20 inches LCD : P-MVA vs S-IPS (?) (page 6: Films, viewing angles)

Movies

One has 4/3 format and the other is wide. The Belinea is apparently better for DVDs. It will provide a bigger image: 40.7 cm long for LG as compared to 43.3 cm for the 10 20 35W.

In terms of quality, once again it’s extremely close. As usual with overdrive panels there is a twinkling effect, less than the IPS but much more than MVA 25ms panels. We don’t miss the MVA 25ms as these monitors had very high afterglow effects. (We have even recently ordered a recent MVA 25ms and a little twinkling is much better than afterglow).

None of the monitors, however, seems to be compatible with the new HDCP norm, which is indispensable to display protected HD movies (Blue-Ray, HD-DVD). This isn´t currently a problem, but some day you might be frustrated after having bought the HD edition of your favourite movie and your monitor display the error message, "security requirements to display the content aren´t reached". At best, you will see it in lower resolution. Great!

Viewing angles

Photos are taken from 50°. The monitor’s usual characteristics are:

TN panels: lower viewing angle turns to black

IPS panel: widest viewing angles, almost no degradation at 50°

VA panel: above viewing angle and the side mainly tends to whiten a bit.

Here are the results of the two monitors tested here:

AU-Optronics panel: Belinea 10 20 35W

??? ??? ms panel: LG Flatron L2040P

This test really revealed the panel’s identity. The LG monitor doesn´t behave like an IPS, but like a true VA. So, here’s our question:

What whitens from the side and above, has a very deep black, and has much higher reaction time than previous ISP 16 ms monitors.

The answer is an ISP panel according to LG and a P-MVA according to us. As explained in the previous pages, it’s impossible to open the monitor and not break the bezel, so we had to access a hidden menu, which seems to confirm our opinion. The panel included is an AU-Optronics and the manufacturer doesn´t have any IPS panels so far. For comparison, here is the result of a real IPS monitor.

LG-Philips S-IPS 16 ms panel: Philips 200P4SS

And here is a TN monitor. It´s easy to recognize, because the inferior viewing angle turns black :

AU-Optronics TN 4 ms panel: BenQ FP91V