The IPS LCD Revolution

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/the-ips-lcd-revolution.html

by FredericJ • 14 years ago

152 91 14 years ago

jrockway4• 14 years ago

These articles have made me want to buy a new monitor at home, but the 7 year-old 24" Dell monitor that I have still works perfectly fine. It's more than bright enough and there are no defective pixels. The $800 or whatever it cost back then seems like a lot, but what other 7-year-old computer part does anyone still use today? (My mouse and HHKB are getting there...)

weaksauce• 14 years ago

I upgraded to a 30" IPS(from a 24" IPS) and it's well worth it. It does take a little getting used to having that much screen that close but the adjustment period is on the order of a day or two.

jrockway4• 14 years ago

I have a 30" at work. I don't really need the space. It isn't enough space to have four 100 column files open, and 24" is enough for three.

jarek4• 14 years ago

I use an 8 year old laptop. Quite capable for wasting time on HN and reddit. Oh, and pretty much every web app out there...

w1ntermute2• 14 years ago

Out of curiosity, what's the model # and specs?

epaik3• 14 years ago

I've ordered one, but I'm more than a little concerned about the potential 30% failure rate that I read about in the previous thread.

I'm a little bit curious though, as to WHY exactly these screen's failure rates are so high, or how they fail. If there's any way to prolong my LCD's life I'd like to be made aware.

pja4• 14 years ago

Perhaps that's why they're £200?

Also, they don't work with some video cards (I know my Radeon 5750 has occasional trouble syncing with my HP LP2475W for some reason, but that's single-link DVI only. I imagine these monitors are dual-link DVI displays?)

epaik3• 14 years ago

Of course they're cheap for a reason. I was just a little bit interested in the technical details of what causes a display like this to fail.

And yes, these monitors are dual-link dvi only.

kevhsu3• 14 years ago

That 30% is anecdotal from ONE guy's company that bought a few of these monitors. The sample size is too small, and also there are multiple Korean OEMs selling similar monitors. Some are using nicer boards than others, the same way some are using nicer casing than others.

I've heard murmurring of people getting Square warranties for these monitors. Might be worth investigating if the failure rate is a concern for you. ~$300+warranty costs will still be significantly less than a Cinema Display.

Paul_S4• 14 years ago

You could buy an IPS LCD for a bit above 200 quid for years now. Someone has been not paying attention.

edit: turns out it was I who was not paying attention, not realising that's it not about affordable IPSs in general but this specific size.

epaik3• 14 years ago

This is news to me. Sure, you could probably by A IPS LCD for 200 quid two years ago, but a 27" one?

Paul_S4• 14 years ago

I don't know, I'm not in the economic class that can afford things like that so I wouldn't even consider such a size. With the added distance requirement I don't think I could even fit one on my desk. Is 27" the comfort sweetspot then?

pja4• 14 years ago

Yeah me too. A 2560x1440 S-IPS panel for £200? Never seen one.

TN panels have been down at that price & lower for ages, but not IPS ones.

thezilch• 14 years ago

The article is referring to both a 27" and 2560x1440 display, not just any IPS.

sciurus• 14 years ago

Last month I bought a 24" 1920x1200 display (Dell UltraSharp U2412M) for the same price as he's talking about paying for a 27" 2560x1440.

kevhsu3• 14 years ago

It's an S-IPS panel as opposed to eIPS, which you'll find on some of the smaller cheaper IPS monitors. And as others have pointed out, it's 27 inches and rocking a high resolution.

kecebongsoft• 14 years ago

I own a 27" Samsung SyncMaster P2770, it's a TN panel, didn't know about any of these things when I bought it, whish I could be patient and research more. I'm not so much for viewing angle, so I'm just wondering how different the color reproduction quality is compared to any average IPS panel. If you just browsing around and doing stuff in terminal, is it worth to get one?

Paul_S4• 14 years ago

If you're a freak like me and swivel your monitor 90 degrees into portrait orientation it makes a massive difference (even if only because of the viewing angle - the horizontal and vertical viewing sensitivities are different and more optimised for the portrait mode).

