Blur Busters Forums

First off, let me say that I've been following this website for a while now and I truly appreciate the efforts of Mark Rejhon, ToastyX, etc. in trying to improve the gaming experience of gamers around the world. IMO websites like this and 120Hz.net are nothing but necessary in the age of the LCD rule. Good job!

Now, I've been using one of the famous 144Hz LightBoost monitors, the XL2411T, for about a year and a half. Overall I think the monitor is great for an LCD: low response time, high refresh rate, LightBoost, resolution, colors... all good and the best being offered to gamers right now. But I always had this feeling that even a 120Hz strobed monitor with 10% LB just wasn't good enough... sure, many will be happy with it, especially now with the Z models and BENQ Blur Reduction out. BUT, unless you're willing to spend $10k for one of those lab research VIEWPixx monitors, the technology just isn't up to top standards for consumers yet, and hasn't been for the past decade, wich I find very dissapointing.

Seems to me that, in terms of technological R&D, gaming is nothing but a business and gamers are nothing but cows to be milked by companies like ASUS, who are famous for making "gaming" products all across the board that barely offer any improvements over non-gaming oriented hardware, and of course nVIDIA/AMD & Intel/AMD, with their 2-year baby steps in the "right direction" (good luck maxing out Crysis or Metro with their latest hardware that you paid hundreds and even thousands of dollars for at a decent framerate).

Proof of this business and consumer mentality that I'm talking about is undoubtedly the fact that CRT's have effectively disappeared from the face of the Earth, not being available, even as a niche product, to anyone. Why? Frankly speaking because no companty has the Balls, yes, the balls, to make them any more. Because this is very much a competitive industry and everyone is afraid to be left out of that sweet potential cash.

So in the end, when we're talking about monitors for gaming... if a gamer wants a CRT today, he has no choice but to rely on luck and nothing but luck: he has to be able to find one of the rare models that are genuinly good for gaming at a resolution that isn't 800x600 (which is not a practical resolution because you can barely even read text with it, and good luck seeing enemies from more than 10 feet away in a game that isn't Quake), and on top of that they have to rely on the previous owner/s having taken good care of it for the last who knows how many years. Impractical, very impractical.

And now, look at the direction "next-gen" gaming monitors are going... 'your 1080p 144Hz LCD monitor isn't good enough for gaming? Here, have a 1440p 144Hz LCD monitor that is equally as bad and will get you even worse fps for more money, [unless you spend whatever the other big companies want to milk out of you on hardware, of course], because we at ASUS know that's what you want, we have sneaky polls to prove it!'. Honestly it's just ridiculous. Gamers shouldn't want a marginally higher resolution (believe me, I've had both 1440p and 1080p monitors and I can tell you first hand that the difference isn't a big deal AT ALL), they should want non-existant input lag and response times & a motion blur free, smooth and responsive gaming experience out of the box, without having to tweak around to get close to what should be the standard in gaming, and leave resolution and the rest of it to designers, photographers, etc., fields where that actually matters and makes a difference.

Meanwhile, some of the best gamers out there are still using 10+ year old peripherals and owning everyone online. So you be the judge of what it is that gamers really need...


Anyway... rant over, guys. Oh, and don't take my nickname too seriously... it's meant to be somewhat silly.

/rant

I can't really disagree here. All of the other technology has seen big increases over the last decade. Except display technology.

I remember playing Tomb Raider 3 in the early 2000's, on my 17" Panasonic monitor (forgot the model; "PanaSync something"), at a resolution of 1600x1200 and 85Hz or 80Hz (definitely not 60Hz.) It looked marvelous. The monitor was from 1997!

17 years later, and compared to that experience, things got worse. Resolution didn't improve; 1600x1200 is basically the same thing as 1920x1080. 1080p is worse, even, since that was a 17" display and now you get 24", meaning the DPI got worse (I didn't even need anti-aliasing on the 17", the pixels were tiny and I had to put my nose literally on the glass to make out aliasing effects). Colors got a lot worse (TN). Motion clarity got worse. Viewing angles are basically non-existent.

Now compare the other technologies (CPU, GPU, memory) and the leaps forward they took in 17 years. Pentium II 233MHz with 64MB RAM anyone? Cause that's what we had in 1997.

17 years in computer technology is huge. In display technology, it doesn't even seem to register.

But, not everything is bad. Some things have improved. Static image clarity for example. And I couldn't get the picture completely straight either with CRTs; there was always a slight bend and curve here and there. Nowadays the image geometry is 100% correct. Also size (that CRT was *huge*) and power consumption have improved.

