Unofficial Dell 2405FPW FAQ / INFO page 2405

[MIDIman]

Just finished getting mine hooked up and calibrated. I've had it on for well over an hour now, and no buzzing yet, so that's good. As mentioned tho, I do have one bad pixel.

I still hate how LCDs can be so darn bright. I've kicked the brightness down to 30, and the gamma is around .65. It looks much better than default now, tho still no true comparison to my cool Sony tube.

Nonetheless, a totally happy camper. As the technology gets better, I'll replace my tube with a 20". Greetz and thanks out to Jake for an excellent seller!

 

[HN]

Originally posted by: MIDIman
Just finished getting mine hooked up and calibrated. I've had it on for well over an hour now, and no buzzing yet, so that's good. As mentioned tho, I do have one bad pixel.

I still hate how LCDs can be so darn bright. I've kicked the brightness down to 30, and the gamma is around .65. It looks much better than default now, tho still no true comparison to my cool Sony tube.

Nonetheless, a totally happy camper. As the technology gets better, I'll replace my tube with a 20". Greetz and thanks out to Jake for an excellent seller!

30 seems high. i think most people have it at like 5 (mine is at 5 and gamma at .90)

 

[sirfergy]

Hah! I have mine at 75 and think thats good. 5 is way too dark.

 

[pdontthink]

So where are people going to find the best price? hardforum.com seems to have the most intense bargain hunters... anyone have buying tips?

 

[MIDIman]

Originally posted by: pdontthink
So where are people going to find the best price? hardforum.com seems to have the most intense bargain hunters... anyone have buying tips?

Wait. Dell got as low as $730-ish this summer, and I've seen it come close to $800. If you don't <need> this, I would definitely wait. There's also a lot of new stuff brewing up that's going to be a lot better than this monitor. OLED in particular. I'd say even as early as this winter there might be new products out that will either be better for the same price as this one, or at least help make it a lot cheaper.

 

[HN]

Originally posted by: pdontthink
So where are people going to find the best price? hardforum.com seems to have the most intense bargain hunters... anyone have buying tips?

ferengis have fat wallets

 

[sirfergy]

I'd just say pay for it. If you can afford $730 you might as well pay the $800ish it is now.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: binister

Originally posted by: sirfergy
Thats why you increase your mouse sensitivity.

Yeah, I increased it a bit but too much and the mouse is too hard to control.

I played Doom3 for a few hours last night and didn't notice any ghosting at all.

Amazing monitor.

Well, max it out and get used to it. It will help you in the long run.

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: Bmott

KNOWN PROBLEMS:


problems displaying HDTV from outboard tuner box over DVI input

I'm not sure if this can count as a defect in the 2405FPW. Most of the of HD cable boxes output the DVI signal with HDCP. Since the 2405FPW wasn't designed to decode DVI signals with HDCP encoding (and neither are most computer monitors) it is more of a design decision rather than an actual "problem".

 

[demenion]

I got my new 2405fpw today... it has one dead pixel on the bottom right of the screen.

not sure if i should go through the trouble of returning it =/

 

[MIDIman]

Been testing some DVDs with this...

What's the best method of watching DVDs? Maybe I'm just not used to seeing the sharpness of DVDs on an LCD screen, but I'm using WinDVD6 and movies like Star Wars (both the new series and Clone Wars) look odd to me...The amount of noise and pixelation on the screen is incredible, and any banding present in the MPEG compression can easily be found.


[edit] - after some more thorough understanding, it appears that what I'm watching is nothing more than 852x480 blown up...

Hooked up my POS Norcent DVD player via component. I don't know how to explain how awful it looks, but its really nasty - I'm assuming because the DVD player is not progressive?


Is there a better way to view something of high quality like the Star Wars/LOTR DVDs on a PC, via software, using this monitor?

 

[Bmott]

A program such as zoom player with lancos resizing makes it looks nice and sharp. A good rule of thumb is to resize up to twice the res of original signal.

However since this is such a high res monster you should resize to the res of the screen

 

[MIDIman]

So just resize the resolution of the desktop to something smaller then?


Reason I ask - there's no 852x480 option, and the next bump up is 1280x720 (which is 720p right?).

Would something like powerstrip be able to give me 852x480?


Question2 - What's the explanation for the awful output of my Norcent DVD player. Is this normal of a non-progressive playback on an LCD monitor? Its really really bad - massive distortion of the image (Clone Wars DVD), even when the 1:1 option is chosen.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

Originally posted by: MIDIman

Question2 - What's the explanation for the awful output of my Norcent DVD player. Is this normal of a non-progressive playback on an LCD monitor? Its really really bad - massive distortion of the image (Clone Wars DVD), even when the 1:1 option is chosen.

non progrssive is 480i. i would assume that would look like crap on any lcd. why dont you use component cables and get progrssive scan going?

