LCD to replace 19" CRT in vertical cabinet?

[deano728]

I converted an Ikari Warriors to Mame and I want to replace the old burned in monitor with an LCD.  I have found that if you turn a 19" LCD on its side, it would fit perfectly, but the question is, how do I find a monitor with good viewing angles that is easily mountable?  Does anyone have any experience with pro vision? 

The big problem I've found, is that all of the LCD computer monitors seem to have one side that doesn't view well (usually the bottom).  When I mount in a vertical cabinet, the problem is the from the right side of the cab, it looks great, but anywhere left of center is dark and almost not seen (unplayable). 

Thanks in advance,
Dean

[MonMotha]

You'll have to find an LCD with an IPS or PVA/MVA style panel; IPS will probably do a little better in terms of viewing angles.  These are generally not cheap ($350+), but they do provide very good image quality with excellent viewing angles.  Most inexpensive LCDs have a TN type panel which will suffer from the poor viewing angles you describe.  This information is almost never advertised, but you can look it up here in many cases.

Also note that 19" non-widescreen monitors are all going to be 5:4 aspect, not 4:3 like the CRT you'd be replacing.  The difference is relatively minor, but you will need small black bars on the sides to keep things from being stretched.

[deano7]

Thanks for the site MonMotha! 

On my initial look for IPS, it would seem that there are mostly only 22" and above.  Anyone try the Provision?  It says that the viewing angles are 80/80/80/80.  Seems prett good to me as it sounds as if only extreme angles are not viewable.

[MonMotha]

There are numerous 19" (5:4) and 21" (4:3) IPS options available.  Anything larger than 21" is probably going to be 16:10 or 16:9, which will have a lot of wasted space unless you stretch the video (ugly).  The biggest issue is the "panel lottery" where the manufacturer uses completely different LCD modules with totally different specifications on the same advertised model number over time.  There are some lists of date codes that you can use to figure out what panel you're likely to have, but there are rarely any guarantees.

Dell 2001FP or 2007FP may work and are reasonably priced, though you have to play the panel lottery on those.
The NEC 2090UXi is generally very highly rated, but it's almost $1000.

The above are all 20" and may be a bit big for your application, but they should be 4:3 rather than 5:4 like most (probably all) 19" models will be.

In general, you're going to be looking at older models.  The new stuff is mostly widescreen, and it's generally cheap crap, anyway.

You should ask Blanka for the current list of "not crap monitors".  He always seems to be up on that, but he'll mostly have European models that aren't widely available in the US (I don't know where you are).

[deano7]

Thanks for the info, I am in Southern California.  It is unfortunate, I ordered a monitor on Ebay and it was the perfect size, I just wish the viewing angle was perfect from all angles as it said in the listing.  I guess most assume that noone cares about the bottom part of the monitor, but when you have to turn it 90 degress, therein lies the problem.  I appreciate the info as I never even knew there were different type of panels - I will definitely limit my search to IPS on your advice.  Thanks again!

[deano7]

Hi, just an update if anyone is watching or for future folks finding themselves in this same predicament.  Here is what I did (It worked great). 

per the previous advice, I bought an IPS monitor - a 22" LED monitor (ASUS VS Series VS229H-P Black 21.5" 14ms HDMI IPS-Panel LED Backlight Widescreen LCD Monitor), it was about $170.  The IPS monitor is the way to go, beautiful viewing angles.  You can change the aspect ratio on the monitor to 4:3.  There is a lot of dead space when you do this and the dimensions are such that the picture is a lot smaller, but this is why I bought a little bigger monitor.  It basically turns the 22" monitor into a 17" 4:3 monitor.  Again, not perfect, but I am very happy with it.  I just blacked off the extra space left in cabinet and now I am ready to play. 

Now, if HAPP or some of the other companies would just adopt the IPS technology into their arcade monitors, life would be perfect and I'd order one of those... 

Thanks again for the advice MonMotha!

[fredster]

You can now buy a LCD replacement for video games from a lot of vendors.  The prices are about $180 to $299 min for a 19" and way up there for a 27".  These new monitors will hook directly up into the PCB leads or you can hookup a 15pin to it.  Wells is making them, I think.  And this link points to retrocade.us They are supposed to be able to be seen at any angle.

http://www.hollandcomputers.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=6003&idcategory=2071

This is hollandcomputers.com that is selling them here, our you can google search for the rest.  They want a lot of money for the metal braces, but the ones I saw had a flange you could screw into a piece of plywood in a cab and do the same as some of the old cabs did.

As more of these old tubes bite the dust, these monitors will replace them.  

[deano7]

Thanks Fredster.  So, first of all, I'll say that Holland Computers is a fantastic company and I dealt with a guy named Chris there, who was just phenominal.  I started out with one of those monitors from Holland.  They aren't IPS panels and the viewing angles are good from 3 of the 4 sides.  I think they would be great for a horizontal cabinet, however, the bottom side has an awful viewing angle.  So, when you put it in a vertical cab, you will not be able to see the screen from one of the sides.  Seriously, so bad that just off center, the color started to fade to gray from the viewing angle.  It wasn't the monitor, because they sent me two of them and they were both identical with the one side having bad viewing angles.  So, unless they start making these from IPS panels as Monmotha pointed out, there is no other way I've found than to do it the way I did...