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Using smoked plexiglas - Hey RandyT!
Smack:
I've got tinted glass on my cocktail cab too.
It really does make things look minter. (how's that, I made up a word.) :D Makes my beater EYGO look great.
But let me tell you, 2 Oscar spinners really dress up the cab... (free shameless Oscar plug.) ;D
word.
Smack
Warborg:
Hmm, I might have to give this a shot myself... Replace the glass in my Showcase with some smoked plexi, see how it works for an S-Video TV instead of an arcade monitor... :)
One question is will it interfere with the IR signal of the remote? Only time will tell...
RandyT:
--- Quote from: OSCAR on February 04, 2003, 07:59:42 pm ---I knew you would reply anyway, so I figured I'd just get your attention first. :)
I was getting ready to buy something to go over the monitor on the cabinet I'm working on when I read a post you wrote about using a dark smoked plexi. I figured I'd give it a shot since you were pretty happy with the results.
I had no idea how good it would look! I'm pretty happy I decided to go with a smoked plexi instead of just standard glass. The games & colors looks so much better. The funny thing is that I thought they looked great before, I didn't know what I was missing, but that tends to be the case unless you actually do a A-B type test.... Check out this link to see what I did, along with a couple more pics. For reference, the monitor shown here is a W-G 9100 powered by an Asus GeForce 2. The same exact camera settings were used in the comparison shots.
--- End quote ---
See? I can't be wrong ALL the time :)
Nice job on the pics! You show the effect very well. You could stand in front of that all day long and not have to rub your eyes once.
The reason you don't get the same effect by turning your monitor down is that the black levels of the CRT really don't change much when you do that unless you turn the brightness down REALLY low. And then your foreground images get dull and ugly.
The same concept is applied in the LCD world. Except they use a thin film and call it "contrast enhancement". Most high-brightness LCDs have poor black levels, so this kind of thing is required for a lot of applications.
The only thing you have to watch out for is a slight color shift, depending on the acrylic used. This can usually be brought back to perfect using the video card's color tweakers in the advanced screen properties section.
Warborg: It has the same effect regardless of monitor type, and the darke plexi only cuts visible light. IR goes right through it for a remote.
I think we're about to see some converts......
RandyT
dhansen:
Hey Oscar,
Are you using that brownish colored plexi? I have smoked glass on my cocktail and horizontal upright but I haven't been able to find plexi with the same tint. I can post some pics of my glass against a white background if you could post a pic of the smoked plexi by itself.
Doug
Lilwolf:
Funny... I was going to post a question about this.
I have a funky piece of glass I want to use for my hope to start soon cocktail table.
I was considering buying the stick on tint for car glass for it. Would this work? Think it would be as good?
Is there any cheaper ways to get the tint?
thanks :)