Cliff_Claven

Hey everyone I'm new around here as far as membership goes, but I've been looking into CarPCs for years. I like all the helpful information that has been published over the years.

So now it is time for me to choose my components and the thing that is sticking me up at the moment is the monitor!

I have been searching and I'm thinking either the Lilliput EBY701, Lilliput 629, Xenarc 700TSV or the Xenarc 705TSV. I like the price of the EBY701 and the Xenarc 705TSV. The EBY and 705 are LED backlit which will consume less power which will be nice. Please guide me in a choice I won't regret.

For those of you who have experience with both models or both brands let me know what you think?

Format in:

Pros:

Cons:

I really want to hear what the owners of these monitors say. I'll be buying the monitor sometime within the very close future. Transflective is a bit out of my price range as this is all brand new to me and changing monitors later is an option. I would like to spend no more than 350 dollars on a monitor, but for the right reasons I could sport a few extra bucks if that's what'll take.

Thanks in advance

MP3Car.com

 

Slate

I bought a Xenarc 706TSA (I know it's not on your list), and then later a lilliput 629GL. Here's my opinion on how the two brands compare:

The 706 is better than the 629 in the areas of brightness and picture quality at high brightness. It is CCFL however, so I don't know if the LED Xenarcs could match it's brightness. Also, after several attempts, I was able to get native resolution (800x480) working for the 706. I don't know if that matters to you, but I would guess that the other xenarc models would be about the same. The 629GL is a completely different story. I have had no luck whatsoever getting native resolution working on the 629GL, and haven't heard of anyone else being able to either. It is looking like a lost cause.

Where the 706TSA fails, is at night. The CCFL backlight is way too bright, even at the lowest setting. It illuminated my whole car at night, and I had to turn the screen off while I was driving. This screen was definitely made for daytime use. You will probably have better luck with the LED model, if you go with xenarc. I'm wishing I had purchased that in the first place. Also, I had an irritating problem with the 706, where it would not turn on in colder temperatures. Some people here had similar issues, and others reported no issues. Again, it's a different model than what you are looking for, so maybe you'll have better luck. Because of this issue however, I decided that my next screen would not be a xenarc.

A major disadvantage of the 629 (besides not being able to display native resolution), is that there is no backlight adjustment. Changing the brightness only affects how much light the LCD panel passes through. This means the backlight bleeds through at night (although not nearly as bad as the 706), and everything looks washed out. There is a very narrow range of brightness settings where you actually get a decent contrast ratio, but these settings are too bright for nighttime use. I am looking into adding a PWM control to reduce the backlight brightness at night (another great thing about LED backlights!)

Despite the quirks, the 629GL wins over the 706TSA. What it really came down to for me was price. For the price that I paid for the 629GL, I have a *working* screen that I can at least view at night, and it is still perfectly readable in the middle of the day. I can deal with the non-native resolution.

MP3Car.com