Ping John Bean & David Taylor: Samsung 24" LCD monitor clarified

John and David,

I did some nosing around with Google and discovered somethat that
you two guys might have/probably did tell me about the Samsung
244T (or 245T). It isn't just a 1920 x 1200 native resolution
screen, it is a WIDE-screen monitor with a non-standard aspect
ratio (to me) of 16:10, rather than what /I/ thought was the
standard for wide-screen, 16:9. Obviously you were telling me
that, but my brain was soft and didn't equate a 16:10 native
resolution with what the damn thing must look like physically.

I did call Samsung but they don't have a 24x7 customer support
line, it is 9-5 Pacific Standard Time here in the U.S. so I will
call them tomorrow. But, I think that this is a futile gesture on
my part. Here's why:

What I THOUGHT this was originally was a larger version of my
213T, namely a 24" but 4:3. Well, it ain't. I'm sure you guys
were getting plenty frustrated and steamed at me because I kept
missing this fine point, but I did. Currently, I have no
particular desire to do wide-screen work, e.g., I don't plan to
use it to watch wide-screen movies. I want it primarily for
digital camera photo editing.

Since a monitor's physical screen size is a diagonal measure, I
must assume the 244T is 24" ACROSS the screen, as is the normal
way to measure and is the same measurment as any TV or monitor,
and as my 21" 213T EXCEPT this one is intentionally 16:10. Until
I looked, I didn't "see" that. To the extent you guys tried to
drum that into my stubborn, thick head, I apologize.

It is clear to me that I need to do a much deeper dive on this.
Since my goal is to get a larger monitor that displays 4:3
(somehow), I am interested in a monitor that is bigger
vertically, not a wider one. My guess is that the 244T is no
taller than my 213T and may even be smaller vertically. No good
for me. Some additional Googling seems to indicate that once past
19"/21", monitor manufacturers ASSUME the customer knows what
they're doing (unlike dummy me!) and know they want the
advantages of a wide-screen. I hope, though, that you guys
understand that while wide-screen is an advantage to a growing
number of people, on October 7, 2007 it just isn't what /I/ want.

So, let me try to calmly ask my REAL question a different way: in
today's world is there any such thing as a LARGE LCD when
measured vertically? By dumping my PC box to the floor, I can
squeeze in a wide-screen and just tilt it toward me for easy
viewing. That'll work. I am NOT asking you to do my research for
me, perhaps all I need is to know what questions to ask when
calling any given monitor maker and/or Googling and I can take it
from there.

So, the embarassing bad news is, for which I sincerely apologize,
is that I was increasingly shooting the messenger because I
wasn't hearing what I wanted to hear. I won't really know about
multiplicity of resolutions on the 244T until I call around some
but I think it is out of the running as stated above. The good
news is that I VERY MUCH appreciate you guys giving me enough
info so that I am at least minimumally smart enough to ask
intelligent questions.

Lest you think I am not capable of being any crazier, I'll give
you more ammo. <grin> My real plan is to give my wife the 213T,
put whatever bigger monitor I like on my PC, and move her Sony
26" TV (also a monitor, but no longer important) into our den
because her old 21" CRT TV there is dying. Maybe you can see how
tangled a web I am weaving.

So, any insights would be appreciated. Again: 1) I apologize for
disputing your superior knowledge, 2) I was under a total
misconception about what the 244T even is, 3) I still don't know
about Windows resolution but will find out soon, and 4) the task
at hand NOW is to find something that supports multiple
resolutions and aspect ratios without distorting the image; black
bars are no biggie. Please just point me in the right direction,
I'll take on the research myself.

 

Screens are measured diagonally, I already told you the visible size of the 245
monitor, 52x32cm, or for you Americans, 20.5x12.75 inch's.

It is 3/4 inch taller than a standard 19".

 

Jerry,

I can quite understand - these things are badly explained and dumbed down
even. I also wanted 4:3 and it took me a little time to find the Dell
2007FP with its 1600 x 1200 pixels. That's a 12-inch vertical display.
From BF's comments, it sounds as if the 244T is a little taller.

I had a quick look, but I could find no 24-inch monitors which support 4:3
aspect ratio directly. They all seem to be widescreen.

Yes, I do appreciate the monitor trickle-down effect it happens here as
well!

