want a widescreen monitor for my 360

[randombs]

reading the manual for that sammy, it says you can do zoom (keeping AR) on any res up to 720p, which would mean thin borders top/bottom but no cutting off the sides, if i understand it correctly.

i think i'm gonna just order it provided they let you return it to a store within 16 days (just in case). gonna have to pop into one of their branches to sort out the argos card for the 0% finanance though.

wish me luck

[randombs]

ok i just ordered it on the phone. those groovy guys over there gave me an instant decision so that's a whole 9 months 0%

it'll be delivered wednesday, and if it's a bit pants they'll even pick it up for free :d

pics will be uploaded once it's all set up properly. bring on the 16:9 goodness on a 16:10 telly...

[Salsa Party Animal]

What the model called anyway and how much is it ? (Samsung 19 inch Widescreen) as my PC monitor is old

[Vince]

I believe it is this one the SM940MW. I'm tempted to go for one myself although it is a bit weird that its 16:10. Hopefully some impressions will be posted here.

[randombs]

personally i'm used to 16:10 as that's what my laptop screen is. from what i've been seeing, for 16:9 you'd have to get a 23" or bigger lcd, as they're the ones with the 1366x768 res. personally, i'd rather have 1440x900, especially for 1080i stuff as it'll look better.

the telly apparently has a zoom mode (same as any normal widescreen telly) as well as 4:3. the fact that zoom mode is mentioned as only working for 720p and under goes further to prove my hope - that it won't fill the screen, just until the sides are met, giving a 16:9 picture.

although the zoom won't work with anything higher than 720p, after that point i'll be using my laptop anyway to run videos off, and VLC offers all the aspect ratio options i'd need.

monitor is the one vince has linked to. it's ?300 and with argos' 16-day policy you've really got nothing to lose, honest. they'll even pick it up for free

oh and it has a remote so you can flick between inputs in a flash

[ucci]

Whats the Sammy like Billy? All us video whores need to know if it gets the juice flowing through your no doubt educated self.

[randombs]

ok update.

had the monitor for 2 weeks. i really don't like tft's anyway (they can't do black of course!), and the samsung is no exception.

in the meantime, i found someone selling a viewsonic one (19" ws too, w/speakers, vga and dvi) for ?125 that was supposedly better than the acer one i showed in my original post, so i figured - if i'm not too hot for tft's, there's no point spending ?300 on one. may as well get as cheap (but good) as possible and then a year or so later see how they're doing tech-wise.

got the viewsonic, was nowhere near as good as the samsung is (colours are worse, image is a bit too dark and washed), and bear in mind i'd used the samsung with the old 360 dash (washed out colours) and still thought it was amazing, then when i got the viewsonic the new dash with better colour output was released, but even then i thought the samsung looked better. however, i tried kameo and my jaw dropped!

so i sold the viewsonic to cex for ?117 (lost out a whopping ?8 - a lesson learned ) and decided to keep the samsung.

haven't tried it with the 360 since the dash update, maybe i'll have a go today to see what everything looks like.

basically, i think the samsung is lovely - really nice crisp picture, great scaling, hd-ready (only thing not hd-ready about it is that it's 19", otherwise it's fine), vga, dvi (with hdcp), component, rgb, svideo, composite, full telly functionality (with teletext).

only downer is the dodgy black reproduction but that's to be expected from a 'budget tft' (shakey's words not mine!). main reason i decided to keep it was the fantastic picture i get from my ps2 via component (talking about 480i here), and the fact that, had i kept the viewsonic, i'd be buying a component-vga transcoder (which can't do 480i properly of course) for my xbox/ps2 and probably an xrgb thingy for the older consoles.

also the viewsonic was a pain to use when pressing buttons - the up/down keys bring up brightness/contrast instead of volume (you have to go into the menu, then audio section just to change the volume ), and being a monitor, it can't handle the interlaced stuff (480i/1080i).

so in short, i'm really happy with the samsung, despite being an enemy of tft's in general (ideally i'd have a cheap widescreen crt monitor but space dictates otherwise), and running my old videos in hi-res is like when you rediscover your old consoles in rgb, or upgrade your graphics card

even better, now the 360 upscales dvds over vga to whatever res you've set it to, they look sweet on that just as they do via my xbox media center (which also upscales everything AND corrects the screen for dodgy 16:10 monitors like this one!)

:EDIT: just noticed i talked about zoom mode before, actually this only seems to apply to the aerial so far, and most likely scart/svid although i haven't tested this. definitely doesn't work over vga/component, even at the lowest res

[ucci]

main reason i decided to keep it was the fantastic picture i get from my ps2 via component (talking about 480i here)

These are the little details that make me want to buy the Samsung. The PS2 will be set up on it and it will be fine along the 360 I intend to buy in the next month or so. Got to get into God of War after hearing so much good about it in preparation for number 2.

[wehrwulf]

After reading billy review i have just purchased the 19" samsung (on the 9 months interest free credit ) i have a couple of questions regarding how to connect to my x360

what is the best way to connect ? VGA or the HD cables that come with the x360

What setting do i use in the dash to achieve 720P ?

thanks

[Bassman]

IF you use VGA you will be given a choice of resolutions to choose from. I have not tried using component with my monitor (24" Dell 16:10 Widescreen).

[randombs]

i use vga cos it looks about 100 better than component (i'm talking official leads here)

i set it to 1280x768 as that's 16:10 so the games will have the proper ratio (e.g. ridge 6 and table tennis i've tried work in that res so look right).

1366x768 should look a bit better as it's closer to the 1440x900 res of the screen but i don't see a difference and that's a 16:9 res so i don't bother with it.

as bassman says, vga gives a wider variety of resolutions. with component you're stuck with 480p, 720p and 1080i

[Escape-To-88]

I was thinking of picking up one of these Samsung's myself.
Had a question, can anybody recommend a decent VGA cable for the original XBOX (not 360) to use?? I know you can pick up a variety of adaptors from Lik-sang etc. and have seen a few guides to build your own, but wondered if anyone can offer their experiences with any decent leads???
Cheers

[randombs]

i use the xbox component cable straight to the telly myself. i don't like the idea of these converters and transcoders. ok, it doesn't affect the xbox as much as ps2 because pretty much everything can be run in 480p, including the dash and the homebrew stuff.

i was going to build a vga cable for it as it'd look nicer (the cable i'm using, i got off ebay, and there's a bit of ghosting at 720p+) but didn't bother as i'd have to use a different bios and stuff.

a regular vga box (composite to vga) would be the silliest idea in the world.

if you decided on a transcoder (component-vga), bear in mind that if you run something at 480i or 1080i, the monitor won't be able to display it. some transcoders have a whizz-bang feature that, when in 480i, can display *half* the screen using magic.

although the samsung handles interlaced stuff just fine over component, etc, i haven't tried it over vga, but i wouldn't count on it working.