AjithAntony3• 14 years ago

Isn't the pixel orientation geared for landscape? Every monitor I've used just doesn't look right in portrait. I've tried turning off ClearType (I'm using windows) but just looks strange. I don't know exactly how to communicate what it is, but it's just not good. I've tried it with 3 generations of mid-range Samsung TN panels, and most recently with Dell 2007FP and U2412.

There is a guy I work with who uses two 20" 16:9 TN panels in portrait orientation, and it always looks bad to me. He says it looks fine.

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

For anyone who is not a graphic design type, color reproduction is primarily an enjoyment thing.

Like high quality headphones. It is in no way whatsoever required, but some feel it enhances their enjoyment.

That said, if a terminal constitutes most of your usage, there is honestly little point in getting an IPS display. It just doesn't matter whether or not the blacks are really perfect black, when you're reading text on a white background.

nitrogen2• 14 years ago

I have two 28" TN monitors, and I find them much more comfortable with light gray text on deep gray backgrounds than with dark text on a white background.

old-gregg• 14 years ago

> is it worth to get one?

Yes. Many bloggs with light-gray-on-white text will become less annoying. Even Github used to look like xxxx on a TN panel. Apple-inspired subtle gradients of gray really do look better on IPS.

robomartin6• 14 years ago

IPS has been around for a long, long time. Pricing might be a reflection of many things. Bad or questionable panels are one potential example. Another might be an EOL panel or monitor (End Of Life). Translation: They are not made or supported any more. It can also be an old model.

I spent some time in the LCD OEM business. The simplest way I can put it is that the major LCD module providers defecate all over LCD monitor manufacturers. Their defecate takes the form or panels that sometimes are good and other times are bad. Sometimes the bad is obvious (remember the purple aluminum Apple Cinema Displays?). Sometimes it isn't (reliability issues, pixel issues, etc.

The panel makers also pull stuff like discontinuing panels seemingly overnight and changing specifications on you without notice. We saw a case where the manufacturer changed the logic power supply specification for a panel from 12V to 5V and didn't bother to tell anyone. They shipped us new panels. Monitors started to blow-up during testing. I mean, smoke coming out of them. It wasn't until we burned-up the equivalent of a small BMW (or two) of OEM LCD panels that we came to the realization that the manufacturer had caused this issue. All we got was a new data-sheet out of them.

It's a rough business to be in. Ugly as can be. The sheer size of the providers and sole-source nature of the products create a situation where, for the most part, these companies are above the law (don't ask me how I know this) and can fuck with you --the monitor manufacturer-- to no end. The only companies that don't get screwed with as much are the large players like the HP, Dell and Apple's of the industry.

IPS panels of very high resolution have been around for quite some time. Probably the most famous of these was the IBM-originated quad-HD 3840 x 2160 22 inch panel. Memory fails but I'll say that this panel goes back at least fifteen years. OEM cost started out around $20K and dropped to about $6K with time.

My concern with these 27 inch monitors would be about the unknowns. They could be just fine. But they could also not be OK in a million ways. Did they, for example, not make it to US and European shores because they did not pass safety tests? I don't know. No amount of money will compel me to, quite literally, play with fire. Do they have system-level premature failure modes such as questionable power supplies or the like? Don't know. Or how about panel-level issues, such as high failure rates or deterioration with time, temperature, etc.

Buy them if you must, but be very aware of what you are not buying. I, as an example, would not leave these things plugged in and unattended. I'd plug them all into a power strip and switch them off every time I leave the room for more than thirty minutes. While I am not saying that a fire is the unavoidable consequence of paying so little for them I am proposing that, sometimes, when thing are too good to be true there's a reason for that.

codinghorror4• 14 years ago

Don't you think the many forum posts, now many months old (they start in Feb), from people with these monitors would point out any raging extreme risks like them commonly bursting into fire?

You realize, too, that these are EXACTLY the same LCD panels used in Dell and Apple monitors, from the same factories, right?

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/content/dgm_ips-2701wph....

Do a Google search for the LM270WQ1 label you see on the panel in those pictures, and notice how often the words "Apple" and "Dell" appear.

AjithAntony3• 14 years ago

I think the consensus is that they are not exactly the same. These may be panels that were rejected from high quality batches. And that only speaks to the panel itself. Do we trust the other components? I was shopping for panels in this price range and went with the Dell e-IPS monitors. I just trust them more.

More discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4292740

*edit: fixed bad link

dkl• 14 years ago

Even if they are the same panels, they might very well have much cheaper power supplies in them.

stephengillie• 14 years ago

This is reminding me of a college student job as a PC tech:

We had about 20 labs, 3 of them had 1-year old Dell Precision workstations with 22" Dell LCD monitors. During the summer, we noticed the monitors developing a weird wavy waterline-ish streak along the top 2" of the LCD. The LCD still displayed fine, but everything above this waterline was noticeably darker. The wavy waterline was different on each monitor - on some it only extended down a centimeter across one corner.

Eventually half of the monitors in these 3 labs developed this strange mark. We RMA'd in batches; eventually we learned the glue holding the LCD layers together was failing. The older (and newer) Dell LCDs didn't have that issue.

That's the kind of thing I'd worry about here, especially since there's likely no recourse. Will these LCDs have strange issues, like a watermark caused by the failure of cheap glue?

robomartin6• 14 years ago

The panel itself could be exactly the same part number that Dell and other use. This does not mean at all that it is the same quality or specification panel delivered to the large manufacturers at all. These could be substandard in a lot of ways, some obvious, some not so.

That said, they could be perfectly good too. Your guess is as good as mine.

lusr• 14 years ago

> Probably the most famous of these was the IBM-originated quad-HD 3840 x 2160 22 inch panel. Memory fails but I'll say that this panel goes back at least fifteen years. OEM cost started out around $20K and dropped to about $6K with time.

3840x2400. I paid the equivalent of 1800 USD to buy, insure and import two IBM T221s in very good condition into South Africa about a year ago. They're pretty interesting displays and quite complex to get up and running optimally even on modern hardware.

My buddy imported 3 others along with mine. All 5 displays have a strange blue glow exactly in the centre of the screen when the screen is displaying pure black. It's completely unnoticeable except when you know what to look for. One of the displays needs a 60mm fan replaced -- each monitor comes with two such fans, and the display is rated at 150W power consumption. Seems to keep the room quite warm :)

If you want to run just one at 3840x2400 @ 48Hz you have to spend extra for another set of cables and have a graphics card with 4 DVI ports (good luck with that), or order some of the newer specialist cables that allow you to get away with a pair of dual-link DVI ports. Your graphics card needs to support a Single Large Surface mode to present the virtual panels (4x1920x1200 or 3x1280x2400) as a single high resolution panel (3840x2400).

Furthermore, if you're working with animations (video, games), whichever graphics card you get needs to support frame lock across the display ports otherwise you will experience tearing across the virtual panels. I believe NVIDIA only supports this in their higher end workstation graphics cards, or across multiple cards in SLI. For this reason I went with ATI's Eyefinity on a Radeon 6750/6770.

Working with photos from my DSLR at full resolution on these two monitors is well worth it though :) (That being said, Windows application support for high DPI is unfortunately a bit pathetic.)

codinghorror4• 14 years ago

I've often dreamed of jury rigging four iPad 3 panels together. Think about it: a 19.4" diagonal 4096 x 3072 display, for the not-unreasonable price of $1,596. Drop the flash memory and A5X etc inside the iPad, and maybe you could get it down to $1000 or so (!).

No idea how technically feasible that is, but "tiling" could be one way to build a really high-res 20"+ display without requiring absurdly large, continuous error-free panels.

robomartin6• 14 years ago

Yes, you are right. I forgot. It was four 1920 x 1200 sections, hence 3840 x 2400. It required four DVI connections.

My feeling was always that it was just too small to really take advantage of the resolution. Later on AUO (or was it CMO, don't remember) came out with a 55in 3840 x 2400 panel that was really interesting. Expensive.

jdietrich2• 14 years ago

I don't know what your agenda is, but either you're overstating your experience in the business or wilfully exaggerating the risks.

We know where these panels came from. LG manufacture this panel for Apple. Apple's extremely high technical standards combined with the very high pixel count mean that yields are exceptionally low. LG's contract with Apple forbids them from selling these panels to any brand-name manufacturer. These cheap monitors soak up supply of otherwise unsaleable panels that had previously been an expensive waste problem for LG. It's not too good to be true, just a quirk of the economics of panel manufacture.