Cheers,
David

 

I have a Samsung 214T at home and a 245B at work. The 245B is the same size
as the 244T, just with a cheaper panel (so cheap that its cheaper than the
214T which is why work would pay for it...). The 214T and 245B (and thus
244T) are the same height vertically - easy to see when you look at the
pixel size since they're all the same pixel size and all are 1200 pixels in
the vertical axis. For 3:2 aspect ratio pictures, the 245B displays them
"bigger" - it can do 1800x1200 pixels (in the landscape orientation - it
can't rotate unlike the 214T) rather than the biggest size that fits on the
214T (1600 by 1066 pixels).

If you want a larger display in the vertical axis, then the only option is
a display with even bigger pixels (0.30) such as the Samsung 275T. Its
really quite expensive. But not as expensive as the Samsung SM570DX which
has to be the ultimate!

All monitors do square pixels nowadays. Resizing the output from your
computer onto the display is done fairly well, but its never as good as
when the monitor displays at its native size, so you're best off staying at
the native resolution.

--Sophie

 

Since a monitor's physical screen size is a diagonal measure,

I understand that. I apologize for missing what you said. Some
people last night were replying to me perilously close to telling
me I was stupid. I am not. What I most clearly AM, though, is
ignorant. There's a difference. I measured my 213T and I found a
store that sells the Samsung 245T. My old monitor is actually 1/4"
taller than the Samsung. Yes, you said that, but I missed it, yes
the 245T is 12.75" tall and yes, my 213T is 13" tall.

Thank you for your information.

[snip]

 

David J Taylor added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

David, when I was back in the Apple ][ days, I met a fellow Apple
user that had a couple of good sayings that apply here in general
and to me in specific:

1) You're no ordinary fool, you're college educated!
2) When you're dumb, you're dumb for a long time!

My mother had this saying I have found to be 100.000% true in my
entire life: "what happens, happens for the best". Now, there's
been time like when I was drafted in the Army that it was a
little hard to see why it was good for me, but it was.

The GOOD thing that this saga has done for me I owe almost
exclusively to you. You made the simple yet profound observation
that you were a dyed in the wool 4:3 man (maybe from your film
days?) UNTIL you got your wide-screen, and now you're at least at
3:2. I've been "fighting" with my Rebel XT by forcing its images
to 4:3 by cropping and I think I need a whack up side the head to
see that I should start NOW to go to 3:2, STOP my 4:3, and get
ready for whatever monitor I eventually buy.

David, please see my other reply to you. In short, Samsung isn't
available right now, but I have at least verified that the
244T/245T supports multiple resolutions with or without
distortion, the latter with black bars. What is not quite clear
is if it really does the ones I THINK I want. e.g., Best Buy's
data shows that they support 1024 x 768 but 1280 x 1024, not the
same.

I haven't even taken a peek at a monitor since I bought my 213T
and when I thought I wanted a 244T last winter, I didn't know it
was a wide-screen, so my stubborness compounded my ignorance. I
NOW know from you and from Best Buy that I'm trying to stuff 10
pounds of do-do into a 5 pound bag. NOBODY is making 4:3 anymore
because of digitals at least 3:2 and the number of people who
want to do panos and (apparently) view wide-screen movie DVDs.

So, I have backed WAY, WAY off from my strong stance last night
and will again beg your indulgence for being such a putz. I won't
give you a blow-by-blow when I solve all of this, but I'll
probably post a message to help all the lurkers who may have been
following this. Perhaps my experience will help them avoid my
pain and/or help them to avoid the mental gymnastics required to
go from a lifetime of 4:3 to the New World of 16:10.

And, thanks for the quick check on monitors. My Googling last
night told me the same thing. All the major brands of 24" and
26" true monitors - not the HDTV/monitor combos - are ALL 16:10.
It turns out that everything I looked at also has a native
resolution of 1920 x 1200. What NONE of the web sites list,
though, was the actual screen resolutions that a reasonably
new/good video card can display in Windows.

 

Sophie Wilson added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

[snip]

Hi, Sophie. To the extent you're interested, take a quick glance
on a couple of replies I just made to David Taylor.

I had thought that the 245T was a lower cost cousin of the 244T
but I thought that there was a performance difference, lower.
Thanks for saving me about $100.

