Samsung 23 Lcd Hdtv

Do you know BenQ? (Hint: they don't have any ATMs.)

BenQ (pronounced "BEN-kyew") is a subsidiary of Taiwanese hardware maker Acer that makes displays, PC peripherals, and MP3 players. The company offers an impressive number of LCD panels and front projectors, and today, we're here to take you on a tour of it's new FP231W 23" LCD monitor.

Here's a quick rundown of this display's vital statistics:

Diagonal Screen Measurement: 23"

Panel Size 20" x 12"

Dimensions (HxWxD) 21.1" x 18.3" x 9.8"

Native Pixel Resolution 1920x1200

Supported TV Resolutions 720p; 1080i and 1080p via VGA or DVI

Aspect Ratio 16:10

Panel Response Time 16ms (can run at about 60fps)

Viewing Angles (vertical and horizontal) 176°

Inputs D-Sub (VGA); DVI; S-Video Composite

TV Tuner None

Audio System Optional; two-channels; 4W/channel

Remote Control None

USB Hub Four-port

One bit of trickery that vendors sometimes employ is using vague product names. When you see descriptors like "EDTV," "DTV" or "HD-ready," start reading the fine print on the spec sheet. You may find that the display is not a true HD-resolution display. For more on this topic, check out our HDTV primer.

The upside here is that BenQ's FP231W has all the pixel resolution you'll need for any HD resolution, however, it lacks component video inputs, so your HDTV tuner or cable box will need either a VGA or DVI output to display HD-resolution images on this panel. Or you'd need to buy a VGA-to-component cable.

It's worth noting that Acer-subsidiary BenQ has a "sub-subsidiary" of its own called AU Optronics, which manufactures LCD panels for it and other monitor makers. Many display makers buy their panels from LG/Philips or Samsung, but BenQ uses its own.

We first described our HDTV test methodology in an article about our new HDTV Test Lab.

We test via the DVI input of the unit under test at its native pixel resolution, using Milori's ColorFacts measurement software with a Minolta CA-210 colorimeter. The CA-210 is lined up to be perpendicular to the display, and is positioned at point-blank range.

We test four major areas of display performance:

Contrast ratio RGB color response Grayscale linearity Color Temperature Linearity

Contrast ratio is the difference between the lightest and darkest values a panel can display. A large contrast ratio indicates that the display is capable of displaying color subtleties and a very high degree of detail. Contrast ratio can be thought of as a kind of "dynamic range" of a display device. Contrast ratio is an important metric, but can end up being an incomplete indicator of a display's overall performance. For instance, if a display can get very bright, but doesn't get especially dark, the ratio can wind up masking this fact. For this reason, we look at a series of other tests – both objective and subjective – to more fully measure a given display.

We use an ANSI checkerboard pattern, and take nine measurements (three across the top, three across the center, and three across the bottom). For the other three measurements, we take one measurement at dead-center.

We measure grayscale linearity to see how close the display comes to 6500 degrees Kelvin along the full IRE range. IRE is an arbitrary unit for gray level, which is really the amplitude of the voltage representing the gray level. 100 IRE is pure white, while the video blanking level is 0 IRE. One IRE unit is 7.14 millivolts.

Next we run 720p HD video material into the LCD TV using a Sencore VP920 HD video player to gauge its ability to display fast-action and color-rich HDTV content. We use the player's VGA connector and run content into the panel under test at 480p, 720p, and 1080i.

Using a combination of a Sencore VP403 test pattern generator and a PC equipped with a Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card, we can generate a variety of clean, robust test patterns, such as SMPTE bars, pure red, blue, and green, checkerboard, grayscale gradient, and high-frequency patterns to assess image fidelity. We run these test patterns at all HDTV resolutions (480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p). Interestingly, the VP403 uses a subset of the DisplayMate test patterns in its firmware.

Finally, we use DVD movie content coming from a Yamaha DVD-S2300MK2 progressive-scan DVD player connected via the panel's component video connectors. Currently we do this testing with the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers DVD, using both bright, intense action sequences and darker scenes to gauge dark tone response. Dark tone response is especially important for a display because we perceive light the same way we perceive sound: logarithmically. This means our eyes are very good at distinguishing subtle changes in luminance values in dark scenes, but as we move toward fully bright scenes, our sensitivity diminishes and almost everything appears to be bright to our eyes.

The FP231W has several color temperature settings, although none of them are explicitly stated to be D65 (6500K). We chose the panel's sRGB color setting. Proposed by Microsoft and HP in the mid-1990s, SRGB sought to create a standard, platform-independent color space for the Web and imaging devices. According to the sRGB original 1996 proposal, this color space would enable a "…method of handling color in the operating systems, device drivers, and the Internet that utilizes a simple and robust device independent color definition." BenQ has implemented this color space as a choice for the FP231W, and so we opted to use it here. As we found out during our grayscale linearity test, sRGB corresponds to 6500K.

Measured Contrast Ratio

Average Contrast Ratio Max/Min Contrast Ratio Max/Min Dark Value Max/Min Bright Value

227:1 2.15 2.17 1.22

Out of the gate, the FP231W stumbles, and is well off BenQ's rated contrast ratio of 500:1. According to BenQ's spec sheet, the FP231W is supposed to deliver about 250 candelas/square-meter (cd/m2) of brightness. However the highest measured value we saw was down around 150cd/m2. More troubling is the tremendous variance in dark values, and the resulting disparity in measured contrast ratios. As you can see, bright values are much more consistent. The two culprit measurement points are the upper-right corner and the upper-left corner, where dark values are just below or just above 1cd/m2. The other seven values were in the range of 0.5-0.6cd/m2.