I have a lot of sympathy for this...rant...but respectfully disagree that the difference between 1080p and 1440p isn't that big...at least when talking solely about 27" monitors

Sent from dumbphone (pls excuse typos and dumbness)

For a few things, nothing beats a CRT if you are wanting simultaneously a lagfree and blurfree experience, everything else be damned. Those mint condition Sony FW900s are a lot of fun if you can afford their hassle. No dispute there. Even though a lot of us have moved beyond CRTs, and the major competition tournaments have even stopped using CRTs a long ago.

A rolling scan OLED can achieve lagfree and blurfree like a CRT, since it can achieve real time visible scan out, like a CRT. Sequential presentation is the lowest lag method, since refreshes are transmitted sequentially per the cable. All-at-once strobing is global presentation, which while has advantages (no skewing effects in fast horizontal motion), adds a bit of lag compared to sequential presentation such as CRT, or rolling scan OLED, or fine-granularity scanning backlight, all of which can reduce or eliminate the lag caused by global presentation (waiting for a whole refresh to arrive before making it visible). It is my opinion that a rolling scan 120hz+ OLED, if done properly with a sufficiently bright one, can get the same persistence as a CRT, blacks as a CRT, color quality as a CRT, while preserving all the pros of an LCD (flatness, perfect geometry, etc). As we know now, OLED is prone to motion blur and manufacturers need to intentionally engineer the rolling scan method to get lagfree/blurfree, like a CRT. The main issue seems to be cost and the amount of lumens to squeeze into the low persistence strobes (numbers competitive with CRT persistence) of a rolling scan. Oculus has essentially done close to those numbers with their DK2 virtual reality headset.

Hopefully, is a matter of time for technological improvement progress for OLED to solve those, and at 24" sizes (give or take), so these can hit the market. But not yet this coming "next gen" (or two), though.

That said, LCD successfully solve motion blur problem, is a big feat alone itself, notwithstanding other LCD drawbacks. As you've even pointed out. Few thought we'd ever see such CRT-league motion clarity on LCD being successfully achieved by strobe backlights. (It was once thought motion blur was as unfixable as perfect blacks, for example)

Black Octagon wrote:I have a lot of sympathy for this...rant...but respectfully disagree that the difference between 1080p and 1440p isn't that big...at least when talking solely about 27" monitors

Sent from dumbphone (pls excuse typos and dumbness)

In terms of pixel density, sure, the difference is quite big, but in terms of definition... meh (sure, it looks better, I'm not going to deny that). And since we're talking about gaming, 1440p obviously requires more horse power, which I'm not a fan of.

But anyway, it's a matter of preference, I'm just saying that a higher resolution isn't really gonna help the whole lag-free gaming concept.

Chief Blur Buster wrote: Hopefully, is a matter of time for technological improvement progress for OLED to solve those, and at 24" sizes (give or take), so these can hit the market. But not yet this coming "next gen" (or two), though.

Yeah, fingers crossed that my P275 lasts that long...

... but I'm looking forward to OLED.

just wondering, would it be easier to implement rolling-scan or global strobing on oled? I'm no expert but I think that with oled displays, each pixel can't hold its color state independently of illumination...

flood wrote: I think that with oled displays, each pixel can't hold its color state independently of illumination...

Nope. The transistors in AMOLED hold the color state. Rolling scan uses an "OFF" pass chasing behind an "ON" pass, as seen in high speed video. You need to actually work harder to strobe an AMOLED. Passive matrixes just do not scale to large sizes.

AMOLED stands for Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode. The Active Matrix is a transistor behind each pixel.

Hey everyone, since you're talking about the OLED technology I wanted to know if you don't mind, what is exactly holding it back, I mean why does it take so long, it's been years that I've known about OLED, and it's only now that I start seeing some screens in stores, but they are only 1080p, curved, very expensive, and don't seem to interest anyone (excepted me who needs a real replacement for the old CRT ).

zb0t wrote:Hey everyone, since you're talking about the OLED technology I wanted to know if you don't mind, what is exactly holding it back, I mean why does it take so long, it's been years that I've known about OLED, and it's only now that I start seeing some screens in stores, but they are only 1080p, curved, very expensive, and don't seem to interest anyone (excepted me who needs a real replacement for the old CRT ).

Mostly manufacturing costs I imagine... among other things.

But like Chief mentioned there are still no OLED screens available that are low persistance or any good for gaming, not yet. We're gonna be waiting a while until that becomes mainstream.

LagBuster wrote:But like Chief mentioned there are still no OLED screens available that are low persistance or any good for gaming, not yet. We're gonna be waiting a while until that becomes mainstream.

Except for the Oculus DK2 virtual reality headset. It's a surprisingly good little low-persistence OLED. Small, but you'll get a near CRT-quality experience if you can sustain 75fps@75Hz (for both eyes at the same time).