not wasting the money on the 30. At some point, the resolution is going to be too high to make TG look any better (arguably since TG is formatted at low resolutions, anything bigger will actually make it worse). I have the 24 inch Dell monitor, and I like it so much i'm considering buying another to have dual 24 inch monitors. The 30 inch monitors are gimmicks, no one really needs one, unless they are handling MASSIVE images that require that type of resolution (like architects, etc...).

My suggestion, save your money, buy the 24. You won't regret it.

[Koenig]

yeah, ur prolly right about that....

BTW, how many a/v inputs does the 24 incher have? I'm just trying to figure out how many video game systems I can plug in at the same time, or if i have to buy one of those multi-a/v adapters.

[hokiethang]

Originally Posted by Koenig

yeah, ur prolly right about that....

BTW, how many a/v inputs does the 24 incher have? I'm just trying to figure out how many video game systems I can plug in at the same time, or if i have to buy one of those multi-a/v adapters.

1 Component (RGB), 1 Composite, 1 svideo, 1 DVI and 1 VGA. There should be plenty of inputs for different game systems, even though you might have to buy adaptors.