RSS Feeds
Make Screen Comparisons Simple at Display Wars
Posted by Kevin Purdy at 12:00 AM on December 27, 2007
Sizing up a new monitor or television these days involves balancing way more than just inch counts—there are widescreen models, display ratios, and other factors that make simple size comparisons difficult. Enter Display Wars, a free web utility that lets you compare display sizes for televisions, monitors, and projection units in simple coloured rectangles and mathematical comparisons. You'll have to know a little bit about the units you're comparing, most importantly the aspect ratio, and it won't tell you much about resolutions and densities, but it's a good way point on the path to a better view.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
dognose
Posted 8:01 AM 26/12/07
Wow, while I love the idea of these comparisons, they are highly inaccurate. CRT tube size vs viewable varies. And, where are regular lcd monitors? are those suppose to be the tv sizes?
I think the TV selection is really just a regular LCD size (or crt tube size, useless). There is no CRT comparison, even though they claim the tv includes crt.
dognose
schwnj
Posted 10:24 AM 26/12/07
Wow, I should really pay more attention. I just noticed they list both the letterbox and windowbox area.
schwnj
schwnj
Posted 10:23 AM 26/12/07
That's funny. I made an Excel spreadsheet to tell me these exact same things, except I added two very important items: Letterbox/Windowbox sizes. Particularly, I wanted to know what size of 16:9 TV I would have to buy such that any 4:3 programs I watch on it (the majority of shows I watch, for now) are the same viewable size as my current 4:3 TV.
For example, I had a 32" 4:3 TV, and I found out that a 40" 16:9 TV's windowbox area was 32". This told me I needed to go larger than 40" if I wanted a larger picture than what I currently had on 4:3 shows.
(I should also note a more impressive comparison I made was to show the drastic jump in letterbox area--my old 32" tv only showed a 26" letterbox area, while a new 16:9 tv would trounce that.)
schwnj
mikesty
Posted 1:38 PM 26/12/07
That's pretty sweet.
Anyone have any inexpensive LCD TV recommendations for 3 dudes living in an apartment? Not too big, widescreen isn't terribly important, HD isn't really important at all - just needs to be for watching DVDs and watching the Hokies annihilate other teams.
mikesty
HeartBurnKid
Posted 2:28 PM 26/12/07
@dognose: When you're talking about a TV, viewable size is generally advertised, not tube size. The reverse is true for CRT monitors.
HeartBurnKid