There is no reason to believe that these displays would present any greater safety risk than a typical item of consumer electronics. If you really are in the trade, you'll know that not a damned soul knows exactly what they're buying. Everyone got stung by the electrolytic plague, from Apple and Dell to military contractors. Shit happens in China. Personally, I don't trust Dell any more than I trust the Shanzhai boys. The PCBs look good, they've obviously spent the money where it needs to be spent and the panels have no worse provenance than those in any other value-priced monitor.

forgotusername• 14 years ago

> We know where these panels came from. LG manufacture this panel for Apple.

The last time I read this on HN, less than 24 hours ago, it was clearly branded a rumour.

jonah• 14 years ago

To be honest, I'm not all that impressed with the quality of my brand-spanking-new 27" Apple Thunderbolt display. Not what I'd expect for a grand.

My 5-year-old Samsung 244t is still a better image.

robomartin6• 14 years ago

No agenda. Just sharing some experience, which, among other things, includes about fifteen years designing and manufacturing high-performance, high-reliability display systems for demanding applications; from military to industrial. Hardware, software, mechanical, etc.

I have personally bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of shit panels from LG and Samsung and others. Not third hand or gray market, but through official and approved distribution channels in the US.

The LCD business is surreal. It is nasty as can be. Most people don't know this and don't believe it until they are inside the beast for a while. I know of one company who got sued by the US government to the tune of millions of dollars for not delivering on a contract to buy a number of custom monitors.

Why couldn't they deliver? Because the panel manufacturer decided to discontinue the panel they were using without any advance notice. And, because most of these panels are single-source, the aforementioned company was royally fucked. They, quite literally, had their product evaporate into thin air. They could not build them to save their lives.

I don't know how the ordeal ended. We, at the time, got hit with the same issue but were lucky enough to "only" have burned about $800K developing a product around the newly obsolete panels. We had to spend another half a million to design a new product around a new panel. Brutal. This is one of the reasons I am glad I moved into the software business and left hardware behind.

As for the implied quality because Apple is using the panel. All I can say is I am laughing so hard my head hurts. As I mentioned in my post, there are various grades of panels. What Apple specifies, buys and accepts could be miles away from what manufacturer B is receiving, even if they use the same part number to order them.

Even Apple gets shit panels from LG. The original aluminum 23 inch Cinema Display had a horrible purple/magenta shift problem and some had a band of discoloration along the top --both due to the LG panel. Just Google it.

I bought some of these LG panels at the time. Same exact part number Apple was using. Exactly the same panel, right? Nope. I got a batch where more than half the panels went purple within about six months or less. I figured we burned $250K on bad panels on that one. And, what's worst, you have absolutely no recourse with the panel manufacturers. The OEM business is very different from buying a monitor at Best Buy. Once we cracked-open the factory packaging (bag/box) the warranty evaporated very, very quickly, thirty to ninety days, if you were lucky. Most stuff is sold "NCNR" (Non Cancelable - Non Returnable). Translation: It's yours.

The idea that the same part number equates to the same quality and results doesn't necessarily hold water. It's akin to the idea that all models of the same car are just as good as the best one they ever built. There is such a thing as good and bad versions of that same exact car, lemons, if you will.

Saying "hey, I bought the same car my neighbor bought" doesn't guarantee that it'll be just as good or as bad as hers. Don't fall into the trap of believing that because Apple (or whoever) uses a certain panel or part then all instances of that panel or part must be good. That could not be farther from the truth.

With regards to the cheap 27 inch monitors, do as you wish. It's your money. I am merely pointing out that things are not always as good as they seem. Other than that, I don't care if you or anyone else buys them. I am no-longer in that business and I am glad. Software is sooooo much easier than hardware.

sp3323• 14 years ago

This article doesn't mention, that these panels don't have the decryption hardware for DHCP. That means you won't be able to watch blu-rays on this monitor.

nitrogen2• 14 years ago

Unless, of course, you live in a country without a DMCA-type law, and you rip your legally owned discs to a media server.

sp3323• 14 years ago

If you play them from a media server, it's not really a blu-ray anymore :)

