Plasma TV as the primary computer monitor
- Thread starter Mintmaster
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
I should do a picture of mine. I prefer it currently to 2x30".
I have a 30" for main monitor then a 24" in portrait view for the secondary. It's nice for viewing web pages, documents, and Manga jpgs. Added benefit is that the DPI is slightly lower on the 24" making casual reading easier (text and images are larger...getting old
) and also making images slightly larger when I want to get a better view.
Regards,
SB
I have a 30" for main monitor then a 24" in portrait view for the secondary. It's nice for viewing web pages, documents, and Manga jpgs. Added benefit is that the DPI is slightly lower on the 24" making casual reading easier (text and images are larger...getting old
) and also making images slightly larger when I want to get a better view.Regards,
SB
Yeah bad idea. The problem is really the height of the screen. The width is alright, but your eyes do get tired having to cover the width of the screen. I end up only using a fraction of the real estate of the large screen. 30" is really the optimum size for work. Even 40" gets annoying.
Now 30" 1080p Plasma I am not aware of any good one or any for that matter. Well I hope either Sony or Samsung sells 24"-30" OLED soon.
Now 30" 1080p Plasma I am not aware of any good one or any for that matter. Well I hope either Sony or Samsung sells 24"-30" OLED soon.
Iron Tiger
Regular
I sit about 4-5' from my 46" LCD, and that works fine. I'm about 6-7' from my 92" projector screen and that's way too big to use the full screen for productivity and browsing. Win7's snap-to-tiles feature comes in handy on there, so I can have two windows taking up equal space side by side and focus on one at a time.
So funny thing, I got a plasma after all a 50" samsung.
And it definitely has issues displaying right from my ATI 3 series HDMI connection. Funny thing is when I use VGA connection instead (DVI-->VGA-->Plasma) it seems perfect... I want to use HDMI though so I can still zoom in on 4:3 content from the HTPC (like hulu and such). Oh well I need to try d/l new aTI drivers and see if I can set it up right. It is the overscan that is an issue. When I adjust it the HDMI input gets close to right, but it is never crystal clear like it should be IMO.
And it definitely has issues displaying right from my ATI 3 series HDMI connection. Funny thing is when I use VGA connection instead (DVI-->VGA-->Plasma) it seems perfect... I want to use HDMI though so I can still zoom in on 4:3 content from the HTPC (like hulu and such). Oh well I need to try d/l new aTI drivers and see if I can set it up right. It is the overscan that is an issue. When I adjust it the HDMI input gets close to right, but it is never crystal clear like it should be IMO.
You need to set overscan to 0% in the AMD/ATI drivers. Then you have to set the TV to "Fit to screen" (which will yield 1-to-1 pixel mapping for 1920x1080 output). For some reason ATI has a default of 6% underscan when using HDMI on Windows and Linux alike.
If anybody can tell me how to disable underscan for ATI in Linux please, please, please do so.
Cheers
Gubbi thanks a million. In the drivers I have there is no % in overscan though just a slider which I tried to adjust to what looked like 0. Hopefully in the newer drivers it is fixed. I don't like updating drivers on an HTPC though unless there is a real issue. Hopefully you understand why that is. I do have the fit to screen setting so I will give that a go with the new drivers and let folks know what happened. It is win7 though maybe ATI has lower quality drivers on that (note I don't have win7 + nvidia so it is not a comparison to that just to ATI vista drivers).
Doesn't your TV remote have a size adjustment button (zoom feature)? My Panny does, works perfect for 4:3->16:9 resizing.
The trouble is that ATI thinks it is a good idea to underscan when you have a display connected through HDMI. That means your 1920x1080 resolution is downscaled by the GPU by 6%, black borders are added and the whole thing is output to the display as a 1920x1080 stream. The display then overscans the image. On my screen it almost fit sizewise, but the result is a blurry mess because the screen is scaled from 1920x1080 to 1800x1015 and then back to 1920x1080.
The solution is to set overscan to 0% for the display in question in the Catalyst gizmo:
Choosing properties then gets you to the DTV setup where you find overscan under "Scaling options", the underscan should of course be set to 0%:
Cheers
im using a 42" s1 and noticed the same thing, vertical line appear fainter than horizontal ones.
if you look closely they are smeared like in enforcers image.
so it happens to g12 panels too.
its not a big deal really because its only noticeable if ur right on top of the screen and looking at horizontal and vertical intersecting lines in paint.
but it still makes me sad that my display isnt perfect.
its great for games though, for the cost of a good lcd you can get a huge plasma so why not.
if you look closely they are smeared like in enforcers image.
so it happens to g12 panels too.
its not a big deal really because its only noticeable if ur right on top of the screen and looking at horizontal and vertical intersecting lines in paint.
but it still makes me sad that my display isnt perfect.
its great for games though, for the cost of a good lcd you can get a huge plasma so why not.
Panasonic plasma settings for 1:1 pixel mapping
As far as I have read, the only way to get a panasonic plasma G1 or S1 (not sure about others) to do 1:1 Pixel mapping is to use a HDMI to HDMI connection, driving the monitor at native resolution, and the settings on the tv set to HD SIZE 2, which turns off overscanning, while the PC drivers must have the underscanning turned off.
