Common theme in LCD screens..

**freestyler** · 09-07-2003, 07:02 PM

Originally Posted by vairox

frodobaggins - thats probably it, i'm not trying to be a dick or anything...

freestyler - yes, video graphics array, but does it truly make that much of a diff on a TFT screen? i have a POS 7" STN and it indeed looks like crap, but i just figured it was cause it was STN and not TFT.

makes a HUGE difference, I could barely read the stuff on my composite display, now that I have VGA it's a lot easier to read, i mean a lot, enough to justify the $400 price tag IMHO, but it all depends on what you want to use it for, with my composite having MilkDrop running or a movie for example it was fine, GPS and such sucked.

**Defiler** · 09-07-2003, 11:27 PM

Originally Posted by vairox

freestyler - yes, video graphics array, but does it truly make that much of a diff on a TFT screen? i have a POS 7" STN and it indeed looks like crap, but i just figured it was cause it was STN and not TFT.

Just an FYI...

STN sucks to begin with. It has no viewing angle, can't read text worth a shiznit, colors bleed, and it just looks like crap.

A TFT w/ composite in is way better than STN. Generaly better viewing angle, brighter, more pixes, can read larger text and can start to make out smaller text, and considerably less color bleed. BUT, it still is not the quallity of a Xenarc/Gain.

Xenarc/Gain are practically LCDs. MUCH higher pixel count and higher resolutions. You can CLEARLY read text on one of these. Very sharp colors.

IMHO they are a bit pricey but that's my wallet talking. I have a 7" TFT and I can deal with it for what I do.

And to just throw my two cents in about this thread being started...

Everyone who is complaining AND standing up for the selection of screens being offered on this forum and on the internet in general, you have your right to say what you feel, BUT you do not have the right to post SLANDER. This is a serious matter. You are possibly messing with someones source of income. If you think you can get a better deal, great. Let us know how the transaction went after ALL is said and done. But please do not bad mouth someone on someone elses post. For all you know they could be doing the same thing.

I too recently bought a screen from DS Customs. Dave was nice enough to have the screen sent VIA a different method then he usually sends his items and I got it in the time I was prommised.

This forum is to help people, not start some finger pointing BS over what some people have posted in other threads. Just use a little common sense.

**cproaudio** · 09-08-2003, 03:29 AM

OK Now I have get into this since I'm one of the "MORON" who bought the $400+ screen. LCD is LCD no matter if its low res or high res or STN aka dual scan or TFT aka active matrix. There are STN VGA, STN composit, TFT VGA and TFT composit LCD screens. Price varies from super low cost STN composit to low cost TFT composit screens to mid cost STN VGA screens to high cost TFT VGA screens. Gains screen (Xenarc, DScustoms, DigitalWW) are all TFT VGA screens.
The screens that vairox keeps refering to on this thread and various other thread are the low cost TFT composit LCD screens. The main stream TFT composit screens are more than addiquate for displaying movies but not computer display. That's why all car monitors are so inexpensive. Because they all us low resolution screens. They dont need to display small details like computer displays do. The bigger screens like 10.4 or larger are capable of VGA resolution BUT the controller is not. The LCD screen itself is not expensive, the controller is. Composit LCD controllers are inexpensive. Another reason why low res LCD are cheap.
vairox cant seems to understand why most of us choose the $400+
screen over his much prefered $"79" screen. I hope this clears up why we rather spend the $400 than waste $100 for a cheap composit screen.
This is a VGA (640X480) resolution using RCA jack connected to a regular composit TFT LCD screen. The screen is an Accel LCD64A 6.4 inch. Same type of screen used in the cheap LCD screens. The picture shows the lower right hand corner of my desktop where the icons and the date and time goes. As you can see the composit screen cant show the details of the time and icons.

This is a WVGA (848X480) resolution using VGA connected to a Xenarc high res LCD screen. With the Xenarc screen you can see the details.

As for the common theme, I cant say anything about DScustoms and DigitalWW cuz I've never bought anything from them. I've dealt with Xenarc before with excellent results. I fried my Xenarc screen on Thursday morning, overnight the screen to them on Thrusday afternoon. They received it Friday morning got it repaired and send it out the same day. I got my monitor back on on Saturday. The only thing I paid for was sending the screen to them. I didnt have to pay for the repair nor the return postage. Talk about fast service.

Edit: vairox have you ever seen a Gains 7" screen in person? Since you claimed to have built a carPC before, care to shad some light with us. what kind of car was it in? what screen did you use? any pictures of the dash/whole install? what kind of car do you currently drive? You claimed to have found a 10.4" screen for $79 dollars care to post a link?

**Defiler** · 09-08-2003, 08:24 AM

Originally Posted by cproaudio

LCD is LCD no matter if its low res or high res or STN aka dual scan or TFT aka active matrix.

You are correct. What I ment to say when I said "Xenarc/Gain are practically LCDs." was they are practically LCD quallity that you would use for your desktop.