Oh actually I just remembered that AnyDVD HD transparently decrypts Blu-rays. http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html

ojbyrne• 14 years ago

I think you meant HDCP. DHCP is something else entirely.

sp3323• 14 years ago

D'oh, yes, thanks :)

nachteilig• 14 years ago

Even though I kind of wish people would not spread the gospel on this issue, since I'd like the prices to stay low, I can report that I bought 2 of these some weeks ago and really, really love the result.

nazgulnarsil• 14 years ago

economies of scale vastly outweigh short term demand fluctuations in determining technology prices.

devindotcom• 14 years ago

Man, does it have to be a revolution?

kevhsu3• 14 years ago

Correction to the article: The majority of the displays only have DVI, but a few have DP, HDMI, and VGA.

mrpollo2• 14 years ago

I've read before that my macbook pro 15" with regular display port wont support the 27" displays, can anyone confirm this is true? even with the Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter (http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB571Z/A?)

mwill• 14 years ago

I'm using one of those with a 13" mid2010 mbp to power a 30" display at 2560x1600. It works, just make sure you use a dvi-d cable as well, most of the complaints I noticed about it not working when I was researching it seemed to be because the person hadn't actually got a dvi-d cable to go with the adaptor.

mrpollo2• 14 years ago

thanks. I'm running on a 15" late 2009, hoping it works too, I'll look into the cable as well, Thanks!

pilsetnieks• 14 years ago

I have a 2-year-old 13" MBP that is running a 27" display (2560x1440) just fine (with a DP to DP cable).

deelowe4• 14 years ago

I use a 15" macbook pro with display port on a 27" display at work with the dual link adapter, no problem.

dbecker• 14 years ago

I keep hearing programmers tell me how much better IPS is than TN, but then they emphasize colors and viewing angles. Are these monitors better for programming and text editing?

llgrrl_• 14 years ago

Yes. I'm the kind of guy who couldn't care less about retina screens (they don't look that much sharper to me)... but definitely can tell the difference that IPS screens make. In contrast with the TN LCDs that you buy that requires tuning to make the images and text not washed out, with IPS everything looks right out of the box without you having to fix anything.

Especially much better text rendering when you turn on subpixel rendering, which is a huge deal to me (I'm typing this on my 22 inches 2209WA which I had for two years and absolutely love).

jdboyd• 14 years ago

I had one TN display that got unpleasantly dim along the edges when viewed a bit off angle. I could never find a position for that monitor where I could go from sitting straight to slouching without some one of those positions resulting in dim edges.

But, aside from that one bad example, if the text is crisp and there a plenty of pixels, then it is probably good enough for programming and text editing.

Many programmers also do web design, photograph, games, or other tasks that benefit from a better display though.

deelowe4• 14 years ago

Viewing angles matter more on a larger display due to the ratios of the distance from your eyes to the size of the screen. IPS screens have much better viewing angles than TN.

pbreit• 14 years ago

Am I reading correctly that you shouldn't expect to hook one of these things up to a MacBook?

sachingulaya• 14 years ago

No, I did it just fine. Check my comment history.

DanBlake• 14 years ago

I wish monitor arms could come down in price with them. Its crazy that some of the arms cost as much as the monitor themselves.

delackner• 14 years ago

The link below says that LG is about to introduce their own very very cheap HDMI compatible ips 27 inch, the IPS277L-BN for just 30,000 yen. OK in USD that's like $385, but you get HDMI and a real company behind it. Also that price is for Japan so who knows what the US price would be.

(in Japanese): http://watchmonoblog.blog71.fc2.com/blog-entry-2304.html

[edit: m3koval rightly points out that this monitor is low resolution so only really fit for gaming or video viewing. My mistake. ]

m3koval• 14 years ago

That description states a resolution of 1920x1200 instead of the 2560x1440 on these panels. I think 1920x1200 looks pretty awful on a 24" monitor, so I'm sure it will look even worse on one that is 3" larger.

It's a shame these monitors don't have an HDMI input. Then again, I can't complain given the price.

Dox• 14 years ago

Very interesting, which model is the non glossy version

bytephilia• 14 years ago

Can I use three of those for one 2011 MBP?

The IPS LCD Revolution

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