Movies
All of these 22" monitors are equipped with TN panels. As explained in the previous page, the lateral viewing angles are quite good. This is one of the most important factors when there are multiple viewers, which 22" monitors accommodate. The size is comfortable enough even if the diagonal of current TVs is improving from 32 to 40".
The major inconvenience of TN technology is the inferior viewing angle. The image isn't visible if you look at it from below, something that usually happens if you are on your couch and the monitor is on your desk. The other problem is for children. If you do not change the screen's position for them, they won't see the image.
Another well known problem for TNs technology is the accentuation of compression defects. The quality of movie encoding will have a direct impact on the image displayed. HD movies encoded in MPEG2 with DVD quality are a bit of a problem. So imagine what it would look like with a heavily compressed DivX… While we are on the subject, let's bring up the problem of
HDCP or not HDCP compatibility.
You, the readers, do not share the same opinion. Some letters have faulted us for giving good grades to monitors compatible with this protection norm, instead of militating against it and even trying to find a way crack to it. If our point of view isn't clear despite the articles published on the subject, here's a clarification. We find the implementation of HDCP unfortunate, and we wish that it would simply disappear and manufacturers would finally decide not to activate it.
In cases where the digital signal is blocked, you have to go with the analog one, the VGA interface. This isn't a problem for quality, with a 22" monitor the precision difference between digital and analog isn't visible. However, it implicates some manipulation, the modification of the interface and this is really annoying. We bought an HD player, a very expensive movie, Blu-Ray or HD-DVD compatible software, a screen and the norm considers us a pirate while the bill for all of this was quite significant.
Because of these complications having an HDCP compatibility seems preferable to us. Here is the list of monitors in this test that are compatible:
There aren't many.
Finally, we prefer a monitor with accurate colors for movie viewing. The Dell and Samsung are really good for this point while the Acer is less impressive.