**chut** · 09-08-2003, 09:49 AM

Wow!!
now that I can see the comparison, I am sooooo glad that I did the stupid thing and bought a "ridiculously overpriced" VGA, TS, USB, LCD.

Whew! That was a lot of initials to type.

**samc** · 09-08-2003, 10:18 AM

how about the original guy who started this thread. Come up with a nice indash 7" vga screen with touch with 400+ nits of brightness, with no scotch tape and 24/7 customer service. I'll gladly give you $199.99 for it.

**MichaelG** · 09-08-2003, 01:04 PM

crproaudio, what does the composite signal look like when passed into one of those Xenarc high res screens? I am in the market for something to just watch movies for now and I was considering one from digitalww that has 800x480 res (upgradeable to VGA with kit). If your screen accepts composite could you please post a pic for comparison?

Also for anyone, would DVD look much better through a VGA connector from a carPC as opposed to just using composite out from a DVD player directly to a screen of the same quality (say one of those Xenarc type's that has both VGA and composite inputs)? I am thinking about the carPC but for now my only interest is to set up DVD/TV viewing in the car for trips.

Thanks

Mike

**gork** · 09-08-2003, 01:18 PM

MichaelG:

I don't have side-by-sides for comparison, but it's going to look almost exactly like the other composite image posted. The image is just a lot fuzzier and colors are different.

Nobody has mentioned it, but there is substantial color loss using NTSC Composite. VGA can display a much larger color gamut than NTSC. Don't believe it? Look at this little image I generated below on VGA and then on Composite and be amazed!

On an NTSC Composite monitor the top row and bottom row of colors will look the same if your video card is not doing gamut compression. If it is doing gamut compression, they will APPEAR similar to how they look via RGB display such as VGA, but rest assured composite video cannot carry the colors shown in the top row. In the latter case you'd need a side by side comparison of the same display with and without VGA to see the effect I've described.

DVD will look far better output via CarPC to a VGA screen than via composite ever will. The horizontal resolution is just not there with composite video and there is also lots of vertical banding and scaling to most LCD's; however, with DVD, there will not be a gamut problem as the production company has produced the title for NTSC colorspace already.

Here is a graph of full gamut vs NTSC (defined by the triangle):

It's worth noting also that S-Video and Y/Pb/Pr component inputs (Confusing because they often have Red Green and Blue RCA connectors) do not provide any greater colorspace than regular NTSC allows for. They DO provide better color DEFINITION and genearlly help to increase apparent video resolution by not compressing everything onto one (or 2 in the case of S-Video) pairs of wire, but to get any more colors, you have to have a true RGB input on your monitor with three seperate color channels and H/V sync. Monitors that do sync-on-green lose some color definition in the green, but other than that, it's still a lot better than NTSC.

OTOH, now you can see why they use blue for the background of VCR's DVD's TV's etc.. It's the brightest "looking" primary apparent in NTSC and the least likely to have consumers complaining they got some kind of unit that produces colors that are 'washed out' or 'dark'...

Finally, (and to make things even more confusing) it's worth noting that some NTSC controllers actually do gamut EXPANSION to make colors more vivid, so you'll see the "pure" RGB green when NTSC is showing the "greenest" color it can in its gamut. So, if you had a RGB(VGA) to NTSC composite conversion that did gamut compression AND a NTSC LCD controller that did gamut expansion, you'd actually get colors that match closely to the regular VGA-output colors; however, you'd lose quite a bit of color definition (similar to running a screen at 16 bit color vs. 24 bit color or similar)

Well, that was way too much information, probably. Anyway, have fun with it...

**MichaelG** · 09-08-2003, 01:39 PM

Thanks for the reply, and all the info. I am pretty familiar with component video and quality differences with that, just wasn't sure how that would translate with such a small screen. I have a 56" widescreen TV at home and for me the difference between S-Video and Component is noticeable. Since I have no way to see the actual lcd screens I have nothing to go by, but I have read several posts that state the composite lcd's are fine for videwing video such as DVD/TV, but they are not adequate for GPS, or other CarPC type applications because the text is unreadable.

I would rather go with better quality and spend some more $$$. Maybe it is time to start saving to build a CarPC, start with the DVD/TV, MP3 for now and add on GPS, OBDII and other things later.

**digitalww** · 09-08-2003, 02:02 PM

Also check out some of the installs here: http://digitalww.com/customer_installs.htm

Originally Posted by MichaelG

Thanks for the reply, and all the info. I am pretty familiar with component video and quality differences with that, just wasn't sure how that would translate with such a small screen. I have a 56" widescreen TV at home and for me the difference between S-Video and Component is noticeable. Since I have no way to see the actual lcd screens I have nothing to go by, but I have read several posts that state the composite lcd's are fine for videwing video such as DVD/TV, but they are not adequate for GPS, or other CarPC type applications because the text is unreadable.

I would rather go with better quality and spend some more $$$. Maybe it is time to start saving to build a CarPC, start with the DVD/TV, MP3 for now and add on GPS, OBDII and other things later.

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