[clug] Monitors that swivel

[Hal Ashburner]

steve jenkin wrote:
> Hal Ashburner wrote on 6/6/09 1:37 PM:
>
>   
>> Good luck with whatever you choose, it's unlikely to have full functionality
>> available in windows as painlessly. Supporting ati and intel encourages the
>> world to move to a state where that might be the case. (Says the man with 2
>> expensive nvidia videocards installed).
>>
>> Hal Ashburner
>>     
>
>
> Would one super-large monitor ever be as good as multiple monitors?
> How much price-pain is tolerable??
>
> Saw this today NEC CRV43, due in the US 'in July':
> <http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=4759>
>
> "NEC's 43 in., 31:10 curved monitor commands $8,000 price tag"
>
> - 2880 by 900 pixel resolution
> - 200 nits brightness rating,
> - 10,000:1 contrast,
> - 0.02ms response time,
> - covers 99.3 percent of Adobe’s RGB color gamut,
> - and USB 2.0 jack and DVI-D and HDMI 1.3 connectors.
> - 32:10 aspect ratio
>
> "provides an excitingly immersive viewing experience"
>
>   
2 years ago 4x22" 1680x1050 monitors + 2 pcie video cards was in the 
region of $1,200.
ie desktop is 3360x2100. 2880x900 sounds like you might notice the 
resolution sitting close to it.
I ended buying a stand for a 2x2 configuration for another $500. I found 
the 4x1 gives you a stiff neck and means you don't get the full benefit 
of "i need to see this now while I continue to work on that so I just 
open another window and it's an eye glance away, and now this too and 
also this." The use case is debugging code. Code in big font, 2 or more 
pieces of documentation, a compile window, a debugger and valgrind plus 
possibly a UI window. I run out of realestate on 2 screens when I do that.
A friend of mine swears by having 2 of the funky apple 30" monitors. But 
iirc just one came to about the same price as my 4. I can see how it 
would be better.
One super large monitor would be better still, as long as the resolution 
is there or therabouts.
I'm not sure how having one 46" lcd tv with 1080p rez would go. It'd be 
interesting to try.
Advantages of a single monitor are pretty obvious. No gaps between, no 
xinerama/twinview/merged fb, not necessary to calibrate brightness and 
contrast between monitors.
Quake on your massive monitor has your actual cross-hairs in the middle 
of your field of view rather than monitor frame...
Nvidia's TwinView treats 2 monitors as though they are one large one. 
I'm guessing this is what you see in shopping centers sometimes when you 
have a very wide monitor that on closer inspection is 2 LCD panels in 
one frame with no break between the panels. The hugely talented hardware 
hackers on the list might be able to tell you how hard it is to 
dismantle the monitor frame and join 2 or more panels with a very thin 
join like this. If it's possible I can't help thinking a few inexpensive 
22 or 24" panels + paying someone to do it as a custom job will be a lot 
less than USD $8k

I'd love to do the big tv experiment but I think I'd prefer not to get 
into that much trouble. If fonts of a normal size looked ok that might 
be a pretty good answer. Then you get 2 of 'em coz you can :P