Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

Its amazing how really REALLY bad games like TDM (and other "dark" content) look on some televisions...


lost_soul

Recommended Posts

I was at my brother's place, playing TDM on an extra LCD TV in the basement. The darker areas hardly stood out from the backlighting of the monitor. I frankly can't believe consumers accept hardware like that. I mean, there are a LOT of dark movies out there.

 

Moral of the story, avoid low-end TVs and monitors. I'm typing this using a monitor that I picked up at a garage sale for the price of a good pizza. Even though it isn't IPS, its not half bad. TDM is easily playable on it, it has in-built speakers, and it does more than 1366x768, though not full 1080.

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I'm actually going over there in a few days, but this time I will bring an extra monitor to use. :) Its not as big, but it has better contrast. Is it true that they set the levels on TVs to extreme levels at the store?

 

I'm just glad that the TV I picked has good contrast. Back then, I didn't know about IPS/DSTN displays. DSTN is where the contrast is low and the colors appear to invert if you look at the monitor at a sharp anble. I don't know for sure, but I think mine is IPS.

 

My TV is CCFL-lit though, and that was a mistake. Those will be the first part of the TV to burn out. Newer TVs use LEDs to light the screen instead of CCFLs. Also, plasma TVs have REALLY good contrast for dark games like TDM but they wear out quickly. Plasma TVs also draw lots of power. They draw even more than CCFL-based LCD screens!

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep, CRTs are still loved by some of us because they have awesome contrast! I finally got rid of all of mine though. They're just so big! We put a perfectly good 17 inch CRT monitor outside with a "free" sign on it and it was gone in less than 10 minutes. lol

 

Also, what's the story with those glossy screns? It seems like a lot of people hate them, but they're still popular.

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Glossy screens look shiny and sell well in the stores, but are so horrible and make viewing problematic obviously. It'll take a while before the general public realizes it as well.

"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."

- Baron Thomas Babington Macauley

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, OLED will be awesome. It will have real per-pixel lighting, instead of having a constant (or even variable) backlight as we do now. It will also boost your battery life on mobile devices if you use white text on a black background because the background portion will not have to be lit.

 

This video explains how LCDs function, where you have to light the whole screen, then block out the light in sections that you want to be dark... but you cannot block out all of the light in those dark sections.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiejNAUwcQ8

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yup, I habe an Eizo as a computer monitor, which has a pretty awesome contrast. Those were 4oo € well spent. My 55 inch LG 3D TV is also pretty good due to its local LED backlight dimming. But of course both of these displays don't compare against the small 25 inch SONY OLED we have at work. Such amazing black values.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have an old 20" pseudo widescreen crt NEC diamondtron multisync FE2111sb sitting next to me. Used to be my primary monitor @1920x1440 but now its at a workstation we built for my young nephew. :(

 

The complete lack of color banding and blacks are just amazing and when you run it at 90-110hz there's no visible jitter and its awesome. I miss it in many ways.

 

Hopefully 10bit color on oleds will be the standard? Color banding for clouds/skys/lit areas is something we've all become accustomed to on all of the mass market 8bit panels.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Remember those early LCDs on laptops back in the 90s? They weren't even able to show smooth movement without becoming extremely blurry. I tried playing Doom on one of those at one point and it was a headache inducing experience, especially if you used "always run".

 

These days, even cheap laptops have this particular problem solved. Back then, you had to spend a lot more if you wanted a laptop with a screen capable of video without giving the user a headache.

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The culprit is the HDMI black level.

My advise is to always use the DVI port when it comes to connect a monitor/TV to PC VGA cards.

Edited by lowenz

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

what's the story with those glossy screns? It seems like a lot of people hate them, but they're still popular.

I'd guess it's partly to do with cost. When I ordered my custom-built laptop nearly two years ago, I went with the glossy screen option as having a matte screen put me over budget. I occasionally find the reflection on the gloss screen annoying, but not enough to make me regret saving the money - can't remember how much it was, but as it was a 19" screen it was a fairly significant difference. (And to go off-topic for a moment, it looks like I bought one of the last 19" laptops ever made. As far as I can see, no-one makes them any more. Is that right?)(And could that be why I got it so cheap?)

 

repent, sinner

 

Yeah, in the 'New Content' page, the title showed up as

 

"Its amazing how really REALLY bad games like TDM (and oth..."

 

I thought, "This is either the start of a flame war or it's an ambiguously-phrased start to a sentence." Fortunately it was the latter... :smile:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a "bridge" of monitors in Ghana.post-17754-0-09122600-1391490620.jpgpost-17754-0-09122600-1391490620.jpg

Edited by Jinix
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A bridge made of monitors? Nice to see the stuff we put in the "e-waste" for less fortunate countries is being put to good use :rolleyes:

Intel Sandy Bridge i7 2600K @ 3.4ghz stock clocks
8gb Kingston 1600mhz CL8 XMP RAM stock frequency
Sapphire Radeon HD7870 2GB FLeX GHz Edition @ stock @ 1920x1080

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recent Status Updates

    • taffernicus

      i am so euphoric to see new FMs keep coming out and I am keen to try it out in my leisure time, then suddenly my PC is spouting a couple of S.M.A.R.T errors...
      tbf i cannot afford myself to miss my network emulator image file&progress, important ebooks, hyper-v checkpoint & hyper-v export and the precious thief & TDM gamesaves. Don't fall yourself into & lay your hands on crappy SSD
       
      · 3 replies
    • OrbWeaver

      Does anyone actually use the Normalise button in the Surface inspector? Even after looking at the code I'm not quite sure what it's for.
      · 7 replies
    • Ansome

      Turns out my 15th anniversary mission idea has already been done once or twice before! I've been beaten to the punch once again, but I suppose that's to be expected when there's over 170 FMs out there, eh? I'm not complaining though, I love learning new tricks and taking inspiration from past FMs. Best of luck on your own fan missions!
      · 4 replies
    • The Black Arrow

      I wanna play Doom 3, but fhDoom has much better features than dhewm3, yet fhDoom is old, outdated and probably not supported. Damn!
      Makes me think that TDM engine for Doom 3 itself would actually be perfect.
      · 6 replies
    • Petike the Taffer

      Maybe a bit of advice ? In the FM series I'm preparing, the two main characters have the given names Toby and Agnes (it's the protagonist and deuteragonist, respectively), I've been toying with the idea of giving them family names as well, since many of the FM series have named protagonists who have surnames. Toby's from a family who were usually farriers, though he eventually wound up working as a cobbler (this serves as a daylight "front" for his night time thieving). Would it make sense if the man's popularly accepted family name was Farrier ? It's an existing, though less common English surname, and it directly refers to the profession practiced by his relatives. Your suggestions ?
      · 9 replies
×
×
  • Create New...