Phoenix 26" Monitor

[DJO_Maverick]

Just a heads-up for anyone else who suddenly found themselves in the market to replace a 27" CRT-

The long-rumored but never actually completed 26" 4:3 LCDs from Unico just hit today.  Virtually impossible to find a modern 4:3 monitor in this size class, they allegedly only have 200 units in the run (and 50 of those actually for sale today).

https://www.unico-usa.com/products/ulm26-unico-phoenix-series-of-arcade-crt-replacement-lcd-monitors

Worth a look; I've been super-reluctant to move on from a CRT, but this might bump me over the edge.

[spamola]

They sold quick! (or their site hasn't updated, they're showing sold out currently).

[DJO_Maverick]

They sold quick! (or their site hasn't updated, they're showing sold out currently).

Yeah, they posted they were out on Facebook not long after I posted that.  They're supposed to get the rest of that batch in sometime in July for delivery in August, if I understand right; so should be another 150 available within a month.  Still not a lot.

I'll report back after I get my hands on mine and see if it's worth it-

[javeryh]

They sold quick! (or their site hasn't updated, they're showing sold out currently).

Yeah, they posted they were out on Facebook not long after I posted that.  They're supposed to get the rest of that batch in sometime in July for delivery in August, if I understand right; so should be another 150 available within a month.  Still not a lot.

I'll report back after I get my hands on mine and see if it's worth it-

How much was it?

[lilshawn]

some chode probably bought them all up to flip them at 3x the price.

this is the 2nd? 3rd? time they've tried getting orders to get manufacturing done. last time they said they didn't get enough pre-orders and had to cancel all them. surprised they got enough for a batch this time.

[DJO_Maverick]

How much was it?

$299.99, plus $20 domestic shipping.  They won't ship outside the US presently.

They've restocked another 250 this weekend, there are still some left.  First wave has been shipped, but mine is still in transit...

[DJO_Maverick]

So I got mine a few days ago and am still trying to put it through paces and iron out some details before committing to a final review, but some initial observations:

• While it is not recognized as truly VRR by the drivers, it does actually display any refresh rate I've elected to throw at it so far between 54hz and as high as 75hz, and appears to be syncing fine.  Definitely plays nice with Groovymame LCD_Range.
• It almost perfectly fills the void of the 27" CRT I blew up.  I had to throw together a homemade bracket and will need to shrink the bezel slightly, but it still does a great job fully filling the space
• It looks nice, picture is pretty vibrant, and viewing angles are excellent.
• Biggest ambiguity and complaint at the moment is what its native resolution actually is.  The printed documentation in the box is wrong and applies to old prior prototype.  The listing doesn't actually state one either, just that they've tested it up to 1600x1200.  Their social media person is very responsive and is getting a definitive answer for me, but we'll see.  The resolutions it reports as native are transparently wrong.  It appears to use a generic Chinese control board by the same manufacturer that made the generic board I use for a LCD in my pincab, which has mislabeled buttons, and appears to want to believe it's attached to a 5:4 or 16:9 screen (the two native resolutions it reports are 720p and 1280x1024), but those are clearly stretched and wrong.  For the time being, I'm running it at 1600x1200 and it looks good, but doesn't seem pixel-perfect (I've fiddled considerably and can't identify it yet).  An issue, however, is it does not support that res out of the box...  I had to add it as a custom resolution.

More info and pics to follow, whenever I iron out that resolution.  I'd still already recommend it for someone trying to replace a 27" though at this point...  the panel seems good enough and there's nothing else out there that fits that gap as well, and the apparent free-syncing is great.

[lilshawn]

It appears to use a generic Chinese control board by the same manufacturer that made the generic board I use for a LCD in my pincab, which has mislabeled buttons, and appears to want to believe it's attached to a 5:4 or 16:9 screen (the two native resolutions it reports are 720p and 1280x1024), but those are clearly stretched and wrong.

in that case, it probably does... and it couldn't hurt to grab a couple different cheap Chinese LVDS boards and try them out on that panel. perhaps another one would operate better and/or support more resolution scales.