Thanks for the insights from your personal experience Sophie. I
put in another call to Samsung a while ago and they're in some
meeting. I will get the info I need straight from the horse's
mouth, but I am almost certain that while the 244T/245T WANTS to
display 16:10 or 3:2, it CAN display 4:3 with those annoying
black bars.

Let me try to put into some perspective why I'm so reluctant to
run at a really huge resolution like 1920 x anything. I have JPGs
of all shapes and sizes going back to my early graphics days
scanning circa 1990 to today's digital world with my Rebel XT.
These images run the gamut from 640 x 480 - remember that one? -
to well about 1600 x 1200 (or in 3:2). But, the VAST bulk of mine
are 1280 x 960. These days, I save my car shots at 1400 x 1050,
which is better but not much.

Yes, yes, yes, I know that shooting at 4 mega pixels instead of 8
with my Rebel isn't optimal and I know that running a "small"
screen resolution well under the native of my monitor isn't
optimal, but I'll do some simple arithmetic here:

If I display a 1280 x 960 on a wide-screen monitor set at 1920 x
1200, with a vertical dimension of the screen actually 1/4" LESS
than my 21" 213T, of course it will disply in all of its glory,
but look pretty small. Vertically, there'll be black of 120
pixels top and bottom and black left and right. But,
horizontally, I'll have over 300 pixels of black. So, while
calling this a postage stamp is over-stating by quite a bit, you
can (now) see that many of my older pics - e.g., hundreds and
hundreds of family snapshots scanned to 1024 x 768 - WILL look
quite small. Since I print very, very few of my images, so far my
1400 x 1050 is OK.

Now, I can fix the font sizes and icon sizes that Windows uses
when going to a larger resolution on a monitor that isn't any
taller, but my old legacy apps, e.g. PSP 9, do NOT have the
capability of a fine adjustment. PSP has either big icons or
small icons. The big ones look like crap because they are simple
pixel resizes of the small ones. Worse, though, since it is such
an old app, it doesn't "know" I have a wide screen, and it cuts
my horizontal toolbar in half.

So, again, my thanks for the info and nice to meet you. Have a
great day!

 

It is odd that they don't make 4/3 large screens, the OP could look at a
27" widescreen which should be 14.3" tall at 1920x1200 like this:
http://www.anandtech.com/displays/showdoc.aspx?i=2961
Of course a 21" CRT can get more pixels tall than that if you don't mind
tiny icons & text on some of the menus. I run my 21" CRT at 1280x1024
.... it does go up to 2048x1536 but that's awfully hard to read & I'm not
sure there is much real benefit in real terms. I used to run it at the
native 1600x1200 but that's just too hard on my eyes.

 

HEMI-Powered wrote:
[]

Jerry,

I read all your comments, even if I don't reply to them. In a way, it's
interesting to see you go through some of the uncertainties I had when
first buying an LCD monitor bigger than 1024 x 768.

I would just make one comment on aspect ratio. I come from both a TV and
a film background, so I'm happy with both 4:3 and 3:2. My film was mostly
SLRs with 35mm slide film (so trying to get things right when taking has
always been my way - no post-processing here), and hence a 3:2 aspect
ratio. But very little cropping, except under the direst of conditions.
With digital I moved to the 4:3 aspect ratio of a Nikon 900, followed by
various other 4:3 cameras until more recently getting a Nikon DSLR (mostly
for low-light performance and speed of operation). Of course, that's 3:2
aspect ratio.

However, what I've increasingly found is the (rather obvious) conclusion -
there is NO single aspect ratio which is right for all images! Ever since
getting digital, with the easy editing capabilities, I have been able to
crop with an ease which does way back to the days of making my own black
and white prints. So more and more now (it's taking time to learn this) I
will crop an image to what suits the picture - and forget the display! My
wife has a more artistic eye than I do, and has been an encouragement in
crop-when-needed.

Perhaps having all 4:3 images displayed on a 4:3 display looks neat and
well-planned. But with film and HDTV, I think we are more used to images
with black borders, and it no longer looks as botched as it used to.

Just an impression....

Cheers,
David

 

Paul Furman added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

[snip]

I thought it was odd also, Paul, and was getting awfully
frustrated trying to get my mind to accept the realities of
modern wide-screen
monitors, but I think I have at least taken the first step. David
Taylor made an off-hand comment to me that he used to do 4:3
until he got a wide-screen and he found 3:2 much better. Since
that is what my Rebel XT does, I'll actually save myself time and
effort by admitting I've been too rigid and stubborn to even
consider an alternative.

