Monitors & Bluray players

[Niall]

Hello there one and all, it's your resident fat bloke with another question

I've been spending a lot, and I do mean a LOT of time reading reviews of monitors, specifically 26" screens. Eventually lowering to 24" to compare reports of image quality, specifically with colours, response times and if the monitor allows adjustments to correct colours within a reasonable limit.

Anyway, after spending from around 9pm to 4am reading countless reviews I've come to the conclusion that there are a LOT of so called reviewers out there that should shut up and go and walk around on the autobahn.

There is SO MUCH information missed out in these reviews, with contradictory information put forward, with heavy personal feelings being added to reviews, rather than sticking to the full facts and recording the stats on these areas.

The ONLY thing that people seem to agree on, and I really think this is just a lot of sheep like teenagers saying this, as I can't believe there are that many out there with these monitors, or have tried them, is that the Dell ultrasharp or the Eizo monitors are the best ones. While that's great that there's a clear leader in this particular area, spending £1600 on a monitor isn't even remotely feasible for me.

Every monitor I've ever bought has been good. I had the Iiyama HM903DT (it's on my desk next to me at the moment actually!) and a while ago I decided it took up too much room and I was convinced the image was starting to wane. As such I bought the Samsung 2032MW HDTV, which other than pretty average viewing angles, and black display, it's been great. The differences are so slight you can actually tell what it's supposed to be so correct anything in photoshop, etc and it'll look fine. Checking with three other monitors shows that it's accurate, so yay!

Anyway, now that I've bored you to tears, the monitor I was looking at getting was the Iiyama 27" E2710HDS, which can be purchased from Scan

Basically I've read every review I can, and everyone seems to say that there are serious problems with every single monitor out there, unless you spend a small fortune. Now, it seems to me that they are really over selling the more expensive monitors and have some vested interest in slagging the cheaper ones. The above monitor is only £242, which is VERY cheap from what I can see that it does, compared to other monitors, even the 24" ones.

At the end of the day, I thought sod it and went to buy that from Scan and they'd run out of stock while I was reading all the bloody reviews! The only place that had it in stock for a reasonable price was Ebuyer, and I'm not using them as they use Citylink. One thing I did notice on my travels was there this month there are a few monitors coming out, or have just come out, from Panasonic and I think it was either Samsung or Sony (honestly, I read literally hundreds of reviews so I can't remember ) so I decided to wait and get myself a few treats instead

So, does anyone have a 26" monitor that is widescreen, HD resolution, has HDMI & VGA, but more importantly has good colour reproduction? The latter is vital for me for processing photographs, as is a low response time of 2ms-5ms at most for games & films. I wanted a larger monitor initially as my eyesight is getting a bit poo, but I've got a few other things sorted out today so I can actually have the monitor nearer me (it's actually too far away anyway, currently) so having HD resolution up from the 1680*1050 I currently have, wouldn't be a problem after all (would be a similar font/image size with that sort of size increase).

Now for bluray.

Basically apply the above to bluray players too

I've ended up completely giving up and buying one from Play

After reading just as many reviews, it seems to be the case that unless you pay well over £200, you're not getting the full package, and as I won't be linking it to any surround sound system via an amp or anything, this should do what I want, which is good picture quality and access to bluray.

As I got nowhere with the monitor, I decided to get this and a load of DVDs and books I've wanted for a good while. It's nice to have a bit of spare cash after 8 years being skint!

Anyway, I also bought:

Stephen King; The Dark Tower: Wolves of the Calla (book 5)
Stephen King; The Dark Tower (book 7) I already own 1,2,3,4 & 6 that I bought in the old ASDA & Tesco cheap book drive they were doing about 9 years ago
Michael Gray; "Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell"
Criminal Minds Season 1
Criminal Minds Season 2
Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip - The Complete Series
Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
Battlestar Galactica: Season 4
Battlestar Galactica - The Final Season

Eventually I'll buy Battlestar on Bluray. But not just yet, as the Bluray might turn out to be rubbish

[Technical Ben]

Nice. My 1620/1050 Acer is A* rating from me. Granted, it's not Pantone compatible but I'm not that involved in the business.
Most reviews now are paid for adds. Even internet reviews are dirtied by thousands of paid for reviewers. Rumours are abound of offices of facebook surfers paid to big up products. As the links between Apple/Amazon front page "customer favourite" lists and sales is so strong, it pays off.

[Niall]

I know what you mean about amazon. There are "discussions" about people downrating other peoples reviews so there's take priority. It's more apparent when it's for the same product where they'll downrate one sellers comments and uprate the other sellers review.

My samsung monitor is nice, I'd just like something bigger for the PC so I can use that for tv and get rid of my giant old analogue tv!

[Rik]

I've used Iiyama in the past, Niall, and they were good. I can confirm the excellence of Eizo monitors.

