Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Monitor Distress

A few days ago, I was killing time by playing a couple matches of Call of Duty: Black Ops. I was just starting my second match when my primary monitor (the one showing the game) flickered and shut off. I've had problems with Black Ops before, so I figured the game locked up or my computer crashed.

Then I saw the smoke floating out from behind the monitor.
Forgetting which power strip the monitor was plugged in to had me shut everything off, and when I got everything back together, I discovered that the monitor wasn't going to catch on fire, but that it wouldn't do anything else, either.

The monitor actually turns on, but only shows a dim picture and then goes black again after five seconds. I spent a while messing about with it, and then abandoned it to go shopping. I was originally aghast at what a decent IPS display costs, but with a few hours of research I found some very good options.

Firstly, there is a huge difference between the cheap monitors you get at Best Buy and something that will actually display colors like they should be: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/panel_technologies.htm
TFTCentral goes in depth in ways that I won't and can't, but this stuff is pretty important for digital photographers.

I finally chose a 23" NEC display, the NEC EA231WMI-BK, which is pretty much the cheapest IPS I could find with good reviews.

My biggest worry is that all of the photos I've made on these monitors will look ridiculous and poorly colored on the new display, but when it arrives today we'll figure it all out.

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