Can Tinted Glass/Plexi Allow for no Bezel?

[51mmz0rz]

Is there dark enough glass/plexi that will hide the interior of the cab without a bezel?  Is it practical to use in front of an LCD monitor?

I ask because it would be nice to drop the bezel to allow the LCD to rotate for vertical games.

[orchidius]

It certainly can be!

Myself I'm using plexi. I taped the circumference of my monitor with (painter's)tape and covered the monitor square with plain paper, making sure no paint would get on that piece of the plexi.

I found some leftover cans of black spray paint (one gloss and one semi-gloss) and emptied them on the back side of the plexi in thin layers. Did about a layer or 6. I ran out of paint, but it looked more then decent from the outside.

However, there will be a lot of light on the inside of the cab, so I tested if the paint was dense enough. I held a flashlight directly behind the plexi and looked at it from the other side. There was still a smudge of light visible, so I used some leftover pieces of vinyl (the very thin, self adhesive stuff) to put on top of the paint to make sure no light at all passes through.

On the outside, you just see the "smoked" effect of the paint shining through the plexi. Done deal, no light comes through .

[TOK]

Tinted plexi helps with an LCD, because it helps the way blacks look. I think you will still need some kind of inner bezel behind the tinted plexi because there are bound to be light leaks inside the cabinet that you will see.
I used black foam board on 2 of my cabinets and works great. You don't see any light, and I run them with no back doors.

[BadMouth]

I've had the idea too, but I guess nobody has done it. 
If you have enough space around the monitor, one option might be to cut a big circle out of black foam project board as a bezel to go behind the tinted plexi.
That way it could rotate with the monitor.
Really though, as long as everything inside the cab is black and there is no light leaking in, I doubt you'd notice if there wasn't a bezel behind the plexi.
Especially if your gameroom/bar is as dark as mine.
Keep us posted if you experiment with it.

[Witchboard]

Why not attach the bezel to the monitor instead of the plexi?  This way the bezel rotates with your monitor.  You'll just need to make sure it clears the cabinet frame during rotation.

[Lewis Black]

I spraypaint a bezel on the back of the glass using masking tape.  Works fantastic, it's cheap, and it's easy.  It also looks nicer than a black bezel in my experience.

[BadMouth]

I think a couple of you are missing the point of the original post.

The goal is to have the monitor rotate for horizontal and vertical games and have the bezel look perfect for both.

[VanillaGorilla]

You could use dark grey or dark amber tinted plexi. you would need to have some distance between the plexi and the display, as much as you can live with. The depth of field will help obscure the lcd casing/mechanics. paint the interior everywhere around the display with flat black, non-relective paint. Hopefully you have a SIPS LCD panel, and can crank the contrast up really high. Imperative because you need to cut thru the dark plexi. You are limited to how dark your plexi can be, by how bright your LCD is.

[javeryh]

You could use dark grey or dark amber tinted plexi. you would need to have some distance between the plexi and the display, as much as you can live with. The depth of field will help obscure the lcd casing/mechanics. paint the interior everywhere around the display with flat black, non-relective paint. Hopefully you have a SIPS LCD panel, and can crank the contrast up really high. Imperative because you need to cut thru the dark plexi. You are limited to how dark your plexi can be, by how bright your LCD is.

Exactly right.  I don't have a bezel on my DK and you can't tell even if you are looking for it.  The screen is of course quite a ways from the plexiglas though.