[harri]

and it couldn't hurt to grab a couple different cheap Chinese LVDS boards and try them out on that panel. perhaps another one would operate better and/or support more resolution scales.

Just thinking out loud, how easy it would be to get this monitor to support the 15KHz signal Amiga outputs.

[DJO_Maverick]

So I've been holding off for well over a week to give a candid assessment of this hardware, because I was waiting to hear something back from the Unico folks to address some of my most glaring concerns.  I've been going back and forth with them for over a week now and still have no answer of any kind on that problem, so here is where I'm at so far.

First: Anyone anticipating running HLSL for a CRT simulation on this one with pixel-perfect accuracy will want to hold off until some of these questions are adequately answered.  It pains me to say that, because I was excited about this and supporting it, but I think the ball's in their court to answer the issues now.

The Good

• The Biggy (to me): while it doesn't support Freesync/Gsync, it does appear to absolutely sync to any refresh rate I've thrown at it, from 50-75hz.
• It has a sturdy enclosure and mounting frame of good quality
• It does an excellent job of filling the space of a 27" CRT; with a stated purpose of being a drop in replacement for that, it's pretty darn close.  I ended up quickly fashioning something to screw it down to in my cab in front of the original brackets out of 1" aluminum angles.  While it loses about ~1" of diagonal screen size, it's close enough; closer than anything else on the market.
  
• The screen, itself, is physically 4:3...  again, unlike anything close on the market...  but, that's not without issues (see below).
• It does have excellent viewing angles.  I can't contort myself to a position in-cab where it washes out (honestly didn't notice it when it was being tested out of the cab, either).
• Contrast seems pretty good for what it is, though I can't say for sure whether it meets the stated specs in that regard.  Not qualified to measure that.
• Color and brightness are good, to my eye
• It looks fairly good with HLSL, but not great at the moment, because...

The Bad

• The native resolution of the panel is completely unknown at this point, and Unico has still not answered this pretty straightforward question.  You can throw just about any arbitrary resolution you want at it...  I've mostly used 1600x1200 as that's what they stated as the res, though have thrown 1920x1440 at it for giggles too, and everything down the line...  and I've yet to find a resolution that is free from scaling artifacts when looking at a grid pattern in ArcadeOSD (or uneven scanlines in HLSL).  I've hazarded a guess that it might actually be as low as 1024x768, but it does APPEAR to resolve more detail with a slot/aperture mask at 1600x1200...  and it's still uneven stretching even at 768p.  It's subtle, but it's there.
• It does not support high resolutions out of the box.  There is no driver software I've seen, and Windows wants to hold it to a recommended 1024x768 out of the box (or, interestingly, widescreen resolutions).  There are various contradictory resolutions reported in ArcadeOSD as the native resolution, but all of them have obvious scaling as well.  So, expect to add a custom resolution to get that 1600x1200 that's stated on the site; it's not supported out of the box.
• It does not appear that the LCD control board matches the panel.  The controller appears designed for a widescreen display, maybe even 16:10.  This can be demonstrated by outputting a 4:3 signal (such as 1600x1200, 1280x960, 1024x768, etc) to the monitor via DSUB and then attempting to adjust the monitor's onboard 'aspect ratio' setting.  Setting it to anything other than Auto causes issues.  If set to 4:3, an actual 4:3 signal is very squashed and significantly pillar-boxed, despite the panel itself being 4:3.  If set to 16:9, the 4:3 signal is LESS squashed, but STILL pillar-boxed.  This seems to suggest that the monitor controller is stretching everything to 16:10 or some other wider proportion internally, prior to displaying it.
• There appears to be no way that I can find to disable the scaler on the monitor, and without knowing what target resolution it wants...  well...  it's currently making it impossible to get pixel perfect or prevent moire effect on scanlines.  My growing concern is, what if there is a mis-match between the physical native resolution of the panel, and the believed native resolution of the controller?  The inability to get an answer on something as elementary as what the native resolution of the monitor is, has me increasingly concerned.
• It's TFT, not IPS, just so you know.  There's also no form of local backlighting, so there's definitely edge glow.
• Mine appears to have shipped with two dead pixels.  No word back from them yet whether they will warranty it or what their dead pixel policy is.

