DanielSmedegaardBuus on 3/12/2011 at 15:43

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Hello all :)

I've been playing the Thief series since the 90s, and they've always been the best games for me to play. I can't imagine ever stopping playing them. I do believe I'll be an old grunt one day, still playing the original Thief on some emulator on some crazy kind of hardware.

My playing, however, has been on somewhat of a pause for awhile, and that's due to not being able to get a decent display on any of my flatscreens.

When I originally played the series, I was on a good old 17" CRT display. Then I switched to extremely expensive and extremely crappy TFTs when they started getting "purchasable", i.e. not insanely expensive. Those two displays are chilling in my attic.

I switched again to a 24" Samsung TFT some four years back IIRC, better than those old 17-inchers, but definitely not usable for Thieving.

I bought a Panasonic plasma TV about two years back. Now this one, this baby is definitely worthy of Thieving. Unfortunately, my gaming PC has a stupid ATI card which doesn't like my Panasonic plasma, it fills black with millions of little red pixels that swarm around. I.e., Thief will be mostly a big red smear ;) Also, plasma being plasma, is more sensitive to "burn-in" of static portions of the image than a TFT is, so that counts as an argument against using it as a game/PC display.

Then, last week, my girlfriend got a Samsung 32" 2011 5-series LED TV from her father, and I was really impressed with the black levels on it. It was also very cheap, so I thought I'd order one for myself and use that as a PC monitor and for thieving.

However, now that I've been testing it for awhile with my Thief games, the black level on one hand isn't really that good. It's tonnes better than my 24" Samsung TFT, but still not like my plasma. That would be okay, if it wasn't for the un-uniformity of the display. Black isn't the same black all-around. The bottom corners have "misty" effects from the backlighting bleeding through. Not a lot, but somewhat annoying.

Those things I could live with, though, but the worst part, and this is the thing I've seens with every LCD I've owned, is that while viewing angles can be pretty good with a high-contrast image, having a severely low-light scene, as in pretty much 95% of the gameplay in any Thief installment, the viewing angles get abysmal. You cannot just sit straight in front of the screen and get all details in every shadow, whenever you move your head, some details are lost while others are revealed. It feels incapacitating for lack of a better word. It feels like I'm never ever looking at the whole screen, I have to move my head around to "scan" the image and get every detail. In essence, not playable.

My plasma has, literally, a 180-degree viewing angle on every light level. You're watching pixels glow, not being shone through. It's fantastic that way. It's ideal for Thief. But I can't use the one I have as a PC monitor.

I've noticed lately (since I bought my Panasonic 42" plasma) that a lot of advancements have been made with plasma screens. I don't know, though, if the "burn-in" problem is as bad as it was two years ago (which, for the record, is not that big of a problem, I accidentally left my screen on for a week with "HDMI 1" burnt in the top left corner, and after a month or so of casual viewing it's no longer visible).

What kind of display do you guys use? What are your thoughts? Are there LED TVs or monitors out there - with a reasonable price - that are good enough for Thief? Is it possible to use a plasma these days as a computer monitor without facing burn-in?

I can't fit a CRT on my desk, so that's out of the question.

Thank you in advance for any thoughts and help :)

And merry christmas! YAY! :D

DanielSmedegaardBuus on 4/12/2011 at 08:25

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Hmmm... It seems this burn-in problem with plasmas really is even less pronounced as I've been led to believe: (http://hdguru.com/plasma-tv-burn-in-fact-or-myth/826/)

The article is even from 2009 and tests 2008 and 2009 models. This would include my model year. I think my strategy will be to use my current plasma as a monitor, ditch the ATI card and buy a proper Nvidia one, and get a new plasma for my living room. This old one doesn't have MPEG-4 anyway, so an upgrade definitely wouldn't hurt :)

Cheers!

jay pettitt on 4/12/2011 at 22:40

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Glad you've got a happy solution.

You'd never believe, but Black Level isn't actually dependent on marketing blurb, rather (at least if you're human) it's relative to ambient light. If you want to enjoy black and not getting satisfaction, turn the ambient light up (a bit - you should still be dark enough for moody - if your screen can't manage that, it's either set up wrong or broken).

"But I must play in a light excluded controlled environment of absolute darkness"

And no, you don't need to be in a light controlled environment to get in the mood or to appreciate computer games. That's even more true with most LCD/TFT screens - you still have fun because they're usually not as stupidly shiny and reflective as CRT screens of yore - you'll still be able to see, even if there's a light on in the room next door.

What you really need for Thief isn't mega awesome black levels, but nice contrast that lets you pick out the difference between nearly black and neearly black.

There are some sucky screens that such for Thief - especially cheap ones. The viewing angles on my old laptop were so appalling that contrast wasn't even consistent from the top to the bottom of the screen But most decent screens will do fine.

I use a LED projector. It's bigger (up to 5 metres when I'm keen), yet smaller, more fun, cheaper and only uses 50watts.