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60 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nice looking monitor, very easy to configure and install, July 14, 2002
I purchased this monitor...I'd been looking at the Envision line for a while, but noticed this one and decided to make the purchase. This monitor is different from all of their other line, because it has the Picture in Picture and TV tuner built in.While I rarely use PIP even on my normal television, I do currently use a TV Tuner card with my PC, and this allows me to eliminate running cable through the PC if I want to watch a program. The advantage of PIP on this monitor is that you can actually watch a program while continuing to work on the computer. In other words, have PC input on the main screen and your video or TV in on the PIP screen. Very flexible in that regard. For inputs you can use either standard video analog, SVID, or the normal monitor cable from your PC. It also includes speakers on the monitor itself, which you can activate by connecting your line in from the PC, or which will be used when you plug in the coax from your VCR or satellite. There is also a headphone out plug, in case you want to listen in private. The monitor itself is very light. I was surprised at just how light it is. You can not readily adjust the hight of the monitor but you can very easily tilt it back and forth for easy viewing. Depending upon the height of your computer desk, this might or might not be an issue for you. The menu system is very easy to use, and allows you to independently configure the settings for PC, PIP, or TV tuner inputs. Max resolution of this device is 1280x1024 with an associated refresh rate of 75. With a monitor this large, you might as well use the max. I did adjust the brightness down to very very low, and left contrast very high, which is the recommended setting for MOST monitors to ease eye strain. Setting it up to work with XP takes a tiny bit of configuration, but nothing extravagant. The vendor website describes how to do this, as well as offers driver downloads. Because this device is brand new, there are NOT drivers currently on the vendor website, so use the one on the included CD. In XP, just tell it not to search for a new driver (XP didn't automatically detect it when I plugged it in), and force it to use the one you specify which is on the CD. It will tell you the driver isn't certified, just ignore that and make it install. Once the driver was installed, XP identified the monitor appropriately. After that, I did only minor configuration with the onscreen menu to move the display around a bit. Aesthetically, the silver colour matches the rest of my setup, so that was a nice bonus. And since the monitor is so thin (depth of about 8" depending upon how you tilt it), it takes up very little space on the desk. (width is 19" wide due to slim speakers on sides) Shimmer effect: Depending upon what screen colours you use, you might notice a slight shimmering effect. I have seen this within Internet Explorer, on a grey/silver background (i'm using the XP blue default theme with no customized colours). I do not notice the shimmer on any other colour being displayed by the monitor, but on that silver area in the menu bar, you can actually see the monitor refreshing. While it is a bit distracting, I simply changed that colour and it went away. So far, the monitor has performed well, presenting very brilliant colour, and with only a slight drawback on that shimmering in the silver. (7/17 update: i was able to eliminate about 50% of the shimmer by reducing the brightness to zero and increasing contrast to 100) .... Happy monitoring!
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