1600x1200 set with HLSL on


Ditto


Ditto, Title Screen; Scanline moire very obvious here, with Groovy grabbing an integer scale


Same with HLSL off


One more quick shot with HLSL off (not the greatest reference screen, sorry)

Will certainly report back if they ever report about the resolution/scaling concern.

[lilshawn]

The native resolution of the panel is completely unknown at this point, and Unico has still not answered this pretty straightforward question. 

dude, just plunk the panel number into panelook and find out for yourself. it's not like they made it. it's gonna be a sourced sharp, LG or innolux panel or some crap. just start slamming numbers in there till something pops up.

[DJO_Maverick]

dude, just plunk the panel number into panelook and find out for yourself. it's not like they made it. it's gonna be a sourced sharp, LG or innolux panel or some crap. just start slamming numbers in there till something pops up.

Fair point.  I honestly haven't been in any hurry to decase it to snoop while I was waiting to see if they were going to warranty the panel or not for the dead pixels.  If not, or if they keep stonewalling on the topic, I'll pull it all out and take a peek.

[lilshawn]

not sure, but chances are pretty good the label of the panel will be near were the LVDS cable hooks onto it from the driver board. you might not even need to take it apart to see it. just crane you head around the back and take a peek.

[harri]

• It does an excellent job of filling the space of a 27" CRT; with a stated purpose of being a drop in replacement for that, it's pretty darn close.  I ended up quickly fashioning something to screw it down to in my cab in front of the original brackets out of 1" aluminum angles.  While it loses about ~1" of diagonal screen size, it's close enough; closer than anything else on the market.
  

Doesn't about every CRT screen loose about 1" of its diagonal area to borders so that the actual picture is smaller. Meaning that since LCD shows the complete area this shouldn't loose practically any area compared to original.

[DJO_Maverick]

chances are pretty good the label of the panel will be near were the LVDS cable hooks onto it from the driver board. you might not even need to take it apart to see it. just crane you head around the back and take a peek.

Yeah, no luck with that.  It's going to mean decasing it to get to it, which will also mean taking off the cab glass and uninstalling it entirely first.  I got a little bit more info that's expanded my patience a bit for that exercise.  Still saying they're waiting for the manufacturer to relay the panel ID and made it sound like they were blowing them off, but that they should have it this week.  Sounds like there's a known firmware issue and said they're planning to have a firmware update done within a couple of months.  Should also include defaulting the auto-scaler to off and opening up manual positioning/sizing/scaling options that currently aren't accessible.  If that happens, sounds like that will solve my main complaint and make it possible for HLSL to look right.  As-is, with HLSL off, it's about as good as I could reasonably hope

But I just can't bring myself to keep it off.     So, just dropping the scanline and mask alpha low enough to mask the scaling issue for now.  0.15~0.25 mostly camouflages it.

Doesn't about every CRT screen loose about 1" of its diagonal area to borders so that the actual picture is smaller. Meaning that since LCD shows the complete area this shouldn't loose practically any area compared to original.

Well, that presupposes you haven't gone into the service menu with a test grid and brought all the overscan area into the frame (which I always do).  With that in mind, yeah, lost 1" diagonal of real estate.

And an extra couple of action shots (I've got phosphor persistence tuned up with the bloom, so the ghosting is intentional; it's not there with HLSL off):

[ckas]

Hi DJO_Maverick - hailing from Australia here!

First of all - thank you so much for your super in depth review of this display. Wow - such a huge help for anyone considering it! Thank you!

I have been looking at this monitor also and am thinking about putting it into a 26" cab since CRT stopped working.

Any chance you can tell us the actual "exact" display pixel area in mm (width x height)? Can't seem to find this info anywhere on the resellers websites! Would be good to know how it will fit with existing bezel.