I learned at Best Buy this morning that the Samsung 244T/245T
monitors, my most likely choices, at least can do 1280 x 1024,
but that will vertically elongate my images so is no good. I've
been trying to get Samsung customer support on the phone and
they're having some bullshit Monday meeting! I understand
meetings, but if your business hours at 9:00-5:00, why not come
in early and stay late? Isn't it supposed to be true that the
customer comes first?

BTW, I just don't have the space on my desk for a big CRT, plus
they are pretty hard to find, REALLY big and heavy, and generate
a ton of heat.

If you're at all interested, I made comments to other people
today on some short-term issues I have with going to a really
high resolution like the native 1920 x 1200 of a modern wide-
screen.

Thanks for you observations.

 

David J Taylor added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

There's certainly no obligation to reply to all of my blather,
but I am pleased to know that I'm not the only one going through
a mental nightmare trying to rationalize a 16:10 monitor. If
you've ever seen the movie "Cool Hand Luke", which is about a guy
on a chain gang that just doesn't "get the message", the Captain
says "Luke, you're just gonna have to get your MIND RIGHT". Well,
yep, that's true and I'm peddling as fast as I can!

One of these years, I will buy a dedicated slide scanner and see
if I can make a dent in the "best of the best" of some 5,000+
35mm slides I took with my still working 1969 Nikon FTN. Having a
wide-screen monitor will be a stupendous aid when I start
scanning these old slides as I won't get caught in any Hobson's
Choices when trying to crop 35mm to 4:3.

As I commented to you earlier today, I quit, you win, you're

Absolutely agree. OTOH, one can crop so as to intentially fill
the screen at whatever aspect one prefers or a crop for most
pleasing composition which enhances the creative/artistic
attributes will almost always be a non-standard aspect ratio.
And, if one prints anything cropped to ANY aspect ratio and want
a full borderless print that doesn't require trimming and you
don't want white bands, then you have to crop for the paper
aspect ratio.

No, it is more than an impression. In just a day, I have come
around to your way of thinking as your logic is so compelling.
During any gut-wrenching technological changeover, whether it be
from big on cars with V-8 engines to little boxy cars with an
anemic 4-banger or whether it is the mental gear change required
when moving from film to digital or whether it is the coming
reality of an all-digital TV world and increasing usage by TV
show and movie DVD producers to go to wide-screen, sooner or
later ALL of us have to either upgrade and go with the flow or
live a partially unhappy life with crap like black bands or
elongated images.

 

244T and 245B are indeed quite similar. I'm very happy with the cheap 245B
at work, since I don't tend to be quite as critical about colour fidelity
there - equally, I'm happy I paid for the 214T at home and would pay for a
T series panel if I were to replace it today.

Well, its pretty good for you - 1400x1050 with 0.29mm pixels gives you
images which at their original pixel size are a little larger than they
would be on the 244T/245B and a fraction smaller than the 275T (and much
smaller than the unattainable 570DX). Until you resize images, its all
down to the monitor's pixel size. When you resize (e.g. with Photoshop or
Irfanview) then the 275T (being taller!) is better. Quite a lot better. And
in addition if you move to 3:2 capture, then the 16:10 monitors start to
have a big advantage over 4:3 ones. [Incidentally, 1050 pixels at .292 is
306mm while 1200 pixels at .27 is 324 - the SM214T or SM245B or SM244T is,
indeed, taller than your current display. So with one of these, resizing
will give you a 10% larger image. Perhaps you need to try IrfanView!]

One interesting thing about LCDs is that they're easier on the graphics
card than CRTs. 60Hz on an LCD gives a nice picture, on a CRT it flickers.
Which means even if you can find a CRT >20" 4:3 to give you a bigger pixel
on (say) a 1400x1050 raster, then you'll need to drive it harder than your
1400x1050 LCD. (I found I had to use 85Hz on work's previous CRT - Sony
G520)

Well, I hope it helped/helps.