[Niall]

Mr Richy rich pants

My CRT Iiyama was awesome when I bought it about 9 years ago. It's been absolutely fantastic. The image quality started to drop, then I switched to this Samsung thing, and when I tried the CRT again, just to play an old game that didn't support wide screen, I noticed it had deteriorated quite a bit. It's okay for web and watching the odd film, but the quality is now very poor, and it looks soft. I've calibrated it too. Still, it's HUGE so I need to get rid of it anyway. Strange how I feel guilty getting rid of a piece of technology 

Anyway, I've decided to wait a few months to see if anything new comes out that gets better reviews. There's no immediate rush. Plus I have purchased something else today, which I shall mention in another thread down in the hobbies section

[Rik]

 

I expect monitor prices to rise in the next few months.

[Glenn]

I expect all Japanese goods to rise in price.

[Rik]

Not just Japanese, of course, but those containing Japanese components, eg laptop batteries.

[Glenn]

Honda are cutting production in the US as parts are becoming a problem, Renualt in Korea are having the same issues.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/S_Korea_carmaker_to_cut_output_over_Japan_quake_999.html

[Rik]

It's going to be universal, I suspect. So many items will contain Japanese components.

[Technical Ben]

I guess the magnets and stuff have gone on the electron gun on the crt then Niall. Else the capacitors are on their last legs.

[Niall]

Another success for DPD today. Emailed ahead to say when they'd be here and sure enough they were there within 4 minutes of the time stated 11:01-12:01 and I got a text fromy mum saying it was there, about 11:10.

This was from Play too, so I may start using them again, if I spot any more deals!

[Rik]

 

[JB]

I agree with the opinion of DPD. They are very good and I'm glad Scan are using them.

Just a word of caution about Play. For some parcels, they use an outfit called Hermes (or MyHermes).  It's a cheapskate organisation that uses private individuals in their private cars to deliver. A couple of months ago, just as I was about to return home from Spain, I ordered a mobile phone from Play. They dispatched it immediately, instead of the usual three or four days.

It was delivered by Hermes and even before I left Spain I could see on their web page that it had 'been signed for by the customer'. When I got home two days later, the package had been sitting on an outside patio and the driver had forged my signature. Fortunately, nobody had wandered around the back of my house for a free phone.

I won't be using Play again in a hurry.

[Simon]

That's a good recommendation.  Interlink email ahead too.  If they can do it, why can't all couriers?

[Rik]

They can, they just can't be bothered. Carriers really ought to understand we don't like sitting around all day waiting for them to deign to turn up.

If you phone City Link, they can give an estimated time of delivery, so why not start using SMS to tell us?

[zappaDPJ]

Better to spend fifty to hundred quid on a hardware calibration device and another two hundred on a monitor than a thousand on a monitor. This is especially true if you are into photography.

I've never come across a correctly calibrated monitor out of the box and they all drift with time anyway.

[Niall]

I was looking around a few online stores over the weekend, and I've noticed that pretty much every company that I refused to use as they used Citylink, have now stopped using them. OCUK (although they're cowboys and I won't ever use them anyway), Scan, Play, and a couple of others.

Amazon are using a company called indigostarfish.com for 1st class (whoever the hell they are!), and I assume Royal mail for second class, as all it says is 3-5 days with no company listed. All the items I ordered on Amazon over the weekend have arrived within 2 days too, which was pretty good (via the indigostarfish.com people, who have their own odd little envelopes).

Oh, and I haven't checked where the DPD depot is around the Wrexham area, but every order I've had delivered by them recently have all arrived between 11am-1pm, so they must be relatively near here.

[Steve]

I've got City Link coming tomorrow from Amazon, they've been much better for me lately, certainly helps to have the local depot 10 miles away instead of the previous 35 miles. However I've absolutely no idea what time they'll come unlike DPD.

[Niall]

It wouldn't surprise me if Citylink improved a lot now that 4 or 5 of the major sellers in the UK are no longer using them. They have probably lost an immense amount of money in contracts due to their awful performances in the last year.

[Simon]

I think the trouble with CityLink was that everyone used them, so they didn't give a s**t about providing a decent service to the end recipient, as they simply didn't have to.  My local depot seemed to delight in being positively unhelpful.  Hopefully, now they have some competition, they'll pull their socks up a bit. 

[Rik]

Isn't indgigostartfish Amazon's Channel Islands subsidiary?

[Ray]

Yes it is, I believe, Rik.

[JB]

Isn't indgigostartfish Amazon's Channel Islands subsidiary?

Yes it is. I don't believe it is a delivery company.

[Rik]

It usually comes via Royal Mail.

[JB]

It usually comes via Royal Mail.

It does and they use a tracking system that doesn't require a signature but still can give the time of delivery on the web page.