Also - I don't suppose you ever confirmed the actual panel resolution in the end - sounds like there is a mismatch between driver params and screen params as others have mentioned.

A really good sharp photo with a good camera of the display with a measuring tape over it will likely tell us the actual resolution of the display if we can count how many pixels are showing per say 10 or 20mm of tape. It will certainly tell us something about the rough resolution and then we can infer it is a likely resolution close to that once we know the exact pixel area sizes from earlier (if you can be bothered setting up the close up photo!!).

My plan was to make a really authentic looking experience using HLSL settings, including barrelling and other distortions to try to replicate my old CRT. From all your reporting it sounds like any high resolution effects will just be washed away with the poor scaling and resolution matching between the driver and the display and simply turn into a moire-fest!?

Thanks for taking the time!

[DJO_Maverick]

I don't know if I'd call it super in depth, but no problem.

Still no official answer on the resolution today, but yeah, there's definitely a mismatch between the screen and controller firmware it seems.   

Any chance you can tell us the actual "exact" display pixel area in mm (width x height)? Can't seem to find this info anywhere on the resellers websites! Would be good to know how it will fit with existing bezel.

...

A really good sharp photo with a good camera of the display with a measuring tape over it will likely tell us the actual resolution of the display if we can count how many pixels are showing per say 10 or 20mm of tape. It will certainly tell us something about the rough resolution and then we can infer it is a likely resolution close to that once we know the exact pixel area sizes from earlier (if you can be bothered setting up the close up photo!!).

I'll try to do that tomorrow evening.  Not sure if my cell camera is adequate for pixel counting, we'll see.  I'd attempted to do that once before with a ruler and that's what led me to the 1024x768 estimate, but I'm doubting that more now.  1600x1200 is clearly resolving more detail to the shadow mask sim, even with the scaling errors.

My plan was to make a really authentic looking experience using HLSL settings, including barrelling and other distortions to try to replicate my old CRT. From all your reporting it sounds like any high resolution effects will just be washed away with the poor scaling and resolution matching between the driver and the display and simply turn into a moire-fest!?

Same here, that's why the uncontrollable scaling has been a real problem; it does, in fact, turn HLSL into a moire-fest.  At least they're aware of the scaling issue and claim to be working on an update. 

[DJO_Maverick]

Any chance you can tell us the actual "exact" display pixel area in mm (width x height)? Can't seem to find this info anywhere on the resellers websites! Would be good to know how it will fit with existing bezel.

...

A really good sharp photo with a good camera of the display with a measuring tape over it will likely tell us the actual resolution of the display if we can count how many pixels are showing per say 10 or 20mm of tape. It will certainly tell us something about the rough resolution and then we can infer it is a likely resolution close to that once we know the exact pixel area sizes from earlier (if you can be bothered setting up the close up photo!!).

You'll have to settle for Imperial units or convert, only ruler I've got handy. 

Visible area is 20 3/4in x 15 9/16in.  About 25 3/4in on the diagonal.

This is the best I can do for pixel close-ups today. 

[ckas]

Awesome!

Ok - I count roughly 54-55 pixels per inch. This results in 20.75 x 54 = 1120 pixels and 15.5625 x 54 = 840 pixels. This would make the monitor 1120x840 (which is an unusual but not completely implausible resolution - there are monitors with this!). Perhaps a more likely (due to measurement error) is XGA+ 1152x864 pixels (a standard but very uncommon resolution). Perhaps try to send some resolutions inside this range in ratio 4:3 to see if any render without scaling?

Feels like we are getting close - thanks again for all your hard work!

[DJO_Maverick]

Tried that suite of resolutions again, no luck.  Still stretching.  I also count more like ~50 per inch.  That would basically be spot on to 1024x768.

Went back and stared at that some more...  I'm convinced now, more than ever, that it really is 1024x768.  I think it was tricking my eyes at 1600x1200 by doing some pretty good subpixel rendering.  Anything with 768 vertical has perfectly even lines.  I also forgot to turn off autostretch in my prior testing...  with it off, x768 generates perfectly even scanlines at integer scale.  Nothing else has.