--Sophie

 

Sophie Wilson added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

[snip]

Thanks, Sophie. I just posted a comment to a couple of people
that I've decided to defer my purchase for a while as I don't see
an immediate upside and don't actually require a new monitor.
But, please let me ask you a specific question about the 244T vs
245T:

I thought the Best Buy store display on the 245T I looked at
yesterday to be pretty good, but NOT as good as my 213T. Now,
that could just be from a lousy image the store was displaying or
maybe that they just left the monitor set to its factory
defaults. I don't really care that much if the case of the 244T
look spiffier than the 245T because that's hardly worth $100 to
me. I obviously DO care about the display.

So, since you actually own a 245T and obviously have done your
homework on the differences, are there NO display differences at
all between the 244T and 245T that might justify the extra $100?
Often, but not always, a manufacturer will up the model number
when it gets "better" but here it is because it got "cheaper".
Am I reading you correctly?

Now, since Samsung's model numbers start with 2 digits of their
size, and knowing that my 213T is a 21", I'll assume your 214T is
also a 21", again maybe with a less expensive case. When I bought
mine over 2 years ago, the store didn't have a 214T and I was a
rank newbie on LCD but I really liked the image quality so I
bought it - for $800! - and have been extremely happy with it
ever since.

Interessting info, thanks. After reading that David Taylor
changed his way of doing business and adopted 3:2 when he got a
wide-screen, I decided his logic was compelling and I intend to
start doing that even though I currently have a 4:3 monitor and
will for some time. I'll put up with some black bars top and
bottom so as not to accumulate even more 4:3 images that will be
at least annoyingly problematical on a wide-screen later on.

I didn't know that but it sound logical to me. In my prior CRT
days, with some images under some lighting conditions, I could
occasioonally see flickering but I needed to go to an LCD to get
bigger than 17" because I simply do not have the desk real estate
for a HUGE CRT, plus the dang thing could heat my entire house.

You most certainly have helped me. I'm a bit hazy but my
clarifying question, which will be short for you to answer if you
choose to, will "close the deal" for me.Thank you again, and have
a great day!

 

wide is a good thing with. say, Photoshop (I have CS) because you have
tool and other palettes that take up space on the sides (I am
repeatedly "tabbing" to hide and reveal these since I don't have enough
real estate on my 20")...back when I was using version 5.5, the OS
allowed "tiling to two monitors" and I had my palettes on a smaller
monitor beside the main one...

If I had the budget for a great monitor _and_ new photo gear, I would
buy an Apple Cinema Display w/o hesitation. Have you seen these? I went
with a second camera body and new lenses this time.

 

244T versus 245B. B panels being the cheaper ones - cheaper financially,
cheaper technically (though my example of the 245B doesn't have any
obvious dead pixels, I'd expect Samsung's manufacturing limits would be
different for B and T).

I would assume that any monitor on display in a store has had its
settings played with so much that a visual comparison is useless!

In the UK, the 245B is cheaper than the 214T and something like half the
price of the 244T! (£306, £370 and £725 respectively - 24" 1920x1200 B,
21.4" 1600x1200 T, 24" 1920x1200 T all with the same pixel size.) One
reason for the cheapness between 245B and 214T is that the former does
not have a pivot.

T panels are better than B panels in colour fidelity, colour gamut. But B
panels are no slouch - I think you would be hard pressed to tell the
difference without them being next to each other, especially if they are
both on their brightest.

Doing my best

--Sophie

 

sheepdog 2007 added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

As the old saying says, "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder".
I have nothing against people who want 16:10, if that's what you
like and you want to crop your digitals to that, fine by me. I
don't have PS CS as it is 10X overkill for me. PSP 9 works just
fine.

I am currently forcing my Canon Rebel XT images from 3:2 to 4:3
in the previously mistaken view that this would make them
compatible with an overall collection of my own and downloaded
images north of 50,000 in every pixel size under the sun.
However, after reading David Taylors very brief off-hand comment
that he totally rethought his "devotion" to 4:3 when he got a
wide-screen and switched to 3:2 which also saves him time, I, too
intend to STOP producing any more 4:3 even thought I've decided
to defer the purchase of any monitor for the foreseeble future
(see my other posts for the reason). Also, I have been moving
steadily from ruining the esthetics of an otherwise good photo by
forcing 4:3 into cropping for best visual appeal with no regard
whatsoever for aspect ratio. If black bars show, so what? If I
have to crop to print, so what? Or, if I print a slim aspect
ratio to fat paper, I'll just accept the white bars.

