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Plexiglass and Smoked Glass
Angry_Radish:
Please excuse the quality of the pics, taking photos with my camera's flash off is an iffy thing at best :)
I haven't adjusted the brightness or anything on the TV screen, and I'll let you draw your own conclusions, but I think the colors look WAY better under the greylite, and it DOES hide the terrible job I did mounting the screen ;D
Wade:
Photos of tinted glass over a monitor are misleading (especially Oscar's), as they suggest it makes colors more vibrant, which is far from the truth. Photographing a monitor is difficult, it requires turning the flash off, which in turn causes the brighter non-tinted monitor to appear washed out, and the darkened tinted monitor ends up looking better.
Primarily, tinted glass is used to hide a screen-burned tube, a poor monitor installation, or a poorly fitting (or missing) bezel. If your cabinet doesn't fit into any of these categories, I'd suggest using clear Tempered glass.
Keep in mind that practically all newer monitors have a black/grey tint to the tube already. I have had problems with brightness with tinted plexi on some games with perfectly good, new monitors! I used tinted plexi on these games just because I have a BUNCH of it scrap (it was free).
I have a dozen games, and some have tint from the factory, some don't, and none that I have built have tinted plexi because in general, it doesn't look as good IMO. Generally, the older games had some light tint, and newer ones don't. The dividing line seems to be somewhere around 1990.
I've never felt I needed to "add tint" to a monitor. The best lighting for playing games is a dim ambient light, and under those conditions I haven't had trouble seeing the monitors or getting enough contrast out of the monitors. Tinted or not, when I have the overhead lights on in my gameroom, it is hard to see the monitors. Those lights are only on if I'm working on a game.
I know I'm in the minority on this forum on the tinted glass topic. :/
Wade
releasedtruth:
Wade, I hear what you're saying. I have Graylite 14 at the moment, but part of me wonders if Graylite 31 would be a better option. I've never seen it personally, but it's not as dark and my installation looks good so no need to hide anything. I should try without any glass for a while, see how my eyes like/dislike it...
flyguy1821:
Does the number equate to amount of light let through as in vehicle tint? Example graylite 14 lets less light through than graylite 31?
Aurich:
--- Quote from: flyguy1821 on September 27, 2006, 06:13:20 pm ---Does the number equate to amount of light let through as in vehicle tint? Example graylite 14 lets less light through than graylite 31?
--- End quote ---
Yes. Graylite 14 means that it allows 14% of the light through. I like the tinted look, my first cab has tinted plexi, but IMHO that's on the pretty dark side, I'm not sure why it's so popular.