Grasbak said:
I was considering getting the dell 2405 for home cinema use. I have a sony dvd/surround sound player with component output.
1. Does any use the dell for watching movies? It is as good as anything out there on the TV market?
2. It is HD ready? - I have read differing thoughts on this and admit I dont entirely understand the techincal stuff. I would imagine plugging any reveicer into the dvd player (there are a number of inputs).
3. How would a current digital tv signal look (it would be connected through the dvd player)?
4. Using the vga adaptor I would attach my mac to the screen for vision and the dvd player for sound to be able to view movie trailers and slideshow etc. This would be assuming the dell could switch down ok to my iMacs resolution, otherwise make use of the screen spanning hack.
Any advice on the above? Thanks.
I might not be 100% useful here, but I thought I'd give a few of my experiences with my Dell 2005FPW (the 20" model of the one you're considering).
1) Yes! I use mine for watching DVD's on my Mac Mini. Picture quality's as good as I could ask for with an LCD. The blacks, whilst not as deep as a CRT, are still pretty good. The picture's never washed out, and there are no motion artefacts (that I can see) caused by the display. When watching via the Mac, I see no quality issues when compared to an LCD TV.
2) No idea I'm afraid! Whether or not it can do 1080i HD will be dictated by the vertical resolution. If it's 1080 or above, it should be fine. I believe the model you're looking at has component inputs, which are suitable for HD (both interlaced and progressive).
3) I have my Sky+ box connected to my screen via the S-Video connector. Since you'd have component input, you'd be using that, via your DVD player. Picture quality's fine unless you're sitting pretty close. There's a little hashing visible if you're looking closely, but otherwise it's absolutely fine (relatively crisp, good colours). One thing to note is that a good quality screen really shows the cruddiness of compressed digital TV! MPEG compression artefacts which blur nicely on a CRT from a few years ago will be much more visible on your panel. However, that's due to the broadcaster's over-use of compression. I see you're in the UK -- with Sky (D-SAT) and ntl/Telewest (D-Cable) having launched (or soon to be launching) HD services, this shouldn't be a problem in future. Rumour has it that the Sky+ HD box will have component as well as HDMI outputs.
4) I'd suggest that you connect the Mac to the screen using DVI, and your DVD player/set-top-box to it via component input. Won't your Mac support the screen's native resolution anyway (via VGA or DVI)? My Mac Mini drives my 1650x1200 display just fine!
To sum up, I'm over the moon with my monitor! DVI is absolutely beautiful, the screen response and quality's fantastic. It serves as a great display for both general use and for viewing DVD's on the Mac. It's also a capable display for analogue inputs (composite, S-Video), although naturally the quality via composite or S-Video doesn't match that of DVI or VGA. The addition of Component Video on the model you're considering will help out -- component's capable of some gorgeous video output (both at SD and HD), even if it's not strictly digital.
read that which ever way suits! - what is HDCP?