So, in short, literally in a few hours yesterday, I "discovered"
that my very strong views over the past week are, to be polite,
foolheardy.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. <grin> You could help
me, though, but expanding how you take advantage of the greater
screen real estate. I assume you use it to park multiple images
in the areas of the screen where there's no image and/or you want
easy access to your Desktop icons. There's a LOT of people that
have found it either very convenient or in fact, very necessary,
to invest in a 2nd monitor. They use one for the image they're
working on the other for the software and other overhead. I'm not
into that either, but I also don't disparage them because they
have a different view than me.

Wouldn't this indeed be a dull world if everybody did things the
same way? Besides being BORING, nobody would ever see other ways
of doing things that may be an improvement over what they are now
doing. Thusly, I am trying really hard TODAY to open up what was
a very closed mind, so I'd appreciate understanding more about
how you use your wide-screen. Perhaps I, too, will see the light.

Thanks and have a great day!

sheepdog, nobody ever has enough money, not even Bill Gates, and
nobody thinks that the price they pay for what they buy is cheap
enough. That's a fact of human life. I can understand why you
would consider an Apple anything. OTOH, for many years and maybe
still today, Apple Macs - the expensive kind with the expensive
monitors - are the preference of graphics professionals. And,
those who are pros in the ultra-high performance world, e.g., 3-D
gaming development probably are still running on the far more
powerful "work station" genre of "PC", previously only used by
CAD and CAE people.

 

Well, across the screen DIAGONALLY if that's what you mean. All monitor and
TV screen sizes are measured on the diagonal.

The only LCD monitors go I've seen that are 4:3 are either 15" (1024 x 768)
or 21" (1600 x 1200). The 17" and 19" standard (i.e., not widescreen)
monitors are invariably 1280 x 1024, which is 5:4. That's close enough for
most practical purposes, but does result in slight vertical stretching of a
4:3 image.

Check Newegg.com and see what they have that may suit you. Most larger
screens nowadays are widescreen, so if you absolutely positively don't want
widescreen you're probably going to be limited to 21". But see what Newegg
has. If there's a monitor made today that will suit you, Newegg probably has
it.

Neil

 

I quit following the deeper resolution discussion because it was making
my head hurt. As for cropping, I often end up with a vertical (or
square, or whatever) final image and I've never worried about either
the print or the screen versions' aspect ratios(!) for a millisecond.
If a print is good enough to show, it deserves a matte. If I can stand
to look at the same image onscreen for more than a day, I'll turn it
into a desktop picture. In either case, the surrounding area will
almost always be neither black nor white but a neutral gray. For a
desktop, I make the background 1152 x 870 (that's what my current
monitor is running) and fill it with 160R-160G-160B, and plop the image
at visual center (a smidgen above geometric center), much like I would
matte a print. I don't always use that color, but I'd say at least 3/4
of the time.

As I mentioned, Mac OS9 would let you tile to two monitors. When I was
doing critical color matching in my home business, I used a Sony
Trinitron carefully calibrated and so on, with a smaller ViewSonic to
the side, holding the palettes. I'm talking about image editing of
scans here. For all other times the small monitor was either showing
some secondary app window, or it might even be turned off.

With the present OS, you can only mirror the same desktop on both
monitors, so I see no point in running two.

I don't have a widescreen. Every time I go into the Apple Store I stop
and marvel at the Cinema Displays. My desk will definitely accommodate
the largest size=')

My decrepit G4 would have to be replaced with a newer Mac, though.

 

Sophie Wilson added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...

Thank you for this observation. It fits better with my mental image
of Samsung, albeit one still of considerable ignorance on my part.
This may well be another example of my ill-advised paranoid
tendencies, but I have this feeling that Samsung took more out of
the 245 to get the $100 than just a plastic case. I don't know, but
wouldn't be surprised if they didn't redesign some of the
electronics for greater manufacturing economy but at a loss of
reliability. I jumped to that possibly incorrect conclusion after
reading your comment about dead pixels.

I obviously agree. I find it frustrating that most/all stores
locally don't have their monitors hooked to a real PC, they're
hooked up to some kind of "network" that can only display a very
limited subset of images. When I first started investigating LCD
displays a year before I bought my 213T, I tried to find a store
that would let me bring a CD in to display my car pictures. I got 2
replies: 1) we won't accept the risk of a virus and 2) our monitors
aren't on a PC. OK. So, I simply bought from a store that would
refund my money, but was pleasant surprised to see such outstanding
images on the 213T.