To verify these initial measurements, we brought up a full-screen all-black test image, and we could see some clouding artifacts around the periphery of the panel, whereas the center of the panel appeared to be darker.

RGB Color Response

The black triangle represents a "perfect" response, whereas the white triangle represents the measured color response.

The FP231W pretty much nails the red and green values, but its blue response wasn't quite as strong. Some of this however is fairly typical of a display set to 6500K. If the display supports it, dialing the color temperature up to 9300K will give the overall image a more bluish hue, but will also enhance the blue response as well.

Grayscale Linearity

The above graph shows (from left to right) grayscale tracking from gray levels IRE 0 (video blanking level/absolute black) through IRE 100 (full-on white). An ideal plot will be a straight line that runs along the dotted line, which is the target color temperature.

BenQ pretty much nails this through all IRE levels. It runs just slightly below the 6500K white target, but only by a hair. There also no dips or spikes at any of the IRE levels.

Color Temperature Linearity

The above graph shows (from left to right) RGB color response at the different IRE levels used during the grayscale tracking test. An ideal plot will have all three color response curves settling at around 100% of the 6500K white target.

Here again, the FP231W does quite well, with green response being just about dead-on, and red and blue only slightly below the 6500K target.

We did a "red streak" inspection test, where we bring up a bitmap of a pure-red raster, and quickly drag the image around the screen. One of LCD panels' biggest problems is streaking, or temporal smearing that's a result of inadequate panel response time. However the FP231W's 16ms response time appeared to be legit here, since we saw no streaking as we dragged the red-raster test image around the screen.

In our subjective video inspection tests also revealed no smearing, and colors generally looked correct and vivid. It won't give NEC's mammoth 61-inch plasma display panel a run for its money, but then again, BenQ's offering doesn't cost $17,000.

High-definition WMV content (available for download from wmvhd.com) also looked sharp, and the BenQ panel was able to reveal several known visible artifacts in the content itself. In particular, the Magic of Flight video clip has some banding in the river water during a flyover scene.

Because the FP231W is intended primarily as a PC display, we did most of our subjective inspection tests at close range, at a viewing distance of three to five feet. However, we also spent some time viewing the panel at a six to eight foot view distance and it still fared pretty well. We did notice however that its off-axis viewing characteristics weren't especially good. In particular, black tones took on a reddish color when viewing the panel from about 45-degrees off-axis (horizontally). There was slight distortion of other colors as well, but the black tones were especially noticeable. Again, BenQ isn't trying to pass this display off as an HDTV, but if you're considering it to pull double-duty as both a PC display and an HDTV, this may not be your best choice.

We also briefly fired up AquaMark3 on the panel to look for streaking there during the benchmark's test scenes, and none was readily apparent.

Putting the FP231W together out of the box is a snap, literally. The panel easily connects to its base, and once it clicks into place, the panel is ready to roll. The base has a sprung height adjuster, making those adjustments very easy, and once set at a given height, the setting didn't creep up or down. You can also push the panel all the way to its lowest setting, at which point it will lock, allowing you to pick the panel up and move it. A button on the back of the base then releases the panel again, and you're back to the same sprung mechanism.

Cables dress fairly neatly into the middle of the FP231W's panel, although we look forward to seeing a display that implements a "snake" design. This would take the form of an I/O breakout where you'd connect all your inputs, and then a single cable would carry all input signals into the panel. Granted, this would be cost adder, but for panels that are wall-mountable, a single cable would be much more elegant than a jumble of cables.

The FP231W's menus are fairly straightforward, although we found ourselves wishing the color temperature descriptors told us actual temperatures. Instead, your options are "bluish," (likely 9300K), "greenish" (likely 6500K), and sRGB, which corresponded to 6500K in our grayscale linearity testing.

The last thing we liked about the FP231W was its overall fit and finish. The thin bezel is especially nice, and because the audio system is an optional add-on, you don't have speaker "ears" hanging off the panel if you don't want them. In contrast, HP's FP2304 23" LCD panel has its speakers built-in to the chassis, and so they're there whether you want them or not. BenQ gives you the option of a modest two-channel speaker system, but its absence by default means you get a cleaner-looking panel that gives you just your picture, sans extraneous frame material.

All told, BenQ's FP231W stacks up well versus HP's FP2304. The two units are comparably priced, though the BenQ offering has a street price just under $2,000. If you don't need an audio system (you're not using your monitor's speakers, are you?), the FP231W's crisp, lean look will deliver a big picture with a minimum of bezel. The panel's overall video performance was pretty solid, as was its handling of Windows desktop chores.

If you're looking to a big Windows desktop and lots of pixel resolution, the FP231W will do a good job. However, like HP's FP2304, its off-axis viewing performance isn't stellar, and as such, this BenQ panel won't make a good HDTV for small living room viewing. There are other panels out there better suited to that task. But for Windows desktop duties and near-field viewing of DVD and HDTV content, the FP231W will get the job done.

Product BenQ FP231W LCD Monitor

Web Site: www.benq.com

Pros: Good grayscale linearity performance; easy assembly and good ergonomics; generally solid video playback performance

Cons: Inconsistent dark-tone response, especially at the upper left and right corners; contrast ratio uniformity suffers as a result; on-screen menus don't list specific color temperatures

Summary: A good panel if you're primarily looking for a big Windows desktop and also want to watch some DVDs and HDTV content in a near-field viewing environment.

Price: $2,499 MSRP, $1,999 street (check price)

Score:

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.

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