Interestingly, however, that still generates some slight uneven stretching on the x axis.  Not really noticeable outside of a test pattern/ArcadeOSD, but it's there.  That may come from the apparent mismatch between the controller firmware (what it thinks the AR/res are) and the actual panel resolution.

I think it's time for me to come to peace with the fact that it is, almost certainly, merely a 1024x768 panel (or it certainly only has 768 vertical lines and some oddball X resolution).  That keeps lines even for HLSL, even though it (of course) means a lot less resolution than desired to do a really good simulation.  I may fiddle with creating some x768 super resolutions for it next to see how that looks, since the sub-pixel rendering seems good.

[ckas]

Bummer... That's a pretty low res for such a large "modern" screen. If they were making a custom panel anyway - they might have ramped up the resolution a bit! 1920x1440 would have been awesome...

[Falken Hawke]

960x768 (5:4)?  I have a project that would be perfect for this if it is 5:4.

[DJO_Maverick]

960x768 (5:4)?  I have a project that would be perfect for this if it is 5:4.

It was just weird enough to try, but, no, still has x axis distortion.  Worth noting, the physical size of the screen is definitely 4:3 in aspect...  but there's no telling what the control board thinks is correct right now.  It's still in the right ballpark though...  like 1024, it only shows some very modest stretching on the x axis in just the center 25-33% of the screen.

[ckas]

Honestly cannot believe they won't just tell you the res of the physical panel... Really pathetic form - ultimately, the panel will be manufactured by one of only a handful of companies, it will have a part number so the mob selling the complete unit with the driver MUST know immediately all the specs for it (and even have a datasheet handy!)...

[DJO_Maverick]

So in breaking news, they have now confirmed that the physical resolution is only 1024x768...  after someone else did a teardown and found that the one part that had an identifiable part number was the T-Con, and it was from a 32" 720p TV.

No word yet on what, if anything, they intend to do about everyone who paid $300 believing it to be a 1600x1200 as-stated...

I suppose it boils down to what one believes a 1024x768 4:3 LCD at 26" is worth...  It's still a bit of a unicorn size, so there's still value in that.  More than adequate for real hardware, but definitely a whole different animal for those of us thinking it was going to be The Perfect CRT Shader Monitor.

[harri]

While it's not optimal it should be more pixels than in any system it will be used for. So biggest concern is scaling which is harder to do with less extra pixels.

So in breaking news, they have now confirmed that the physical resolution is only 1024x768...  after someone else did a teardown and found that the one part that had an identifiable part number was the T-Con, and it was from a 32" 720p TV.

Which makes me wonder, how hard it is to modify a production line that makes 1080p or 1440p 32" panels to output 26" 4:3 panels. I'm sure it's more than saying to a robot 'cut there instead of here' but if it would be easy enough some manufacturer could possibly be persuaded to run a final batch with a line going to decommission.

[sadanorakman]

Which makes me wonder, how hard it is to modify a production line that makes 1080p or 1440p 32" panels to output 26" 4:3 panels. I'm sure it's more than saying to a robot 'cut there instead of here' but if it would be easy enough some manufacturer could possibly be persuaded to run a final batch with a line going to decommission.

There are companies in China which take 16:9 LCDs and slice them down to different aspect ratios, notably for very wide but short panels that can be used for marquees, so I don't know why they wouldn't be able to do this.  You'd probably want those panels to be IPS though instead of VA.

I managed to find a used Eizo EV2730, which is a 27" IPS panel, but completely square 1920 x 1920 pixels, so is great for landscape and portrait games.  https://www.eizo.com/products/flexscan/ev2730q/

[DJO_Maverick]

I ended up returning mine and got one of the 28" LG DualUp instead, rotated to landscape.  2880x2560, obviously much better build quality, and it is pretty darn close to a 27" 4:3. 

[ZTylerDurden717]

Looks like MSVX-Unico is going to update their ULM26 to 1440x1080.