Wow! Half?! Now, you just listed something that IS important to me,
a pivot stand. If I understand you correctly, that would allow me
to turn the angle and tilt of the monitor. That's an important
feature to me as I need to move the screen as lighting changes in
my office and to better view some images. Otherwise, I have to pull
the room darkening blinds on the window and work with an
incandescent ceiling light which distorts the color balance my
brain interprets from the monitor display.

Thanks for the tip! I will definitely look for the better quality
"T" when I re-start my buy investigation. While I am neither a pro
nor independently wealth, I sure don't want to throw money away for
no good reason. OTOH, I don't buy monitors all that often and $100
or so for significantly better display, tilt/swivel, etc. are a
good cost-benefit fit for me.

Again, thank you. For decades, the long defunct car company Packard
had the slogan "ask the man who owns one". I guess they were
sexists in those days, so updating to "ask the PERSON who owns
one", e.g., you, is far, FAR more valuable to me than theoretical
discussions, especially when the latter begins to turn into an
argument where one "side" or the other starts to suggest that their
"opponent" doesn't have all their marbles.

I tried half a dozen times yesterday to get Samsung customer
support but inexplicably they had it locked out with some silly
message "we are in a meeting, please call back later". HUH?! Today,
after long waits to get to a human being, once they find out I want
to talk about monitors, they transfer the call - to the dead zone!
It comes back with "this call cannot be completed, please dedial
the 800 number". Again, HUH? Another guy was from the printer
department, even though I'd selected "monitors" on their phone tree
and he literally hung up on me. And, the 5th call the guy said "not
me, hold" and I got the voice mail of some dude! I'd like to use a
stronger word than "huh", I imagine you know what that might be.
This simply blows my mind that a company that wants to sell to BOTh
consumers and business has such a callous disregard for people who
call for information. I don't know if I'll get an answer on my
resolutions questions or not, but I cannot talk to a live person!
Oh, I found out that while the message yesterday said they were in
a meeting, in fact, they took the Columbus Day holiday off. That is
a NOT a holiday that very many businesses take in the United
States, it is mainly a government and bank holiday. But, again, I
don't understand why Samsung doesn't comprehend that taking
holidays is WAY secondary to their customers. Now, when I worked,
we all took the same holidays but of course, we also took
vacations. But, MY voice mail message didn't just say "I'll be back
in 2 weeks, leave a message". I assigned one of my subordinates (I
was a manager) to take my calls, attempt to solve the problem while
I was gone as best they could or at least give my internal
"customer" a warm and fuzzy feeling that I wasn't simply dissing
them. Sorry for venting on you, Sophie, as you've been so helpful
to me. I'm used to being independent and digging into these things
myself once I discover or it is (gently?) told to me I need help
and/or a more flexible brain.

I truly appreciate ALL the people that have been patient with me,
and I hope that any lurkers who're likely as confused and
frustrated on this New Direction as I am will benefit from your
knowledge. I think I've expended all the energy I have on this
right now. Whenever I get serious, next month, or next year, I'll
just buy what I think is best and give it a test drive.

Have a great day!

 

You mean you're squeezing them horizontally, or cropping them? Presumably
the former since you apparently don't want to crop them but do want to show
them filling the whole screen.

If so, this is going to be problematic for you -- because no one makes a 3:2
monitor, to my knowledge.

A better way to look at aspect ratios might be the way they're given for
movies, where "widescreen" can mean anything from 1.66:1 to 2.55:1.
Expressing the ratios as "to one" makes them easier to visualize than
expressing the ratios with all integers.

For example, 4:3 (the original movie and TV format) is called 1.33:1. In the
same way, 5:4 is 1.25:1 and 16:10 is 1.6:1. Those are the common monitor
aspect ratios.

Since the format of your Rebel XT is 1.5:1 (3:2), a widescreen monitor is
actually going to be closer to your original image shape than a standard
monitor. There is no way you're going to get those 3:2 images to fill the
screen on any existing size or shape of monitor, without distorting the
image. Either you're going to have to stretch or squeeze the image in one
direction or the other (which I'd never want to do), or you're going to have
black bars either on the sides or the top and bottom.

Neil