 

[gplracer]

One more time.... how do DVDs look on this monster? Also, would my nvidia 5900 be ok to support the native resolution for desktop matters? I play Grand Prix Legends mostly and I can run it at that high of a resolution even with this older video card.

 

[pdontthink]

Well I really missed the $730. I watch dell.com and look at a coupon site once in a while, but never have seen it even as low as $800. Where are you people seeing this price? Dell.com keeps it up around $1000 or in the $900s at best when on sale. And even with a 25% off coupon, that's always applied to the non-sale price of $1200. So $900 best case scenario without scouring hardforum.com for what rep to call to beg and scam for a better price.

Where are you people seeing $800??? $730????

OTOH, if OLED is really right around the corner *AND* it is worthy of gaming.... anyone got any recent links about this?

 

[sirfergy]

OLEDs been around the corner for years.

 

[liebowa]

OK - "NEWBIE" question - but one that I can't seem to find a good answer to...

I've got a 2405FPW waiting to be picked up at UPS this afternoon. However, I'm a bit concerned about my video card's capability to smoothly handle the native 1600x1200 (edited: should be 1920x1200) resolution for the games I am interested in playing.

I've got an ATI x700 PRO PCI-e video card, and a Dell 8400 3.6 ghz. PC.

Clearly I won't be able to run games like F.E.A.R., Quake 4, etc at that resolution, right? So, what happens if I need to lower the resolution to get smoother gameplay?

And, if this is the case, does it make sense for me to invest this much money into something that I'm not going to be enjoying at it's full potential? Should I maybe opt for the 2005FPW???

 

[sirfergy]

First off, the native resolution is 1920x1200.

I guess it depends on what your needs are. If you cannot afford a better video card maybe you should downgrade to the 2005FPW and buy a new video card.

But if you plan to use that resolution while doing 2D work too, then you should just suck it up and buy a new video card.

 

[jevans64]

My 6800GT and x800xt PE cards BARELY cut the mustard at native resolution with 4xAA/8xAF. You could downgrade the resolution to something like 1680x1050 or a little lower and see how it looks. If you don't like the way it looks, then upgrade to a 7800GTX.

 

[pinocchio]

All,

Nice to find such a good forum.

Though I have worked for 23 years in the computer business, it is the first time that I have decided to use a wide screen setup. I have purchased an XPS600 Gold with a single NVidia 7800 GTX card, 2Gb of RAM etc, etc. and I would like to prepare for when it arrives in order to set it up correctly.

Aside from a lot of photo, audio and video work, I would like to play my two favourite games that are Combat Flight Simulator 3 and IL2 Forgotten Battles.

Is there anything peculiar that I need to know in order to be able to install, configure and run these two games in 1920x1200 mode?

Thank you in advance for any kind help you may extend.

Best regards.

Massimo.

 

[imported_prisoner]

yo all.

I bought the dell 2405 as a replacement for my old monitor AND tv (which are pretty much side-by-side) Well, as a monitor, it ROCKS. But when i hooked it up to my cable box via s-vid cable, the picture was "fuzzy". Then i hooked it up with a composite cable . Still fuzzy. i then hooked up my dvd player to the component connections. HD Fuzzy.

I'm almost 100% certain all the connections are fine and there are no settings to correct for this. So, Does the monitor not have the ability to process the signals correctly?
Would a video/multimedia card (such as the ATI All-in-Wonder) fix this problem?

Please help so i can throw out my bulkly old 27" tv tube to the curb!

Thanks

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: prisoner
yo all.

I bought the dell 2405 as a replacement for my old monitor AND tv (which are pretty much side-by-side) Well, as a monitor, it ROCKS. But when i hooked it up to my cable box via s-vid cable, the picture was "fuzzy". Then i hooked it up with a composite cable . Still fuzzy. i then hooked up my dvd player to the component connections. HD Fuzzy.

I'm almost 100% certain all the connections are fine and there are no settings to correct for this. So, Does the monitor not have the ability to process the signals correctly?
Would a video/multimedia card (such as the ATI All-in-Wonder) fix this problem?

Please help so i can throw out my bulkly old 27" tv tube to the curb!

Thanks

Basically, you're viewing horrible, fuzzy SD (~640x480) content being blown up to 1920x1200 (or at least 1600x1200) and then displayed on a razor-sharp low-dot-pitch monitor with perfect geometry. Yes, your TV *does* look that bad.

An upsampling DVD player that can give you 1080i output might help -- although I'm not sure if those use HDCP, which this monitor does not support. If you can get HD content into this thing, it should look incredible, since it's a native 1080p display -- but you may run into the same problem with HDCP, since most HD tuners will not display encrypted content over component (at least not in HD).

Using a video capture/tuner card would give you more options on how to scale the picture, and a really good software scaler like DScaler would probably look *significantly* better (but is never going to make SD content look great on this display). An OTA HD tuner card should look *amazing* if you get OTA HD where you are.

 

[SnoMunke]

Anybody know of some good calibration software to calibrate this monitor?

 

[renaisancexx]

try this link