The only way to set HD size 2 on the panasonics is if the TV is receiving 1080i or 1080p through HDMI, otherwise the option is greyed out.
At least, this is what I read. I dont have access to a plasma to test it.
http://www.highdefforum.com/flat-panel-tvs/102781-hd-size-panasonic-tc-p42s1.html
I'm super-curious to find out if I can purchase a plasma display as my only monitor for my gaming/htpc rig, and let my girlfriend use it for emails and web access.
I know the earlier crop of Plasmas were pc-unfriendly, and the 720p native resolution wasn't great. Can someone point me to a comparison of Plasma screeens and text, vs LCD? Are plasmas really that bad as a monitor? Ignoring image retention problems... is the sharpness bad enough to make using them a pain?
I prefer CRTs to LCDs... and plasma is alot closer to a crt.
As far as I have read, the only way to get a panasonic plasma G1 or S1 (not sure about others) to do 1:1 Pixel mapping is to use a HDMI to HDMI connection, driving the monitor at native resolution, and the settings on the tv set to HD SIZE 2, which turns off overscanning, while the PC drivers must have the underscanning turned off.
The only way to set HD size 2 on the panasonics is if the TV is receiving 1080i or 1080p through HDMI, otherwise the option is greyed out.
At least, this is what I read. I dont have access to a plasma to test it.
http://www.highdefforum.com/flat-panel-tvs/102781-hd-size-panasonic-tc-p42s1.html
I'm super-curious to find out if I can purchase a plasma display as my only monitor for my gaming/htpc rig, and let my girlfriend use it for emails and web access.
I know the earlier crop of Plasmas were pc-unfriendly, and the 720p native resolution wasn't great. Can someone point me to a comparison of Plasma screeens and text, vs LCD? Are plasmas really that bad as a monitor? Ignoring image retention problems... is the sharpness bad enough to make using them a pain?
I prefer CRTs to LCDs... and plasma is alot closer to a crt.
DVI->HDMI works fine as well, as I do precisely this on my Panny.
Anon Lamer
Newcomer
Panasonic plasmas use 4:2:2 chroma subsampling.
That means - as I understand it - every other pixel is interpolated and they are fine for watching lossy data streams such as your favorite porn movie but they cannot provide a pixel-perfect view of your windows desktop.
This is a limitation of the onboard control electronics and not the plasma screen itself. LCDs tend to be 4:4:4 since the manufacturers apparently expect people to use them with computers.
I visited the video store and noticed that the both panasonic and samsung plasmas appeared to use 4:2:2 subsampling but the LG plasma appeared to be 4:4:4 since it lacked the telltale blue edge to white letters on black background, something both the panasonics and the samsung had. Screens were this years edition.
See http://www.avforums.com/review/Panasonic-TX-P42G20-Plasma-HDTV-Review.html
"It's also worth noting here that at all times, the TX-P42G20 displayed video signals in 4:2:2 format. This means that the coloured components of the picture are at half-resolution; a common shortcut used in the video world, which takes advantage of the fact that our eyes are less sensitive to colour in relation to brightness. (DVD and Blu-ray Disc video uses even lower chroma resolution, which is why TVs processing the video at 4:2:2 is generally fine). I mention this in the gaming section because games consoles can output full resolution colour (4:4:4 format). When input to this display, the chroma resolution will be downgraded. This is a little surprising, because Panasonic themselves are some of the biggest advocates I can think of of high-resolution chroma processing - they make a point of publicising it when present in their Blu-ray Disc products."
That means - as I understand it - every other pixel is interpolated and they are fine for watching lossy data streams such as your favorite porn movie but they cannot provide a pixel-perfect view of your windows desktop.
This is a limitation of the onboard control electronics and not the plasma screen itself. LCDs tend to be 4:4:4 since the manufacturers apparently expect people to use them with computers.
I visited the video store and noticed that the both panasonic and samsung plasmas appeared to use 4:2:2 subsampling but the LG plasma appeared to be 4:4:4 since it lacked the telltale blue edge to white letters on black background, something both the panasonics and the samsung had. Screens were this years edition.
See http://www.avforums.com/review/Panasonic-TX-P42G20-Plasma-HDTV-Review.html
"It's also worth noting here that at all times, the TX-P42G20 displayed video signals in 4:2:2 format. This means that the coloured components of the picture are at half-resolution; a common shortcut used in the video world, which takes advantage of the fact that our eyes are less sensitive to colour in relation to brightness. (DVD and Blu-ray Disc video uses even lower chroma resolution, which is why TVs processing the video at 4:2:2 is generally fine). I mention this in the gaming section because games consoles can output full resolution colour (4:4:4 format). When input to this display, the chroma resolution will be downgraded. This is a little surprising, because Panasonic themselves are some of the biggest advocates I can think of of high-resolution chroma processing - they make a point of publicising it when present in their Blu-ray Disc products."
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